The Test Drive

Notes

 Part 1.Proving Grounds Epigraphs: Emerson, Diary, . Benjamin, One Way Street (London: New Left Books, ), . Acker, My Mother: Demonology (New York: Pantheon, ). . Immanuel Kant,“On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy,” in Religion and RationalTheology (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,), translated and edited byAllenW.Wood and George Di Giovanni,–,“Über das Mißlingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodizee,” in Immanuel Kant Werkausgabe XI: Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik und Pädagogik I (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, ), edited by Wilhelm Weischedel, –, which begins by affirming tests within tests when stating that“the human being is justified, as rational, in testing all claims, all doctrines which impose respect upon him,before he submits himself to them,so that this respect may be sincere and not feigned” (). .Hannah Arendt understands the camps in these terms as well,as“laboratories in which the fundamental belief of totalitarianism that everything is possible is being verified.Compared with this,all other experiments are secondary in importance .”The Origins ofTotalitarianism(Cleveland:MeridianBooks,),.Consider also her assertion that what is practiced there constitutes the“testing ground in which [ideological indoctrination] must prove itself”whereas the camps themselves are“supposed to furnish the‘theoretical’verification of the ideology”(). They also “serve the ghastly experiment of eliminating, under scientifically controlled conditions, spontaneity itself as an expression of human behavior” (). The camps form the center of “the experiment of total domination” (). However , Arendt does not interrogate what it is that made this experimental turn possible . In Ce qui reste d’Auschwitz: L’archive et le témoin Homo Sacer III (Paris, Editions Payot & Rivages,),translated by PierreAlferi,GiorgioAgamben considers experimentation in the camps and on U.S.prisoners in terms of the suspension of legal rights. .Friedrich Nietzsche,The Gay Science, Die FröhlicheWissenschaft, KSA (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, ), edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, : Notes  “Vielleicht ist sie [die Wissenschaft] jetzt noch bekannter wegen ihrer Kraft, den Menschen um seine Freuden zu bringen,und ihn kälter,statuenhafter,stoischer zu machen.” Translated with commentary by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, ). . Edmund Husserl, “The positivistic reduction of the idea of science. The ‘crisis’ of science as the loss of its meaning for life,” §, in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, ), translated by David Carr, . . See Jacques Derrida, Mémoires: For Paul de Man (New York: Columbia University Press,) translated by Cecile Lindsay,Jonathan Culler,and Eduardo Cadava, edited by Avital Ronell and Eduardo Cadava. . Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, The Seminar Book VII, – (New York: W. W. Norton, ), edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, translated by Dennis Porter. . Husserl, Crisis, . . Ibid. . Ibid. . Ibid. . Ibid. . Ibid., . . Ibid. . Consider in this light what Derrida states in Aporias:“In order to be responsible and truly decisive, a decision should not limit itself to putting into operation a determinable or determining knowledge, the consequence of some preestablished order. . . . One must avoid good conscience at all costs.”Aporias: Dying – Awaiting (One Another at) the “Limits of Truth” (Stanford: Stanford University Press, ), translated by Thomas Dutoit, . . Ibid., . . There are too few activists but there are some, such as Steve Potter’s team at the Laboratory for Neuroengineering, shared by Emory University and Georgia Tech.Potter’s robotic creations – for instance,the Hybrot,a machine controlled by rat neurons sealed in a patented dish spiked with micro-electrodes – have become an object of desire of the U.S. military and Department of Defense, with which Potter refuses to deal. For a succinct review of further listings, see Erik Baard, “Some Scientists Refuse to Get Paid for Killer Ideas” in the Village Voice, – September , –. Notes to Pages –  . The repression of the destructive edges of irony in the works of Szondi and Booth is one of the concerns of Paul de Man in“The Concept of Irony,”in Aesthetic Ideology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ), edited by Andrzej Warminski. . Edmund Husserl,“The Vienna Lecture,” in Crisis, . . See Martin Heidegger’s discussion of this utterance in What Is Called Thinking ? (New York: Harper & Row, ), edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen, ff. Was Heisst Denken? (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, ). . Ibid., . . Jacques Derrida,“Interpretations at War,” New Literary History . (Winter ): . . Cohen after Derrida,“Interpretations,” . . Ibid., . . Ibid. . Ibid. . Ibid., . . Ibid. . Ibid. . Ibid. . Ibid., . . Ibid. .Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,  U.S.  (). Let us situate the cases in question.Frye v. United States,  F., (D.C.Cir.) held, in...