Rupture: On the Emergence of the Political

Notes

NOTES Introduction 1. The allusion here, of course, is to Alexandre Koyre's account of the scientific revolution that surrounded the shift from geocentrism to heliocentrism, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957). 2. Jacques Lacan provides a nice example of the typical role that power plays relative to rupture, which he formulates in terms of the outbreak of desire (though he would later associate it with drive or enjoyment). In his seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis, he notes, "What is Alexander's proclamation when he arrived in Persepolis or Hitler's when he arrived in Paris? The preamble isn't important: 'I have come to liberate you from this or that.' The essential point is 'Carryon working. Work must go on.' Which of course, means: 'Let it be clear to everyone that this is on no account the moment to express the least surge of desire.' The morality of power, of the service of goods, is as follows: 'As far as desires are concerned, come back later. Make them wait.' " Jacques Lacan, The Seminar ofJacques Lacan, Book VII: The Ethics ofPsychoanalysis, 1959-1960, trans. Dennis Porter (New York: Norton, 1992),315. 3. The fetishization of resistance has become commonplace today, but perhaps the great exemplar of this position was Albert Camus, who wrote The Rebel in order to encourage continual revolt without revolution. Revolution, for Camus, marks the betrayal of revolt, and revolt is the act through which our humanity becomes constituted. The problem with revolution, as Camus sees it, is that it always ends up with the establishment of power, which is exactly what continual revolt avoids. What Camus doesn't see is how the position of revolt requires the very power structure that it contests. The subject of revolt cannot but be what Hegel calls a beautiful soul, a subject who fails to see its own role in constituting and sustaining the situation that it rails against. For Camus's explanation of the politics of revolt, see Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, trans. Anthony Bower (New York: Vintage, 1991). 4. Derrida's deconstruction of traditional metaphysics sees only a repression of rupture in metaphysical speculation. The attempt to achieve presence, as he sees it, has the effect of eliding difference and discontinuity. But this analysis misses how metaphysics first introduces a rupture into being before it theorizes a return to presence. According to Derrida, "Metaphysics has always consisted in attempting to uproot the presence of meaning, in whatever guise, from dif- (erance" (Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981],32). Our contention is exactly the opposite: metaphysics 231 232 Notes to Pages 5-8 introduces difference into being in the form of the break between the appearance and the idea. 5. Metaphysics tries to heal the rupture that it opens by seeking an ultimate ground for being, and this is why Christian theology was so easily able to take up the metaphysical tradition. God becomes the foundation for being and thereby heals the rupture occasioned by metaphysical speculation. 6. Attempts to overcome the epistemological division between appearances and things in themselves-to treat things in themselves as if they are appearances and thereby governed by the laws of the understanding-result in the antinomies of pure reason. Kant shows how through these antinomies reason becomes at odds with itself unless it retains this fundamental division. Kant makes clear that a certain idea of rupture is necessary for thinking coherently about the world. 7. Our position on Hegel is exactly the opposite of Allen Wood's, who defends Hegel as an ethical and political thinker by dismissing his "speculative metaphysics." According to Wood, "If you decide to examine [Hegel's metaphysical speculation] more closely, you know before long that you are in for a difficult and generally unrewarding time of it, at least from the standpoint of social and political theory. If you are sensible, you will try to avoid that" (Allen W. Wood, Hegel's Ethical Thought [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990], xiii). Though Hegel's political thought is not barren of insight, our view is that the metaphysical ground is, contra Wood, much more fecund because it takes rupture as its point of departure, while the political thought assigns it a much more minimal role. 8. There have been, of course, many attempts to redeem Hegel as a political thinker, but the most prominent of these have focused...