The plot: origin and future
It is possible that Klossowski had been waiting thirty years to be able to find in Nietzsche’s Nachlass a confirmation to his and Bataille’s thesis about a possible post- Zarathustra «plotting theory» against the economic system of society. Thanks to the dual alliance with Colli and Montinari on one side and with the two French philosophers on the other (a relationship solidified during the Royaumount Conference in July 1964), Klossowski may develop and elaborate an analysis on some specific Nietzschean themes, that will be completed with both his masterpiece Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle (1969) and his next reprise entitled Circulus Vitiosus, displayed at the Cerisy-la- Salle Convention in 1972. Circulus Vitiosus marks the «passing of the torch» from the generation of Nietzschean philosophers of the ‘30s to the new anti-philosopher one of the ‘50s and ‘60s, independent from Marxist and structuralist schemes, like Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotard, Derrida to name a few.Klossowski’s advice in reading some of Nietzsche’s fragments, namely The strong of the Future, is “[to] overcom[e] the feeling of strangeness that, prima facie, Nietzsche’s affirmations inspire” (CV, 33). In this fragment Nietzsche asserts that the emancipation of European man will produce a new type of «excessive» man, the strong of the future, whose aim will not be the needs of society but the needs of the future. Klossowski clarifies that “The thought that a setting apart or isolation of a human group could be used as a method for creating a series of 'rare and singular plants' (a 'race' having 'its own sphere of life, freed from any virtue-imperative): - this experimental character of the project - impracticable - if it were not the object of a vast conspiracy - because no amount
of 'planning' could ever foresee 'hothouses'
of this kind - would in some manner have
to be inscribed in and produced by the very
process of the economy.” (NVC, 166). But
the economy of any society would prefer
destroying such 'rare and singular plants'
as the costs of their elimination would be
less than those spent for their growth and
their probable consequent eradication once
these plants would represent unrelated
communities, whose political goal would be
the overturning of any future representative
deemed to have power. Thanks to this
fragment the philosopher Klossowski finds
an ethical opportunity to show a honest
anti-system plot in Nietzsche’s words: “This
challenge is anticipated by every industrial
morality, whose laws of production create
a bad conscience in anyone who lives within
the unexchangeable, and which can tolerate
no culture or sphere of life that is not in
some manner integrated into or subjected
to general productivity. It is against this
vast enterprise of intimidating the affects,
whose amplitude measures, that Nietzsche
proposes his own projects of selection, as so
many menaces. These projects must provide
for the propitious moment when these rare,
singular and, to be sure, poisonous plants
can be clandestinely cultivated - and then
can blossom forth like an insurrection of the
affects against every virtue-imperative.”
(NVC, 167). The ethical and moral fronts of
the counterposed forces display here: on
one side we have the productive gregarious
constantly spurred on producing goods,
gaining his daily sovereign portion, following
established and controlled codes, figures,
rules, and behaviours, on the other the non-
assimilated men that Klossowski defines
as a “... some secret, elusive community,
whose actions would resist suppression by
any regime. Only such a community would
have the ability to disperse itself through its
action whilst maintaining a certain efficacy,
at least until the inevitable moment when
gregarious reality appropriates the
community’s secret in some institutional
capacity.” (CV, 34). Deleuze and Guattari
replay the aforementioned «unproductive
species» in the late XX century as
insurrectionary force in the accelerate
process of desiring production. We have
evidence of this idea in Deleuze’s Nomad
Thought (written four months after Anti-
Œdipus, 1972): “Confronted with the ways
in which our societies become progressively
decodified and unregulated, in which our
codes break down at every point, Nietzsche
is the only thinker who makes no attempt at
recodification. He says: the process still has
not gone far too enough, we are still only
children (“The emancipation of the European
man is the great irreversible process of the
present day; and the tendency should even
be accelerated.”). In his own writing and
thought Nietzsche assists in the attempt at
decodification - not in the relative sense,
but expressing something that can not
be codified, confounding all codes. But
to confound all codes is not easy, even on
the simplest level of writing and thought.”
(NT, 143). At this point a discrepancy
between the interpretation of the quote
“accelerate the process” in Nietzsche and
in Deleuze is to be noted and explained. A
«political» Nietzsche thinks - according
to Klossowski’s reading - that a possible
”secret society comprised of experimenters,
scholars and artists, in other words
creators .... will know how to act according
to the doctrine of the vicious circle and ....
will make it the sine qua non of universal
existence." (CV, 34). This community of
singularities have at their back a society
that follows an incessant economic growth
for a «total management of the world» and
a «planetary planning of the existence»;
whereas in Anti-Œdipus there is no hint of
such plans. Theirs (Deleuze and Guattari’s)
is a «message of hope through the
conflict». The century of revolutions has
occurred, maybe even ahead of Nietzsche’s
imagination, and it is exactly from the
extraordinary load of energy/desire coming
out from such breaking events, that
Nietzsche’s hothouses-differentiations
-as well as Deleuze and Guattari’s
revolutionary events- rise. The affirmative
delirium of the nomadic codebreakers that
accelerate the process of destitution of
codes and spaces through a schizo-desiring
production corresponds and substitutes in
Deleuze and Guattari’s anti-philosophy, the
figure of the strong-of-the-future-plotter.
As far as the “we are still only children” is
concerned, Deleuze in his Anti-Œdipus hints
at a parodistic reprimand towards «the
poisonous childhood charm» in the process
of acceleration of delirious behaviours of
the mutinous ones to come. But we need
Klossowski to fully understand the meaning
of it: “The power of the propagation of
the species is already turned against the
instrument that multiplied it: the industrial
spirit, which raised gregariousness to the
rank of the sole agent of existence, will have
thus carried the seeds of its own destruction
with itself. Despite appearances, the new
species, 'strong enough to have no need
of the tyranny of the virtue-imperative',
does not yet reign; and unless it is already
preparing for it on the backs of the classes,
whatitwillultimatelybringabout-themost
fearful thing of its kind - is perhaps still
sleeping in the cradle.” (NCV, 167 168). What
a terrible joke and dread for the gregarious
of any time to breed vipers in their bosom!
Nietzsche may laugh in the end, with
his Dionysian laugh: “It often happens
that Nietzsche comes face to face with
something sickening, ignoble, disgusting.
Well, Nietzsche thinks it's funny, and he
would add fuel to the fire if he could. He says:
keep going, it's still not disgusting enough.
Or he says: excellent, how disgusting, what
a marvel, what a masterpiece, a poisonous
flower, finally the "human species is getting
interesting." (DI, 257). Deleuze is right here
in affirming : “It is perhaps in this sense
that Nietzsche announces the advent of a
new politics ... which Klossowski calls a plot
against his own class.” (NT, 149).
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento