Can’t no PhD niggaz hold me down!
Although a weak current against the ocean of progressive opinion, the spirit of luddism can be seen if one cares to look. It takes a single visit to a supermarket to realize that there exists today an almost fetishized relationship to the natural. Consumers have demonstrated the want to pay extra for food that is free of synthetic compounds when there is no clear nutritional difference in organic versus conventional produce. The same inveterate fixation to the natural can also be felt in the resurgence of vinyl records in music. At the heart of this backlash against digital culture in favor of the analog are the echoes of the ethical dimensions that Lévinas describes in his corpus. It is as though popular culture is beginning to repent for the ontological violence that has long ago been committed against the natural world. Despite the precarious status that Lévinas imposes on ethics in regards to nature, the spirit of luddism has a strange status in regards to the I; in a unique way, it is a trojan horse inside the bastion of ipseity.
In the opening of Lévinas’ essay Philosophy and The Idea of Infinity there is a discussion of the relationship between philosophy and truth. Lévinas asserts that every philosophy pursuits truth, but that two distinct spirits of philosophy interact in order to create the full notion. In one sense, truth is the expression of the investigator’s freedom; it is the means through which the thinker establishes the sovereignty of his ego in the world. Confronted with things that challenge his being, either biologically or ontologically, the thinker utilizes reason in order to create a means of reestablishing his ipseity. By identifying in the other some aspect that is generalizable between it and the self, the same and the other become coextensive to one another. In turn, this reneges the alterity of the other such that it becomes the same, resulting in truth. The method through which this coextension is accomplished is the application of a neuter; “an abstract entity that both is and is not”. The neuter serves as the mediation through which the other’s alterity is nullified into a theme or object that is graspable. It functions much like a fulcrum through which the thinker can exert the force of his will onto things that are external to it, enabling the I to turn reality into its plaything rather than vice versa.
In order to justify such actions, the philosophy of autonomy is accompanied by an almost mythological belief in the pursuit of truth being equivalent to the pursuit of survival. Upon each encounter with an obstacle to the self, the objectification of the obstacle into something controllable is treated as a victory of the human over the inhuman. The self-contained I carries the burden of its own existence. The establishment of a clear difference between I and non-I allows for the violence committed upon the other to be a just violence, one that is in accordance with the manifest-destiny of the I in a world that is only hostile. If the self is a closed system, then what is best for the self is not influenced by the fate of things external to it. Lévinas largely attributes this position to Heidegger. The consequence of such a schema of the self is that an almost insurmountable barrier is placed before empathy. If the I opens up to something other than itself, to something external, existing as an open system rather than a closed one, then the idea of autonomy would collapse. By founding the self upon such an idea, the self isolates itself from all else; without recourse to things outside of itself, the self owes nothing to the world. This spiritual narcissism creates the conditions for the tyrannical progression of freedom.
However, opposite to this philosophy of autonomy is a philosophy that puts the other before the same. This is illustrated by drawing attention to how the unique nature of the idea of the infinite makes the ipseity of the I impossible. Lévinas draws awareness to the fact that in thinking the idea of the infinite, the thinker “thinks more than he thinks”. This overflowing of the ideatum from the idea results in an inability to be grasped, in the presence of alterity despite the usual attempts to destroy it. The appearance of the infinite in the realm of thought disrupts the membrane that the same creates around itself by leading directly towards something outside of the membrane; it is a puncture wound in the horizon of being. The radical alterity that is present in the idea of the infinite subverts the idea of truth as freedom; truth no longer is merely the free adherence to a proposition, but becomes a reality that is imposed on the thinker. In thinking the idea of the infinite the mythology of the self-contained I is cracked open.
Hence arises the conception of truth as experience. Experience, in order to be such, requires an encounter with the “absolutely other”, a transportation into beyond what constitutes our nature. This movement “beyond the nature that surrounds us” is one away from what is familiar and convalescent with the identity of the I. In embarking on this journey, the voyager undergoes a change in his identity. True experience requires that the I recast itself in light of new experience rather than recast the new experience such that it becomes innocuous to the self. Without recourse to a means of establishing the other underneath the umbrella of the self, the other becomes an interlocutor instead of an object. By granting the other the status as interlocutor the I enters into a relationship in which it is not sovereign. The freedom of the I is thus put into question. Lévinas writes that this questioning does not consist in the progression of self-knowledge, but the breakup of the self; “it opens the infinite process of scrupulousness which causes the I to coincide less and less with itself”. The ethical, for Lévinas, originates in the thou shall not kill; in the inability of conquest that arises in the presence of what is infinite.
The tension between these spirits of autonomy and heteronomy can be seen in massive mobilization of the autonomous during the enlightenment era. Albeit an old trope from the history of science, the enlightenment era can be characterized as the time in which God was expelled from the world in order to establish the laws of causality as the ruling force in the “natural” world. By removing God in his enigma and (at least partial) unknowablility from nature, the otherness of nature was replaced by a potential for understanding that could be actualized through reason; sustained miracles were traded in for hidden causes. Although the idea of hidden nature can be traced as far back as Heraclitus’ infamous saying that “nature loves to hide”, the enlightenment innovation was to suppose that these hidden things do not threaten the ipseity of the I that explores them. Rather than nature harboring numinous spirits, entities with their own ipseity distinct from the human I, nature began to harbor secrets; truths continuous with reason, but that had not yet been penetrated. This idea of a secret is nothing less than the extension of a creative neuter over the realm of Artemis. The supposition of a materialist, clockwork universe that functioned in accordance with laws that are graspable is only possible if nature functions in accordance with the functioning of the I. By generalizing between nature and man the common property of reason, the forest and the clearing became coextensive entities. Lévinas echoes this idea of nature’s newfound sameness when writing that the “genuine experience must even lead us beyond the nature that surrounds us, which is not jealous for the marvelous secrets it harbors, and, in complicity with men, submits to their reasons and inventions; in it men also feel themselves to be at home”. The enlightenment forced nature into the horizon of being by thematizing it; the numinous veil that once covered the face of Artemis was smothered death, producing the inanimate fog of ignorance.
One would expect Lévinas to take issue with this on the sole basis that an act of ontological violence has taken place. However, contrary to the critiques that he raises against similar acts, Lévinas does not see the thematization of nature as ethically reprimandable. Although the body of Lévinas’ theory is such that any entity which demonstrates the quality of the infinite becomes a source of heteronomy, Lévinas criticizes ontology only insofar as it revokes the otherness of the human. In Is Ontology Fundamental? Lévinas writes that “a human being is the sole being which I am unable to encounter without expressing” the acknowledgement of alterity. In the encounter with the human being there is always the trace of some dialogue, no matter how attenuated. Lévinas takes issue with the thematization of the human because it is the only such act that cannot be enacted totally. Lévinas writes that the face provokes ethics because the face of the other can be presented to the I without having its alterity reneged. Lévinas argues that the face is necessary for ethics to occur because the I cannot fully conceive of the face as same; it will always be experienced as infinite.
However, the theoretical precedents that Lévinas lays down in order to understand this origin of ethics need not be limited to apply only to entities whose face cannot be revoked. In the exegesis of Lévinas’ thought there is some uncertainty in regards to the degree to which the ethical signification of the human other can be extended onto things that are not identifiable with that other, but that still can be conceived of as sharing in its ethical signification. Lévinas himself raises the question of whether things can take on a face, but leaves the question unanswered. In order to answer the question for ourselves we will have to take up Lévinas’ remarks on subjectivity. Lévinas argues that subjectivity is required in order to listen to the insinuation of the enigmatic, of “a meaning which disturbs phenomena”. What this would imply is that the enigmatic is not limited to what remains enigmatic despite attempts at understanding. Instead, the enigmatic is present in proportion to the degree in which the thinker is willing to engage in subjectivity. The ability for a thing to sound the call to heteronomy is not limited by any factor inherent to it, but by the thinker’s ability to listen to the insinuation. Ethics towards the irrevocable face of the human other constitutes the bottom limit of the I’s ability to decide the degree of its participation in subjectivity.
Lévinas himself seldom ventures beyond this bottom limit. In the essay Heidegger, Gagarin and Us Lévinas refuses to engage his subjectivity in regards to nature. Instead, he asserts that the mystery of a nature infused with spirits is reducible to paganism. Lévinas relates this directly to Heidegger’s idea of enrootedness. He writes that “one’s implementation in a landscape, one’s attachment to Place, without which the universe would become insignificant and would scarcely exist, is the very splitting of humanity into natives and strangers”. Technology, the exploitation and objectification of nature for the good of mankind, is touted by Lévinas as a force that reneges the ontological barriers between men that originate in the idea of Place. Lévinas’ idea is that by fixing the coordinates of the I in Place, in a sacred grove, there I is given enough solidarity to create distinctions between in-group and out-group. The ontological violence founded in the idea of enrootedness is one of Lévinas’ most profound anxieties. Tirades against the ability to theoretically justify such behavior are dispersed throughout Lévinas’ corpus. Although such stalwart opposition to ontology was wholly necessary in Lévinas’ time and place, this reactionary project unduly colors the rest of Lévinas’ writing. However, his refusal to consider the ethics of nature is comprehensible in regards to his attack on ontology.
When writing on nature in Heidegger, Gagarin and Us, Lévinas does not investigate very deep into the human relationship with nature. The notion of Place ipsilateral with identity is already entangled in the placement of nature inside the horizon of being. Historically, this has not always been the case. There has long existed in nature a threat to the ipseity of the I. This is most prominently demonstrated by the Greek myth of Artemis and Actaeon. When Actaeon happens to glimpse upon Artemis naked, experiencing nature directly, the consequence is the total reversal of ipseity. Artemis yields her power by having Actaeon take on the identity of the stags that he and his compatriots were hunting. Actaeon calls to his friends to cancel the hunt but he is no longer able to communicate to them; he dies at the hand of forces that he was previously yielding. This is the result of experience in the extreme; the I that engages with the wholly other loses its identity to the other. In this portrayal of nature, the notion of Place is nowhere present. Lévinas’ lambaste against nature in Heidegger, Gagarin and Us is directed towards the grove as a force that solidifies ipseity, whereas in the myth of Artemis and Actaeon we can see that nature has deeper significations. Instead of Place, nature contains the infinite. In seeing Artemis’ body, Actaeon’s eyes neither invade nor grasp the image of nudity that they fall upon. The opposite occurs; the image invades the eyes, Actaeon is grasped by what he has encountered. Nature is presented here as radical Other. The formal structure of Descartes idea of the infinite and the Greek account of Actaeon’s fate both describe the same thing (except that the Greek version is far more elegant).
Despite what Lévinas would believe, the contemporary spirit of luddism bases itself on renewing the alterity that was once present in nature. As one begins to engage with nature subjectively, the enlightenment conception of nature ripe for exploration begins to have ethical ramifications. Few portrayals of this ontological violence have been more explicit than Georges Méliès’ 1902 film Le Voyage dans la Lune. The arresting image of a bullet shaped vessel embedded in the face on the moon neatly summarizes the course of scientific discovery; the I in its despotic thirst for conquest marches beyond every horizon and tramples upon even the meekest resistance. The face of the moon, the very source of what enables the viewers to have ethical feelings towards it, is damaged by the arrival of the I. Selenites, the moon’s inhabitants, burst into a million pieces upon contact with the voyagers; their ipseity is threatened by the mere touch of beings whose ego is so engorged. Throughout the film the ontological violence at play in the act of exploration and understanding becomes explicit and grotesque. By imbuing the moon with a face, Méliès asks of the viewer to listen again to the insinuations of the infinite that emanate from nature as other. In this sense, Le Voyage dans la Lune makes a quintessential argument towards heteronomy by granting the other a face with which to protect itself from the I. Luddism, in many forms, consists of renewing alterity by granting faces to otherwise helpless Others.
In several facets of today’s popular culture we can see the same motion towards renewing the otherness of things that have been divested of their alterity. An obvious manifestation of this spirit is found in the growing market for organic foods. In order for a product to be labeled organic, the USDA requires that it be grown free of synthetic compounds and that the soil be free of such compounds for a period of time beforehand. The popularity of such food is often attributed as a manifestation of the ecological spirit. However, the care that ecology directs towards nature is primarily motivated by the desire to continue the biological existence of the I. The first hint towards this should be that ecology is a science. The term was first employed by Ernst Haeckel to describe the “economies” of living forms. “Economics” is a black word; it describes only the phenomenological aspects of the interaction between organisms. When ecology speaks of the need to respect nature, the violence prevented is not measured in terms of the death of nature, but in the threat that such a death poses towards the future existence of man. Instead of asking man to enter into a dialogue with nature in which both parties are of equal importance, ecology asks of man to direct his husbandry of nature in a way that is most sustainable. Ecology’s relationship to nature is not one of ethics, but of efficiency. Few instantiations of ecology ask of man to put into question the exploitation of nature for his own ends. Ecology is an ideology in accordance with the philosophy of autonomy.
The farming of organic food in many respects heads the call sounded by ecology towards sustainability; organic farming is a laissez-faire approach to the husbandry of nature. However, is the pursuit of the organic reducible to the pursuit of the ecological? If the ecological were really the main concern of those purchasing organic produce then most consumers would be growing it themselves rather than purchasing it at a supermarket. Upon closer inspection, infused into the appeal towards organic produce is language that alludes to nature as an actor independent of humanity. An article entitled Preserve Ecology with Organic Food on FoodEditorials.com opens with the sentence “organic farming is as close to what Mother Nature intended as possible”. In this invocation of Mother Nature, nature is presented with a face. Mother Nature, although still a thematized version of something that was at one time totally other, alludes to considering nature as an ethical being. Distinct from the ecological considerations that are given for organic farming, there is present in the practice the purposeful renewal of alterity. Rather than attempt to control as many aspects of the farming process as possible to achieve the minimal amount of uncertainty, organic farming purposefully reintroduces that uncertainty. Scientifically, the two potatoes are the same. Subjectively, the one that is free from human intervention stinks less of ethical violence. If one is willing to grant nature a face by calling her Mother Nature then the difference becomes clear. If one subjectively attaches the reverberations of maternity to the idea of nature, then these reverberations will overflow the idea. The only difference between this structure and the idea of the infinite as presented by Lévinas is that a purposeful maintenance is required for the overflowing. Although the presence of the infinite in organic food is unstable, the ethical significations of the infinite still flow unheeded. Luddism’s active listening for the insinuations of an order that is other to the rational idea creates ethical significations where otherwise there would be none.
A similar revival of alterity is evident in the revival of vinyl collectorship in music. Although better digital audio codecs offer acoustic quality that surpasses the ear’s discriminability, there is a distinct group of people who prefer to retain the outdated technology. The technical difference between digital and analogue music is that analogue recordings of music retain pure sine-waves while digital recordings takes samples of these wave and break it down into discrete steps. If sampled at a high enough rate, this process does not influence the acoustic properties of the sine wave once it reaches speakers. Scientifically, there is no difference between the two methods of delivering audio divorced from the instrument that produced it. For Adorno (an earlier Luddite who, from the perspective of our time and place, is a more extreme instantiation of Luddism) these processes commit equal violence upon the musical act. However, collectors of vinyl records will assert that vinyl produces warmer sound; there is more a physical relationship with the instruments that produced the music because the relationship to the sine-wave forms of the music is kept intact. Objectively, this idea does not make sense. Subjectively, the difference connotes. For the collector of vinyl, the vinyl record has been granted a face; the collector’s inability to forget all the reverberations of the idea of a vinyl record when asked to redefine music as digital means that the ideatum will inevitably overflow the idea. For those who are capable of perceiving the difference, there is difference. This difference, despite being self-created, gives rise to heteronomy.
Luddism, in general, seeks towards renewing the otherness of things that have been folded into the same. We see in Le Voyage dans la Lune, organic farming and vinyl collectorship that if a face is granted, the other appears. Although the ethical responsibilities that arise in Luddism are not the total altruism that is required in the relationship with another human being, the responsibilities are not incommensurate. Luddism, in accordance with characterization that Lévinas gives to ethics, provokes in the I a questioning of the spirit that treats of every limitation of as an obstacle; it is the inversion of the enlightenment spirit. In Luddism, the ethical violence that has been committed against things that were once other is rediscovered and presented to the I as a source of heteronomy.
However, it does not necessarily follow that the rediscovery of previous violence is a prompt towards entering into a relationship with an already trampled object. This would be to enter into an ethical relationship with a corpse; something that once contained alterity but, like the Selenites, was homogenized into the same. How can the dried husk of a fact be restored to life as a living, breathing other? Even if the I is capable of conceiving of an object in the horizon of being as the corpse of something that was once other, does this necessarily constitute a provocation towards ethics? Lévinas writes that “all reflective critique already takes place after responsibility”. This would imply that it is impossible for the I to purposefully recover alterity from something that has already been made self-same; a source of true alterity must exist behind luddism that motivates the recovery of the infinite. Yet, how can this be so if luddism itself provokes alterity in what would otherwise would be same? What alterity can provoke luddism if luddism itself provokes alterity?
Lévinas himself asks this same question: “How does it happen that there is subjectivity in being?”. How is it such that the I is capable of the subjectivity required to listen to the insinuation of the enigmatic? There is something deeply paradoxical present in this question. Lévinas writes that “in order to tear itself from the ontological weight, must not subjectivity have to have received some most private convocation to appear from beyond being and the rational enchainment of its significations?” Lévinas asserts cryptically that this message cannot be put into rational language, but otherwise remarks on the presence of Desire in the I. Desire is one of the more mystical concepts in Lévinas’ corpus. It accounts for the partnership between subjectivity and enigma, for how the I is not totally blind to the other. Desire is the prompt “towards a thinking that thinks more than it thinks”, it “is what takes cognizance of the alterity of the other”. Most radically, it heads “towards the good” (158). As we have seen, Luddism is a force that creates alterity by granting faces. As the force that asks of the I to engage subjectivity, to think more than one thinks when doing so is not necessary, Luddism participates heavily in Desire.
Both Desire and Luddism are baffling in that they are aspects of the self-same that suicidally head towards the other. Both proactively find and create faces in what otherwise would be presumed to be same. Even Lévinas cannot help us in characterizing this relationship. The only qualification that is necessary to mention is that Luddism reacts against contemporary movements of phenomenolization. It requires that an ontological violence be present before it can revive alterity. Luddism is the form in which Desire manifests itself when presented with technological progress. As such, Luddism seems to be almost pure Desire in it’s paralyzing form; it runs so counter the forward march of the I that if undiluted it would instantly inoculate the self.
With all this said, it is strange that Lévinas does not refer to Luddism in his writings nor considers it as a possible reason to bemoan technological progress. This is probably due to Lévinas’ time and place, yet his theory of ethics is too original to be employed reactively against Heidegger. The clear means through which Lévinas is able to handle the enigmatic, the infinite and Desire offer us the opportunity to realize how decrepit the story of the autonomous I really is. By utilizing Lévinas’ conceptual framework, future thinkers have the opportunity to track out movements and spirits that, much like Luddism, give expression to the Good.
Chicago, ’10
