Inanimation: Theories of Inorganic Life

340 Pages·2016·2.716 MB·English

by  David Wills

InanImatIon
Cary Wolfe, Series Editor
35 InanImatIon: theorIes of InorganIc LIfe
David Wills
34 aLL thoughts are equaL: LarueLLe and
nonhuman PhILosoPhy
John Ó Maoilearca
33 necromedIa
Marcel O’Gorman
32 the InteLLectIve sPace: thInkIng beyond
cognItIon
Laurent Dubreuil
31 LarueLLe: agaInst the dIgItaL
Alexander R. Galloway
30 the unIverse of thIngs: on sPecuLatIve reaLIsm
Steven Shaviro
29 neocybernetIcs and narratIve
Bruce Clarke
28 cInders
Jacques Derrida
27 hyPerobjects: PhILosoPhy and ecoLogy after
the end of the WorLd
Timothy Morton
26 humanesIs: sound and technoLogIcaL
PosthumanIsm
David Cecchetto
25 artIst anImaL
Steve Baker
(continued on page 319)
InanImatIon
theorIes of InorganIc LIfe
davId WILLs
posthumanities 35
unIversIty of mInnesota Press
minneapolis · London
The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges financial support for the
publication of this book from the Brown University Faculty Development Fund.
An earlier version of chapter 1 was published in German as “Automatisches Leben,
Also Leben,” trans. Clemens Krümmel, Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 4, no. 1
(2011): 15– 30. An earlier version of chapter 2 was published in Mosaic, a Journal for
the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 44, no. 4 (2011): 21– 41. An earlier version of
chapter 3 was published as “The Blushing Machine: Animal Shame and Technological
Life,” Parrhesia 8 (2009), http://www.parrhesiajournal.org/. Portions of chapter 4 were
published in French as “La technopoétique de l’autre . . . en pointillé,” in Rêver croire
penser: autour d’Hélène Cixous, ed. Bruno Clément and Marta Segarra, 115–2 6 (Paris:
CampagnePremière, 2010). An earlier version of chapter 6 was published as “Raw
War: Technotropological Effects of a Divided Front,” Oxford Literary Review 31, no. 2
(2009): 133– 52, reprinted with permission of Edinburgh University Press. An earlier
version of chapter 8 was published in Journal of French Philosophy 18, no. 2 (2010):
43– 64. An earlier version of chapter 9 appeared in Anne Berger and Marta Segarra, eds.,
Demenageries: Thinking (of) Animals after Derrida, 245– 63 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011);
reprinted with permission of Koninklijke Brill NV.
Copyright 2016 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the
publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wills, David.
Title: Inanimation : theories of inorganic life / David Wills.
Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2016. | Series:
Posthumanities ; 35 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015019115 | ISBN 978-0-8166-9882-0 (hc) |
ISBN 978-0-8166-9886-8 (pb)
Subjects: LCSH: Life.
Classification: LCC BD435 .W64 2016 | DDC 113/.8—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015019115
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
21 20 19 18 17 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Emma and Branka
my private lives
This page intentionally left blank
ContEntS
Preface ix
Introduction: Doubled Lives 1
Part I. autobIograPhy
1. Automatic Life, So Life: Descartes 31
2. Order Catastrophically Unknown: Freud 55
3. The Blushing Machine: Derrida 81
Part II. transLatIon
4. Living Punctuations: Cixous and Celan 111
5. Naming the Mechanical Angel: Benjamin 153
6. Raw War: Schmitt, Jünger, and Joyce 179
Part III. resonance
7. Bloodless Coup: Bataille, Nancy, and Barthes 203
8. The Audible Life of the Image: Godard 229
9. Meditations for the Birds: Descartes 257
Acknowledgments 283
Notes 285
Index 313
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
In/animate: what is the appropriate space of separation between those
two words? Is there not an absolute distinction to be maintained be-
tween what lives and what does not; does not knowledge in general, and
scientific knowledge in particular, starting from the eighteenth century,
begin there? Or is there rather persistent contamination between the two;
at the same time forms or figures of an enlivening of the inanimate, and
encroachments of the automatic or inorganic upon the animate? Do we
know what animate means, any more than inanimate, and, presuming we
do, would we know how to articulate those two terms vis- à- vis what we
call “life”? Aristotle, with his vegetative, sensitive, and rational souls, might
take comfort from the avowed inability of contemporary science to define
life as a series of positive terms (e.g., programming, self-o rganization,
autokinesis, autopoiesis) and to exclude all counterexamples. But we
would no doubt not agree with him any more that the vegetative state of
plants renders them lifeless or insensible. And what of the mineral, or
the peculiar relations that develop between the human animal and the
myriad technological apparatuses that have been developed, most often,
precisely in order to render human life easier to live?
The word I will use here to ask these questions is inanimation. It is not
of my own invention but came into usage, as did the corresponding verb to
inanimate, in the early seventeenth century (1631 and 1600, respectively).
For no less an authority than John Donne, inanimate and inanimation were
the preferred signifiers precisely for the positive senses of “enliven(ing),
animat(ing), quicken(ing), infus(ing) life into.”1 To inanimate was to en-
animate. The privative equivalents, referring to deprivation of life, came
later, beginning in 1647 with the verb, which nevertheless remained rare
and would soon become obsolete, and in 1784 with the noun, which has
managed a longer life.
ix