ANGELAKI

journal of the theoretical humanities

volume 19 number 2 june 2014

In the beginning there is Black – Man and

Universe, rather than a philosopher and the
World.

[…]

Man, who carries the Universe with him, is

condemned, without knowing why, to the
World and to the Earth; and neither
the World nor the Earth can tell him why:
The Universe alone responds to him, by
being black and mute. EDITORIAL
Black is neither in the object nor in the INTRODUCTION
World, it is what man sees in man, and that
in which man sees man.

Black isn’t merely what man sees in anthony paul smith

man, it is the only “colour” inseparable
from the hyper-intelligible expanse of the
universe. LARUELLE DOES NOT
Solitude of the man-without-horizon who sees
Black in Black.
EXIST
The Universe is deaf and blind, we can
Laruelle does not exist.
do nothing other than love it and assist it.
François Laruelle, “Non-Philosophy,
Man is the being who assists the Universe.
Weapon of Last Defence” 244
[…]

No light has ever seen universe black. the difficulty of non-philosophy

[…]

See black! Not that all your suns have fallen –

they have already returned, only slightly
dimmer – but Black is the “colour” that
falls eternally from the Universe onto your
Earth.
François Laruelle, “Universe Black in the
Human Foundations of Colour” 402–03,
408
T he first time I met François Laruelle was in
Rome at a conference being hosted by the
Centre of Theology and Philosophy (housed in
the University of Nottingham’s Department of
Theology and Religious Studies). It was, to be
sure, a strange group of people gathered there,
mere miles from the Vatican. A number of phi-
losophers, theologians, and other intellectuals
(academic and otherwise) had come together

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/14/020001-11 © 2014 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.950847

1
 editorial introduction
under the banner of “The Grandeur of Reason.”
The title was a reference to a line from then
Pope Benedict XVI’s infamous “Regensburg
Address,” where he held up the merging of
Christianity and Europe as divine providence.
I was loosely affiliated with the Centre, as I
was studying with Philip Goodchild who was a
staff member there at the time, and because
my own work straddles the line of philosophy
and theology proper, albeit in an aconfessional
mode.
Laruelle was present as a keynote speaker,
one of many planned keynote speakers meant
to speak alongside and in conversation with pro-
minent Christian theologians like John
Milbank, Stanley Hauerwas, and Graham
Ward. But in the end, one by one Slavoj
Ž ižek, Quentin Meillassoux and Iain Hamilton
Grant dropped out until only Laruelle and
Giorgio Agamben remained to speak from a
non-Christian perspective. And it was indeed
strange to find Laruelle here; after all he is argu-
ably the most trenchant critic of a certain kind
of self-sufficiency found in philosophical and
theological universalism that has set in like rot
at the very foundations of European thought.
But at the time the Centre of Theology and Phil-
osophy had attracted a number of students and
conferees who were not in lockstep with this
vision enthusiastically embraced by the confer-
ence organizers, and though that heterogeneous
moment passed and the culture changed dra-
matically over the years, that year in Rome
bristled with difference, conflict, and possi-
bility; the presence of Laruelle among this con-
tingent of heretics was a testament to that.
Having read some of Laruelle and the little
that had been written about him in English by
Ray Brassier and John Mullarkey, I was
excited to meet him. With my clumsy American
tongue I nervously introduced myself over
dinner, told him I had been reading his work
and showed him my copy of Philosophie et
non-philosophie (his 1989 work which has
recently been translated by Univocal Publish-
ing). He looked at me with playful pity and
responded, “Un livre très difficile.”
It’s true that I found the book difficult then,
and though I understand it a great deal better
now, some five years later, new readers to Lar-
uelle often express their frustration with the dif-
ficulty of his work. While it is no more difficult
than any other philosophies that attempt to
create a new way of thinking, and in so doing
come up against our standard syntaxes
(I would include here thinkers as diverse as
Husserl, Wittgenstein, Derrida, and Deleuze),
non-philosophy is nevertheless new for many
anglophone readers. The syntax, the vocabulary,
the use of concepts don’t hang in the air in the
same way as terms like deconstruction or the
body without organs, or the ways in which set
theory has been used by Badiouians. Those
approaching Laruelle for the first time may
feel as if they have had the wind knocked out
of them, becoming lost amidst his more techni-
cal, abstract works like Philosophies of Differ-
ence and Principles of Non-Philosophy. The
impetus for this volume, then, has been to
provide a number of explicatory works on Lar-
uelle’s non-philosophy, translations of non-phil-
osophy into the languages of analytic
philosophy, German Idealism, religious mysti-
cism, and others. For example, Laruelle’s key
concept of the Principle of Sufficient Philos-
ophy is explicated here by Rocco Gangle using
the work of Robert Brandom, the famous Pitts-
burgh-based American analytic pragmatist, in
his “The Theoretical Pragmatics of Non-Philos-
ophy: Explicating Laruelle’s Suspension of the
Principle of Sufficient Philosophy with Bran-
dom’s Meaning-Use Diagrams”; while Eugene
Thacker’s “Notes on the Axiomatic of the
Desert” unpacks Laruelle’s concept of radical
immanence using the tradition of desert mysti-
cism, and in so doing shows Laruelle’s major
differences with Michel Henry and Deleuze in
terms of thinking immanence.
Along with these explicatory works this
special issue hopes to show the varieties of
non-philosophy, the way non-philosophy can
operate when its methods and concepts are
taken up by someone other than Laruelle or
what he sometimes half-seriously, half-jokingly
refers to as the “Laruelle-subject.” Included
here are texts by thinkers who have been
working alongside Laruelle in some capacity
for a number of years. Katerina Kolozova, for
2

example, a Macedonia-based philosopher who
has also taught and studied in France and the
USA, has used the methods and concepts of
non-philosophy in her work in political philos-
ophy and gender studies. Her “Violence: The
Indispensible Condition of the Law (and the
Political)” deploys non-philosophy’s con-
ceptions of unilaterality and the last instance
to think through the problem of violence as
articulated through Walter Benjamin and Carl
Schmitt (who have been instrumental for later
attempts within radical philosophy to account
for and think through violence). Anne-Fran-
çoise Schmid and Armand Hatchuel, by con-
trast, have put Laruelle’s work in what would
normally be called the philosophy of science
and epistemology in dialogue with interdisci-
plinary projects around the study of Concept-
Knowledge (C-K) Design Theory with their
“On Generic Epistemology.” Their essay aims
to think beyond the usual demand for epistem-
ology to be “critical” to an epistemology
become “fictional,” from the “criteria of scienti-
fic nature” to the “identity of science.” In so
doing they expand upon Laruelle’s work in so
far as they spell out how his theory plays out
in a practice that is not philosophical. Of
course non-philosophy is already a practice in
itself, but here it is put into practice within a
new field, and within a collaborative scientific
research project.
However, in addition to these other non-phi-
losophical voices, it also seemed important to let
the voice of the inventor of non-philosophy
speak, and so four essays written or co-written
by Laruelle have also been included. Each of
these has been chosen because of the way in
which it intervenes in more familiar debates
within ethics, theology, and gender studies,
and the first two show where Laruelle has gone
in his recent work with a more intentional
engagement with quantum physics. The first
two of these essays were originally delivered as
lectures at two separate Nottingham Centre of
Theology and Philosophy events. The first,
“Principles for a Generic Ethics,” was delivered
on 5 March 2010 at a workshop entitled “Fran-
çois Laruelle’s Non-Philosophy: Theology,
Gnosticism, and Theory.” This event, co-
3
smith
organized by Aaron Riches and me in much
the same spirit of productive adversarial
exchange as the Rome conference, brought Lar-
uelle to Nottingham for a day in which about
fifty students and others participated. After I
gave a short introduction to non-philosophy,
Laruelle delivered his paper, and this was fol-
lowed by a roundtable discussion with Philip
Goodchild, John Milbank, and John Mullarkey.1
The paper examines the Kantian ethical theme
of means and ends under the non-philosophical
rubric of the generic. In the course of the essay
Laruelle argues for a return to seeing human
beings as simple means, but a means rethought
and revalorized: means placed under the ulti-
matum of protection. In the course of explicat-
ing this new conception of means he touches
on a number of issues, foremost among them
being the place of technology. Rather than the
usual Heideggerian hysterical fear of technologi-
cal encroachment, or the exuberant naive opti-
mism of a Kurzweilian embrace of technology
as the saviour of humanity, Laruelle maps out
of a fusing of means (technology) and the
subject under the regime of the subject.
“A Science of Christ?,” translated by Aaron
Riches, was also first delivered at a Nottingham
Centre of Theology and Philosophy event, “The
Grandeur of Reason” conference discussed
already. The essay, which touches on themes
explored in more depth in his currently forth-
coming Christo-Fiction, was originally pub-
lished in the conference volume entitled The
Grandeur of Reason: Religion, Tradition and
Universalism. It is reprinted here with the
kind permission of the editors and the press,
and I want to especially thank Aaron Riches
for securing that permission. The translation
here has been slightly amended to bring some
of the terms in line with what have become
the established translations of technical terms.
The focus of the essay explores the connection
between messianity (and the more traditional
discourses of messianism) and scientific prac-
tice. In the course of the essay Laruelle makes
his understanding of science clearer, showing
it as a general name for a kind of human prac-
tice, as well as discussing the traditional Chris-
tian theological problem of the incarnation
 editorial introduction
where, for orthodox Christianity, the human
and the divine are taken to dwell without
mixing or separation within the person of
Christ.2 While Laruelle clearly signals that he
does not accept the authority of Christianity,
he nonetheless uses the tradition of thinking
the incarnation in order to think through the
relationship of two forms of law, Logos and
Torah. In this way the essay is incredibly
wide-ranging, though in a subtle way, touching
upon the nature of science, the nature of reli-
gious discourses, the political problem of the
authority of law, and, of course, the nature of
philosophy itself.
The third essay, “Sexed Identity,” translated
by Nicola Rubczak, is co-written with Anne-
Françoise Schmid and explores the implications
of non-philosophy for thinking through the
questions of sex and gender. The essay was orig-
inally published in French in 2003 in the Mace-
donian journal Identities: Journal for Politics,
Gender, and Culture and is published here
with the kind permission of the editors and
the press. In terms of the vocabulary he uses,
Laruelle’s non-philosophy often appears to be
all-too-philosophical and so all-too-misogynistic.
Take, for example, the central concept “Man-in-
person,” which is in part an effect of the French
language but is perhaps not just an effect. This
essay goes some way towards showing the femin-
ist impulses within non-philosophy and the
ways in which it already resists phallocentric
philosophical language. In this essay Laruelle
and Schmid attempt to show the ways in
which non-philosophy separates the human
(which goes, not without problems, under the
generic name of Man, referring to species-
being) from the subject. For a non-philosophical
theory of the human must proceed without any
transcendental attribute, including those of
gender and sex, while the subject may indeed
undergo sexuation. This is the non-philosophi-
cal attempt to think a universal that actually is
universal, rather than a universal which takes
some particular as the universal; though in
recent years Laruelle and Schmid have both
referred to this conception with the term
“generic” rather than “universal.” This short
essay shows the ways in which Laruelle’s non-
philosophy both shares many of the same
impulses of contemporary radical philosophy,
feminism included, and diverges from them,
as Laruelle and Schmid both posit philosophical
sexual difference as something to be liberated
from in the name of feminist struggle. The
relationship of non-philosophy to gender
theory has been significantly expanded by
Katerina Kolozova and interested readers
should see her Cut of the Real: Subjectivity
in Poststructuralist Philosophy (Columbia
UP, 2014), including the preface written by Lar-
uelle where he advances the argument here by
thinking the generic identity of the human as
“queer.”
The final piece, “Theorems on the Good
News,” translated by Alexander R. Galloway,
is included to showcase Laruelle’s use of other,
more experimental genres of writing in the
pursuit of non-philosophy. The piece was orig-
inally published in the first issue of the journal
La Décision philosophique in 1987, which was
the home for many of Laruelle’s more exper-
imental pieces as well as essays by others in
the non-philosophical collective. The theorems
presented here touch on many of the same
issues present in the other essays, especially
the Greek and Judeo-Christian origins of philos-
ophy and the identity of the human. The per-
formance of non-philosophy ought not be
limited to the genre of philosophical writing,
but may follow Laruelle’s own example of exper-
imental, poetic writing and even go further
afield into less discursive and more performative
genres of the manifestation of thought.
the black cows of philosophy
But why give any attention to non-philosophy at
all? Laruelle claims that one of the reasons for
the negative move of non-philosophy, which is
only one aspect of the non-philosophical
stance, is because philosophy is a harassing dis-
course for human beings and other creatures.
Philosophers, like the majority of human
beings, are not very often kind to other
animals. Within philosophy we see that all too
often the animal is either a part of the
subject–predicate dyad (the famous example of
4

the “rational animal”) or a polemical and some-
times humorous metaphor (for example,
Badiou’s description of Sarkozy as the “Rat
Man,” which was perhaps more offensive to
rats than Sarkozy himself). Like human
beings, animals are mere objects to shift
around the linguistic field of philosophy. They
are so rarely ever shown as already-manifest or
as something which is lived, another way to
say “radically immanent,” but these humans
and other animals only exist as yet another
mirror for philosophy to show itself in. The
animal is made to reflect the philosophy speak-
ing about it and in being so rendered the
animal is no longer lived, she no longer has an
identity except as a mirror for philosophy. An
identity which is not one.
And here enters the cow, an animal whose
real suffering on an industrial level has very
rarely been mitigated and often then only at
the demands and insights of human beings
whose empathy seems strange and misplaced
to the wider populace. Philosophers don’t
often talk about real cows, but after Hegel
they seem like American Midwestern high
school students, obsessed with cows at night.
No doubt our philosophers have less cruel inten-
tions than pushing the poor beasts over while
they sleep, but instead they seek to use the
image of a black cow at night to try and
knock down some philosopher they deem to
be too stupid or naive to be worthy of much
attention.
The reference to Hegel’s famous veiled dis-
missal of either Fichte, Schelling, or both is all
too clear in Harman’s own not-at-all veiled dis-
missal of Laruelle: “Laruelle’s One is not the
night, but the daylight in which all cows are
black.”3 While the reference is clear, the
meaning of Harman’s last line is far from
clear. To place it within its context the reader
needs to know it was found in a review of Lar-
uelle’s Philosophies of Difference (originally
published in 1986 and published in English
translation in 2010). The review itself ultimately
fails to live up to the promise and demands of a
philosophical review, as Harman barely even
takes time to summarize the text, providing
almost no citations from the book itself, and
5
smith
uses up most of the space outlining a bizarre
vision of philosophy where contemporary
French philosophers put themselves forward
to sit in a “Supreme Court of French thinkers.”
Harman shows that he lacks even basic famili-
arity with Laruelle’s work, claiming that non-
philosophy belongs to the tradition announcing
the “end of philosophy” (something Laruelle
explicitly rejects in a number of his works, but
most forcefully in the recently translated
Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Phil-
osophy), but still seems to think he has found
the gotcha moment in his concluding paragraph
which I quote in full for context:
But even arrogance is forgiven when it comes
from the great illuminators. And here we
reach the third and most serious obstacle to
the reception of Laruelle’s work. For it is
not at all clear that his central insight is of
value. First, it can be questioned whether
we really have a direct experience of the
One at all – yet this is the whole foundation
of Laruelle’s often extreme claims. Second,
he gives no proof for the assertion that his
is a different sense of the One from that of
the neo-Platonic philosophers. And finally,
even if Laruelle can handle these objections:
so what? What good would it do to install
an opposition between the One as a unilateral
“determination in the last instance” and the
cosmos of difference where the “larvae”
become entangled in their pointless games?
Laruelle’s One is not the night, but the day-
light in which all cows are black.4
With his “so what?” Harman has opened up a
dangerous path for philosophers to judge them-
selves by. For, if Harman were braver, he would
have to go on to ask what ultimately is the value
of any philosophy, any theory at all once you
toss aside even the academic play of “handling
objections.” But, moreover, there is an interest-
ing betrayal of language in his condemnation.
He begins by saying that arrogance is forgiven
when it comes from great illuminators and
then goes on to speak of Laruelle’s conception
of the One as the greatest illuminator, daylight.
Harman reveals the all-too-philosophical con-
vertibility or amphibology of illumination and
obfuscation here and he does so without
 editorial introduction
seeming to realize his betrayal, covered as it in
his drive to pen a clever line, to show himself
the clever philosophical stylist.
What is revealed here though? Ultimately I
am not bringing up Hegel, Harman, and black
cows in an introduction to an issue on Laruelle
and non-philosophy to be perverse. Nor am I
simply participating in an aggressive philoso-
phical battle for territory, which good taste dic-
tates we hide from the pages of our journals,
keeping it for snide remarks at conferences or
status updates on social media. I bring up
these two very standard philosophers, Hegel
and Harman, because the black cow can help
us to see – not illuminate, not elucidate, but
see with a simple vision – something about Lar-
uelle’s non-philosophy. It isn’t that Laruelle is
the great illuminator, nor that he is the great
obfuscator, as this reversibility of a light that
illuminates and a light that blinds is just the
constitution of the usual philosophical subject
going all the way back to Plato’s philosopher-
martyr who escapes from the cave of this
world. Drew S. Burk shows this reversibility
of illumination and obfuscation in his “With
One’s Eyes Half-Closed, a Particle of Laruelle,”
explicating non-philosophy’s relationship to
standard philosophical aesthetics by looking to
Laruelle’s writings on photography. Burk
shows that Laruelle does not try to illuminate
or obfuscate in his readings of other thinkers,
artists, and materials, but instead tries to see a
“particle” of them. This vision happens in
non-philosophy in a way akin to the manner in
which photographers do not elucidate or obfus-
cate a subject in their photos, but instead create
fictions, a new identity that is not simply
representation.
But who knows what Harman really meant
with his clever line? After all, I doubt he is
denying the existence of black cows. But if we
were to do that thing he loves so well and specu-
late, then it seems reasonable to assume he is
claiming that Laruelle’s critique of the philos-
ophies of difference rests solely upon a new
valorization of the Same, that Laruelle’s One is
akin to the conception of the Absolute that
Hegel mocked in his day. And, again, Harman
would be wrong, but would accidentally
illuminate something about Laruelle’s project:
namely, his theory of identity qua radical imma-
nence and the ways in which this conception of
identity has shaped Laruelle’s engagement with
a host of intellectual problems, as well as the
engagement of those who have come after Lar-
uelle and attempted to take up non-philosophy
in their own work. Rather than providing
another iteration of the general introduction to
non-philosophy – a general introduction which
many of the authors here already include – the
rest of this introduction will quickly describe
Laruelle’s conception of identity qua radical
immanence and the way in which this con-
ception lays the theoretical foundation for an
engagement with a myriad of intellectual pro-
blems, both by Laruelle himself and by others
who have taken up non-philosophy in their
own way.
meditation on the non-black cow
So what exactly is the aim of Laruelle’s non-phil-
osophy if not elucidation of past philosophers
nor their misanthropic obscuring? To get an
answer to this question let’s revisit the original
philosophical reference to the black cow. The
famous line comes, of course, from the preface
to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit where he
writes:
Dealing with something from the perspective
of the Absolute consists merely in declaring
that, although one has been speaking of it
just now as something definite, yet in the
Absolute, the A = A, there is nothing of
the kind, for there all is one. To pit this
single insight, that in the Absolute every-
thing is the same, against the full body of
articulated cognition, which at least seeks
and demands such fulfilment, to pal off its
Absolute as the night in which, as the
saying goes, all cows are black – this is cogni-
tion naively reduced to vacuity.5
Above we speculated that Harman means to cor-
relate this risible conception of the Absolute
with Laruelle’s conception of the One.
Well, first of all let’s be clear about Laruelle’s
conception of the One in order to show its
6

radically different character to the Absolute of
German Idealism. We can find one of his most
direct statements on the One in a short piece
Laruelle wrote to Deleuze after the publication
of What Is Philosophy?, where Deleuze and
Guattari both lauded Laruelle’s Philosophy
and Non-Philosophy and raised some questions
about his project. In this piece, entitled simply
“Letter to Deleuze,” he apes the style of
Spinoza and it is perhaps owing to this stylistic
parroting that Laruelle is so direct when he
writes:
By One, I describe an individual that is absol-
utely finite or stripped of attributes or of phi-
losophical decisions, that derives its essence
from its identity without which it would be
necessary to express it in a universal attri-
bute; that is to say a last instance that is not
finite and constituted by a universal collec-
tion of individuals, but which is immediately
a multiplicity of individuals that know them-
selves to be multiple and solitary without
ever forming a collection or a universality.6
The conception of the One Laruelle is putting
forth is not at all an Absoluteness of the Same,
but instead a way of thinking identity which is
radically immanent to itself, without any
recourse to transcendental attributes to overde-
termine this radical identity. In slightly less
abstract terms, and to return to our black cow,
this is a cow black in itself, without its blackness
being determined by something outside of itself.
To think the identity of the cow without simply
turning the cow into a map of its tastiest meats:
has a philosopher ever thought like that? Has a
philosopher ever thought a black cow that is in
the midst of life, a lived black cow?
Of course, Laruelle has philosophical prede-
cessors for his conception of identity qua
radical immanence, and interestingly one of
those predecessors was Fichte, who was perhaps
the target of Hegel’s original clever remark
along with Schelling. Even as the impact of
German Idealism on contemporary Continental
philosophy continues to be felt in thinkers col-
lected under the banner Speculative Realism,
Fichte remains a much-maligned thinker,
usually seen as a stepping stone to either
7
smith
Schelling or Hegel. But Laruelle is not usual in
his philosophical engagement, and just as he
was one of the few writing in French about
Derrida in the 1970s so he is one of the few to
valorize the work of Fichte. After all, according
to Laruelle, he and Fichte share a certain identity
in common as peasant philosophers. From the
ages of eight to fourteen Laruelle used to look
after the cows on his grandparents’ farm, and
to shock his Parisian students – who probably
had never been in any physical proximity to a
cow – claimed to be the only philosopher along
with Fichte to do so. This is not the only thing
that Laruelle shares with Fichte, as Alexander
Galloway shows in “The Autism of Reason.”
There, Galloway places Laruelle within the
Kantian tradition and shows that Laruelle
shares Fichte’s strong interest in the a priori
realms of thought, rather than Kant’s mixed
approach, to explicate Laruelle’s relationship to
the traditional philosophical problem of “first
principles.”
Galloway’s piece is very useful for under-
standing Laruelle’s appreciation of Fichte.
This appreciation is made clear when Laruelle
writes that the 1794 Wissenschaftslehre (trans-
lated into English as the Science of Knowledge
but which could also be translated with the
gerund Science of Knowing) provides “one of
the most lucid positions, one of the most beau-
tiful solutions to the problem of philosophy.”7
While Laruelle denies that non-philosophy is a
simple neo-Fichteanism, he does think along-
side Fichte’s principles of radical identity
expressed as I = I. In Principles of Non-Philos-
ophy Laruelle compares his own theory of iden-
tity writing that, from the perspective of non-
philosophy, thinking from the One would
mean not I = I but I-in-I. What he means by
this is simply an identity taken within itself,
and so he actually moves away from the subjec-
tivism of an I oriented philosophy, or a subjec-
tivism, and instead thinks this abstract One as
identity that is neither subject nor object in its
representation. He summarizes this moving
with and then away from Fichte, writing:
For Friends of the earth and Friends of Ideas,
the duality of Is which know themselves to be
 editorial introduction
free and those Is which take themselves as
things or substances, we substitute the
duality of One(s) that think themselves
“objectively” as absolutely-not-objects, as
radical immanence, and One(s) that perceive
themselves in a philosophical-all-too-philoso-
phical manner as transcendence and
distance.8
So a dyad of a real One and a real One that hal-
lucinates itself as transcendence under a philo-
sophical illusion. To illustrate the meaning of
this, let’s turn one last time to our black cow.
Hegel’s original complaint about the night in
which all cows are dark refers to the ways in
which philosophies of the Absolute could
provide no meaningful knowledge of the iden-
tity of various things since, from the perspective
of the Absolute, all was the same, all was one.
Laruelle’s attempt to think from the One is
not making the same statement. Let us be
clear: Laruelle’s claim is not that all is one,
that all is the same. That would be to turn iden-
tity into a meta-object, a kind of set of all sets
containing within itself all the forms of actual
individuals. The status of identity is actually
somewhat closer to Harman’s daylight in
which all cows are black. But not where black
is an attribute, but rather the black which no
transcendental attribute, no attribute with any
distance (like “colour”), has ever touched. So
the daylight in which philosophers gaze upon
the cow, carving it up in their minds as the
butchers they are along dotted lines of attri-
butes, thinking that they then know the cow.
But that’s easy enough to think, that’s just the
way we break apart the world in order to form
some mastery over it and that philosophy all
too often does not advance beyond this form
of thought is not something to be lauded for it
does not respond to the true challenge of
thought to know an identity in itself. Even as
we carve up the cow she, like the universe Lar-
uelle speaks about in the epigram to this intro-
duction, “responds to him, by being black and
mute.”9 The daylight in which all cows are
black, yes, for Laruelle’s central claim is that
theory must be practised as a rigorous science
which thinks the true identity of things, the
thing as radically immanent to itself. Thus
one, whether a cow or a human, is “neither a
substance nor an act, but an identity whose
entire consistency is inherence or immanence
(to) itself.”10 Thinking from this level of
ethical, real abstraction is what Laruelle aims
to do.
varieties of non-philosophy
Of course, for Laruelle himself, the main focus
will be on the identity of the human. Both as a
problem and an “answer without a question,”
by which he means that the human is “no
longer a question philosophy dares still pose,
to say nothing of trying to answer it.”11 In
Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of
Philosophy he makes clear this “non-huma-
nist” orientation of non-philosophy writing:
“Non-philosophy is an attempt at a reply to
perhaps the most determining if not unique
question of science fiction and gnosis: should
we save humanity? and what do we mean
by humanity?”12 But one of the purposes of
this special issue, as stated above, is to show
the various uses others have made of non-phil-
osophy. So, must we stay within Laruelle’s
non-humanist paradigm, which must necess-
arily always risk a return of a simple philoso-
phical humanism? In response to a question I
posed to him, asking whether non-philosophy
is simply what Laruelle has written or
whether it is a method or practice that
others can take, he said:
Laruelle does not exist. There is a “Laruelle”
base for non-philosophy. There is a subject-
agent, a contributor, a manufacturer, but
that’s all. A proletarian because the struc-
tures need to be sustained by a concrete indi-
vidual. Non-philosophy too. Non-philosophy
is not what I’ve written even though that is a
style. It’s still what I have written in so far as
I identify myself with humankind.
While philosophy identifies itself with the
philosophical tradition, myself, I back away
from that identification: it’s simply
humankind.13
While taking Laruelle’s work as a base or
ground, John Ó Maoilearca is one of those
8

who has taken non-philosophy furthest in
English. His use of Laruelle in Philosophy
and the Moving Image: Refractions of
Reality extended non-philosophy into the
area of film-philosophy, while here in his
essay “The Animal Line: On the Possibility
of a ‘Laruellean’ Non-Human Philosophy” he
questions whether or not the non-humanism
of Laruelle can be used to rethink the identity
of the animal. In this way Ó Maoilearca
not only moves towards a new variety of
non-philosophy but also makes an important
contribution to the field of animal
studies, arguing for a kind of empathetic
anthropomorphism.
These varieties of non-philosophy are not
necessarily “new non-philosophies,” but what
Laruelle hopes will be “new effectuations” of
non-philosophy. Writing in Struggle and
Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy, Lar-
uelle discusses at length the possibility of
other variants of non-philosophy and writes
that any non-philosophical collective (though
he is speaking specifically about the Organis-
ation non-philosophique internationale
(ONPHI)) “is not the re-foundation of non-phil-
osophy, or even ‘other non-philosophies’, but
rather the power of invention of disciplines as
‘non.’”14 The “non” of “non-philosophy” is
never the full negation of philosophy, but
rather its generalization or being made
generic. And so the power of the invention of
various other non-disciplines speaks to the
power of generalizing those disciplines. In this
vein my contribution, “Against Tradition to
Liberate Tradition: Weaponized Apophaticism
and Gnostic Refusal,” is one step in the continu-
ing development of a non-theology. By untying
them from their being moorings to a transcen-
dent conception of tradition, I aim to show the
ways in which generalizing theological forms
of thought can lead to a way to use theology
and religious thought in ways that allow us to
understand the power of abstraction in creatural
life.
But not every variety of non-philosophy will
develop in ways that avoid conflict. Laruelle,
too, recognizes this in Struggle and Utopia at
the End Times of Philosophy, writing:
9
smith
we ultimately find philosophical and doc-
trinal conflicts of interest traversing all the
groups working under this label of non-phil-
osophy (including even its inventor if we take
into account each book on non-philosophy
separately) and which are the annunciators
of future divides. The divides always have a
theoretically objective appearance within
the proposed reasoning, but there is always
a more complex cause.15
It may be that this complex cause is, as Laruelle
always theorizes can happen, a return of philoso-
phical illusion within non-philosophy, though
this time at least an immanental illusion rather
than a transcendental one.16 Or it may be that
the complex cause is the foreclosed nature of
the Real itself, which can be seen in the theoreti-
cal work of Gilles Grelet, former student of Lar-
uelle and current co-editor of one of the homes
for non-philosophical works “Nous, les sans-
philosophie.” Grelet’s own “anti-philosophy as
rigorous gnosis” (which Laruelle characterizes
in Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of
Philosophy as “non-religion”) is seen by Lar-
uelle as the leftist deviation of non-philosophy
and the debate between them characterizes the
ongoing development of non-philosophy
outside of Laruelle’s own words and works.
Grelet’s critiques of Laruelle are developed
upon lines which Grelet himself sees as the radi-
calization of non-philosophy into anti-philos-
ophy. While Grelet’s unique fusion of Lacan
and Maoism clearly owes much to Guy Lardreau
and Christian Jambet, it too builds upon the
central non-philosophical insight that the Real
(a cause) is distinguished radically from the
World. In his “Proletarian Gnosis,” Grelet pre-
sents a programmatic piece outlining his own
variation of non-philosophy in an explicitly pol-
itical and abstract way.17 Daniel Colucciello
Barber’s “Mediation, Religion, and Non-Con-
sistency in-One” also presents a critique of Lar-
uelle’s own theory of identity. First, Barber
shows the power of this theory, using the
example of the ways in which Laruelle escapes
certain deadlocks within the philosophy of reli-
gion, but then moves to ask whether Laruelle
isn’t too beholden to the very Christian
formula of “neither Greek nor Jew.” By
 editorial introduction
attempting to move out of a universal formula
that has, according to Barber, failed, Barber
also moves towards a further generalization of
non-philosophy.
As Laruelle himself said:
There are invariants and rules in non-phil-
osophy. There are rules formulated for a
school, a research collective, meaning in
each of my books there is an exposition
of rules that sum up what it would be
necessary to do to be a non-philosopher.
But it wouldn’t be that I am a victim of
delusions of grandeur. I know very well
that these rules are made not to be
followed.18
Arguably, in each of the essays, whether they
are explicative, productive, or critical, or some
mix of the three, there is a certain recognition
of the Real (as radical cause) foreclosed to sub-
jectivity or objective capture, and so they fall
fully within the invariant structure and rules
of non-philosophy showing that non-philosophy
may advance away from simply what Laruelle
says and does without having to deny the signa-
ture of Laruelle on the concepts and methods. If
non-philosophy is to be achieved then one must
be cognizant of the rules, but not forsake the
liberty that non-philosophy promises in its
making other disciplines generic. So, without
falling into the trap of a normalizing heresy,
future non-philosophers ought to take notice
of the rules and invariants of non-philosophy,
but taking them in hand they
must also be wielded and
changed because Laruelle does
not exist and neither do we.
The non-philosophical wager is
that this is good news.
notes
“A Science of Christ?,” by François Laruelle, was
published originally in The Grandeur of Reason: Reli-
gion, Tradition, and Universalism, eds. Peter
M. Candler Jr and Conor Cunningham (Canter-
bury: SCM, 2009) 316–31. “Sexed Identity,” by
François Laruelle and Anne-Françoise Schmid,
was published originally as “L’Identité sexuée” in
French and Macedonian in Identities: Journal for Poli-
tics, Gender, and Culture 5 (2003): 49–61. “Theo-
rems on the Good News,” by François Laruelle,
was published originally as “Théorèmes de la
Bonne Nouvelle,” La Décision philosophique 1 (May
1987): 83–85. All are published here with the per-
mission of the respective editors and presses for
which we thank them.
The cover image was provided by Sean Capener,
and special thanks to Marika Rose for her editorial
assistance.
1 Audio of this event has been archived online and
is available at <http://itself.wordpress.com/2010/
03/15/laruelle-at-the-university-of-nottingham-ref
lections-and-audio/>.
2 Strangely enough Laruelle is far from alone in the
French tradition in engaging with the problem of
incarnation, a problem that goes under the
general rubric of Christology. For a comparison
of his engagement with Michel Henry and Alain
Badiou see my “‘Who do you say I am?’: Secular
Christologies in Contemporary French Philos-
ophy,” Analecta Hermeneutica 4 (2012), available
online at <http://journals.library.mun.ca/ojs/index.
php/analecta/article/view/703/603>.
3 Harman.
4 Ibid.
5 Hegel 9.
6 Laruelle, “Letter” 396.
7 Laruelle, Principles 140.
8 Ibid. 141.
9 Laruelle, “Universe” 403.
10 Laruelle, Principles 141.
11 Laruelle, Struggle 3.
12 Ibid.
13 Laruelle, “Non-Philosophy” 244.
14 Laruelle, Struggle 160. ONPHI’s web presence
can be found at <http://www.onphi.net>.
15 Ibid. 85.
16 See Laruelle, “Non-Philosophy” 243.
17 For more on Grelet in English see my transla-
tor’s introduction to Struggle and Utopia.
18 Laruelle, “Non-Philosophy” 243.
10
 smith

bibliography
Harman, Graham. “Review of François Laruelle’s
Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to
Non-Philosophy.” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Aug. 2011. Web. 21 June 2013. <http://ndpr.nd.
edu/news/25437-philosophies-of-difference-a-criti
cal-introduction-to-non-philosophy/>.
Hegel, G.W.F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A.V.
Miller. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977. Print.
Laruelle, François. “Letter to Deleuze.” Trans.
Robin Mackay. Mackay 393–400. Print.
Laruelle, François. “Non-Philosophy, Weapon of
Last Defence.” Laruelle and Non-Philosophy. Trans.
Anthony Paul Smith. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP,
2012. 238–51. Print.
Laruelle, François. Principles of Non-Philosophy.
Trans. Nicola Rubczak and Anthony Paul Smith.
London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. Print.
Laruelle, François. Struggle and Utopia at the End
Times of Philosophy. Trans. Drew S. Burk and
Anthony Paul Smith. Minneapolis: Univocal, 2012.
Print.
Laruelle, François. “Universe Black in the Human
Foundations of Colour.” Trans. Robin Mackay
and Miguel Abreau. Mackay 401–508. Print.
Mackay, Robin, ed. From Decision to Heresy:
Experiments in Non-Standard Thought. Falmouth
and New York: Urbanomic/Sequence, 2013. Print.

Anthony Paul Smith

La Salle University
Department of Religion
1900 W. Olney Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19141
USA
E-mail: smithanthony@lasalle.edu
 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 19 number 2 june 2014

morality placed under a generic

condition

I call an ethics generic if it fulfils the following

five conditions: (1) it draws its conceptuality
from the only discourse of meaning that we
necessarily have at our disposal, namely the phi-
losophical discourse; (2) it affirms the primacy
of means as the mainspring of active causality
over every end (whether that end is material
or an end in-itself (Kant)) and over every
effect; (3) it accepts a scientific treatment of
its discourse as much as is possible, science
alone being capable of clearing away [lever] françois laruelle
nearly every finality; (4) it follows a matrix of
variables as a function of these variables, these
variables being philosophy and science as vari- translated by anthony paul smith
ables canonically able to be conjugated, and so
not spontaneously able to be conjugated; (5) a PRINCIPLES FOR A
matrix in which one of these variables, that is
to say the scientific variable, is recast as under- GENERIC ETHICS 1
determining the unity of the variables. The
most general form of this matrix is thus: the
fusion or inseparability of science and philos- Double Finality or Sufficient Finality (PSF).
ophy under science or under a scientific regime. While, on the other hand, science loses its posi-
tivity and, as a variable, it also becomes a simple
(1) Generic ethics is complex in the sense that it medium. Generic humanity is thus relieved of
includes several conjugated disciplinary vari- ends and of a philosophy that would totalize
ables. Philosophy and science are merely the and hierarchize humanity. But, a residue of fin-
data, either necessary or required, but neither ality remains without any philosophical end,
one can be the legislator of the development of because the critique of the PSF is neither scep-
the other. This is a great change, in so far as ticism nor a radical doubt regarding ends in
philosophy is now no longer a horizon, but general, but rather one regarding what philos-
merely a material or an object of meaning; still ophy calls “finality” – what is essentially a
less is it a subject, but rather a means or a doublet or double finality. Now humanity
mediation, nothing more. Philosophy is no itself becomes the univocal end, a finality
longer an end in itself. In this way, on the one which is not an end for any means.
hand, philosophy loses its doublet structure,
which hitherto assured philosophy of its own (2) If this ethic is no longer an ethics of ends and
sufficiency, and in particular its Principle of of the Good as an end, then neither is it an ethics
ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/14/020013-11 © 2014 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.950849

13
 a generic ethics
of effects like we find with the Stoics and as what
was reactivated by Deleuze. Rather, the ethics we
are proposing will be an ethic of qualified means.
By partially undermining the PSF human beings
are freed from imposed or extrinsic ends and also
from their own supposedly internal, immediate
end. This thus renders finality impossible as a
double finality or as a strong finality, a certain fin-
ality is tolerated but weak in terms of means.
Here the means assume the place of immanence
while the end assumes the place of transcen-
dence. Accordingly the means are here imbued
with an ability for finalization that becomes
titular, a relation that is neither analytic nor syn-
thetic nor even that of difference but, as we will
say in quantum terms, of “superposition.” The
means will no longer be found in the end and
the end will no longer be a synthesis of means.
Transcendence and its finality make short work
of the means and thus “fill up” its immanence.
This is the force-(of)-acting and it does not
allow itself to be even possibly motivated by
exterior or interior ends, but rather uses them
and weakens them (if not turning them against
themselves), thus liberating humanity from its
harassment. Philosophical finality is in the end
which falls on itself and subdues the means,
whereas the means, far from simply reversing
the situation, do not become their “own” end
(that would be to return to philosophy) but
under-determine in-the-last-instance a weak or
closed finality on the plane of means. Generic
ethics thus has a privileged adversary, which is
the “morality of mores.” Morals affirmed and
reaffirmed by goals or ends pulled from the mor-
ality of mores, and assumed to be a philosophical
subject – this is a will and an intentionality,
generic ethics recast in terms of means. It is a
contracted mediation.
(3) In order for these transformations to be poss-
ible and not arbitrary, there must be a second
variable that conjugates itself with the philoso-
phical, a thought capable of asserting relations
that are neither analytic nor synthetic without
being merely an interval between them, but
rather what we will call a mediate-without-
mediation or their mediatum. These relations
of immanence are of the order of elementary
algebra, of idempotence and of the complex or
imaginary number, as used within Quantum
Physics in particular, which will of course be
our remote scientific model. The place of con-
temporary problems requires a contemporary
treatment, and science is at least an index of
the spirit of its time, of its complexity and its
manner of thinking. Humanity – generic as
used by contemporary science – sets itself only
such problems as it is able to solve [résoudre].
Philosophy is the culture of impossible ques-
tions, science the practice of partially solvable
problems. Generic thought, as the middle
ground of these two, sets for itself only semi-fin-
alities, insistent problems that are like ques-
tions, but weakened questions.
I am asking if an ethic reduced to the means of
traditional philosophy with the help of an anti-
quated science, like that of Kant for example,
is truly capable of even posing the problems of
our situation. For an older generation these
are, for example, crimes against humanity,
racial and religious fanaticism, and for the
recent generations, they concern the rights of
biodiversity (and technodiversity), of its techno-
logical manipulation and its conservation – in
general, the problem of the rise in power [puis-
sance] of the human body, which is the object of
the generic. I think that philosophy was never
meant to be able to provide a correct formu-
lation to these problems and instead it offers a
way of authorizing and limiting the means of
their transformation. In order to treat these pro-
blems it seems preferable to me, and not at all
shocking, to call on quantum mechanics,
algebra, idempotence, the imaginary numbers,
and vectorality, on the condition of knowing
how to go about it, rather than calling an ontol-
ogy of substance or classical rationalism. There
is a certain historicity of science as an index of
the real, and science is not necessarily of the
order of “progress” or “regression.”
I call “sufficiency” the supreme prejudice of
philosophy, its confidence in itself that goes all
the way to the bottom of its doubts, its sufficiency
in believing itself able to settle the problems by
posing questions, its narcissism causing it to
take itself for a model of itself – Platonism as
14

an auto-modelling of philosophy condemned to
produce doublet upon doublet. I compare it to a
generic device made use of here by two principles
from Quantum Physics, superposition and the
non-commutability of products and variables. A
very special “identification,” without reflexivity
or folding on itself, is possible for a model that
will no longer make philosophy an example of
itself but will extract its own example, a model
that is scientific through its content and also
through its model function. Through its content
it makes use of a means of paradigmatic inven-
tion, the complex number of the vector.
Through its form it makes use of superposition
and non-commutability as ways of thinking. It
allows means to be constituted as a subject
without any sufficient finality.
As a result of this I will treat the situation in a
more deductive spirit, rather than in an empiri-
cist or reflexive spirit, if not as an a priori one
(like Kant said regarding the possibility of the
moral law). Combining the quantum as imagin-
ary number and the generic as a passage to
immanence, the ethical will cease to reflect
mores or the morality of mores. When the real
is thought as a weak finality then it is impossible
for philosophy (which is a double finality), but
the real is at the same time capable of establish-
ing a certain complementarity with philosophy.
Therefore, ethics detaches itself from morality,
morality no longer being anything but its
material and therefore not at all its guide, just
as perception is too often the guide of theoretical
philosophy. Partially extracted from philosophy
and put back as its praxis in the hands of man,
ethics comes to place morality and philosophy
under a certain condition, a human condition
that determines or, more exactly, under-deter-
mines even philosophical ends. It coincides
in-the-last-instance with humanity and rejects
the humanism of the first instance. It is an act
of uni-lateralization, not a “theoretical anti-
humanism.”
dualities of the ethical
Kant tells us nothing about the means as means
that we do not already know except as some
obvious doxa when he says that man, other or
15
laruelle
self, must from the start and principally be
treated as an end in himself and “not simply as
a means.” How do we think means if they must
be submitted to an end, which is the “being” of
means? Hegel tells us how in the theory
of mediation, Heidegger in his phenomenology
of the circuit of tools [circuit utensile], Deleuze
in his theory of desiring machines as means of
production, to say nothing of Marx. But all of
them, except Marx who does something else, pre-
suppose a solution that I call “philosophical,”
and for me saying that it is “philosophical” is
not at all stating the obvious [enfoncer une
porte ouverte].2 Nothing is less obvious than phil-
osophy precisely because of its great obviousness.
Everything is presupposed either in the mode of
finitude or in the mode of the actual infinite, by
inserting the means or the tool under the
horizon of the whole, of totality, of the circuit
of tools, of the Body-without-Organs [BWO]
(production of reproduction) or of the Eternal
Return of the Same [ERS], diversely under-
mined, molecularized or deconstructed. In this
way these philosophers maintain the PSF, the fin-
ality that reaffirms itself, and only critiques the
most empirical and crudest forms of finality,
but they do not destroy its sufficiency. The
essence-of-the-means is still thought as Being
and not as One or through superposition. A
generic ethics of means is designed to replace
formalism in ethics by a formal (algebraic) mate-
riality, the phenomenology of the circuit of tools
is replaced by a phenomenology taken to be a
tool, desiring machines by machines of lived
experience and generic machines. The generic
places itself under the sign of immanence as
One and not immanence as All or Being. The
One conditions without reciprocity the duality
that reciprocally conditions Being. One may try
to show that the One entails a duality that is
not specular, which is productive and not
closed on itself so that Being has authority for
specularity. The generic that we will develop
under these two aspects, as toolness and messian-
ity, is a theory of uni-laterality, a theory of the
“face of the One” or immanence. Not the face
of God who either does not have a face or who
has an infinite number of faces; an endless
number of mirrors (Leibniz) or that still only
 a generic ethics
has one (Levinas) but one wholly of transcen-
dence that snatches from the autonomous self
the possibility of a face to face. Non-philosophy
is surprised not by Being, which has at least
two faces, and is not surprised that there would
be beings, but is surprised that there would be
the One and that it shows itself in the subject,
not at the same time that it hides within it, but
while it shows itself as what will be explained
“partially” or by a single face.
A generic ethics takes the philosophical triad
of subject-cause, means, and effect for its
material and arrives at the central position of
the Means distributed between subject and
effect. It is no longer about an analysis term
by term nor the synthesis of terms, dualysis is
a different method altogether. It observes the
whole of the chain as a circle of cause-effect or
of the reciprocal determination across the
means. It divides the cause-effect in two in
the longitudinal manner of crossing through
the three terms or, if it is a sphere (the Parme-
nidean sphere), in the equatorial manner, divid-
ing it into two halves, two layers or strata, but
keeping as Real one of the sphere, which still
contains the three dimensions. This is the first
duality, we choose the side not of right or left,
this is not quite a Platonic division, but a half
which will be reputed to be real or immanent.
Next we again divide that half and conserve
the quarter which from then on will concentrate
the Real and immanence. This time the chain or
triangle of causality is broken by a vertical
or meridian cut that crosses into the Means or
the philosophical mediation. This does not sep-
arate cause and effect in order to connect the
causes between them, setting the effects within
a network or a circle. It twice successively distri-
butes the chain of causality concentrating each
time the Real under the form of a half-turn,
then by a quarter-of-a-turn in which it reduces
the middle term. The Real symbolized by the
circle is now symbolized by the quarter of the
circle which concentrates it. So, there are
finally two becomings of the Means or two
faces according to the side, subject or effect,
towards which it looks, each face being unique
and not looking at the other. The Means are
now an open half-circle separated by a
common border, in comparison to philosophy
the generic practice is half-of-a-practice and
then a quarter-of-a-practice. It will have to
find the status of the Means as that transition
or that indivisible and dual (indivi-dual)
mediation that looks towards and as the
subject, towards and as the effect. The dualities
are one of the Means as effect and one of the
Means as subject. It is the Means which will
bear the continuity and unirection of generic
causality.
The concept of a uni-lateral or generic matrix
means that two variables merge in a unity, a
unity under-determined by one of them and so
remarked or recast. The matrix uni-laterally dis-
tributes inseparability or immanence (the vari-
able that reaffirms the group) and the
separability or transcendence (the variable
which is not reasserted) between them. Hence
there will be a fusion of means and subject
under the subject or the regime of the subject,
and a fusion of means and the effect under
the means once again. The generic operation
is a transfer but a non-analytic one (to the
benefit of the One, not the Other). From one
side it proceeds by those cuts that progressively
cut the sphere of the Real, cutting and recutting
into philosophical transcendence, into the
reality that has taken itself for the Real,
without completely abolishing it but weakening
and simplifying it. And from the other side it
intensifies in a complementary way the Real in
its treating of the One or of immanence, re-
marking it as a regime of means. The causality
of philosophy (of its ends) is no longer anything
but occasional in the sphere of means-effects
that the means-subject designed to become a
generic Last Instance which will have to be
taken into account.
an ethics of means seen from
effects: the care and invention
of means
I am going to abridge this section on the corre-
lation, or the half-circle of means and effect,
meaning what regards the primacy of the
means over the effect, because I would prefer
16

to make time to treat the second duality at
length. The second duality is that of the
means and the subject, which takes the form
of the quarter becoming a subject. An ethics
of means is not that of an average: the means-
effect duality must be recast, not doubly re-fina-
lized but recast as an apriorcity of means and
materiality of effects. A certain number of
“imperatives” can be given by quasi-mathemat-
ical formulas (Kant) but this will not become
possible until later through the act of the
generic subject’s constitution. In this aprior-
ico-empirical aspect uni-laterality is provision-
ally assumed, but still not “practically
grounded.” The subject becomes a Last Instance
in the second part, the apriorico-immanental.
The side of the “effect” can be summarized
this way: (1) take care of the means, do not
waste or destroy them; (2) do not separate the
effects of the means, which are their a priori,
under the threat of an authoritarian and
utopian drift; (3) invent new means and new
uses for existing means. In this way I move to
the aspect of the “subject” and “quarter” of
the means.
an ethics of means seen from the
subject: the theory of the mediatum
Regarding the human being who is heralded in
the means-subject, can he be just a means and
nothing more? This is a thesis contrary to
almost all ethics. It goes without saying that a
human being cannot be treated “simply as a
means,” as if, like Kant, we separate in a ration-
alist way the subject, as an end in itself, and the
means, the “simply” by which Kant indicates a
deficiency or lack of morality and a cynicism
that despises human dignity. But here it is not
about “simply” or “only” making use of the
means without anything else. The PSF signifies
that the philosophy which speaks of finality in
general creates a doublet of the empirical end
and the ideal finality. But the means can fully
assume a simple, unique finality or one that is
not sufficient. Deleuze completed this first
reduction or simplification of finality’s transcen-
dence with the BWO or the plane of
17
laruelle
immanence, but he did not fulfil the second
reduction, a stronger one, that of the BWO or
the plane of immanence, which can only be a
scientific effect. The generic subject, from its
perspective, is not a given individual or a univer-
sal humanity in the heaven of Ideas, each time
he must take the possibility of his invention
without which he is sure to get the opposite
result. This is the opposite of “natural” huma-
nist essences and even of Michel Henry’s under-
standing of the individual. Before the assumed
human nature, there is no God but just
generic humanity as the Last Instance which
precedes human nature as pre-priority [avant-
priorité].
In order to reach its autonomy the means-
subject must be forced as generic but it cannot
do so, as we have said, except under a quasi-
mathematical form. Is there a mathematical
notion that corresponds to the means-subject
machine rather than only to its end? The
means is that which makes possible the end
but by limiting it in any case. At least forcing
the means is what makes the sufficiency of the
end partially impossible, which now means the
philosopher’s old subject. This means of
means, if we can put it that way, is found in
modern physics, quantum physics, under the
form of the imaginary or complex number as
excess or impossibility fashioned in the macro-
scopic reality of being the Real-One, but
which at the same time is under-determined as
microscopic. The imaginary number seems
like it must correspond to partially or uni-later-
ally finalized means and not to the double end.
This is why the causality of means-effect must
be determined by the means in its becoming-
subject as partial or uni-lateralized end. The
generic subject as means will be devoid of
every double finality and will constitute a
plane that is called “generic,” but which at the
same time, being scientific, will be a plane of
reference. Forcing a means as generic is the
means re-casting itself, means fashioned from
the human refers to a subject without then, for
all that, introducing a reflexive subject. Rep-
resented by a quarter of a circle or a quarter
turn, which will no longer be a re-flexed
circuit condemned to re-cast the simple
 a generic ethics
flexing, what Deleuze has called the “fold,”
without forming a re-flexed arc or repetition.
Means only become a subject for a quarter of
its initial finality, one could say that the residual
finality of the means is never “partial” but “qua-
terial,” twice entrenched in itself such that it
gives itself as a circle of the end or transcen-
dence (one and double at the same time depend-
ing on whether the circle is geometric or a
philosophical doublet).
The means which “become a subject” are
thought not like in Hegel where substance
becomes a subject, but signify that the subject
will be a form of immanence, and not just any
immanence, but an immanence obtained by
superposition and not by reflection or auto-pos-
ition. This includes the phase which is here no
longer the effect’s excess but the subject’s
excess over its own immanence.
The means as subject dedicated, so to speak, to
the quarter of a complete immanence, is different
from Lacan’s signifier or Deleuze’s disjunctive
synthesis. But this means as subject comes
close, without being the same thing, to Derrida’s
archi-signifier/duality, signifier-signified hier-
archy. In each of these philosophical figures,
the One is a formal coefficient or a limit of other-
ness of these formulas, a lived transcendent end
but not a lived immanence. Said otherwise, the
Other and the One are left within the anonymous
horizon of the Whole. If they want to define the
subject as man-in-person rather than as “self,”
“subject,” “ego,” rather than the philosopher’s
individual or pre-individual, they must instead
acquire a scientific stature or form, even the
One as immanence must fashion itself through
superposition. It is an apparent paradox that
the “in-person” depends upon a scientific factor
(alongside other factors) rather than upon philos-
ophy alone.
Only a vector in a space of configuration
(Hilbert) can intuitively represent the means
in its effort towards becoming a subject. One
no longer copies the means-subject from a philo-
sophical subject but from the quantum quarter-
of-the-whole (or of the turn), which alone is
capable of disposing of the philosophical
context and uni-laterally distributing the Real
along this vector. In order to pass from the
vectorial to the vectorielle, to vectorality, we
must remove the vector in philosophy through
the quantum model, like we are going to do,
but now we must also remove it from its
quantum positivity, that passive module-phase
machine must be recast as generic.3 This deduc-
tion of the subject from the immanence of
means is the most technically difficult point,
so I will summarize and shorten it here.
The phase is the vector’s means and the
module’s immanence is its finality. As it is
about regaining a minimal finality and one
proper to the means, which is the vector, we
then reduce the philosophical transcendence of
the vector as a doublet. To do this we recast
the vector through its superposition with itself
so that it under-determines the philosophical
interpretation of finality that is also attributed
to the means. Now it is the means or the
vector superposed with itself that transforms
its finality and aligns it with its own immanence.
This transcendence of the end in the means’s
immanence is the Last Instance, which is only
a subject as generic subject or humanity-in-
person.
How does this “transfer” constitute humanity
“in the last means”? The recasting of the generic
forcing of the means has the appearance of an
effort or act of fulfilment, or even a coincidence
of opposites. But that effort is never fulfilled
because it re-identifies with itself in an object.
That force-(of)-acting, because that is all it is,
neither consists in tending indefinitely towards
itself nor in identifying itself in an ego
assumed without distance. But, by superposi-
tion or interference, which is our fundamentally
original generic quantum act, the vector
“becomes” a process of the “filling up” of an
“impossible” gap, a process that is non-objec-
tive-(of)-itself. Uni-lateralization is neither
a scepticism nor a blank slate, it is a re-distri-
bution of the Real as impossible that
under-determines reality or disempowers [dépo-
tentialise] it. The new subject – the Last
Instance – retains an aspect of finality, which
is the module, but it becomes impossible in
reality because the superposition is not its
multiplication but its idempotence, which
escapes the double finality, the new subject is
18

par excellence a unique finality at the level of the
means in opposition to the sufficient finality of
the philosophical subject. As for the aspect of
the means, the phase is also superposed with
itself, the quarter no longer in the service of
the module or of the subject but taking on its
autonomy or its own consistency.
Thus we arrive at a position that is neither a
dialectical tension of contraries nor a contempla-
tive praxis (Henry): it is a phenomenon of super-
position through a vector with itself. In this
transfer, the means or the quarter fulfils itself,
not with a predicate like “animal” or “rational”
but by itself. It rids every moral ideology and
corresponding finality from the predicates of
the philosophical subject. This generic fulfil-
ment of the means is not intentional or objecti-
fied, an empty aim filled with an object-noema,
it fulfils itself through a quarter of the object
only and through a superposition or interference
with itself. In order to retain the means before
they disappear in the service of some great end
or into a simply closed ego, we must transform
the face to face of the mirror into a uniface or
uni-finality. Generic humanity does not fill out
an image of self in a mirror, or (as is wrongly
assumed) absolutely without a mirror (Henry).
The Last Instance conserves an irreducible
quarter of the mirror or subject that signals its
quantum style and its adequation within
thought through a superposition, a “micro-
scopic” Real, not a “small” object but a fraction
of an object. This is why we have said that the
One only manifests itself through a unique
face or partially, it will be necessary now to
say “quaterially.” The vicious circle of the
object is here defeated only because the utilized
means are provided by science, by algebra.
Being no longer intrinsically drawn by philos-
ophy, it is thus relatively stable.
There are several neighbouring concepts to
the generic subject. The generic man of Feuer-
bach is still an atomic concept and comes out
of an idealist materialism, while the humanity
function of Badiou is, to the contrary, a function
of mathematical essence. We are superposing
the two in order to disembody the old form of
the generic human and embody the humanity
function. This process of transfer does not
19
laruelle
transform the former subject into a new
human body, both an object and lived transcen-
dental, but transforms it into what we call the
human disposition, which is generic and corre-
sponds to the becoming-subject of the human
means. The transcendental ego of auto-affectiv-
ity (Henry) is also filled up on itself and shelters
transcendence but under the form of a rigid
dualism of ontological regions, but not a contin-
ued or immanent uni-lateral duality that can be
read into its transcendence repeating and bring-
ing about a dualism under that condition. The
last subject is not an intensification under the
form of a “crushing” of immanence onto itself
(Henry) through a circle of affectivity going
from one side to the other, which is nevertheless
still a stationary and closed affectivity. Imma-
nence recast by an occasion or practical effect
is perpendicular to itself, it is not an interiority
but rather opens up to a right angle, an imma-
nence of superposition is open to the quarter
with and by the minimum of transcendence, it
is not an identity nor even a BWO or plane of
immanence. If there is a radical immanence, it
is not absolutely separated, a certain atom of
itself, but a generic ego, open and liquid as a
lived fluctuation [vévu fluant] neither an indi-
vidual nor a body but a postural flux [ fluance]
that expresses itself by taking the means in
hand and through taking man by himself.
When you take a tool in hand, and that can be
an Idea or a remedy with which you help your-
self as if a means for you or for another, you
assume the man-in-person in yourself, you
assume not a body but a posture of immanence
that under-determines the object and forms
some means. It is the opposite of the perspective
of Heidegger and Deleuze – toolness for them is
discovered in the way the tool in question breaks
down, here it is the taking in hand that counts,
the passage from the object to the tool.
under-determining and
disempowering: the
stranger-in-person
But what is the guarantee that this generalized
use of means will not lead to human beings
 a generic ethics
being harmed? If it is done within the limits of
the generic there will be no such harm. And yet
it must be admitted that some minimal harm is
nevertheless inevitable, so where will this harm
be directed? To philosophy alone and only to its
double finality. The fundamental ethical act is
neither obedience to superposed values, nor
the rational non-contradiction of my maxim
taken as the universal law, but the fundamental
ethical act is an act of disempowering.
The recasting of the vector, of means as a
subject, is an under-determination of violence
and power [puissance] and fashions itself as a
superposition of the means-subject and means-
effect that it under-determines through the
Last Instance and the Occasion that comes
together as a uni-lateral duality without becom-
ing confused. An occasion and its repetition are
necessary in order to activate the vector as a
virtual motor but if that recasting is ontologi-
cally constitutive of its functioning then the
occasion of the recasting is not. The only
means certain to be careful not to do harm
and so to assure the care of generic humanity
is that of acting under the strict conditions of
immanence.
Dis-empowering the ends frees the means and
prevents them from bursting out under the
impetus of ends. They can be used in this
way, the one according to the other which is to
say indirectly according to themselves. But
that is not a simple reversal of the means
against itself. It is just an indirect process of dis-
empowering, not of suppression or fighting, the
dialectical impression of the fight or struggle of
opposites comes from a static or philosophical
vision of uni-lateral duality, from its interpret-
ation by its objective side. There is no fighting
or suppression of front against front but a dis-
equilibrium or loss of capability [puissance].
This is the act of the mediatum and perhaps
of the Mediator …
Either way it is a means that must be pro-
tected in order to keep the occasional means.
Taking the excess from transcendence, this is
evidently neither sublimating it nor destroying
it (Luddites) in the name of an exclusive end,
but setting it within the shelter of its condition.
Science in itself does not destroy, does not lay
waste to man but contributes to his protection
as means. If one allows me this overly daring
expression, ethics is a “generic maintenance”
of those means that are human under the form
of an invention of new means. The human is
the only capable means and so the human is
thus bound to guard the others in guarding
“himself,” the only Last Instance rather than
an end in itself as a reasonable being. It is the
ultimatum of having to re-set oneself constantly
anew in a state or posture of defence against the
harassment of ends, to recast oneself as a subject
submitting oneself to occasions and to taking
care of oneself. But this is no longer a philos-
ophy of means that will place itself in a state
of auto-position and auto-defence, and so no
longer a philosophy of aggression. It must
“force” means, which is the human in its own
immanence. That means dis-empowering all
means, either within oneself or outside.
So, in-the-last-instance, man will be not an
end but a means for himself and to this
extent only an end, a “generic himself” that
must be invented as the greatest possible dis-
tance. That formula is not only the reverse of
Kant’s but a different distribution. The
generic human is the means-in-person or the
becoming of a subject, the means capable of
inventing itself as a subject or person. “In-
person” means both that the subject is not
given once for all, like a mask or a facies, but
is who is in charge of transforming the One,
which the subject is, into a single unique
“mask,” once each time or in-a-person. But
this is also the Stranger to the world by the
definition of uni-laterality. The face of the
One is what I call the Stranger or the unifacial.
Man is this One which is the “Stranger-in-
person” and it is his unique face that makes
him both in-person and Stranger, that is to
say Stranger to the world that he transforms.
Generic man is the face of the immanent
One. Man is thus a mediate (means-in-person)
under-determining in turn every act of
mediation, i.e. every philosophical mask, but
constituting itself as a unique “mask” or
“person,” the “last face.” There is only “one”
person … Without a doubt there are several
theological consequences.
20

ethics as a tempered ultimatum
It is an imperative to assume for oneself the
terms of generic humanity and, since this is a
partially scientific act, it is an object of a rational
desire, an individual willing himself as a rational
subject or an end in himself. It categorically
cannot be or have the rational form of duty,
but the “rational” form of the quarter, which
is not that of logic or non-contradiction. In
relation to the PSF, everything is displaced,
from the imperative and its diverse modalities,
between the Last Instance or the generic
subject and Occasion. The Ultimatum is an
excess or a pre-priority, an effect of the “imagin-
ary” as the radical (not absolute) impossible that
makes transcendence’s redoubling or its doub-
lets impossible, what is itself formed in the
forcing of the philosophical One as a generic
One.
The categorical imperative here takes the
form of a tempered ultimatum, of a “radical”
condition that is only debatable according to
the occasions or effects and modalities of its
investment in itself, it is not an absolute com-
mandment, it is conditional or rather it is
occasional, which is not the same thing. In a
sense, the imperative is also technically dis-
placed as categorical by generic causality.
These are means becoming fundamental or
central and is not the end as the end is for the
two Kantian imperatives. The means-subject
has its share of contingency and assumes a con-
jectural scientific choice that is still more sure
and less unstable than political choice. There
is a principle of choice within philosophy and
also within science, this is what fashions a
certain contingency of the generic’s materiality,
there are partially contingent choices, but the
generic is nevertheless not the minimum of a
vicious circle of variables. Thus, an ethic that
makes use of a materiality is an ethic of means
presupposing a lability, since everything is
intermediary [moyen] and variable. But these
means are only treated as means by generic
immanence. These diverse means become uni-
lateral effects in the service of the subject who
himself becomes a subject under the form of
the Last Instance.
21
laruelle
messianity and fidelity, a problem of
amplitude
I call messianity the form of strictly human
causality that is exerted as a generic practice
and I distinguish messianity from messianism.
Rather than a transcendent event, expected
but received as unexpected, it is an unexpected
or under-expected process of placing the events
that happen within the world’s horizon under a
condition or under-determination. Given its
constitution, the subject becomes what it vir-
tually is, it is involved in an ever-changing per-
manent transformation of means within the
limits of their generic use. Human practice
expends itself as a vectoral arrow from which
humanity establishes the minimal phase necess-
ary for there to be invention, humanity requires
at its disposal the means found in the world’s
various knowledges in order to truly invent
itself. This orthogonality of immanence itself
is what I readily call the amplitude of
messianity.
We will distinguish several fundamental
forms or styles of causality: (1) the theoreticist
causality of the finished Greek cosmos whose
closed curve does not allow the righteousness
of messianity to be thought or received; (2)
the practical causality of the means as effect,
this is toolness, a semi-ecstatic distance, a
priori but indirect, half-closed or undulatory;
(3) the causality of the generic subject or mes-
sianity, which is indirect like the previous
form because of its being perpendicular or by
its quarter phase, but oriented and irreversible.
It does not characterize an individual nor a
mode at all, but a generic indivi-duality. Only
the ways of generic humanity are right or
aspire to righteousness. Virtual messianity is a
posture irreducible to both the body and the
soul, such that each individual philosopher
(meaning mundane) must assume it in order
to become what he is and participate in
generic humanity.
What does one call the Last Instance if not
the generic subject as an interference of the
immanent vector with itself, or, if we can put
it this way, that which “aims” itself through
superposition towards the nearest quarter?
 a generic ethics
Messianity is a drive, a possibility that makes
the PSF impossible, not a modality either of
being-in-the-world or of the immanence of an
individual ego. It crosses them but without
anticipating them, in-pre-priority of every
anticipation, by throwing what under-deter-
mines every project, the indirect ecstasies of
practice but those through which it emerges.
Messianity has already crossed through the
indirect trajectory of action, meaning the trans-
cendences or “mountains” that are moved by it
through a kind of immanence tunnel, or a secret
action. This is neither a finished subjectivity
encircled by the world, nor an actual or virtually
infinite drive, but a “transfinite” throw that
overcomes those obstacles that cause the
action to hesitate or bifurcate, it is each time fin-
ished but not closed.
Superposition is re-cast, and the recasting
does not reconstitute a unity or a new individ-
ual. One can only recast an indivi-duality – and
even then an indivi-quarterality –, an imma-
nent posturality rather than a body. In relation
to Heidegger, messianity is vectoriell and not
existentiell, in relation to Michel Henry it is
immanental and not transcendental. It makes
possible and sustains a practical semi-causality
but it does not have the same direction as it and
does not double it. It is not pointed at the world
but towards the subject’s immanence, it is the
means which “under-come” as a subject but
always in terms orthogonal to itself. The
phase keeps immanence “quantically” open,
in an imaginary or complex way, an immanence
which is thus neither reflection nor lived inter-
iority, neither auto-position nor auto-affectiv-
ity. It is a messianity through immanence,
directly opposed to that of Levinas. Moreover,
the subjects of philosophy, which we also are,
are overcome by messianity, these subjects
are not the hostages of messianity or perse-
cuted by it.
To the extent that this concerns superposi-
tion, which is an objective and algebraic prop-
erty, an anterior act is still necessary but
secondary and not constitutive. Messianity is
a uni-lateral duality as we have explained it,
the superposed triumph of superposition
that fades away like a ghost and here it is the
in-itself that is the ghost. Non-philosophy is
the unexpected, meaning uni-lateral, combi-
nation of scientific thought, which assumes
the primacy of ideality over the object and of
the object over the operation of access to
itself, and of philosophy, which always antici-
pates that ideality through an operation. It is
not necessary to think the generic as an oper-
ation but as virtual-being-under-condition
under-determining philosophy as well as
quantum physics. We call this re-mobilized
character of the generic subject acting under
an occasion messianity of-the-last-instance.
There is here a broken symmetry of causality,
the occasion acts under a condition or “secon-
darily,” the condition acts in-pre-priority or
principally, but under a condition. What else
can “being-under-a-condition” mean, if not
depending on what is in-coming [en-venue]?
Since this coming is not that of an individual
or even of a Concept on the order of the par-
ouisa, but is instead the coming of generic
humanity, it is preferable to say that this
coming is about an under-coming. A formula
in memory of the Russian mystic who said
“remember God”: remember
the Messiah? Let the messianity
under-come in you. Messianity
demands fidelity to itself only
as being human in-the-last-
instance, the last fidelity.
notes
1 This essay was originally given as a lecture on 5
March 2010 at the University of Nottingham for
a workshop on Laruelle’s work entitled “François
Laruelle’s Non-Philosophy: Theology, Gnosticism,
and Theory.” [Translator’s note.]
2 Literally “smashing through an open door.”
[Translator’s note.]
3 The difference between vectoriel (what in
English is translated as vectorial) and vectorial
(which is a neologism of Laruelle’s own creation)
parrots the difference between Heidegger’s terms
(in translation) of existential and existentiell. Fol-
lowing discussions with the author, Drew
S. Burke has translated the neologism as
22
 laruelle

“onto-vectorial” in Photo-Fiction, a Non-Standard

Aesthetics (Minneapolis: Univocal, 2012) to signify
the constitutive and immanent character of the
concept.

François Laruelle
E-mail: francois.laruelle@free.fr

Anthony Paul Smith

La Salle University
Department of Religion
1900 W. Olney Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19141
USA
E-mail: smithanthony@lasalle.edu
 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 19 number 2 june 2014

christ and science

T o “philosophize in [en] Christ” is one of

those injunctions of which there are
many in philosophy. In this case, however –
against Plato and the Greeks – the grandeur of
Reason is discerned through a mode of philoso-
phizing that puts philosophy itself in tensive
conflict with faith. There is also the thesis, like
the thesis within Marxism, of a non-philosophi-
cal practice, here Christian, of philosophy.
Stated thus, our maxim is susceptible of innu-
merable equivocations to the extent that, never-
theless, a rigorous concept of Christ cannot be
established apart from philosophy. We thus françois laruelle
understand this maxim as a maxim of the non-
philosophical practice of philosophy, and as an translated by aaron riches
obligation to establish a Christian science that
is not neutral, but rather is engaged in the prac-
tical affairs of Christianity, and thus not merely A SCIENCE OF [ EN ]
in the manner of a hermeneutic or in simply
scientific terms. But will there be Christianity
CHRIST? 1
in this science of Christianity? Not necessarily.
And this is what distinguishes the science of generic science, of the subjectivity of religion,
Christianity from Christian hermeneutics: which is our principal thesis. Between philos-
there will be something of Christ himself in- ophy and Christ I have inserted a third term
person in the science of Christianity and other (which was perhaps not expected): science. To
religions. But if there will be something of philosophize in Christ would not affect the gran-
Christ and not of Christianity in this science, deur of Reason if our science-in-Christ behaved
the circle between Christianity and Christ will like a religion. On the contrary, we must posit
have been broken under the condition of the philosophy and theology as forms of under-
possibility that science and Christ can now be standing and belief that need to be subjected
sutured together. to the condition of a new theoretical posture,
Is “knowing in [en] Christ” the most impor- one that determines and transforms them
tant testimony to the grandeur of Reason – or according to a science in which Christ himself
is this “knowing” an attempt to destroy the bears their principles, blinding yet invisible,
grandeur of Reason? The aporia radicalizes the clear but silent. Christ is not merely a religious
injunction to “philosophize in Christ” such personality to imitate in his existence and in his
that it pits Luther against Pascal and Plato by sufferings. He is not primarily the founder of a
identifying Christ alone as the bearer of a new religion which must be continually

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/14/020025-9 © 2014 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.950851

25
 a science of [en] christ?
interpreted and solicited. Rather, he is the
author of a “logia” which must be read as the
protocol of a new human science, a science of
belief and rite. To this end we must submit reli-
gious thought to Christ just as we submit an
object to the principle of its science. And here
we note an important nuance: it is not the Chris-
tian religion, still less the “Christian science”
which is the science of other religions, it is
Christ himself who announces the protocol of
the science of religion as such, Christianity
included. It is thus redundant to say that
this is not a positivistic science, even while it
yet possesses identifiable principles and
procedures.
How then do we philosophize “in” [en] Christ?
The answer depends on what we mean by “in”
[en] – whether we take it to mean “because of”
[à cause de] or “for” [pour]. We are engaged in
a theory of immanence which Christian philoso-
phers have tended to settle whether through the
subjective interiority of faith or the individual
ego, whether through the interiority of the mys-
tical body of the Church or by appeal to the
text of the Scriptures. From thence issued the
idealist Christo-logies which are simply interpret-
ations of the Scriptures through the medium of
philosophy by the dogmaticians of the Church
who are themselves the new merchants of the
Temple specializing in the buying and selling of
truth. For us, by contrast, the answer of “in”
[en] will be more a question of philosophizing
“in” [en] the science which is Christ himself.
For us, in so far as Christ is identified with
generic science, there will be always and only
two terms and not three. The apparent third
term will not be a mediation or philosophical syn-
thesis. We are not defending a theological pos-
ition but rather the scientific posture of Christ
taken as the object of the whole of religion
according to both its two poles: the paganism
of philosophy in its Greek origins signified by
the Logos, on the one hand, and the monotheism
of Judaism signified by the Torah, on the other.
Here we must recognize an affinity between
certain scientific principles in order to specify
the “logia” of Christ. But obviously I am not
going to say that Christ is a subject, the subject
of a science or a philosophy – this is excluded.
Further – and this is a second thesis – the
science-according-to-Christ is a two-term
system in which Christ is and bears a type of
understanding: faith, which is messianity
itself. If faith or messianity is an understanding
and a critique of religion, then to find axioms of
faith is likewise to find principles of messianity.
Our object is thus to formulate laws that are not
those of religious representation, but formu-
lations capable of explaining religion. From
the point of view of its object, this science is
that of humanity, of course, but now as a
subject dealing with the world rather than
with Being (or even being-in-the-world). If
Christ can be credited with a science, his
science is that of the world as its own final
object. This is what distinguishes the science
of Christ from an ontology that deals with a
middle zone between beings and Being.
However, for us humans, religion along with
theology is the form according to which the
world is expressed, and thus the form in which
Christ gives us understanding. From this realiz-
ation there issues a third thesis, polemical but
merely proceeding from our first principles:
the whole content of the religion of Christianity
is nothing more than the standardization, illu-
sion and fabrication of a religion of Christ.
Christianity is the limit, the whole content of
which is a misinterpretation of Christ.
We should say of Christ, summarizing his
work, that he is the one who is faithful, the
Messiah of the “Last Instance.” This means
that he is not a cause or event preceding Chris-
tianity. As such, Christ cannot be deployed as
the foundation of any transcendent authority.
The idea, rather, is to treat him as the constant
scientific type, and therefore as the “objective”
invariant meaning of all human science who
also fulfils subjective functioning. The principle
of this science is therefore a quantum, by defi-
nition constant, which does not necessarily
mean quantitative, but rather a lived experience
which, in this case, is faith. This quantum is the
objective constant woven into what is lived,
what is lived by a faith objectively informed.
In this way, faith, the messianic-as-constant,
preserves the grandeur of Reason in spite of
its weakening of the sufficiency of philosophy.
26

The antimony is resolved or redistributed as
follows: the grandeur of Reason belongs to a
science that behaves like a subject or lived
experience, which is faith. Whereas the suffi-
ciency that needs to be destroyed belongs to
philosophy and theology. The sufficiency of
philosophy and the grandeur of Reason have
thus been all too often confused.
generic science: the fusion of
science and christ
It cannot be a question of traditional science,
positivistic and without need of a subject –
such a science would correspond to nothing.
Jesus is not a laboratory experiment [expéri-
ence] but an experience [expérience] of salvation
in the world. However, in his practice and
especially in his words, Christ offers the ingredi-
ents of a science in which a subject is included in
the form of symptoms to be analysed (analysed
in so far as we know how to read the principles
we “have” a priori as symptoms). These symp-
toms are the sense of universality as human:
Christ’s fundamental relation to the Law that
remains Law even when it is fulfilled; the imma-
nence of this achievement “in” [en] his person
(of the Law and the Messiah); the theory of his
new mediating function; his doubly unwise
thought, his “logia,” the simple words he
utters as axioms which are yet addressed to
the “simple ones” who are not philosophers;
the necessary passage of the crucial experiment
of his sacrifice; and finally the assertion
(accepted by the apostles and refused by the
Church) of the actuality of his messianity and
what it accomplishes. All that speaks of Christ
in terms of fulfilment can obviously give rise
to religious scenarios or dialectical construc-
tions. But it can also pointedly indicate a rigor-
ous intellectual enterprise and can thus be taken
literally, such that Christ in his axioms strips
himself of every religious implication without
bringing about a “negative theology.” It is
thus for us to retrieve the axioms of Christ in
a manner that is non-religious and not funda-
mentalist. All this is not simply existential,
and it is not in fact presented in the delivered
meaning of the historical existence of Christ as
27
laruelle
handed down by the theologians. Nevertheless,
it has a theoretical range if one can decipher it
and is willing to see Christ’s “logic” – his mes-
sianity is what is actual, even if in this actuality
there is, as we will see, a feature of inexistence
and non-manifestation in so far as the actuality
of the Messiah, Christ, cannot signify that he
manifests himself to the gaze of the world.
The “plan of salvation” means that God has
another face which is “theoretical” but invisible
to epistemology.
The discourse of Christ therefore assumes a
posture which works from the generality of an
unknown type towards a philosophy which is
scientific and, at the same time, a faithful or mes-
sianically lived experience. For these two reasons
and their combination we call this science
generic. Generic is the posture of human beings
who are not religious but who yet know their
faith, their non-religious messianity. The speci-
ficity of Christianity is therefore to have revealed,
in the work of Christ, the generic essence of the
sciences, which engages humanity’s own imma-
nent life, not only in the posture of objectivity
but also in terms of subjectivity. This life is not
an ego-logic, it is part of the protocol that constitu-
tes science, it raises the question of procedure such
that, for its part, it neutralizes itself generically,
suspending its own philosophical features. Thus
there is a life which is not a life of singularity, a
life of living beings, but rather a life that adheres
to a scientific procedure: this is the generic.
The theoretical novelty here is the fusion of
science and Christ which signifies the discovery
not of a new foundation or ground but rather
of the posture of the generic Last Instance discov-
ered now as a new element of the most rigorous
subjective knowledge. The discovery thus is
that there is no subject of science in the
manner of Lacan (as if this science were again
predicated of a subject who would be Christ).
On the contrary, here subjective science is a
science “in” [à] the subject, a subjective
science, where it is Christ who is in some way
the predicate of this “subject” which is now a
science in which every doubted term is trans-
formed. The new alliance of God and humanity
is achieved through the person of Christ but rea-
lized by him in a hitherto un-actualized form,
 a science of [en] christ?
that of the fusion of science (principles that, as
we will see, prefigure faith and messianity) and
subjects such that we can speak of the incarnation
of generic principles and of the lived experience
that incarnates them. The fusion of these prin-
ciples (which are neither ontological nor “Aristo-
telian”) with Christic subjectivity inaugurates a
new type of “human” science.
two scientific principles
At this juncture we must announce the two scien-
tific principles which intimately tie together and
inform faith and messianity, constituting them as
the science or understanding of Christianity. The
most general principles of science, which trans-
gress the boundaries of discipline within particu-
lar disciplines, are mathematical and more
particularly algebraic – they exert themselves,
for example, in quantum physics (which has an
amplitude higher than traditional physics and
yet is transferable to non-physical properties).
If a science in-Christ is possible and applicable
to all religion it will be realizable within these
same operations taken as principles. On the
other hand, it is important that these principles
are recognized as laws of amplitude, and there-
fore must be algebraic in order (if they are to
become principles) that they can be detached
from physical properties. Only thus are they
transferable elsewhere, into other objective con-
texts and into the subject of faith and religion,
and thus without being universal in the philoso-
phical sense of hierarchy and domination. Marx
hinted at this when he linked the science of
history with a theory of determination-in-the-
last-instance. Herein he gave us an example of
the fusion of theory (Marxist) and the masses
(the proletariat). Accordingly, his work likewise
reveals these two scientific principles.
The first principle conditions faith (or mess-
ianity) such that it must become a constant, a
particular type of determination regulating the
correspondences it implements. Thus faith will
be an idempotence, what quantum physics
terms a “principle of superposition.” An idem-
potente operation produces the same result no
matter how many times the original application
is reapplied. The second principle subtracts
determination from philosophical grasp: it is
the non-commutation of messianic faith with
religious belief. Messianic faith is thus the con-
dition of the ruin of theological sufficiency and
the condition of our understanding of religion.
If it is difficult to recognize what exactly is the
affinity of the Christian invention with the fun-
damentals of Marxian science of history (Michel
Henry), then its affinity with physical science,
such as quantum science, is even more perplex-
ing. However, we will distinguish in the Christic
operation these two principles: the principle of
idempotence (or superposition) and that of
non-commutativity. These principles will be
deployed in quantic fashion, giving the oper-
ation its character of generic universality. This
double principle is decisive for the vectoral defi-
nition of messianity.
A logical operation is thus an idempotent
operation when the same term or component
can be added or subtracted without its truth
value changing, it remains the same whether it
is added to or subtracted from. Idempotence
thus immediately grants to immanence its
linear and “undulated” form, and not in the
form of a point or circle as the philosophers
suppose. Idempotence, rather, programs the
equivalence of one term with itself as a result
or resultant of whatever operation has been
used to mediate it and which accordingly neu-
tralizes or suspends it without denying or forget-
ting it. The intermediate operation, which we
could have taken for the transcendence of arith-
metical addition, is hereby suspended in its
effect. Accordingly, idempotence can be under-
stood as simulating a mode of identification
which folds a particular term back upon
another in the manner of a reflection depicted
in a mirror. Total and partial, the identification
remains an operation that skims through imma-
nence, without neutralizing or destroying any-
thing. With two terms, here two Laws (Logos
and Torah), we have in effect only one: one
Law provided that it is immanent or in flux
and that the mediations between Logos and
Torah are neutralized, not negated or denied.
The linear immanence of the Same has the
effect of suspending the operation of addition
which would be included in the fashion of
28

arithmetics and would pose terms in the interval
of externality or transcendence. Two entities
within a theological interval are not superpos-
able, while an idempotent addition produces
the entities as a flux or phases of flux.
Idempotence constitutes the linear form or flux
of messianity dedicated to the superposition or
addition of one with oneself, of forms with
other forms without any change to the nature of
the forms. This vectorality, this linearity of the
Same, remains the Same as itself. But for the
moment it is still an empty algebraic form ready
to be amalgamated, ready to be given its natural
superposition with the property of lived subjects.
As a force of idempotent fusion, this vector finds
its material immediately in a form of lived experi-
ence proper to religious beings, the belief which it
pre-empts or takes as faith to which it gives
generic form. Severed from belief, the lived
experience of faith is neither objective nor subjec-
tive. Faith does not reside with either of the two
poles of belief. The vector incarnates itself
totally in the messianic “matter” [matériale] or
material [matérielle] messianity which is both
lived and non-empirical, and thus it is constant
with the faith that remains the “same.”
The second principle is that of the non-commu-
tativity which institutes order. This principle
ensures the being-oriented – the sense of the
Last Instance – of messianity. By means of its
being-foreclosed from the world, messianity is
not commutative or exchangeable with a phenom-
enon of the world and therefore establishes an
order between the Last Instance, which is “pre-
priority” [avant-première], and the world which
is first [premier]. Instead of reducing Christ to
the rank of a vague, unspecified fidelity, that is
to say a “Christian” or a “believer,” one must
admit that Christ is neither a Christian much
less a “believer.” On the contrary: a radically
indifferent faith must be put on equal footing
with Christ, equal among the equals, but under
the strict condition that the new faithful, like
Christ himself, are released from the Christian-
ity-world and from religion. They are established,
rather, in the mode of a subject-science, of fidelity
to the Last Instance – the ultimate fidelity of sub-
jects – which is not fixed by messianity but,
rather, constituted by its generic subjectivity.
29
laruelle
The faithful are those who break the yoke of the
vicious circle of Christianity in so far as it is insti-
tuted and takes the historical form of a religion.
christ as the generic constant
Christ is a “subject,” not because he is the
founder (involuntarily) of a religion (to which
the apostles are witnesses and Paul the authorita-
tive corrupter of the message), nor because he is a
historical figure who has become an anonymous
symbol. Not only is science a human work (and
not a divine work) which requires “subjects,”
but certain sciences (and perhaps all) require sub-
jects who are included in the science and there-
fore irreducible to the object of that science. A
science that introduces constants into the inti-
macy of thought (and particularly a constancy
of encounter) requires an indivisible messianic
ultimatum. The “last things” are not fantastic
cosmic events or cataclysms; rather, only
generic subjects are “last” in an eschatological
sense, that is, “prior-to-first-things.” The name
of Christ therefore introduces a fundamental dis-
continuity not only “within” [dans] the historic
present, but also in the pre-present of present
history itself. Far from “breaking in two”
(Nietzsche) the history of the old philosophical
scheme, Christ updates a “pre-priority” which
leaves its priority to history under the condition
of determining the in-last-instance.
The event of the arrival of the Christ-science
consists of several layers connected as phases.
(1) Christ as the generic subject is first of all
constituted by a formal principle of algebraic
origin deployable in quantic terms – a property
of idempotence, a form of vectoral immanence,
a flux of immanence, a form of total messianity.
(2) The flux of messianic immanence is not an
empty logical form, it has intrinsic content, a
content lived according to an idempotent faith
in the form of a generic lived experience
without ego. Here we have a non-individual sub-
jectivity since Christ has stripped away the
possibility of belief and of any ego; thus we
have a pure faith without object or individual
subject. (3) This unity, the fusion of the scienti-
fic element with the lived form of the vector of
infinite immanence, is the subject-science,
 a science of [en] christ?
messianity. (4) Finally, the immanent messianic
vector has not only one content – faith or mess-
ianity – but a content of transcendent origin
reduced and contained by its consequent
double state, which is at once extrinsic and
immanent. It is thus a transformed transcen-
dence, simplified and not redoubled, unilatera-
lized by the flux of immanence which crosses
it and in which it takes root. This transcendence
is the general shape of the religious sphere, the
form of the religious world (beliefs, rites,
senses, symbols).
the two laws, logos and torah, and
the invention of the scientific
position
What does Jesus say that makes him the Christ?
He describes his mission in terms of two different
languages, both of which are identified with the
Law. First of all he is strongly identified with
Torah, but also with another formal structure
of mediation, the Greek or philosophical Law of
Logos. The Law of Logos is implicit in the
milieu of the Jewish origin of Jesus, indeed it is
as fundamental as Torah (a fact too often forgot-
ten with the Christic fulfilment). Pagan Logos
and Jewish Torah are substantial and consistent
religions, structured by three terms: divinity,
humanity and the law. In both cases, the Law is
the intermediary, Logos and Torah both
mediate as the “third” term of relation between
humanity and divinity. The problem of Jesus is
simple because it is precisely the problem of
the Simple: to make a non-religion out of two
of the three terms of religion, simplifying them
in their essence. In other words, Christ’s
problem is neither Pauline nor Hegelian; it
excludes every solution of triad or trinity.
On the one hand, Christ describes his mission
in a manner evocative of Greek mediation, of phi-
losophizability, a mediation between God and
humans. But in so doing, the mediation is flat-
tened to the extent than one of the terms of
mediation is left unrepresented. Jesus is the
mediate-without-mediation (complete or triangu-
lar). He does not represent his Father a second
time, but presents him. It is enough to have
seen Jesus as to have seen the Father. Thus he
accomplishes in his person the mediation of
terms under a condition that removes the infinite
distance between finite reason (polytheism) and
God. In this way, Christ curtails the circuit of
mediation, contracting the median term in
himself. This fulfilment of contracted mediation
transforms the other side of mediation, ensuring
the salvation of humanity through a kind of
new obedience is suddenly required. Christ is
not, therefore, the developed mediation which
Hegel would later see in him.
But Jesus also says that he came to fulfil the
Law which, in Hebraic terms, means that he
fulfils the Law in person. This can also be under-
stood in Greek terms in so far as the Mosaic Law
embodies certain common features of Greek
mediation. Just as we must philosophize in
Christ, so we must “Judaize” in Christ. (For
this reason one needs to “Judaize” beforehand
as much as possible.) Nevertheless the
mediation of the Mosaic Law takes on a very
different form from that of Greek Law in so
far as it involves an immediation of subjects to
the Law. This immediation of subjects to the
Law is the maximal human obedience required
of the Law which testifies to the infinite distance
that separates us from God, to whom we related
through maximal obedience to the Law. The
infinite proximity of obedience to the Law is
thus a proximity which is at the same time our
infinite distance from God. Christ’s fulfilment
of the Mosaic Law is achieved when he takes
responsibility for it in his person – and it is
thus that he utterly transforms the Law. How
is this accomplished? It is accomplished by
suppressing the infinite proximity of Torah,
just as it was previously accomplished in terms
of Greek Law through the suppression of trans-
cendence. Thus humanity is released from the
infinite proximity of the Law through the substi-
tution of the Law by faith, which leaves human-
ity free to choose between obedience to a
stubborn and fixed Law on the one hand, and
free obedience to Christ on the other.
The heart of the matter is an immanent
accomplishment. The transformation achieved
here relates not, however, to the infinite, but
rather to the transcendence of God and the
30

absolute proximity of a Law that requires
maximal obedience. The mediation of three
terms thus becomes that of duality. In short,
the Law does not divide me as a subject, as
Christianity and psychoanalysis (Lacan) would
have it, rather it distributes otherwise the
entity of “Jesus” as the generic man or messia-
nic Last Instance – and therefore as a subject
determined in-the-last-instance by a transcen-
dent obedience. The Law-Christ is generic, it
does not divide but distributes and redistributes
immanence and transcendence in terms of an
infinite immanence. Thus generic universality
takes the form of unilateral duality, not at all a
divided Whole returning to itself.
what of greek law? christ the
idempotent superposition of logos
and torah
It is possible to arrive more directly at our con-
clusion in a way that shows, at the same time,
the theoretical mode by which “Christ” is
himself the resultant name of a superposition
by idempotence of two Laws, two forms of
mediation. Superposition by idempotence
involves a strict condition of application or
usage which is specific. In particular, this appli-
cation is not a pure and simple identification, it
does not merely take the broken [brouillée]
image of Christ only to present it with the Chris-
tian solution of a Greco-Judaic blending. Super-
position, rather, produces a generic image that
is not a blending but the generic form of
mediation which is Christ. This mediation is
neither Greek nor Jewish, nevertheless it is able
to generically valorize, a priori, both religions.
The message or meaning of “Christ” is a dis-
cursive system with two additional variables,
two classically discernible “states” or properties,
Logos and Torah. Maintaining the addition
(Logos + Torah) is still a state of the message
(or at least one of its properties). Christ remains
Christ under the condition of each of these
three states according to his generic universality,
only now with the crucial difference that as soon
as he is thought of in terms of superposition – an
addition of Logos + Torah – none of the
31
laruelle
properties are any longer discernible or able to
be isolated. Conversely, if one makes the point
of identifying them individually, one destroys
the superposition which is called “Christ.”
Christ is not a point-subject such as God or the
ego, an atom or an identifiable corpuscle within
the coordinates of a theological interval – this is
a Greco-Judaic interference which is no longer
identifiable. The idempotente addition or super-
position is not a mixture or synthesis, especially
not a Greco-Judaic blending together in which
the components are at once blurred [brouillée]
yet still relatively locatable. Nevertheless, if one
tries “to clear up” [débrouiller] the variables in
Christ one ends up destroying what constitutes
the indivisible messianic nature of Christ, which
is not that of a fixed spacial point but that of an
immanent messianic flux. The Christ-Logos and
the Christ-Torah, the Word and the Law are
one in him, they are indistinguishable and all
wholly occupy the space of messianity.
Turning to the formula “God was made man”
– what exactly is signified by this “made”?
Believing that God metamorphosed himself
and decided to take on human form is at the
origin of anthropomorphism and the Trinitarian
substantialism of the Church, the aporias to
which the intra-Christian heresies testify. But
this metamorphization is also an integral
aspect of much of the philosophies and
modern Christologies that are now at the
margins of Christianity. Rather, “God was
made man” signifies the “becoming” immanent
of Christ as a generic lived experience. More rig-
orously, it signifies the coming of two religious
Laws into the generic nature of science as
lived, the science-subject as the true science
and true subject. Christ is thus a scientific pro-
cedure who has found a lived usage which the
procedure neutralizes. Rather than becoming,
the Messiah comes but does not come from
heaven or earth. Instead he “under-comes” to
the world as generic and thus his “being
made” does not take place in the world. “To
be made” is neither a procession nor an emana-
tion, nor is it a medium or synthesis of the two:
Christ (and every faithful one with him) is
spoken in duality. The faithful one is thus an
immanent duality, a “logia” – faithful or
 a science of [en] christ?

generic, which is not a total entity, a faithful By contrast, superposition is sacrifice when it is
member of a Church, nor is he absolutely singu- understood in terms of a unilateral act of suspend-
lar. He is a unilateral duality, as indivisible as ing the reciprocal mediation of exchange with God.
the procedure of the Same on the one hand God is suspended in an idempotent manner as a
and as lived on the other. generic being becoming the Son. What is sacri-
ficed, then, is the reciprocity and competition of
the divine side of mediation. The result is a con-
sacrifice and the suspending of dition in which God is radically immanent such
that he ceases to be a mediate term.
sacrifice Hereby two solutions are excluded:
The secret of Christ is his “sacrificial” aspect –
(1) The celebrated formula of the “death of God” is
but what precisely is the relation of Christ and
a metaphysical symptom of idempotent suspen-
sacrifice? There have been too many interpret-
sion, nevertheless, the suspending of divine pater-
ations which have gone in the direction of an
nity to the benefit of engendering Christ has
anthropological imaginary and religious archae-
nothing to do with the act of killing God, of mod-
ology; one ought to be suspicious of this “doxa.”
ernity’s metaphysics according to which God is
Idempotence includes an act of suspending,
sacrificed to the advantage of Greek Law.
an immanent neutralization that makes idempo-
Nothing more than the moral God dies. The
tence possible. This condition, we can call it
subject which symmetrically corresponds to God
“sacrificial,” is the possibility of the superpos-
does not simply disappear, but rather comes to
ing of two Laws. But who is sacrificed? We
subsist as obedience to the new generic Law in
must posit – as an axiom – that it is the function
which and by which God himself is transformed.
of God as Father which is sacrificed in Christ
The sacrifice of God is now no longer the theme
and not, therefore, the Son. There would be
of late Christian modernity, it is the necessary con-
no reason to sacrifice the Son. It would be a
dition of the dimension Jesus acquires as a generic
pure injustice through which the salvation of
figure required by Greek and Jew alike. This
the world could not be accomplished. The true
generic duality unilaterally assembles (i) God’s
symbolic range and foundation of the Christic
sacrifice of his transcendence and (ii) the subject
sacrifice is not that of Jesus (even if a phenom-
released from the servitude of the Law. This is
enon of this sort took place). Rather, the sacri-
always achieved under the condition of a resolve
fice of the Cross is the sacrifice of God on the
to obey. Thus the sacrifice of Christ is the sacrifice
Cross, of God “in” [en] his Son. Thus, by no
of God within his Son. God’s sacrifice of his Son is
means is the sacrifice that of the Son, as if the
the sacrifice of a Jewish image of sacrifice, just as
Father could have decided on this in an aberrant
the son killing the father and sublating him is a
and cruel way. The “sacrifice” is rather of God,
Greek image of sacrifice. The truth of Christianity,
which is the condition of Christic messianity,
however, is that of the Father’s “self-sacrificing” in
the flux which applies to the Jews and the
order that the Son may be born – but this truth is
Pagans at once. Thus, if Christ is an indivisible
neither “religious” nor, much less, promoting
generic immanence, then it is impossible to dis-
family values. Christ signifies that there is a true
tinguish in him – in a classic philosophical
genesis of the Son, and that this genesis is
manner – the atomized components of “his”
neither philosophical nor the unruly geneses of
sacrifice. The sacrifice necessarily takes place
“family histories,” where the family is already
in Christ (in whom it is constituted) but it
present and anticipates the birth and education of
does not mean that it is Christ “himself” who
the children as the ground or horizon of presence.
is sacrificed (only, then, to be wrongly identified
as God or Jesus in so far as he is the “same” (2) It is difficult to speak of the “sacrifice” of the
generic). The sacrifice of Christ “himself” Cross, for here sacrifice takes on the form of sus-
would initiate a bad dialectical fluctuation of pending divine transcendence. However, the
opposites, even of substances. general structure of mediation requires a more

32

precise exegesis. Herein divine transcendence is
itself established as sacrifice. Religions are
mechanisms consisting of three terms. Religions
are transcendental structures which are more or
less objective and “disciplined.” There is always
transcendence in every form of transcendental
religious mediation. It is thus possible to
explain why the transcendent(al) needs to be
excluded from duality like an emissary third
(Girard) – because it is the structure of exclu-
sion which allows the hierarchical organization
of duality. The transcendental plays a function
both negative and positive: its exclusion is con-
stituent of a group joined together in hierarchi-
cal terms. Every religion in this way is
concerned with sacrificial activity.
For this reason, Christ, in contradistinction to
what Christianity reflects, cannot completely
answer the sacrificial model. The everyday prac-
tice of Christianity and theology copies precisely
the logic of sacrificial divine transcendence on
this implicitly transcendental model, just as phil-
osophy imitates religion by transcendentalizing
it. But to act for Christ in the posture of scientific
fidelity involves an act of suspending that is con-
stitutive of something neither religious nor trans-
cendental. For it is now the structure of sacrifice
that is recognized as founding the transcendental
and the divine transcendence it suspends. Sacri-
fice was necessary to produce the transcendent/
transcendental God and to constitute a religious
community, another operation is now required
to neutralize this system itself. This suspending
cannot be a sufficient sacrifice, even if Christian-
ity is content with it, thereby lapsing back into
pagan errors and into pride.
It would thus appear that all sacrifices produce
a transcendence with the aspect or effect of imma-
nence, which is eventually transcendental. The
uniqueness of Christianity is the accomplishment
of immanent reduction. God must be suspended
– his sacrificial origin must be suspended. All
that science requires of religion and of God is
this suspension of sacrifice, which is neither the
metaphysical “death” of God nor his atheistic
and materialist refusal. But even while this sus-
pending of sacrifice has been confused with sacri-
fice itself, nevertheless it is a sacrifice of sacrifice.
laruelle
The innocent Christ proclaims the innocence of
sacrificial victims. Moreover, he suspends the sup-
posedly Christic sacrifice, revealing it or showing
it up as appearance. Thus Christ “acquits” the
Jewish God of cruelty. If sacrifice establishes
the community and distends it for the divine
one, Christ contracts this operation and gives it
generic consistency. As much as sacrifice is the
business of priests and the anonymous and trans-
cendent Law (or the transcendental philosophers
who mitigate it), to this extent its immanental sus-
pension is the work of Messiahs and the milieu of
the existence of the Simple. With rigour we can
now say that messianity is the immanence of
sacrifice or the immanent sacrifice and therefore
messianity is non-religious. Consequently, the
sacrifice of the emissary third founds a proselyt-
ism of heaven and earth, a militant and harassing
proselytism in which messianity establishes an
infinite defence of human beings. It is thus expe-
dient to always pass from the conquering Christ-
ianity of the “return” of Christ to a Christianity
that defends the faithful against religion itself.
No return of Christ is necessary
for the generic subject or generic
Messiah. Our faith is eternal and
actual: it is not as fleeting or con-
tingent as our beliefs.
note
1 “A Science of Christ?,” by François Laruelle, was
originally published in The Grandeur of Reason: Reli-
gion, Tradition and Universalism, eds. Peter M.
Candler Jr and Conor Cunningham (Canterbury:
SCM, 2009) 316–31, and is reprinted here with
the kind permission of the editors and the press.
François Laruelle
E-mail: francois.laruelle@free.fr
Aaron Riches
Seminario Mayor San Cecilio
Paseo de la Cartuja, 49
18011 – Granada
Spain
E-mail: aaronriches@yahoo.ca
 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 19 number 2 june 2014

A theory of sexed identity is not at our

disposal, but rather there are fragments
furnished by philosophy and psychoanalysis.
First, we will analyse the classical philosophical
discourse (which does not take up its own ges-
tures) on the question of gender.
Two sexes, but only one determines the
destiny and the individuality of humans. This
wonky arithmetic does not rely only on a collec-
tion of common-sense arguments, pulled out
from the drawer or from the bric-a-brac of
common thought and political relations; it
also serves as negative condition in the estab-
lishment of proper philosophical values. Its françois laruelle
solidity draws on this double role. A woman
in philosophy is not only she whose empirical anne-françoise schmid
determinations in the world (the house, the
home, love, sensitivity, obedience, domestic translated by nicola rubczak
peacekeeping, etc.) form a negative but necess-
ary condition of absence for man’s determi-
nation; of his absence, allowing him to be for SEXED IDENTITY 1
the world and to live himself as if the destiny
of the world. This much religions also share,
but the philosophical tradition offers some- is perfectly “sexed,” however much it may be
thing else on top of woman: a collection of com- suppressed as sexed.
plicated and indirect arguments, grey in the This thesis will very soon discover, as we have
way we speak of “grey literature,” destined well seen, that the struggle for feminist liber-
for a usage entirely other to systematic theoreti- ation is too narrow, undoubtedly because alien-
cal enlightenment, and as such we could say ation is much more general than just the
that these arguments do not serve only to position of woman, but also because these
diminish woman within philosophical construc- struggles are really not about the object they
tion: another thing must be made clear. Our claim to concern. What, in effect, does philos-
thesis – which only touches on the philosophi- ophy want? It wants to establish games of con-
cal paradigm in order to subvert it within itself traries (as we saw in the twentieth century,
– is that so-called philosophy of “Woman” [la- particularly with Derrida) and a stable hierarchy
femme] perhaps does not touch on sexed iden- soon thereafter, which does not “capsize” itself.
tity, and that, moreover and in a similar For this, an empirical suture is needed, or more
fashion, the structure of the philosophical “crudely” a “nail driven into the wall” (as
system and the game of opposition of contraries Luther said of woman), in order to draw this

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.950852

35
 sexed identity
ensemble together. To take an image from
Neurath, philosophy in so far as it aims to indi-
viduate itself is like a boat we build while sailing
it, searching for a stable point in the boat itself
which would allow us to not fall overboard. This
function, this point of suture or invisible
“focus” (like that of an ellipse) within philos-
ophy, is called “Woman.” However, nothing
indicates that these functions are feminine.
This notion is solidified by putting common-
sense prejudices into relation with highly tech-
nical systems, each holding up the other. We
will not, then, facilitate woman’s escape by
seeking to reverse these systems.
Rather, let us bear in mind that “Woman”
cannot be a direct indication for the comprehen-
sion of sexed identity, at the very most an indir-
ect material. “Woman” is often outside-subject
[hors sujet] where woman is concerned, and
has put woman outside of subject, outside of
individuation, outside of human destiny.
Woman is just a grouping of conditions of appli-
cations of philosophical and political values in
the empirical world. What is essential here is
to constrain this tradition, however rich it may
be. It indirectly suggests that the opposition of
contraries does not seem to be sexed, since it
concerns the human, and that the “sexed” char-
acter of the human only appears in minor func-
tions, concerning fortune and disorder (rather
than virtue) and ornament (rather than truth).
This is how rhetoric has been prohibited for
philosophy, all the while co-belonging to it,
and how it has nonetheless been preferred to
style, which jeopardizes the unity of the
system. Nietzsche, the philosopher who best
exposed the relations between philosophy and
rhetoric, wrote in The Gay Science: “There is
something quite amazing and monstrous about
the upbringing of upper-class women; indeed,
maybe there is nothing more paradoxical” [Frie-
drich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Jose-
fine Nauckhoff (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2001) 74]. Thus we could try to use all that is
repudiated by philosophy while co-belonging
to it in order to describe indirectly the situation
of women, but through a nebula that only con-
cerns sexual identity through condensation,
Woman.
Sexed difference, then, must be universa-
lized, such that what is said of Woman can
only be understood as particular. There is a
mystery in sexed identity that no description
of woman has been able to clarify. Philosophy
ignores man as irreducible to anthropos, and
so it needs a negative empirical object which
can, on the contrary, give it the concept.
Instead of really having studied man beyond
the rational animal, philosophy has denied
woman the character of being an individual
destiny; she is inferior either before original
sin or after it, which renders the question
more complex since it brings together the equal-
ity and inequality of man and woman. But
equality alone cannot exist in the classical tra-
dition – that which does not take its own ges-
tures as an object. This universalization cannot
content itself with the generalization of particu-
lar traits. It gives place to a mystery precisely
because none of the traits used to describe
Woman make us understand her. Ebbing into
the genius of reason, poetic genius, genius of
sensibility, genius of love, says nothing of this
mystery to us. At the same time, all common
sense and the most technical and esoteric
aspects of systems and religions offer us a set
of differences that are always intricated, so
tangled that analysis always gets lost and finds
itself in another game of contraries. This
mystery has indeed justified atrocities. But we
can understand it positively, in a human
rather than a sexed manner. Non-philosophy
proposes, with its paradigm of the non-anthro-
pological-Man, a method for this mutation.
The non-confusion of sexed identity and of
the human has a whole host of concrete conse-
quences concerning everything we think of by
games of contraries, and by which we have
implicitly excluded Woman. The disciplines
which are not philosophical, the sciences, tech-
nics, art, are accompanied by a metalanguage
with a philosophical structure (philosophy of
sciences, philosophy of technics, philosophy of
art … ), a metalanguage which claims to
describe them. The philosophy of sciences, for
example, has organized the ingredients of
science by organizing them as contraries in the
“dialectical” game between theory and
36

experience. The consequence of this approach
has been research of the criteria of science in
the form of verification or refutation. Now we
start to know the limits of such an approach.
There is theory, there is experimentation
[expérience], modelling, measuring, simulation,
etc., but it is important not to put them into
play in a scene which would oppose spirit and
experience, construction and reality, etc. It is
equally important that what we call the
“hypothetical-deductive method,” which is one
method among others, does not operate on the
dialectic link between these contraries. The
actual great experiments [grandes expériences]
resist such interpretations; experience here is
itself an attribute it is not necessary to oppose
to another. “Modelling” does not find its
interpretation here either. The identification of
science through such criteria forms a system
with the philosophical contraries whose stitch-
ing is the-woman. By proposing an identity of
minimal science, independent of the game of
these contraries, by means of a posture rather
than through reified criteria drawn from
history, non-philosophy and non-epistemology
liberate, for example, science from a sexed
interpretation and indirectly pose anew the
question of the relations of the sexes to science.
Such a work of transformation is possible in
all philosophical metalanguages permitting the
philosophizing of other disciplines, an activity
that is at once theoretical (it causes the objects
of these metadiscourses to appear differently)
and practical (it modifies these metadiscourses
progressively, step-by-step), and opens a field
for the old contraries, projecting each ingredient
onto an independent dimension. This does not
at all prevent the contraries from “existing” or
being the object of studies.
The problem of the relation of the sexes to
genius could equally be displaced. In its usual
“philosophical” interpretation, it postulates
the capacity to live, in its own destiny, the
destiny of the World and thus of playing with
these contraries and giving them freely to
itself. This is the faculty of giving itself the
World, and the feeling of being for it rather
than in it. Woman passes her energy into the
World, since she assures its stability. The
37
laruelle & schmid
World, designed by the structures of philos-
ophy, can also be transformed, in the sense
that it is not necessary to give oneself the
World in its unity, nor its totality. Here there
must be a generalization of philosophy, its trans-
formation into materials. Genius could then
appear under the least totalitarian and impulsive
of forms, the least masculine. This too is very
much a work of transformation of philosophical
declarations, whose object always ends up being
something of the World.
Philosophy supposes an “All-sexual”; philos-
ophy implicitly, psychoanalysis often explicitly.
If sexual difference = X is irreducible to these
overdeterminations (political, economical,
psychological), it does not suffice then, as philos-
ophies of difference do, to treat sexual difference
like a residue, like that which appears or can be
shown even though we do not know how to
speak of it, as at the limit of discourse. The psy-
choanalysis of sexual difference already compli-
cates the philosophical schema. One of its
consequences would be that there would be no
simple convertibility between man and woman
as mirrored (as the specularity of contraries sup-
poses), the problem being that of breaking the
specularity of the couple. Derrida introduced
this knowledge of psychoanalysis just as he had
previously introduced that of linguistics in
order to subvert philosophy. In psychoanalysis,
there is no reflection between the two sexes,
but an autonomy of each (“there is no sexual
relation”), the real is not a relation, and not a
sexual relation. Each of the sexes is at least a
tributary of the real. It is not man who is tribu-
tary of woman, or woman of man, since specular-
ity is secondary. From the perspective of non-
philosophy, this is progress in the true liberation
of subjects with regards to sexual difference, but
still an intermediary stage.
The universalization proposed here of the
question of sexual identity does not at all relate
the human to sexual difference. A theory of
sexual identity cannot have any place other
than to separate the human and the subject.
The human is a simple given while the subject
is one of the combinations of modalities extracted
from philosophy, or attributes organized other-
wise than according to anthropological norms.
 sexed identity
Who is sexed? The soul, the body, existence,
work, economy, the sun, the moon, angels? This
is too general a question, supposing that Man-in-
person is a subject of sex. We could maintain
that Man is not the subject of sex, because he
is not a subject in general, but it is the subject
that represents the sexuation of man.
That Man is the Who and the subject is the
How already suggests that, if there is no all-
sexuality, there will have, then, to be a
problem of the usage of sexuality, the usage of
representations of sexuality. The subject, from
the perspective of sexuality, is the usage of sexu-
ality in terms of Man in the sense whereby it is
Man in the last instance alone who determines
this usage.
Pan-sexuality or all-sexuality is anonymous; it
is the world-sex (and not the king sex) which
can isolate itself in monomaniacal sexual positions
and, in a certain sense, there is an alienation here.
This alienation takes the following form: the
subject cannot deliver itself from belief or trans-
cendental appearance that sexuality has an
aspect of the absolute and determines its exist-
ence. These are not proven and explicit beliefs,
but on the theoretical plane we must pose the
problem in this manner, since the critique of
alienations occurs through a clarification of trans-
cendental appearances. We must thus posit a
transcendental appearance of sexuality, in order
to know that this gives its unity to existence or
pervades the totality of existence, as we could
think regarding pornography, for example. This
is because philosophy, especially but not only
the classical tradition, cannot first posit the differ-
ence between Man and the subject and, within the
subject, between man and woman, without seeing
man and woman as entities in a mirror with all the
aggression linked to this specularity. Since philos-
ophy can take its own gestures as its objects, it can
start to identify this transcendental appearance. It
is everywhere where a unity is posited, hence a
confusion, where there must be a radical distinc-
tion, for example, in Kant, between the thing in
itself and the phenomenon and, in a generalized
Kantianism, between the subject and Man.
Where Man is not distinguished from the
subject, their non-distinction is reflected in
relations between man and woman under
dogmatic forms and in any case in philosophy,
of authority and aggression.
Hence the idea of uni-sexuality. The uni-
sexual subject does not mean that there is only
one sex unifying the two (this is the transcen-
dental appearance, where we oscillate from one
contrary to the other). Rather, it signifies that
every (one)subject is individuated by a status
of the human as using sexuality and sexual
norms and transforming them each time in a
way that is proper but human each time.
There is no all-sexual in which we can decom-
pose subjects into singularities or n sexes as in
Deleuze. There are subjects determined as
humans and specified by sexuality and, conse-
quently, using sexual difference each time
according to a practice or a combination
proper but each time human in the last instance.
This paradigm of the universal individual,
opposed to the all-sexual, signifies that every
human transforms, through its non-sexual iden-
tity, the set of relations which weave and form
sexual difference. It particularly opposes itself
to the Platonic all-Eros which, moreover, is the
equivalent of philosophy (it is the same
scheme). Sexual difference, impregnated with
the all-sexual, becomes what it must transform.
It is a kind of plural “material” for a pragmatic.
There is everything in sexual difference; opposi-
tion, but also continuity. Transforming it into
material, these characterizations are generalized
in every sense, and allow the characterization,
indirectly, of each sexed identity. Non-philos-
ophy has effects on philosophy, but on the con-
dition that philosophy is generalized and
transformed into materials. Just as non-philos-
ophy generalizes philosophy and transforms its
declarations, the distinctions between man and
the subject allow the transformation of declara-
tions, philosophical and psychoanalytical, of the
all-sexual. In this way, it is possible to transform
authority and aggression in the relations between
sexes. What is essential in this paradigm consists
in the dissociation of the philosophical confusion
of Man and the subject, Man and subjectivity.
Man is admitted as without accident, not fluent
in terms of the course of the World, history,
culture – hence sexual difference – like the
subject is. As such, Man, as uni-versal for man
38

and woman. We must define this as a stable iden-
tity, spontaneously a-sexed.
There is no properly human sexual differ-
ence. This is a generalization of Lacan’s
formula “there is no sexual relation,” but radica-
lized in terms of the paradigm of Man-in-person.
If we do not move through this sacrifice, this
more than castration or universal castration,
there is no hope of fundamentally changing
the political and other implications of sexual
difference. Castration is the negative essence
of sexual difference, for it, but necessary, des-
tined and devoted to the usage of sexual differ-
ence. It is the non-masculine essence of
castration, its form of positivity, that has
caused it to escape visual metaphors.
In order to eliminate all difference, Man must
be defined as immanent to himself, as “without
relation,” but as a without-relation capable of
maintaining relations, thus also a relation
without relation to sexual difference. Man
replaces Lacan’s Real, without conserving its
anonymity to the philosophical and psychoana-
lytical Real. In this sense, a-sexed Identity is
in its essence an a-sexed relation to sexual differ-
ence. We call this uni-sexual. The uni-sexual is
the subject that has the responsibility of the
usage of affects, organs and sexual represen-
tations. The subject from this point of view, as
opposed to the Lacanian subject, is the Real or
Man as solicited subject, named by the historical
subject, enclosed within sexual difference. Its
practice consists in generating representations
of universal castration and acting positively
with the principle that sexuality does not
define its essence and is not an essence (desiring
animal) but a com-portment or a practice.
This is not a question of simply opposing the-
ories to theories, political-feminist “actions” or
“interventions” to one another. To content
oneself with this is to enter into the game of
sexual difference and to consolidate it. We
must “take” it in the way that taking it is to
transform it or remove its sexual contents (mas-
culine desire, feminine submission, etc.), their
difference-form or opposition. In particular
the double game of man, party and judge of
the couple. The equality of humans is not
immediate or abstract, but sexual equality in
laruelle & schmid
the last instance entails this transformation for
which sexual difference is given, not simply
refusable, but transformable.
Illusion or appearance consists in apprehend-
ing a sexual difference “in itself,” outside of
language, whereas Man-in-Man cannot receive
and give sexual difference himself. He must
not still aim at an object (sexual difference)
beyond this discourse. This is an act, a practice
of discourse – even if these are apparent effects
of language, in reality also of reality, sexual
difference is a primary reality and a language
indissociably. This is why a part of the feminist
struggle, inspired by Nietzsche, has used rhe-
torical turns to show how the feminine is
formed in philosophy. Woman is the ornament,
metaphor or synecdoche, the first here allowing
its relation to truth to be updated. This is
important, but insufficient. Liberation from
sexual difference is not an ideal to be reached,
like truth, but a practical task, a posture
rather than a position, and this “text” is also a
reality, a modest but effective transformation
of Sexual Difference. What, then, is the struggle
for the transformation of Sexual
Difference? It consists in
writing: the struggle against
sexual difference is this writing
that is the subject: “struggling
against sexual difference.”
note
1 This essay was originally published in French and
Macedonian as “L’Identité sexuée,” Identities:
Journal for Politics, Gender, and Culture 5 (2003):
49–61.
François Laruelle
E-mail: francois.laruelle@free.fr
Anne-Françoise Schmid
33 rue de Fontarabie
75020 Paris
France
E-mail: anne-francoise.schmid@insa-lyon.fr
Nicola Rubczak
E-mail: nicola.rubczak@gmail.com
 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 19 number 2 june 2014

theorem 0 or the transcendental

theorem
on nontransferable identity

N othing can, except through illusion, sub-

stitute itself for man and for his identity.
And man cannot, except through illusion, sub-
stitute himself for philosophy, for the Other,
etc. Man is an inalienable reality. There is no
reversibility between man and philosophy.

theorem 00 françois laruelle

on the proof, as transcendental or by
way of 0
translated by
The previous theorem is demonstrated (for) itself, alexander r. galloway
that is, non-thetically. The present theorem and
those that follow derive from the previous. THEOREMS ON THE
GOOD NEWS 1
theorem 000
on the hallucinated murder theorem 00000
Since nothing can be substituted for man, and on the suicide of the other
man substituted for nothing, he can be the
killer of nothing, much less of himself. Those There is no death of man. There is only a
who pretend to kill God and the Subject – to suicide of philosophy (of God and of the
kill “man” even – are disabused by such an Subject, etc.). And the suicide is always that
announcement. of the Other.

theorem 0000 theorem 000000

on the identity of the killer on the suicide disguised as murder
The identity of the killer is obtained before any Philosophy has but one goal: to make man
kind of identification: if man is not the killer of believe that he must identify himself with
man, then philosophy must be the killer. Philos- philosophy; to make man assume this suicide,
ophy is what constructs God and the Subject, a suicide disguised as murder charged against
and philosophy fells them in the same motion. man.
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41
 theorems on the good news
theorem 0000000
on philosophical servitude or on the
statute
To primitive Myth and to Jewish Law is added
the Decision or the Ontological Statute. To
poetic authority and to ethical authority is
added philosophical authority.
theorem 00000000
on the principle of sufficient
philosophy
The Statute refers to the domination of philos-
ophy over man, the point when the Decision
takes the form of the Principle of Sufficient
Philosophy or All-Philosophy, when it professes
to consume the entire essence of man.
theorem 000000000
on the colonization of man
Following on from the primitive Myth and
Jewish Law that it tries to incorporate into
itself, the Philosophical Decision is the third
great power, alien to thought, that has risen
up from the abysses of the World and made
its assault on Human Identity. It is not man
who colonizes the planet, but the planet and
the cosmos who transgress the lonely threshold
of man.
theorem 0000000000
on the enchantment of the greeks
In being sufficient, philosophy acts on man
through a kind of causality resembling enchant-
ment; logos imprisons man within a magic
circle, and it closes around him a second time
just as he strives to exit the circle.
theorem 00000000000
on the advent of impotence
As long as man lives under the Decision or the
Principle of Sufficient Philosophy, he lives
also within an impotence of thought and
within an infinite culpability.
theorem 000000000000
on seduction played by innocence
Man is too innocent to avoid being seduced by
the notion that there are no more traps, when
(as is the case in philosophy) this conceit lets
itself be taken as man’s own entrapment.
Inversely, man does not take on the Statute
without having played or evaded it
beforehand.
theorem 0000000000000
on the abolition of the statute
The abolition of the Statute or of the Decision is
an event without remainder, more radical than
the abolition of the Law (because it lacks rever-
sal, consummation, or interiorization, etc.).
theorem 00000000000000
on the radical origin of man
Man is neither Greek nor Jew, nor the difference
between Greek and Jew. He is the innumerable
and solitary son of man.
theorem 000000000000000
on the announcement made to men
Man is the only announcement that can really be
made to man, and the announcement is identical
to the Abolition of the Statute.
42
 laruelle

theorem 0000000000000000
on the non-thetic gospel [kérygme]
The announcement announces nothing if not
itself. The man-who-is-announced is the only
content of the announcement made to men.

theorem 00000000000000000
on the daughter of man
Philosophy is the daughter of man: man is
no more a historical product
of philosophy than philosophy
his product. Philosophy is
already made, but made for
him and for him to rejoice in
beholding it.

note
1 Originally published as François Laruelle,
“Théorèmes de la Bonne Nouvelle,” La Décision
philosophique 1 (May 1987): 83–85.

François Laruelle
E-mail: francois.laruelle@free.fr

Alexander R. Galloway
New York University
239 Greene Street, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10003
USA
E-mail: galloway@nyu.edu
 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 19 number 2 june 2014

O ne of the most innovative aspects of Lar-

uelle’s project of non-philosophy is its
treatment of the relation of the theoretical and
practical. This relation serves as an index of
non-philosophy’s key contrast between its own
“unary” form of thought proceeding “according
to the One” and the traditional philosophical
way of thinking characterized by the divisions
and “unitary” syntheses of contraries. As early
as the 1985 text Une biographie de l’homme
ordinaire, Laruelle explicitly determines his
proposal for a non-philosophical mode of
thought in terms of an “ordinary pragmatics
[pragmatique ordinaire]” that would, together
with an “ordinary mystics [mystique ordi-
naire],” be capable of “converting the thought
of the One into a real critique of the unitary Illu-
sion [of philosophy].”1 One expression of this
“unitary Illusion” is, according to the non-philo-
sophical critique, philosophy’s intrinsic ten-
dency to pose the problem of theory and
practice in terms of their original disjunction
and possible synthesis. “Unary” thought –
thought not of the One, but in-One – would con-
figure theory and practice no longer in terms of
disjunction and relation but through an axio-
matic positing of their identity in-the-last-
instance. It is this latter notion that we must
clarify.
Of course, the problem of theory and practice
is a highly general one for philosophy, manifest
in various ways throughout ethics, aesthetics,
epistemology and other philosophical domains.
When restricted to the sphere of language and
the philosophy of language, the difference
between the theoretical and the practical is
often interpreted in terms of distinct constative
and performative functions within linguistic or
textual expression. Part of the motivation for
rocco gangle
THE THEORETICAL
PRAGMATICS OF
NON-PHILOSOPHY
explicating laruelle’s
suspension of the principle
of sufficient philosophy with
brandom’s meaning-use
diagrams
Laruelle’s non-philosophy develops out of reflec-
tion on the impossibility – well-testified by
deconstructionist critiques – of these functions
ever fully coinciding in philosophical texts.
Non-philosophy generalizes this insight and
identifies philosophy as such with performative
practico-theoretical non-self-coincidence. As
Ray Brassier puts it, “The philosopher, in
effect, never says what he/she is really doing,
nor does what he/she is really saying.”2 Non-
philosophy aims to eliminate this philosophical
aporia, not by identifying or synthesizing the per-
formative and constative aspects of discourse
but rather by submitting both equally to the
specific axiomatic treatment that defines the
coordinated methods and syntactical operators

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45
 theoretical pragmatics
of non-philosophy: determination in-the-last-
instance, the Vision-in-One, dualysis, cloning
and the non-philosophical generic. The rigors of
non-philosophy as a non-thetic thinking from
the immanence of the One rather than of the
One are in part developed precisely in order to
realize a form of discourse – what in the
context of the non-philosophical treatment of
religious and theological materials Laruelle will
call the oraxiom – in which philosophical
distinctions between theoretical and practical
aspects of thought and between constative and
performative functions of language are no
longer operative. On this basis, a new theory
and practice of human language (language
in-Man (en-Homme)) becomes available for enun-
ciation and experimentation.
We will take our initial bearings from one of
Laruelle’s more recent texts, Future Christ. The
opening chapter of Future Christ makes use of
the traditional distinction between theory and
practice in order to characterize in a twofold
way how non-philosophy operates upon and
transforms philosophy and the World that phil-
osophy gives. On the one hand, philosophy’s
“Greek theoreticism” is distinguished from the
“force of ‘theory’ immanent to the ‘unlearned
knowledge’ or Vision-in-One” of non-philos-
ophy.3 On the other hand, non-philosophy’s
“practice of struggle under the form already
known as unilateral duality” is distinguished
from philosophy’s “raging or absolute practice,
which it would be necessary to call practicism.”4
So initially, in Laruelle’s own terms, we have
non-philosophical theory as distinct from philo-
sophical theoreticism and non-philosophical prac-
tice as distinct from philosophical practicism.
Rather than being distinguished and then syn-
thesized, non-philosophical theory and practice
will be thought in-One, or as identical in-the-
last-instance.
As throughout Laruelle’s work, textual cita-
tion is of little use here without a formal elabor-
ation of the specific non-philosophical methods
indexed by Laruelle’s syntax. Engaging Lar-
uelle’s work can be difficult for the uninitiated
since often the discursive explanans of what
non-philosophy is and how it works employs
the very explanandum of non-philosophical
operators such as “-in-One,” “-in-the-last-
instance,” “-in-the-last-identity,” “-without-” (as
in “the lived-without-life” and “performed-
without-performance”) and so on, that are at
first sight so obscure. Every attempt to explain
any one of these operators seems to involve
importing one or more of the others. And yet
one of the essential motivations for non-philos-
ophy is in fact the urge to discover or invent a
mode of thinking that would avoid precisely the
logic of vicious circles and question-begging
that haunts, so it is claimed, philosophy as such.
It is non-philosophy’s specific use of axio-
matic method that effectuates its break with
the philosophical logic of circles and circularity.
Early in Future Christ Laruelle writes: “Axioms
and theorems, these are our own methods,”5 and
in the “Glossary Raisonné: Rules for Writing
Non-Philosophy” preceding the main text of
Future Christ, Laruelle groups the syntactical
operators mentioned above under the heading
of axiomatized abstraction as an essential
element in the text’s overarching process of
the “general formation of first names.” Accord-
ing to Laruelle’s description there, axiomatized
abstraction “[p]roceeds by way of operators”
which are “the expression and the effects of
the Real, which are inseparable from its
radical immanence.”6 Axiomatized abstraction
thus serves here as a kind of foundational or
constitutive method for non-philosophy, akin
in certain respects to the act of reduction in phe-
nomenology. Moreover, the usage of axiomatic
method is nothing new in Future Christ, but
has been explicitly present in non-philosophy
since at least the later works of the period Lar-
uelle designates as Philosophy II, and axiomatic
treatment becomes increasingly important in
Philosophy III, especially with its central work
Principes de la non-philosophie.7
What, in the context of Laruelle’s work as a
whole, is largely new in Future Christ is a sus-
tained and elaborated application of non-philo-
sophy’s axiomatic method to (or within)
religious, and particularly Christian, materials.
When Laruelle writes of axiomatic and theore-
matic methods in Future Christ it is, in his
own words, “so that we can appropriate religion
and adapt the divine mysteries to our
46

humanity.” To which Laruelle then adds, for
clarification, “rather than to our understand-
ing.”8 So Laruelle intends a program of the
appropriation of religion and the adaptation of
its “divine mysteries” not to our understanding
(philosophy) but instead to something he calls
here “our humanity” (non-philosophy), and he
means to implement such a program with axio-
matic-theorematic methods. In this way, Lar-
uelle’s thought understands itself to register a
new heretical human science – a gnosis – that
is neither philosophical nor theological nor
humanist in essence, yet makes free use of phi-
losophical and religious materials (such as the
name of Christ or the concept of the event) for
the sake of “ordinary” human ends. It is the
formal, axiomatic apparatus underlying this
program that we will aim to elaborate in what
follows, using as a guiding thread the distinction
Fig. 1. Superposition of D1, D2 and D3.
47
gangle
between theory and practice – or, more concre-
tely, between saying and doing.
In this regard, we draw heavily upon the tech-
nical apparatus of meaning-use diagrams devel-
oped by the American analytic pragmatist
philosopher Robert Brandom in his 2008
Between Saying and Doing in order to clarify
how Laruelle’s non-philosophical axiomatics
transforms the problematic of theory and prac-
tice in philosophical expression.9 The necessary
background for understanding these diagrams
will be sketched out in what follows. For now,
the reader is advised first to examine the larger,
main diagram (Fig. 1) and then to compare it
with the three smaller diagrams constituting
Fig. 2. At a purely visual and structural level, it
should be apparent after brief inspection how
the three smaller diagrams labeled D1, D2 and
D3 (Fig. 2) are combined, or superposed in the
 theoretical pragmatics
Fig. 2. Projections onto D1, D2 and D3.
larger structure. The three-component diagram
may be understood roughly as successive stages
in the development of an argument, but this
only in order to grasp ultimately the simul-
taneous structure, the immediate “impasse” of
philosophy and non-philosophy as expressed in
the main diagram (Fig. 1). Diagrams D1 and
D2 (Fig. 2) offer a pair of distinct models or
systems of philosophy. Taken together, they
form an entwined, complementary meta-system
that is here meant to indicate what Laruelle ident-
ifies as the most general structure of philosophy,
The-Philosophy. Diagram D3 (Fig. 2) presents,
in contrast, the unilateral, axiomatic structure
of non-philosophy that appears as both imposs-
ible and heretical relative to the entwined
system D1/D2. We will unfold these conceptual
structures each in turn.
d1: philosophical sufficiency
Diagram D1 (Fig. 2) makes use of the expressive
notation developed by Brandom in Between
Saying and Doing to formalize a relatively
48

straightforward manifestation of what Laruelle
calls throughout his work the Principle of
Sufficient Philosophy (PSP). In light of our
emphasis on theory and practice, the PSP is
elaborated here in terms of a general
conjuncture of philosophical practices and voca-
bularies that guarantees a certain self-sufficiency
to philosophy in virtue of which philosophy
would be capable of fully articulating itself by
way of articulating what it does when it says
what it says.
Brandom’s formal technique of meaning-use
analysis employs the composition of maps or
arrows, a technique drawn from the mathemat-
ics of category theory, to provide accounts of
the relations between sets of “practices and abil-
ities” that are necessary and/or sufficient for
deploying particular “vocabularies” and the
semantic registers of those “vocabularies” them-
selves – in short, the relations coordinating
DOING and SAYING.10 When philosophers
consider systems of relations, as they often do,
the mathematics of category theory offers a
natural, abstract mode of expression for con-
ceiving their specifically formal or structural
aspects. This is because category theory is the
general mathematical theory of systems of
relations – categories – in which objects or indi-
viduals are distinguished solely by the determi-
nate relations they enter into with other objects
of the same abstract “kind” or “category.” This
notion of category, as understood from the
standpoint of category theory, may be pictured
intuitively as a graph, that is, as a set of dots
representing distinct “objects” and arrows
between them representing “morphisms” or
“maps” from one dot to another. There are
certain axiomatic constraints governing such
categories: in particular, all arrows that are con-
nected “head to tail” combine with or
“compose” one another in a uniquely deter-
mined way. That is, if there is a map – an
arrow – from A to B and another arrow from
B to some object C, then there is, necessarily,
a uniquely determined arrow from A to C that
composes these two maps. This “composition
arrow” – going from A to C, but as it were
bypassing the object B, “glues” the two arrows
directly head to tail, transforming the
49
gangle
discreteness of two functions into the continuity
of one.11
Brandom uses a diagrammatic method of
relation-composition derived partly from cat-
egory theory to represent the relevant relations
between philosophical vocabularies and prac-
tices and their various entailments. On the one
hand, languages or “vocabularies” are rep-
resented by oval forms – these express the
power of SAYING. On the other hand, sets of
practices or abilities are represented by rec-
tangular forms with rounded corners – these
express the practical power of DOING.
Labeled arrows from an instance of either kind
of form to some other represent specific
relations that obtain between the two corre-
sponding domains. For instance, take an arrow
leading FROM a rectangular domain represent-
ing some observational capacity (say, the ability
to discern three given shades of red) and
directed TO an oval domain representing the
vocabulary “magenta,” “scarlet,” “maroon.”
This arrow may be labeled, for instance, “PV-
necessary” to indicate that the relation
between these two domains is such that the
given set of practices or abilities (in this case,
a certain capacity for color-discrimination) is
necessary to guarantee the correct deployment
of the given vocabulary. An arrow going
FROM a circular vocabulary-domain TO a rec-
tangular practice-or-ability-domain may be
labeled “VP-sufficient” to indicate that the
given vocabulary is sufficiently rich to
distinguish and express the given set of
practices-or-abilities. “PV-sufficient” and “VP-
necessary” relations are definable and expressi-
ble along similar lines.12 The key points to
understand are that (1) the relations – and
more importantly the systems of composition
they entail – take priority of attention here.
The details of the internal structures of the
domains of vocabularies and practices they
relate may remain largely unspecified, that is
to say, they serve essentially as mere indices or
designators. And (2) the relations themselves
reflect definite pragmatic and semantic modal
conditions – in particular, as sufficient and/or
necessary for the use of other vocabularies and
practices.
 theoretical pragmatics
What Brandom calls a “Meaning-Use
Diagram” is any particular system of such
domains and relations in which the designated
PV- and VP- sufficiency and necessity relations
may be “composed” with one another in an
elementary category-theoretic way. For
instance, a VP-sufficient relation leading
FROM vocabulary Va TO a set-of-practices P
may be composed with a PV-sufficient relation
leading FROM that set-of-practices P TO
another vocabulary Vb in order to express a
composite “metavocabulary” relation holding
FROM Va TO Vb – that is, a new relation is
built up solely from the given VP-
sufficient and PV-sufficient relations, a
relation expressing that vocabulary Va is
sufficiently rich to SAY what it is enough to
be able to DO in order to be able to deploy
vocabulary Vb.
In our present instance, diagram D1 (Fig. 2),
we find two objects – a set of practices-or-abil-
ities and a vocabulary or set of vocabularies –
and three explicit relations: arrow 1, a VP-suffi-
ciency relation, in other words a relation in
which the vocabulary has sufficient expressive
resources to specify the given set of practices-
or-abilities; arrow 2, a PV-sufficiency relation,
in other words a relation in which the set of
practices-or-abilities is sufficient to deploy the
given vocabulary or set of vocabularies; and a
third arrow, representing a VV-sufficiency
relation, in other words the relation of the voca-
bulary or set of vocabularies to itself, such that
it is able to specify, or say what it does when it
says what it says. The important point is that the
latter relation, the VV-sufficiency relation, is
what in category theory is called the compo-
sition of the prior two maps. This is expressed
in the diagram according to the standard nota-
tion 2◦1, read “relation two following relation
one.” This means that the VV-sufficiency
relation 2◦1 is identical to the composition of
the VP-sufficiency relation (arrow 1) and the
PV-sufficiency relation (arrow 2).
Diagram D1 thus links a set of practices or
abilities specified only as indexed to “philos-
ophy” in general with an equally minimally
specified vocabulary – the deployment of “phil-
osophy” as a form of saying. The details of what
exactly is meant by these indexed domains need
not be specified further – what matters from the
perspective of Brandom’s diagrammatic tech-
nique of meaning-use analysis is merely the
pair of sufficiency relations between them as
represented by the reciprocal arrows. The
labeled PV-sufficiency relation indicates only
that some set of practices-or-abilities (perhaps
rational deduction, hermeneutical abilities and
many other things – but again, from this per-
spective the details do not matter) is sufficient
for the capacity to deploy philosophy as a voca-
bulary that makes philosophical statements
about … whatever. The labeled VP-sufficiency
relation indicates that among the things
spoken of by this “philosophical” vocabulary
are sufficient specifications (at whatever level
of requisite detail) of the very practices-or-abil-
ities that are themselves sufficient for that voca-
bulary’s own deployment. There is thus – via
composition of arrows – an implied metavoca-
bulary relation consisting of the composition
of arrow 2 following arrow 1 (thus, an arrow
leading FROM the vocabulary of “philosophy”
TO that very same vocabulary) – this metavoca-
bulary relation (whatever the details of its
internal structure, potentially as complex as or
more so than Hegel’s entire Phenomenology
of Spirit, for instance) would condense the
characteristic structure of what Laruelle calls
“the Principle of Sufficient Philosophy” as
applied to philosophy itself. Expressed in ordin-
ary language, this would be to say something
like: “Philosophy is here able to SAY ade-
quately what it DOES when it SAYS what it
SAYS.” In Brandom’s own terminology, “phil-
osophy” would thus function here as its own
formal pragmatic metavocabulary.13 This
diagram thus formalizes in terms of Brandom’s
independent technical apparatus the claim that
Laruelle’s non-philosophy will both impute to
philosophy and contest by way of positing a
uniquely non-philosophical mode of determi-
nation – that of determination-in-the-last-
instance – the dynamics of which expose a
radical insufficiency at the heart of philosophy
at the same time that they affirm and even
strengthen philosophy’s claim to possess an at
least relative autonomy and necessity.
50

The more or less Hegelian structure of this
practico-theoretical “sufficiency” is evident in
the way it instantiates an operative closure
with respect to the active-productive and reflec-
tive-thematic moments of philosophical
thought. Of course, to do justice to Hegel it
would be necessary to specify the constituents
of this final circuit at many previous and cumu-
lative levels, thus distinguishing the various
practical and theoretical moments constituting
the explicit stages of the dialectic of spirit.
The movement from in-itself through for-itself
to in-and-for-itself at each stage would then be
expressed in terms of the specific practices and
vocabularies engaged in what Brandom calls
“pragmatic expressive bootstrapping” at that
particular level.14 In Hegel the doing – the in-
itself – would systematically precede the
saying – the for-itself – in the dialectical move-
ment of the concept, up to the limit and closure
of absolute knowledge. Or at least that is what
an “analytic pragmatic” understanding of
Hegel would be likely to provide.15 In any
case, whatever its relation to the particular phil-
osophy of Hegel, the external form of diagram
D1, its circular and compositional system of
objects and relations, would express the basic
form of philosophy which Laruelle designates
with the fraction 2/1; in other words, the sys-
tematic unity of a dualism the canonical
example of which would be the “doublet” of
the transcendental and the empirical, the very
form of philosophy’s purportedly sufficient
thought-World.16
d2: philosophical auto/hetero-
supplementation/critique
To be sure, critiques of Hegelian philosophical
“sufficiency” or completeness have been com-
monplace in Continental circles for some time.
In this regard, in its formal or external aspect
diagram D2 (Fig. 2) expresses a characteristic
structure, a kind of solicitation of the non-philo-
sophical (appearing as Finite Real, as Other, as
Event, etc.), shared by certain post-Hegelian
philosophers from Heidegger and Levinas to
Derrida and Badiou. The shift from the
51
gangle
structure of the first to that of the second
diagram may be understood in terms of a corre-
sponding shift in philosophical style from Hege-
lian sufficiency (of whatever stripe or aspect) to
post-Hegelian and, in particular, post-Heideg-
gerian strategies of what could be called a cri-
tique by supplement or adjunction. This is a
structure of philosophy that Laruelle designates
with the fraction 3/2. This system consists of a
duality that is interrupted or transcended by
some putatively independent third term (Real,
Other, Event, etc.), thus apparently breaking
with the PSP. As distinct from the 2/1 system
of the transcendental and the empirical, this
formula of 3/2 identifies the more complex
“doublet” of the transcendental and the real.17
To illustrate this structure – to effectively
index its essential form – we will extend Bran-
dom’s apparatus to include (still within a
general category-theoretical framework) compo-
sitions with relations exceeding those of simple
VP- and PV- necessity and sufficiency. Our
primary model will be Badiou’s use of Paul
Cohen’s set-theoretical forcing technique as an
instrument for challenging philosophical self-
sufficiency with formal mathematical means.18
The mathematical forcing technique discovered
by Cohen is essentially coordinated with the
concept of a generic extension of a standard
model for some given axiom-system, and
Badiou’s translation of Cohen’s work into a dis-
tinctly philosophical concept of the generic will
serve for us here as a specific instance of a more
general sophisticated philosophical maneuver
that solicits “Otherness” in order to at once
delimit and extend philosophy’s own authorita-
tive range. We should emphasize straight off,
however, that what is essential here are not the
specifics of the mathematical methods of
Cohen or their particular philosophical appro-
priation by Badiou but rather the bare form of
the solicitation of the generic in Badiou, its rela-
tively simple “external” structure. Without
being able to defend the claim in detail here, it
may at least be stated that despite the striking
differences in their respective approaches to
philosophy, Derrida’s solicitation of the Other
in deconstruction would take exactly the same
form. In other words, it would be represented
 theoretical pragmatics
by the “same” (that is, an isomorphic) diagram,
a diagram of relations bearing the same “exter-
nal,” compositional structure.
The two boxes in diagram D2 (Fig. 2)
represent two states of philosophy, the first
representing precisely the system of practico-
theoretical sufficiency relations examined
above in diagram D1, and the second represent-
ing philosophy with those same relations sus-
pended or subtracted. The larger diagram
shows this in greater detail. To pass from philos-
ophy as governed by the PSP to philosophy with
the PSP suspended, it is enough to subtract,
cancel out or suspend the VP-sufficient and
PV-sufficient relations labeled 1 and 2. The can-
cellation of these sufficiency relations necess-
arily entails the cancellation of their
composition, the VV-sufficiency relation 2◦1.
How is such a cancellation effected? As indi-
cated by the labeled arrows in D2, the passage or
transformation from philosophy under the PSP
to philosophy with the PSP suspended is itself a
composition-arrow: B◦A. Thus the composition
B◦A “factors through” a third term which is
adjoined to the initial model of philosophy as
governed by the PSP. In different “post-Hege-
lian” philosophies, this adjunction may take
different forms. In the case of Badiou, its role
is fulfilled by Cohen’s mathematics of the
generic. Thus “Philosophy [G]” represents the
adjunction of the generic (G) to philosophy as
governed by the PSP. In the case of Heidegger,
at least as interpreted by Laruelle, the role of
this third term would be played by “Finitude,”
while in Derrida it would perhaps involve a
more complex structure, a doubled infinite: a
Greco-Judaic Other.19
Here we take Badiou as our particular
instance. The formal source for Badiou’s ontol-
ogy/meta-ontology of the truth-event is the
mathematical work of Paul Cohen, in particular
Cohen’s invention and use of the forcing-
relation with respect to generic sets. Cohen
originally developed this technique in order to
prove the independence of Cantor’s Continuum
Hypothesis (CH) from the axioms of Zermelo–
Fraenkel set theory (ZF). In its generalized
form, the CH states that the succession of trans-
finite cardinals follows the well-behaved order of
successive takings of power-sets. Before Cohen,
Gödel had already shown that if the universe of
discourse is restricted to constructible sets, then
the CH is valid. In Badiou’s ontological meta-
phorization, Gödel’s constructible sets corre-
spond to a self-sufficient, “natural” ontology
(like our “Hegelian” diagram D1) while the
use of forcing-relations with respect to non-con-
structible sets (such as generic sets) corresponds
to an extension beyond natural ontology, its sup-
plementation by trans-philosophical “truth-
events.”20
For all the intricacy of its set-theoretical
mechanics, the basic strategy of Cohen’s reason-
ing is in fact simple and straightforward. Axio-
matic systems are realized in models: the
axioms of group theory, for instance, are rea-
lized in some particular group – say, the integers
under addition. The axioms of set theory are no
different in principle, except that a variety of
distinct models for the axioms does not readily
present itself. The “universe” of sets seems
intuitively to be one and one alone, although
this is not in fact the case. What Cohen’s use
of generic sets in conjunction with forcing-
relations essentially does is to provide a
general method for demonstrating the existence
of distinct models of ZF with certain divergent
properties. In particular, Cohen demonstrates
the existence of models satisfying the ZF
axioms in which the CH does not hold.21 If a
ZF model exists in which the CH is true
(which Gödel had already shown), and another
ZF model exists in which the CH is false
(which Cohen demonstrated), then clearly the
truth of the CH remains independent of – that
is, underdetermined by – the axioms.
The forcing-relation itself is realized in two
stages. The first stage, represented by arrow A
in the diagram, is a series of steps that defines
a generic set as such. The most important
point for our purposes (as, in many ways, for
those of Badiou) is that this definition is made
entirely within a countable, standard model of
ZF, and thus from within the “natural” ontology
of constructible sets, while the generic sets so
defined are themselves non-constructible. The
second stage, represented in the diagram by
arrow B, involves the determination of two
52

parallel transfinite hierarchies, of “names” on
the one hand and of “reference-values” on the
other. The details do not concern us here, but
once again at this stage the determinations of
these hierarchies may be made entirely within
the countable, standard model of ZF. Yet the
induced hierarchies themselves – as determined
– in fact exceed the countable model that deter-
mines or defines them. By adjoining the “refer-
ence-values” corresponding to those “names”
that are elements of the standard model, an
extended model is thus generated. Forcing-
relations allow this extended model in turn to
be determined (within limits) from the standard
model itself, though in ways that differ signifi-
cantly from the standard model, in particular
for Cohen with respect to the truth of the CH.
So, in short, the original standard model of
ZF is relativized through the establishment of
the existence of different models with distinct
features, and the key to the establishment of
the existence of these models is the “formal”
definition of the generic and its “material”
adjunction to the standard or ground model.
Indeed, the different models are themselves dis-
cerned only through the particular forcing-
relation that “names” them. But the generic is
nonetheless defined entirely within the standard
model. So the generalized philosophical
analogue here is the rigorous solicitation of
transcendence from within philosophical
immanence, a solicitation whose response both
relativizes such immanence (through the
supplementation of a non-philosophical Other)
and yet reaffirms its sufficiency by working
entirely within its supporting axiomatic. We
might say that in its effective solicitation of
transcendence in this fashion, philosophy
becomes capable of doing what it nonetheless
cannot adequately say, and philosophy is
thereby empowered practically to disempower
or critique itself, or at least effectively to
delimit its theoretical and representational
sufficiency.
d1/d2: the-philosophy
Before turning to the third diagram D3 (Fig. 2),
which is meant to contrast the axiomatic
53
gangle
“structure” of non-philosophy with the two phi-
losophical diagrams just analyzed, we should
examine briefly the relation between D1 and
D2. It is clear that D1 and D2 represent distinct
structures. The “closure” and symmetry of D1
in its two-term circuit obviously contrasts with
the recourse to a term outside the PSP in D2
and its resultant structural asymmetry. Yet to
hold the two diagrams as picturing separate
and independent models of philosophy would
stop short of non-philosophy’s most important
insight into the ultimate essence or identity of
philosophy.
In order to represent the complex object that
Laruelle calls The-Philosophy, it is necessary to
superpose the two diagrams D1 and D2 and,
even further, to conceive them as mutually
enveloping one another in unceasing alterna-
tion. The mutual enfolding of such non-dialecti-
cal and yet complementary structures is
characteristic of much contemporary Continen-
tal philosophy in the figure of open chiasmus.
As work like that of Nancy and Malabou has
shown with respect to Hegel, for instance, the
explicit sufficiency and closure of Hegelian
absolute knowledge is fatally misinterpreted if
such closure does not constitutively involve an
openness to difference and to the impending
event.22 And in thinkers like Derrida and
Badiou – as different as they may be from one
another as considered on their own terms –
whatever limitation and critique of philosophi-
cal sufficiency may underwrite or ensue from
their thought nevertheless implies a second-
order philosophical sufficiency, or at the very
least an undecidable vacillation between auto-
sufficiency and hetero-supplementation.
Laruelle’s most fully developed claims about
philosophical sufficiency may be expressed in
terms of the formalizations of diagrams D1
and D2 by saying that the two diagrams rep-
resent not actual philosophies but rather corre-
lative tendencies that are both necessarily
present but weighted characteristically to
varying degrees in any strong or interesting par-
ticular instance of philosophy. It is then the
undecidable conjunction/disjunction of the
two “doublets” themselves – transcendental/
empirical on the one hand and transcendental/
 theoretical pragmatics
real on the other – that characterizes The-Phil-
osophy at its most general level. The-Philos-
ophy is thus neither fully sufficient nor fully
insufficient, but rather the very system (or, as
Laruelle sometimes says, semi-system) of suffi-
ciency/insufficiency that can only presuppose
and repeat itself in critiquing and/or sustaining
its undecidability.23 The instability of the
relation between the two doublets – or, in
the specific terms of our diagram, between the
auto-sufficiency of the PSP and its undoing by
means of Badiou’s hetero-supplementation of
the generic – is, generally, according to Laruelle,
at the root of philosophy’s warlike and agonistic
nature. It is by working entirely otherwise than
within or across such a system/anti-system/
meta-system that non-philosophy would bypass
philosophy’s seemingly ineluctable violence. In
Future Christ Laruelle writes: “Non-philosophy
is not even the continuation of philosophy by
other means, the ways of alterity, but by the
‘means’ devoid of their war-form or
philosophy.”24
d3: non-philosophical axiomatics
In light of what we have just described, it is
notable, then, first of all that diagram D3
(Fig. 2) representing non-philosophical axio-
matics has a simpler external structure than
either of the previous pair. It is simply a pair
of arrows, two different kinds of arrow
without any resultant composition-arrow, and
thus no possible relation-of-the-relations corre-
sponding to any factoring through a third
term. The absence of any such composition-
arrow reflects at a formal level the specific way
in which non-philosophy draws upon philoso-
phical terms as mere occasions for a kind of
thinking that thereby takes the straightforward
and non-redoubled form of a (non-empirical)
science rather than that of philosophy, or a
philosophy.
The thin, dashed arrow labeled “ι” (iota)
expresses the non-philosophical operation of
“cloning” (clonage) by which a philosophically
determined term is detached from the recipro-
cating context of its philosophical determi-
nations and treated instead as a separated
axiom, that is, a simple and ungrounded iden-
tity that thereby becomes suitable for employ-
ment as an index of its own use.25 “Cloning”
thus functions as the non-philosophical ana-
logue to eidetic reduction in phenomenology,
with the important difference that the axiomatic
identity separated in cloning is not variable-in-
itself like an eidos (and thereby correlated
with the differentiating and synthesizing func-
tions of a transcendental ego) but is rather
exhausted immanently in its effects, its theo-
rems. A cloned axiom is thus something like
an indexical eidos, an eidos that would be
nothing-but-indexical of its theorematic effects
in some given material. In this way, non-philos-
ophy involves an axiomatic usage of occasioned
philosophical material, but its axiomatics corre-
spond to a form of usage, not to some particular
formal syntax as in the axiom-systems of
Euclid, Hilbert, Peano or Zermelo–Fraenkel.
In this way, non-philosophical cloning entails
an axiomatic usage of an occasional philosophi-
cal term that is structured “unilaterally” so as
not to compose with the (philosophically) deter-
mining relations linked to that term. In the
given case of diagram D2, the particular
occasion of Badiou’s philosophical use of
Cohen’s “generic” is detached from its circuit
of determination represented by the commuta-
tive triangle A, B and B◦A. The “generic” as a
philosophically determined object within a
structured system of relations is thereby
treated as the merely occasional cause for a uni-
lateral or axiomatic – precisely a “generic” in
Laruelle’s non-philosophical sense26 – usage of
philosophy (as reduced now to mere axiomatiz-
able material).
The dashed box in the diagram is meant to
represent what Laruelle will call non-philoso-
phy’s axiomatic usage of a philosophical term
as “separate-without-separation” from its philo-
sophical embedding and thereby “performed-
without-performance.”27 Here then appears the
unilateral differend of philosophy and
non-philosophy. From the perspective of philos-
ophy, the unilateral arrow representing the axio-
matic usage of Badiou’s “philosophical
material” appears as a rival to arrow B:
whereas B is an effective determination only
54

through its relational composition with A, the
axiomatic usage of non-philosophy is simply
occasioned (and not otherwise determined) by
A. From the philosophical perspective, non-phi-
losophical unilaterality simply ignores a
“necessary” and philosophically evident compo-
sition of relations. Yet from the perspective of
non-philosophy itself, ignoring the composition
of B with A – that is, in this case, ignoring the
philosophical determination of the mathemat-
ically generic – is precisely what frees the
generic as a form of use from its solicited, deci-
sive and hence restricted function as a question-
begging, critical supplementation with respect
to philosophy or, for Badiou, “natural”
ontology.
As a consequence, the suspension of the PSP
is manifest differently in diagrams D2 and D3
(Fig. 2). In D2, the suspension of the PSP sur-
reptitiously reinserts the PSP in a second-order
fashion, performed but not said, within the very
system that suspends it. Thus one subtracts/
supplements philosophy only to find oneself
back where one began, modulo this very oper-
ation of semi-transcendence or ratcheting. The
semi/meta-system D1/D2 remains firmly (or
rather, flexibly and undecidably and hence all
the more recalcitrantly) in place. In D3,
however, the PSP is suspended axiomatically.
It is not surreptitiously presupposed so as
then to be used a second time against itself; it
is simply – that is, axiomatically – left alone.
From the standpoint of philosophy, this is
strictly impossible; in a sense it appears as the
very face of impossibility as such for thought,
not only a heresy but pure or absolute heresy.
Non-philosophy is, or rather effects, such
heresy within traditional thinking. In Laruelle’s
words, “It is the logically and philosophically
impossible choice, but real as immanent.”28
For non-philosophy, such heresy is neither
absolute nor relative with respect to philosophy,
but is instead merely occasioned by some given
philosophical instance. Thus there is no scandal
of heresy, but only the scandal of the scandal,
the self-conjured hallucinatory reaction of
philosophical sufficiency to what it cannot do
otherwise than take to be its own Other. But
non-philosophical heresy is not Other to
55
gangle
anything. It is unsought immanence. As Lar-
uelle says in Future Christ “[…] after so much
pretension and sufficiency that do not concern
themselves with man except to manage his alien-
ation, a bet may be made on the simply human,
but unexploited, pertinence of heresy and on the
possibility of introducing to it an adequate form
of conceptualization.”29 The purpose of non-
philosophy’s axiomatic treatment of philosophy
is ultimately human in a perfectly ordinary
sense, an ordinariness that is already heretical
in the contour that religious and philosophical
traditions tend to make of it.
A new mode and method of thinking would
make such heresy itself ordinary through the
celebration of what in Mystique non-philosophi-
que à l’usage des contemporains, the sequel to
Future Christ and the second of his as yet
uncompleted “triptych,” Laruelle calls axio-
matic ritual (rituel axiomatique). This new
concept may help clarify what the non-philoso-
phical appropriation and adaptation of religion
and its divine mysteries as mentioned earlier
could possibly mean. Laruelle writes:
How to tear these terms, God, Christ,
Messiah, Being, Man or Human away from
their onto-theological anonymity and general-
ity? Through the unilateralizing, symbolizing
and formalizing repetition that sanctifies the
Logos under the form of first or separated
names, “human names” rather than “divine
names” (Pseudo-Dionysus). Axiomatics are
ritualizing once they are science according-
to-the-sanctified-human. A sacramental re-
iteration of the Logos rather than its flat her-
meneutic repetition: axiomatized-, or separ-
ated but sacralizing-formulae – here is the
matheme that can tear the ancient ontological
and mystical formulations (One and Being,
Identity and Unity, beyond Being, etc.)
away from their worldly meanings and vali-
date them as theorems that are transcenden-
tal-for-the-World.30
When religious material occasions such a separ-
ate theory-practice, it appears as axiomatic
ritual: the “identity of the oracle and the
axiom, of the prayer and the theorem.” This is
what Laruelle calls the “style of the
oraxiom.”31 In this respect, the axiomatic
 theoretical pragmatics
aspect of non-philosophy is meant to serve as a
mechanism for thinking and speaking indiffer-
ently to the closure of philosophy and its World
(particularly the seemingly “open closure” of phe-
nomenological horizons and theological “a-
venirs”). But such indifference by no means
aims at any escape from the philosophy-World,
but rather assumes an ameliorative and even sanc-
tifying mission for it. As Laruelle states: “It gives
to the infinitely open axiom the
secret of the oracle, to the oracle
the poverty and the silence of
the axiom, all this conserving
itself in the theorem that conse-
crates the World.”32
notes
1 Laruelle, Une biographie 114. This distinction is
already evident in broad outline in idem, Le Principe
de minorité sec. 5.
2 Brassier 31.
3 Laruelle, Future Christ 13.
4 Ibid. 14.
5 Ibid. 15.
6 Ibid. xxvi.
7 Laruelle, Principes de la non-philosophie.
8 Idem, Future Christ 15.
9 Brandom.
10 Ibid. 1–30.
11 We pass over the identity and associativity
axioms that must also be satisfied to determine
a category. Over the past several decades,
advances in category theory have led to a re-
fashioning of the foundations of mathematics
and powerful unifications of many of the
diverse branches of mathematics. The standard
reference is Mac Lane.
12 Brandom 7–14.
13 Ibid. 10.
14 Ibid. 11, 19–20.
15 In any case, it is important to emphasize that
this is not an exposition of Brandom’s own con-
ception of Hegel. One can only speculate on
what Brandom’s long-brewing book on Hegel will
eventually look like.
16 Laruelle, Principes 7. The chiasmic interplay of
the 2/1 and 3/2 fractions in Laruelle is complex
enough that they could, arguably, be reversed
with respect to the interpretations given here. At
any rate, what matters are the structures them-
selves, not their designations.
17 Laruelle, Principes 5, 330.
18 Badiou 327–87.
19 Laruelle, Philosophies of Difference.
20 Badiou 286–314, 410–30.
21 Complete details may be found in Cohen. A
diagrammatic presentation based on that of
Badiou is found in Caterina and Gangle.
22 Nancy; Malabou.
23 This delicate but important point is explored in
detail throughout Laruelle, Philosophies of Differ-
ence, but especially in the chapter on Hegel and
Heidegger.
24 Laruelle, Future Christ 14.
25 See Laruelle, Principes 162–67, 225–28.
26 Laruelle’s own notion of the generic is elabo-
rated in Laruelle, Philosophie non-standard.
27 See Laruelle, Principes 212–15.
28 Idem, Future Christ 48.
29 Ibid. 69.
30 Laruelle, Mystique 254 (my translation).
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
bibliography
Badiou, Alain. Being and Event. Trans. Oliver
Feltham. 1988. New York and London:
Continuum, 2005. Print.
Brandom, Robert. Between Saying and Doing:
Towards an Analytic Pragmatism. Oxford and
New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.
Brassier, Ray. “Axiomatic Heresy: The Non-
Philosophy of François Laruelle.” Radical
Philosophy 121 (2003): 24–35. Print.
56
 gangle

Caterina, Gianluca, and Rocco Gangle.

“Consequences of a Diagrammatic Representation
of Paul Cohen’s Forcing Technique Based on C.S.
Peirce’s Existential Graphs.” Studies in Computational
Intelligence 314 (2010): 429–43. Print.
Cohen, Paul J. Set Theory and the Continuum
Hypothesis. 1966. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2008. Print.
Laruelle, François. Une biographie de l’homme ordi-
naire. Des autorités et des minorités. Paris: Aubier,
1985. Print.
Laruelle, François. Future Christ: A Lesson in Heresy.
2002. Trans. Anthony Paul Smith. New York and
London: Continuum, 2010. Print.
Laruelle, François. Mystique non-philosophique à
l’usage des contemporains. Paris: L’Harmattan,
2007. Print.
Laruelle, François. Philosophie non-standard.
Générique, quantique, philo-fiction. Paris: Kimé,
2010. Print.
Laruelle, François. Philosophies of Difference: A
Critical Introduction to Non-Philosophy. 1986. Trans.
Rocco Gangle. New York and London:
Continuum, 2010. Print.
Laruelle, François. Le Principe de minorité. Paris:
Aubier-Montaigne, 1981. Print.
Laruelle, François. Principes de la non-philosophie.
Paris: PUF, 1996. Print.
Mac Lane, Saunders. Categories for the Working
Mathematician. 1998. New York and Berlin:
Springer, 2010. Print.
Malabou, Catherine. The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,
Temporality and Dialectic. 1996. Trans. Lisabeth
During. London and New York: Routledge, 2005.
Print.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. Hegel: The Restlessness of the
Negative. 1997. Trans. Jason Smith and Steven
Miller. Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota
P, 2002. Print.

Rocco Gangle
Endicott College
Department of Humanities/Philosophy
376 Hale Street
Beverly, MA 01915
USA
E-mail: rgangle@endicott.edu
 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 19 number 2 june 2014

photo-fiction is a genre
Photo-fiction is not at all a photographical or
even a philosophical fiction; we must
compare it with the terms of art-fiction and
philo-fiction as well as that of science
fiction. Photo-fiction is a genre.
François Laruelle, Photo-Fiction 23

F rançois Laruelle’s innovative way of seeing

and thinking photography and aesthetics
has only recently come to the forefront of
current discussions in media theory, art, and
the digital humanities, etc. His book The
Concept of Non-Photography, which was
written in 1992, was only recently published in
2011 by Sequence/Urbanomic; his most recent
work, on what he now calls non-standard aes-
thetics, was published in the autumn of 2012
as Photo-Fiction, a Non-Standard Aesthetics.
Because of the very recent reception of Lar-
uelle’s work on a non-aesthetics, there is an
urgent need to provide a trajectory and entry
points into how a new reader of his work can
not only find something fruitful in his non-stan-
dard thoughts on aesthetics and photography
but also his project of a science of philosophy
in general. Where he was once preoccupied
with the fractal nature of Identity, today he
has shifted his focus from fractality to that of
the imaginary number (the square root of –1)
and the conjugated superposition of the philoso-
pher-aesthetician and the artist-photographer
(borrowing aspects of quantum physics). This
essay is derived from an introductory lecture
series1 concerning precisely this trajectory and
will focus on what Laruelle calls the rigorous
fiction of the photo and non-standard
philosophy and why he calls photo-fiction a
new genre. His theoretical poetic attempt at
drew s. burk
WITH ONE’S EYES
HALF-CLOSED,
A PARTICLE OF
LARUELLE
non-standard aesthetics will be the guiding
thread of our discussion here.
Why is photography a new kind of thought?2 For
Laruelle, it is due to the photographic act’s
relation to the real, which provides a new experi-
ence of Identity. But this new thought is one that
is “blind” and this conception of a blind thinking,
of an irreflective thinking, will come up later as an
inherently different type of thinking from that of
standard philosophy. Because of its blind nature,
this type of thought, found not merely within
photography but perhaps within thinking itself
in relation to poetry, is a kind of thought that
can force the reader to re-evaluate the place of
poetry and its relationship to thinking.

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/14/020059-14 © 2014 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.950862

59
 a particle of laruelle
Laruelle’s application of non-philosophy to
photography reveals a new experience of Iden-
tity and a type of automatic thought not behol-
den to reflection, a poetic thought that is
perhaps akin to the “seeing without thinking”
of the poet Alberto Caeiro who I will speak of
later. Following Caeiro’s questioning of meta-
physics, in a similar manner, Laruelle will
ask the question: “what is perception for
photography?” Photography allows for the
in-photo of the lived experienced as being in
the photo-graphic flash of the in-photo or
what Laruelle also will call in his non-standard
philosophy Vision-in-One or the lived experi-
ence as a lived without life or performation
without performance.3 The fiction of the
photo is a
“[f]iction” which is wholly real but in its own
mode, without having anything to envy per-
ception; it is not an image of perception
(deficient, degraded, or simply operatively
produced “by abstraction” from the object’s
characteristics). It enjoys an autonomy (in
relation to perception) but one that is relative
(in relation to the non-decisional photo-
graphic subject).4
As an attempt at a new genre, following from his
work on non-photography, as we encounter a
photo-fiction we enter the rigorous fiction of
being “in-photo” where, exiting the world, like
the photo itself, one enters into the photo-
sphere. What non-photography and later on
photo-fiction strive to provide as non-standard
aesthetics is to mimic in a discursive manner
the miming of the photographic practice and
flash of identity of the in-photo and how it can
be applied as a non-standard aesthetic practice
of non-standard philosophy. For non-standard
aesthetics is reliant on the methods of non-stan-
dard philosophy. And because at the heart of
non-standard philosophy is the use of philos-
ophy as a material, as a color, or space5 that
would have as one of its goals always to defend
humanity in the last instance, we must also
understand any theoretical or experimental
practice of non-aesthetics as a continuing
attempt at questioning our unilateral relations
between each other as Stranger-subjects as well
as the productive forces produced from these
experimental practices and how they relate to
what he will call a “weak compassion” (for
humanity).
an imaginary optics that refolds
philosophy: the style of non-
standard philosophy and its relation
to the reduction of the violence of
decisions
As a discursive theoretical practice as rigorous
fictional genre, akin to science fiction, photo-
fiction is a way of creatively inventing a theoreti-
cal installation of an art-thought, and in this
manner it is a productive force using philosophy
as material to create or invent a new fictional
way of seeing or engaging the real. As he
remarks concerning the non-standard philoso-
phical idea of style:
We have another idea of style. Style is the
imitation of the real and not reality, style
alone has the right to be “specular” or
uni-specular without being a reflection or
mirror, just a uni-side [uni-face] (of) the
One. The real itself does not have this
right, but its unifaciality is woven from
the heterogeneous methods and processes
taken from reality, hence its baroque char-
acter. It is a fiction which is as rigorous
as possible considering its initial axioms.
The art of the fluidly imprecise [l’art du
flou], of the “wave” or “vague,”6 of the
echo and resonance, of the orphaned
amphi-biology of Logos, forms a rigorous
sub-rationality within its order but which
is certainly not a return to the old case of
nihilism.7
Thus the photographic act for Laruelle is a prac-
tice of irreflective seeing or thinking that is not
self-reflective like philosophy but strives always
to see in the last instance Identity or what we
could say science strives to do in seeing in an
experimental way always in the last instance.
And this is perhaps as well while he will claim
early on his work on non-philosophy that his
non-standard philosophy is an attempt at creat-
ing an alliance between science and philosophy.8
60

It is this kind of inventive indeterminacy, the
vague, fluid nature that the superposition of
philosophy and science allow for in thinking
alongside the real, that Laruelle is after. This
indeterminacy for Laruelle’s project is crucial
in that he is striving to reduce the violence of
determinacy and determination in the last
instance. And it is this style of the fluid or
vague we can see play out in some of his more
important questions such as found in the follow-
ing passage:
As for philosophy, it is a real imaginary
that it projects, it is a doublet of an imagin-
ary, a complicated mirror phenomenon. It
still remains that a quantum of action
immediately limits philosophy auto-
interpretations which is assisted by logic,
mathematics, or geometry (as an object, or
model, next to philosophy). For this
classic and principally mathematical rep-
resentation, non-philosophy is without a
doubt seen as a “catastrophe” or a “disas-
ter” […] But we are looking for a thinking
that, however inventive it is, is the action of
a non-acting, an anti-activist wager, a per-
formation without performance, how can
we “weaken” the excess of action and its
decision?9
There is a radical passivity at the heart of Lar-
uelle’s methods of productive forces of non-
standard performative theoretical practice. As
the quote above shows us, this radical passivity
perhaps can also be seen in his other terms such
as the lived-without-life and the generic orien-
tation of his non-standard aesthetics. In the
case of non-standard aesthetics, the reduction
of violence of our decisions begins with a sus-
pension of the mimetic rivalry (René Girard)
in regards to the philosopher-aesthetician and
the photographer-artist in thinking and per-
forming the real or the world.10 For Laruelle,
the non-standard aesthetic practice of photo-
fiction, as insufficient practice, places the philo-
sopher-aesthetician and the artist-photographer
into a position of superposition, no longer allow-
ing either a position of superiority. This pos-
ition of a generic orientation is a posture or
stance of performing or living life within the
theoretical installation that is thought-art of
61
burk
the photo-fiction. And within the theoretical
matrix of non-standard philosophy as well as
photo-fiction, we find again and again the place
left open for the generic human as well as the
continuing explication of the necessity of an
imaginary optics or rigorous fiction.11 But the
theoretical generic clone that is left is the trace
of the experience of Identity. It is in this sense
that it is a rigorous way of experiencing Identity.
It is the experience of auto-portraiture as ruin
that is an experience of self-belonging alongside
the real.12
According to François Laruelle, the realm of
the photo was there even before the invention
of the camera; it is precisely the photosphere
or the in-photo where the photo immediately
enters into an indirect glimpsing of the real
and in so doing immediately exits the world.
It is here that we find that Laruelle’s attempt
at thinking a non-standard aesthetics can also
be seen as an attempt at creating, in the case
of photo-fiction, a theoretical installation that
strives to create a theoretical superposition
for viewing the seeing of the photographic
apparatus to take on an irreflective vision of
the in-photo, the Vision-in-One. But his
photo-fiction is merely one of a myriad of
experimental performative attempts that his
non-standard aesthetics would strive to open
up for anyone who would venture to construct
new ways of thinking that are not based on the
necessity of having a completely thought-out
philosophical backdrop. For example, with a
music-fiction, one could invent a performative,
creative superposition of the musician-artist
and the aesthetician-listener, between the
grasping of sound as theoretical writing in a
partitional musical manner and the immanent
uni-lation between sound and its manipulation
not only by the musician performing but the
listener who can truly hear the musician’s
music. Laruelle’s thinking, when applied as a
non-standard aesthetics, can also be a starting
point for better delving into his relation to
most of his work as concerns not merely what
he means by stating that non-philosophy is a
fictional practice akin to science fiction but
that it is “an imaginary optics that refolds
philosophy.”13
 a particle of laruelle
the flash of logos, the flash of
spinoza, and the flash of non-
standard aesthetics of photo-fiction
Let us continue the discussion on the concept of
non-photography and photo-fiction in regards to
Laruelle’s preoccupation with the flashes of phil-
osophy and non-philosophy. (1) The flash of
Logos, of Heraclitus: everything is ruled by
lightning, the instant.14 (2) The flash of
Spinoza: Spinoza’s third type of knowledge, a
kind of flash knowledge of affection and intui-
tion of the body (by the mind, or as Laruelle
notes, borrowing the term from Michel Henry,
auto-affection). (3) We then move to the pos-
ition of the photographic flash, or capture or
seizure of the instant. Is non-standard philoso-
phy’s relation to the flash found within philos-
ophy of a different orientation? For Laruelle, it
is a new type of orientation to the real, and
thus for him it is not about a realism as such
but how photography allows for a new under-
standing of the real and where photography cap-
tures or seizes the world in one but whose
photographic flash is a flash of a new type of
thinking that relies on quantic superposition.
And this is where we can see Laruelle’s non-stan-
dard science of and for philosophy take on a
different relation to the flash of light. Namely,
if photography as well as philosophy have at
their origins a relation to light, to illumination,
then for Laruelle’s non-standard philosophy
there must be a superposition between science
and philosophy in their relationship to this
light.15 His imaginary invention of a photo-fic-
tional theoretical apparatus is akin to the scien-
tific apparatus as defined in the work of the
French philosopher Gilles Châtelet, and his
idea that certain scientific apparatuses for
measuring space such as the compass and the
protractor are first blueprints which began at
the level of the sketch (that is the knotting of
intuition and discursivity) and then became
real, which is to say “auto-portraits” of them-
selves as functioning.16 Can Laruelle’s work
via the concept of non-photography and contin-
ued in Photo-Fiction, a Non Standard Aes-
thetics be viewed as another attempt at an
auto-portrait of the real, or of light itself?
While Laruelle claims that “Philosophy is that
premature thinking that will have constituted
itself, not through a mirror-stage, but through
a flash-stage, a darkroom-stage, giving it a
fragile being, a fragile basis, in this photo-
graphic mode, unfinished and too immediately
exploited,”17 he will nonetheless continue his
preoccupation with the relation between
thought and light as well as philosophy’s
relation to light.18
In order to entertain this new genre of non-
standard aesthetic thinking of photo-fiction
that stems from Laruelle’s work on non-pho-
tography and the relation of the photographic
act alongside the real, we will continue to
demonstrate its performative action as an irre-
flective vision according to or alongside the
real that is affirmative and strives to reduce
the violence and narcissistic (self-reflective) ten-
dencies of the world and philosophy. That is, we
will try to show that the photo-fictional non-
standard aesthetics that Laruelle is attempting
as “a type of thought that is itself an art” is
akin to a poetic blindsight that is no longer gov-
erned by perspective as such or what he calls a
logo-photo-centrism that over-determines the
contents of the photo. Photo-fiction is a discur-
sive mimesis of the photographic practice and
strives precisely to under-determine the con-
tents of seeing in-photo. Laruelle will claim:
“the invention of photography is contemporary
with the definitive and massive emergence of
thoughts of the automatic, blind, or symbolic
type […]” He continues further down the page
explaining how photography should be inter-
preted as a new scientific thought: “It is at
least in this theoretical context – that of the
invention and scientific use of blind thought –
that we shall interpret it.”19
And so we will also speak about the auto-por-
trait of immanence which is a kind of Borro-
mean topology of the real, imaginary, and
symbolic, à la Lacan, but which nonetheless
has a position of insufficiency allowing us to
think what a concept of non-photography
could introduce to theoretical discussions that
would no longer be reliant on philosophy or aes-
thetics, as is typically the case. That is, ours will
be a poetic attempt at entertaining the idea of
62

photography as no longer subordinate to the
flashes of philosophy but which can add its
own flash of grasping the real. Non-photography
would be a way of irreflective seeing: the photo
and its shutters also grasping the real in an auto-
matic way not too dissimilar to the eye fluttering
or blinking in order to grasp the real. Laruelle
suggests:
To bring photography into proximity with
science, to describe it as an automatic and
irreflective thought, is thus also to cease
reflecting local (psychic, logical, informatics,
technological, etc.) experiences of automa-
tism in this irreflective thought; and to postu-
late that in general what is proper to
science is to be a thought in “good and due
form,” a true form, a true thought, that is
to say a thought that is true, defining itself
by its relation to the real itself, but of an
irreflective or blind nature through and
through, and thus having no need of
philosophy.20
But non-standard aesthetics and non-philosophy
use philosophy as material. Non-standard phil-
osophy speaks of generic or simulated subjects,
and is of secondary importance to philosophy.
Laruelle claims that he is not one of the
French theorists but merely uses them as
material.21 Laruelle will mime, perform and
use Derrida’s deconstruction in the case of
photo-fiction in deconstructing the logo-photo-
centric flash. No doubt, for anyone who has
read Derrida, one can see this as homage to
the thinker. He will make use of Deleuze’s
concept of the conceptual persona22 in the
form of the transcendental swimmer and the
quantic philosopher.23 And in these two influ-
ences and personae we see a glimpse of how Lar-
uelle uses philosophy as material. It is perhaps
useful here to provide a passage from Philoso-
phie non-standard and place it with one from
the The Concept of Non-Photography and
Photo-Fiction to see what sort of theoretical
work is taking place by Laruelle as constructor
of a theoretical installation. Laruelle writes in
The Concept of Non-Photography that “A
photo is an Idea blind to the World but which
knows itself as such, not for itself but ‘in the
63
burk
last instance.’”24 He will also state in Photo-
Fiction (borrowing again from one of his favor-
ite phenomenologists, Michel Henry) that
photo-fiction as imaginary theoretical fictional
practice is “taking a photograph with one’s
eyes half-closed.”25 From these two references,
we can then see the importance of this blind
or indirect irreflective seeing as well in his
play with the conceptual persona of the
quantum philosopher as he states in Philoso-
phie non-standard:
A quantic philosopher is also a philosopher,
he or she occupies the entire space of philos-
ophy rather than merely that of water, and is
measured by other waves coming from the
ocean of history. And when the swimmer
fuses this time with philosophy as with an
element but this fusion is intermingled by
the swimmer rather than the philosophical
wave, a new figure emerges from the ocean,
that of the quantic non-philosopher who has
survived or overcome his philosophical
suicide because he has accepted the ulti-
matum and fused with it. If pure immanence
is deadly, its immanental and generic regime,
without drowning the philosopher, suffi-
ciently blinds him or her so as to no longer
be besieged by philosophy no more so than
by a necessary fantasy.26
So it is that this perpetual necessity of blindness
or irreflective thinking – having no need for the
self-reflective impulses of philosophy – will con-
stantly be re-iterated throughout the entirety of
his work. This performative, non-standard aes-
thetic practice, for Laruelle, is crucial in under-
standing the grasping of the real by the
photographer or the camera, but also how the
artist or thinker works with space and their crea-
tive works via a kind of blindsight, or vision: a
way of seeing where to engage in the practice
of the thought-art or seeing is also one that
exits the sufficient world of philosophy, of
knowing, in order to consider radical imma-
nence as part of the practice of seeing itself,27
of exposing, or drawing out or sketching the
spaces that are indeterminate (hence his reliance
on aspects of quantum physics). And in this
manner, non-standard aesthetics would be a
way of remaining a stranger to naming or to
 a particle of laruelle
identity but which as a stranger with and for
identity would be identity’s only true witness.28
If all these kinds of flashes have in common at
once the grasping of the world in-One, or in-im-
manence, or in-photo, and also the precise
exiting of the world (its sufficiency for Laruelle,
or going beyond the world in a transcendental
way) they nevertheless, for Laruelle, must be
encountered always in the last-instance. Which
is to say, they all have a constitutive relationship
with immanence and are thus beyond or
outside the world and more in relation with a
rigorous fiction of the real. They are in relation
to the lightning strike or chaos of the so-
called Deleuzo-Guattarian Chaosmos. As with
thought and the creative practices of the photo-
graph or any other art form, there is a process of
placing order on chaos; grasping chaos in such a
manner that it leaves a trace, a mark, a photo-
graph, an ephemeral identity, which I provision-
ally name here, following Derrida,29 “an auto-
portrait of blindsight,” but which for Laruelle
as non-standard aesthetic theoretical performa-
tive practice produces more chaos.30 The chaos
takes the form of or simulates subjectivity via
the superposition of the philosopher and
artist. So, for Laruelle, it would appear that irre-
flective seeing of the photographic process and
practice, what he also calls the Vision-in-One
(seeing immanence in an immanent way), his
non-philosophy applied here as non-photogra-
phy, would be an example of the transcendental
subject = X = real = Man-in-Man, necessarily
requiring a rigorous fiction between human
auto-awareness (self-grasping), auto-portrait,
and at the same time being confronted with
the real and in grasping the real in a new way
than other art forms or ways of thinking (oral
narratives for example), providing us with a
new way to orient not only how we practice
various art forms but also how we understand
what identity is or does:
Of photography, we shall say that it is a
thought that relates itself to the World in
an automatic and irreflective, but real, way;
that it is therefore a transcendental
automat, far more and far less than a
mirror at the edge of the World: the reflec-
tion-without-mirror of an Identity-without-
World, anterior to any “principle” and any
“form” […] Photography is a representation
that neither reasons nor reflects – this is true
in a sense, but in which sense? Is it due to an
absence of reflection, as it is spontaneously
maintained? Or is it due to the excess of a
thought that maintains an irreflexive relation
to a certain real or identity that is not necess-
arily governed by perspective.31
At the heart of the auto-portrait alongside the
real that photography provides auto-matically,
instantaneously, we should also understand
this relationship to the auto- or the auto-captur-
ing of identity in relation to echo and narcissus.
Is there, no doubt, a narcissism within pho-
tography? Or art forms? An auto-affection for
sure. But Laruelle makes the case in his
various works on non-philosophy that there is
a way to grasp identity in a less sufficient or
wholly determined manner; there is, as
Derrida used to remind us, a more open narcis-
sistic way which would be to under-determine
what we capture or grasp and take on not a
closed-off specular loop of self and the reflection
of self, or, if you will, self-reflection, which is
precisely not a reflection but an open Vision-
in-One, of the last instant that is precisely
always already what the photographic appara-
tuses and way of seeing capture in the first
place: the first time every time, always already
in the last instance. It is also what Laruelle
will call a reflection without mirror.32 Thus it
is an image of the witness to identity, the Stran-
ger-subject in ourselves. It is precisely the pos-
ition of the black-box of the photographic
apparatus and that of the human or the artist
or seer within the human. It is a position of
imaginary optics.
from utopia and uchronia to
uchromia: on the universe black
The affirmative poetic nature of the “non” of
non-philosophy turned non-standard philos-
ophy as a theoretical performative practice is
also what Laruelle calls a thought in-action.
But it is one that Laruelle makes clear is a fic-
tional practice. A new genre akin to science
64

fiction. And it is around this orientation that I
will try to explain as well that the poetic
aspects of his texts also have a relation to
quantum physics and the superposition of the
artist and the philosopher. While Laruelle’s
work as philosopher or “Laruelle” as proper
name has been introduced and explained by
various thinkers most recently in Laruelle and
Non-Philosophy,33 in our discussion here we
still stick to its imaginary aspects in their
relation to Laruelle as artist and poetic
thinker. I will compare passages from his text
“On The Universe Black” with the poetry of
Fernando Pessoa as understood and theoreti-
cized by Judith Balso in her magnificent work
Pessoa, The Metaphysical Courier. In explicat-
ing the aspects of non-standard aesthetics
through the genre or theoretical fictional prac-
tice of photo-fiction, I will merely provide a
theoretical sketch of an impossible imaginary
poetics of seeing that nonetheless has a material-
ity and necessity as poetic seeing as a blindsight.
This sort of poetic gesture is one example of how
to think of the importance of the oraxiom34 and
the onto-vectorial35 nature of the transcendental
subject = X, and the photo-fictional theoretical
grasping of the real that has a materiality in
that in its “utopian” practicity (with its impor-
tance as fictional artistic practice) transforms
the subject. Its position as new scientific fic-
tional genre of and for philosophy resides in
its imaginary optics of non-standard aesthetics
being reliant on quantic superposition of the
philosopher and the poet (artist) and these
aspects can be better conceived if we explore
Laruelle’s specific text on art and philosophy
that he wrote, as he often does, in a mimetic
fashion, namely the poetic text on color –
Universe Black in the Foundations of Human
Colour:36
Only with eyes closed can we unfold the
future, and with eyes open can we conceive
to enter it.
Black is without-ground which fixes the light
in the remote where man observes it.
The black universe is the opacity of the real
or the “colour” that renders it invisible.
65
burk
In its transparency, its clear gaze, we find the
opaque, uchromia, blindsight of the universe
and the cosmic position of the poet. “Only
with eyes closed can we unfold the future, and
only with eyes open can we conceive to enter
into it.” Laruelle’s stranger-subject or transcen-
dental clones, his forced futural subjects = x, his
idea of theoretical oraxiomatic thinking implies
a manner of writing and seeing or taking on a
subjective position that can only be an irreflec-
tive vision which is fictional or poetic in that it
is only a unilateral duality alongside or accord-
ing to the real. That is, to “unfold the future”
one must be blind to it, but to enter into it, Lar-
uelle claims, one must have one’s eyes open.
This fluttering and constant unilateral duality
of poetic seeing alongside the real at times
exceeds normal linguistic utterances in order
precisely to think alongside the real in view of
maintaining an insufficient and under-deter-
mined possible view of identity. But as quasi-
futural vision, in order to enter into it one’s
eyes must be open, and thus there is a flickering
or glimpsing or grasping that allows for this
excessive, indirect blindsight to take place,
namely to capture or grasp a poetic identifi-
cation (of) the insufficient auto-portraiture of
the real. If even Alain Badiou states that our
duty today is to strive to be contemporaries of
Pessoa,37 it is not, as Badiou states, a mathemat-
ics of being (not an ideal sufficient poetry/phil-
osophy) but, as Laruelle will claim, a physics of
being. That is, it would be a quantic and not
mathematic poetics of seeing in the last instance
that would take on a vision that would be one-
sided, a unifacial cut of the real of the Stran-
ger-subject uni-versed from this position of the
superposition of the poet and the philosopher
(if we understand it as non-standard aesthetics),
which would be an affirmative position not of
the world, precisely exiting any notion of
world, but a poetic way of seeing that is both
cosmic and acosmic to which Pessoa’s hetero-
nyms speak as well as Laruelle’s poetry.
For Laruelle, one must encounter the real as
an irreflective vision or a Vision-in-One in the
last instance that has a position with uchromia,
a position before color that allows for color to
come into existence. This non-color, this
 a particle of laruelle
universe black as uchromic, can also be placed
alongside the insufficient immanent time
spaces of poetic vision which, for Laruelle, are
those of uchronia and utopia. The nowhen of
uchronia and the nowhere of utopia comprised
with uchromia provide us with a manner of
striving to understand the contemporaneous
temporality and spatiality of the poet. Judith
Balso’s reading of Fernando Pessoa’s hetero-
nym, Alberto Caeiro, provides us with an
example of poetic seeing akin to Laruelle’s med-
itations on the Vision-in-One – what Caeiro calls
a “‘non-metaphysical’ regime of thought which
is the proper exercise of the poem in that it
forces itself to ‘see without thinking’, to see
the thing to the extent that it is this thing and
not another.”38 This kind of poetic seeing,
which is a sort of “metaphysics without meta-
physics” for Pessoa’s poetic persona, is created
to oppose the kind of metaphysics and vision
that strives to see the thing behind the thing.
This kind of metaphysics of suspicion, always
striving to see something else behind the
thing, must be eliminated for Caeiro. And this
is also how we can shed light on why the connec-
tion between Pessoa’s poetry or “metaphysics
without metaphysics” and Laruelle’s conception
of the novelty of photography’s irreflective
seeing or non-philosophy’s Vision-in-One can
be quite useful. Pessoa will create his heteron-
ymous oeuvre and poetic personas, whose
position as self-aware fictions is nonetheless
aware of being real. Pessoa’s heteronyms, with
their simulated consciousness as voices of
poetic work, play on the plurality found within
the rapport between self and identity, and
show, perform and create a practice of fictioning
whose poetic way of seeing seems to be a
precursor to Laruelle’s thinking regarding
rigorous fictions of cloned subjectivities in the
last instance.
The poet has always resided within this sort
of non-space, nowhen, nowhere of the photo.
It is an irreflective vision or thinking
in-One such that the being in-photo is a novel
way of understanding the kind of blindsight
thinking of the artist, inventor, creator. Lar-
uelle’s photo-fictional apparatus, as theoretical
installation of the discursive mimesis of the
photographic process, a thought that is itself
an art, can be seen in a similar fashion. It is in
attempting to conjugate art and philosophy,
the photographer-artist with the philosopher-
aesthetician, that we discover his similarities
with the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa and
his heteronyms. In this case via the cosmic or
acosmic poetic miming of Laruelle in the
Universe Black as uchromia, as a uchromic irre-
flective prior to color element that allows for
reflection (reflecting of light for color to come
into existence), as he states, “see black, think
white,” we can see his claim that non-standard
aesthetics allows for thinking another kind of
flash other than that of Logos, where, for Lar-
uelle, to deconstruct the logo-photo-centric
flash one must not be caught within the light-
ning flash but the blindness that is its precursor
in order to see after it flashes or blinds you. If
photo-fiction is taking a photo with one’s eyes
half-closed, it is an insufficient gaze. It is a
concept but, unlike that of Deleuze, is by its
very nature insufficient. To this poetic irreflec-
tive vision of Laruelle and his non-standard aes-
thetic genre of photo-fiction we return again to
the affirmation of irreflective sight, a kind of
blinding by the sun, of the sunflower gaze of
Pessoa’s heteronym, Alberto Caeiro. And I
believe, after considering one more time
Judith Balso’s analysis of Pessoa’s writings on
the imaginary yet self-aware nature of the
artificial intelligence of the irreflective vision
of sketches or blueprints of apparatuses, that
we will see the similarity with Laruelle’s
photo-fictional apparatus. As Balso writes of
Pessoa:
For Pessoa, the poem is a freedom to do away
with the object and a freedom to invent new
images which are no longer “images of”
something, but artificial constructions no
less perfectly real in their own right. Render-
ing possible that art was no longer illusionist,
but “lucid” – re-iterating one of Campos’
favorite epithets – and that art was no
longer so much this fiction conscious of
being a fiction (in which at least an entire
part of modern art, having barely been
born, will lose itself) but a fiction conscious
in its own manner of being real, exactly as
66

machines or bridges are real. The importance
within this poetic framework accorded to the
city and the machine is more profound
than the futurists had thought: the machine
in particular incarnates a “non-object,” a
latent model of the real as an abstract con-
struction. It is in this manner the emblem
of what art thinks and affirms of itself from
then on.39
In the case of Pessoa, as Balso shows us, there is
a poetic self-awareness outside of self which is
that of the poem or blueprint, in that the
bridge “knows,” is aware of itself as a bridge
in that it “functions” as a bridge. For Laruelle,
in placing the aspects of quantum physics at
the heart of his attempt at photo-fictional
thought-art, we have an emergence of a kind
of mimed or artificial intelligent subjectivity
akin to the “lucid,” self-aware fictional nature
to which Balso refers in the work of Pessoa
and his heteronymic fictioning. Laruelle also
makes similar reference to the new kind of
scientific thought that photography brings into
the world in comparing it with various types
of non-reflective intelligence in The Concept of
Non-Photography40 as well as his proclamation
in Photo-Fiction of the theoretical installation
of a non-standard art which would interpret
the model by theory. As Laruelle states: “Only
the generic and quantic orientation allows us
to pass from a standard art to a non-standard
art and in return to interpret the model by the
theory.”41 And in interpreting the model by
the theory, in superposing the philosopher-
aesthetician with the photographer-artist, we
have a place for both of them to take on a theor-
etical position as undulatory particle and wave,
for Laruelle claims “photo-fiction is not an art
of fiction but a genre on par with science
fiction” and “has two types of subjects: the
generic subject = X and the individual clone
of the photographer or artist.”42 If art
becomes “lucid” in the work of Pessoa, accord-
ing to Balso, for Laruelle, in placing aspects of
quantum physics at the heart of his new genre
of irreflective thinking of the thought-art of
photo-fiction, we have simulations of subjectiv-
ity by quantum physics that take the form of a
“generic subjectivity” (a kind of transhuman
67
burk
subjectivity) and a cloned subjectivity. The
lucidity, then, in Laruelle’s theoretical installa-
tion of photo-fiction is thus reliant on these
two types of simulated subjectivity.43
Laruelle’s claim of a production of a simulated
subjectivity is perhaps quite similar to how the
interested reader could also explore the auto-
fictioning of orthonyms and heteronyms in
Pessoa’s work.44 Laruelle has even recently
made the claim that perhaps it’s not too exagger-
ated to say “that non-standard philosophy is a
waking dream.”45
As Laruelle makes the claim that these
aspects of quantum physics found in his non-
standard philosophy can simulate subjectivity
in the form of the superposition of two positions
of (non-human) seeing, we can compare them to
the manner in which the cut-up or collage of
text-images and sound can, by no longer being
“subject” to human intention in a thought-out
reflective manner (as William S. Burroughs
and Max Ernst experimented with in their own
unique ways), make apparent Laruelle’s relation
to the new image of thought that Deleuze had
hoped would come along in the late 1960s, i.e.,
a “Max Ernst for philosophy” who would
mutate the practice and invention of the creative
process of the thought image of the philoso-
pher.46 This is perhaps one of the better ways
to view Laruelle’s non-standard aesthetics and
overall project. In striving to experiment with
a kind of irreflective vision like that of the think-
ing of the photographic apparatus, in miming
this process in his photo-fiction we can see an
attempt at a new image of thought and see
that the performative elements of this exper-
imental practice strive, like any other scientific
practice, to see in the last instance in a
manner that is immanent. And yet it is a
performativity without performance, which is
to say, in its irreflective position of sight, we
can see why Laruelle will say that it is not
philosophical at least as regards reflection and
the history of philosophy but exits the world
and enters into the play of the universe and is
nicely described with the help of his definitions
of performativity or a performation-without-
performance and his insufficient concept of
the Vision-in-One.47
 a particle of laruelle
And so here we have Laruelle’s non-standard
aesthetics that strives to allow for a new
genre of writing photo-fictions, cine-fictions,
and music-fictions.48 For Laruelle’s non-standard
aesthetics is precisely about letting go of philoso-
phy’s and art’s continuous narcissistic preten-
sions of themselves. Poetry in its excessive use
of language doesn’t bother with these ridiculous
quarrels. Its motives for seeing are not bothered
with the pretensions of understanding or suffi-
cient ideas of aesthetic perception, it’s poetic irre-
flective creative performative grasping is a
theoretical art of thinking that sees according to
the universe and not the world, its color being
the universe black, only sparking the flash of
Pessoa’s sunflower gaze. For a non-standard aes-
thetics is a poetic philo-fictional practice. It is
Laruelle’s attempt at a singular poematics,49 an
affirmative inventive thought-art in the spirit of
the quantum, that has as its non-standard aes-
thetic scope an under-determining and insuffi-
cient gaze, partially blind to the universe that is
itself blind and which, like the auto-portraiture
of existence, is the ruin of its autopoietic identity.
And as Laruelle is asked on many occasions to
give concrete examples of his non-standard aes-
thetics in practice, he will often reply that the
only “examples he has are his texts.”50 And
something in this reply seems as if it could be
uttered by Alberto Caeiro. As Caeiro states at
the end of one of the poems from his “Detached
Poems”:
One time they called me a materialist poet
And it made me wonder, because I didn’t
think
I could be called anything.
I’m not even a poet: I see.
If what I write has any worth, it’s not me who
has it:
The worth is here, in my poems.
It’s all totally independent of my will.51
A Max Ernst of philosophy? Perhaps.52 In
thinking of the simulated generic and cloned
subjectivity that non-standard aesthetics allows
for, I hear Laruelle wondering out loud to
himself once again: “I would like to have made
a music-fiction […] if one listens to the music
of Beethoven in one’s mind and truly hears it
like Beethoven, are you a clone of Beethoven?”53
If one had pushed him on this question, he
would have more than likely
said that one would be “a particle
of Beethoven.” If anything, I
have, at best, provided the
reader of this essay with a par-
ticle54 of Laruelle.
notes
1 “Laruelle’s Non-Standard Lenses,” two intro-
ductory workshops held at Midway Contemporary
Art Library in October and November 2012 in
Minneapolis, USA.
2 In The Concept of Non-Photography Laruelle states
how he sees photography as a new type of thought
and how it can relate to his overall project of non-
philosophy. He says:
We thus treat photography as a discovery of
a scientific nature, as a new kind of object of
theoretical thinking – suspending all problems
of historical, political, technological and artis-
tic genesis. So that photography is an indivisi-
ble process that one cannot recompose from
the outside, even partially, like a machine. It is
a new thought – and it is so by virtue of its
mode of being or its relation to the real,
not its aesthetic or technological determi-
nations. (36)
3 Performation-without-performance is used by Lar-
uelle in Philosophie non-standard to describe the
attempt of non-standard philosophy to reduce the
violence inherent in our actions and decisions. As
he states: “But we are looking for a thinking that,
however inventive it is, is the action of a non-
acting, an anti-activist wager, a performation
without performance; how can we ‘weaken’ the
excess of action and its decision?” (Philosophie non-
standard; 222; my translation). The theme of reducing
violence and “weakening” the actions of our decisions
is a principal one across the entirety of Laruelle’s
project. See his works such as Théorie générale des vic-
times and Une biographie de l’homme ordinaire, etc.
4 Laruelle, Concept of Non-Photography 49.
5 Laruelle speaks of his conception of philosophy as
being a material for his non-standard philosophy and
non-standard aesthetics in a very candid manner
in his interview with John Mullarkey found in
68

“Non-Standard Philosophy and Art” in Cox, Jaskey,
and Malik. He states: “I would like to use philosophy
as a material (in the manner of a space or a color, a
materiality) for an art that would make an oeuvre
with conceptual thought without once again creat-
ing an aesthetics or a philosophy.”
6 The word “vague” in French can mean both
wave and vague, and Laruelle plays off these mean-
ings of indetermination quite frequently to get at
his position and style of in-the-last-instance in
regards to quantum indeterminacy and uncertainty.
7 Laruelle, Philosophie non-standard 477; my
translation.
8 Laruelle, Philosophie et non-philosophie 26:
Rather than inventing new modes of philoso-
phical decision, modes of its unitary and suffi-
cient usage, leading back to the narrowness
and arbitrariness of the Greek solution which is
consequently condemned to overexploitation,
new resources of thought can emerge only
from the unprecedented conjunction of
autonomous science and second philosophy.
It will not be said too hastily that this would
be a “new alliance” proposed to old
adversaries. Instead, it is a question of
a perpetual peace treaty between science
and philosophy, a treaty henceforth founded
on the former rather than manipulated by
the latter on its behalf, as has generally been
the case in history. From science to
philosophy, rather than the other way
around, it has become possible to establish
a democratic and peaceful community.
“Non-philosophy” is the symbol of this new
agreement and of the work that can be
done in this community.
9 Laruelle, Philosophie non-standard 222; my
translation.
10 See Laruelle’s reference to R. Girard in his
lecture the “Generic Orientation of Non-Standard
Aesthetics” at the Weisman Art Museum, Univer-
sity of Minnesota, 17 Nov. 2012, available <http://
www.univocalpublishing.com/blog/111-lecture-on-
the-orientation-of-non-standard-aesthetics>.
11 Laruelle, Philosophie non-standard 143; my
translation:
At best, we can speak about a “negative” or
rather “impossible” non-philosophy as with
69
burk
the imaginary number or more still with the
“imaginary home” [foyer imaginaire] or con-
vergence of the negative rays. Non-standard
philosophy is the imaginary optics that uses
the optics of philosophy and folds them
onto the generic. This is merely a partial
example but it is at the heart of the generic
quantum. It could have been, as Marx would
have said, of an individual or bourgeois
essence, but it will be generic and
transhuman.
12 Laruelle’s shift in his preoccupation with Frac-
tality and its relation to Identity, which can be
seen in his early discussion on the photo’s
relationship or unilation to Identity, changes
with his interest in the concept of superposition
found within quantum physics. With this shift to
a position in-the-last-instance that is indetermi-
nate or uncertain (hence his use of what he calls
“aspects” of quantum physics) Laruelle becomes
more interested in the irreflective photo-graphic
flash as self-belonging. See Photo-Fiction 20–21 on
the superposition of vectors in the act of
photo-fiction as well as its theoretical position
as being a lived art as rigorous fiction that is
chaotic due to its insufficient nature as indetermi-
nate. See also 47 where Laruelle states that
“Self-belonging and the event are the mirror of
each other.”
13 Ibid. 143.
14 Laruelle, Concept of Non-Photography. Laruelle
refers to the “photographic flash” of philosophy
in contrast to that of photography itself when he
states:
Photography, without technique, without art,
without science, condemned endlessly to
condemn to reflect itself and to nostalgically
resurrect the Heraclitean lightning-bolt that
came too soon. Philosophy is that premature
thinking that will have constituted itself, not
through a mirror-stage, but through a flash-
stage, a darkroom-stage, giving it a fragile
being, a fragile basis, in this photographic
mode, unfinished and too immediately
exploited. (3)
15 See his discussion on this topic in Philosophie
non-standard, in the section entitled “The Wave
Function of the Philosophical Flash” 104–07. Lar-
uelle attempts to discuss and superpose philosophy
and science’s relation to light itself and shows why
 a particle of laruelle
philosophy perhaps was premature in its relation
to the flash of light:
We take back up the radical origin of philos-
ophy beginning with its undulatory character
of the flash, philosophy having always been a
premature or non-scientific interpretation
of its own physics. Oriental or not, light has
become its philosophical formatting, an
object of its common or current usage, an
ordinary means of thinking, but we intend
to show that it has been nothing more than
a poorly misunderstood science, the auto-
interpretation of a radical flash and that it
was lacking quantum, that for reasons of con-
fusing the originary flash with transcendent
object, it could have been the corpuscular
cosmos upon which it’s reflected. Instead of
knowing itself as an interaction as understood
in quantum physics, it thought itself as a
reflection starting from the object. Under
the name of “philosophy,” it has become a
certain abstract practice of the effects of
light, a theatre of reflections and cavernous
shadows, whose premises it does not know.
But under its material angle, thought is a
photo-electric phenomenon, the flash is
the still corpuscular and cosmic photon of
philosophy. (105)
16 See Châtelet’s extraordinary but difficult text
Figuring Space.
17 Laruelle, Concept of Non-Photography 3.
18 For more studies on Laruelle’s relationship to
light and thinking, see Alexander Galloway’s essay
on Laruelle’s relationship to another artist whose
work focuses on how we see and relate to light
via his artistic installations, namely James Turell.
“Laruelle and Art” 230.
19 Laruelle, Concept of Non-Photography 29.
20 Ibid. 32.
21 At Midway Contemporary Art Library, Min-
neapolis (15 Nov. 2013), Laruelle made this
expressed claim to a public who asked him about
his relation to French theory.
22 See the chapter in Deleuze and Guattari’s What
is Philosophy? regarding conceptual personae.
23 See the section entitled “Le Nageur transcen-
dantal et le nageur immanental” in Philosophie
non-standard 314–15.
24 Laruelle, Concept of Non-Photography 99.
25 Laruelle, Photo-Fiction 35.
The style of photo-fiction is taking a photo
with one’s eyes closed, on the condition
one admits that they are closed which is to
say they had been open and more precisely,
they are half-closed, the beating of eyelids
by which we take excessive measure of the
world and through which we master the
intensity of its hallucinatory aspect: neither
wide open nor automatically closing
themselves as with a camera or robotic
photographer. (Ibid.)
26 Laruelle, Philosophie non-standard 315.
27 See Alexander Galloway’s remarks in regard to
the seeing of perception itself in his essay “Laruelle
and Art” 230.
28 See Laruelle’s Concept of Non-Photography
where he states that perhaps if there is any
true witness to Identity it would be that of the
Stranger.
29 See Derrida’s Memoirs of the Blind.
30 Laruelle, Photo-Fiction 13:
What photo-fiction will produce is a kind of
chaos that is even more intense than the
photo, perhaps as a mixture of cubism and
fractality exerted on the same conceptual
material, on the basis of a special logic of
what we could call an art-fiction or a non-
standard aesthetics. The photo-fictions will
no longer be made of firmly sealed unities
closed in on themselves but will come from
an algebra of the “negative quarter turn”
and will be representable as configurations
of vectors.
31 Laruelle, Concept of Non-Photography 31.
32 Ibid.
33 See Mullarkey and Smith.
34 See Laruelle’s invention of the oraxiom com-
bining equal parts axiom and the oracular position
of philosophy (the oracle). It is essential to thinking
a theoretical installation of photo-fiction or what
Laruelle names as non-philosophy and non-stan-
dard philosophy as philo-fiction.
70

35 The onto-vectorial is a neologism created by
Laruelle to explain his position of the vector at
the heart of the ontology of existence.
36 Laruelle and Mackay, From Decision to Heresy
401.
37 See Badiou’s Handbook of Inaesthetics.
38 Balso, Pessoa 54.
39 Ibid. 20–21.
40 See Concept of Non-Photography 29–30 where
Laruelle compares photographic thought with arti-
ficial intelligence and information systems.
41 Laruelle, Photo-Fiction 72.
42 Ibid. 75.
43 Ibid. 76. Laruelle states: “Physics simulates
subjectivity at least in two forms, generic
subjectivity and cloned subjectivity via the
quantum” (ibid.).
44 Laruelle even uses Pessoa as an example in his
definition of “solitude” in his Dictionary of Non-Phil-
osophy. Pessoa is the example par excellence of the
relation of self to immanence, as Laruelle states in
his definition of solitude: “Primarily, Solitude can
simply be understood as identity of immanence
(to) self.” This, perhaps, is also why Laruelle is so
keen on developing the idea that the auto-matic
relation of photography to the real is a new
relation to identity.
45 See John Mullarkey’s recent interview with Lar-
uelle in “Non-Standard Philosophy and Art” in
Cox, Jaskey, and Malik.
46 See Deleuze’s remarks in L’Ile déserte on the
need for philosophy to become more creative
and inventive as well as contemporary with the
arts and sciences in his interview entitled “On
Nietzsche and the Image of Thought” (188–97).
47 Laruelle and collaborators, Dictionary of
Non-Philosophy.
48 Laruelle, Photo-Fiction 28:
A thought-music or music-fiction in the spirit
of the quantum should be possible as well as a
photo-fiction along with so many other poss-
ible scenarios. To think “aesthetics” in the
form of scenarios, quantically conjugating a
variety of arts and philosophies, would
enrich and liberate possible productive
71
burk
forces and would justify the existence of art
not as thought, as was talked about with
post-modernists, but a veritable thought-art,
entirely specific and worthy of being called
“contemporary.”
49 In a recent interview Laruelle suggested, with
regard to his theoretical and experimental non-
aesthetics and the genre he has strived to open
up for new possibilities of art practice, “It’s as if
my entire theoretical oeuvre had been conceived
with its sights set on positing the conditions for a
new genre or were dedicated to a singular
poem.” See John Mullarkey’s recent interview
with Laruelle in “Non-Standard Philosophy and
Art” in Cox, Jaskey, and Malik.
50 Ibid. Laruelle, in the Realism Materialism Art
interview with Mullarkey, makes this quite clear:
More than anything, I’ve always led a relent-
less war against the famous “example”
whether it be concrete or abstract, and
pretty much the same war against aesthetics.
Whether right or wrong, and I admit that it
could be wrong, I’m trying to construct an
oeuvre that, if it must cite an aesthetician,
would make a theatrical play or a very
narrow, re-localized moment within the
oeuvre.
51 Pessoa 86.
52 Laruelle states his appreciation of the surreal-
ists in his recent interview with Mullarkey in
Realism Materialism Art, but also says:
People often say that I’m an artist-without-
art, a philosopher-without-philosophy, that I
take the “stance” or “pose” of an artist
without practicing it, the stance of a philoso-
pher without a doctrine, and I would add,
someone of faith without a religion. This cri-
tique thus recognizes me by subtraction, that
I’m not exactly part of those sincere liars that
are the artist, philosopher, or believer.
53 Laruelle pondered this question during his
lecture on the “Generic Orientation of Non-Stan-
dard Aesthetics” at the Weisman Art Museum.
54 See Laruelle’s definition of the term “particle”
in the glossary at the beginning of Philosophie non-
standard:
 a particle of laruelle
A hylomorphic entity that, in the form of uni-
lateral duality, combines without mediation
the actual noematic particulate form and
the matter coming from the corpuscle. A
simple transcendence without doublet or
given in-immanence. The result of a generic,
quantic, and non-textual deconstruction of
philosophy. (58; my translation)
bibliography
Badiou, Alain. Handbook of Inaesthetics. Trans.
Alberto Toscano. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2004.
Print.
Balso, Judith. Pessoa, The Metaphysical Courier.
Trans. Drew Burk. New York: Atropos, 2011.
Print.
Burk, Drew S. “Laruelle’s Non-Standard Lenses.”
Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis. 17 Oct.
2012. Lecture.
Cox, Christoph, Jennifer Jaskey, and Suhail Malik,
eds. Realism Materialism Art. Berlin: Sternberg,
forthcoming. Print.
Châtelet, Gilles. Figuring Space: Philosophy,
Mathematics, and Physics. Dordrecht: Springer,
1999. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. What is
Philosophy? Trans. Graham Burchell. New York:
Columbia UP, 1996. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles, and David Lapoujade. L’Ile déserte
et autres textes. Paris: Minuit, 2002. Print.
Derrida, Jacques. Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-
Portrait and other Ruins. Trans. Anne-Pascale
Brault and Michael Naas. Chicago: U of Chicago
P, 1993. Print.
Galloway, Alexander R. “Laruelle and Art.”
Continent 2.4 (2013): 230–36. Print.
Laruelle, François. The Concept of Non-Photography/
Le Concept de la non-photographie. Trans. Robin
Mackay. Falmouth and New York: Urbanomic/
Sequence, 2011. Print.
Laruelle, François. “The Generic Orientation of
Non-Standard Aesthetics.” Trans. Drew S. Burk,
Joe Hughes, and Christophe Wall-Romana.
Weisman Contemporary Art Museum, U of
Minnesota. 16 Nov. 2012. Lecture.
Laruelle, François. Philosophie non-standard. Paris:
Kimé, 2010. Print.
Laruelle, François. Philosophy and Non-Philosophy.
Trans. Taylor Adkins. Minneapolis: Univocal,
2013. Print.
Laruelle, François. Photo-Fiction, a Non-Standard
Aesthetics/Photo-Fiction, une esthétique non-standard.
Trans. Drew S. Burk. Minneapolis: Univocal,
2012. Print.
Laruelle, François. Struggle and Utopia at the End
Times of Philosophy. Trans. Drew S. Burk and
Anthony Paul Smith. Univocal: Minneapolis, 2012.
Print.
Laruelle, François. Théorie générale des victimes.
Paris: Fayard/Mille et Une Nuit, 2012. Print.
Laruelle, François. Une biographie de l’homme ordi-
naire. Paris: Aubier, 1985. Print.
Laruelle, François, and collaborators. Dictionary of
Non-Philosophy. Trans. Taylor Adkins. Minneapolis:
Univocal, 2013. Print.
Laruelle, François, and Robin Mackay, eds. From
Decision to Heresy: Experiments in Non-Standard
Thought. Falmouth and New York: Urbanomic/
Sequence, 2013. Print.
Mullarkey, J., and A.P. Smith, eds. Laruelle and Non-
Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012. Print.
Pessoa, Fernando. The Collected Poems of Alberto
Caeiro. Trans. Chris Daniels. Exeter: Shearsman,
2007. Print.
Drew S. Burk
Univocal
123 N. 3rd St.
Suite 202
Minneapolis, MN 55401
USA
E-mail: drew@univocalpublishing.com
 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 19 number 2 june 2014

Inebriated and bastardized by Plato, lique-

fied and cogitated into concentrate by Des-
cartes, moralized by Kant, whipped by
Sade, devoured by Hegel, disgorged by
Stirner, conscripted by Husserl, chewed out
by Nietzsche, down the wrong pipe of
Derrida, turned over by Heidegger, crapped
out by Deleuze, thrown up by Laruelle.
And it would ask for more if we let it!
Laruelle, “Obscénité de la philosophie” 123

W ith this litany, François Laruelle

recounts the many crimes of the philoso-
phers caught in the clutches of their depraved
profession. Philosophy is, in Laruelle’s words,
“the oldest prejudice.”1 To do philosophy
means to harbor a secret stance toward the
world – pursing it, eating and digesting it,
beating it down, then building it back up again.
And philosophy itself is forever a glutton for pun-
ishment, eager to be re-enlisted for future abuses.
It will always come back for more if we let it.
Let us begin, therefore, by returning to first
principles – that most emblematic philosophical
chore, to return to first principles. In other
words, what is philosophy? To ask the question
what is philosophy? typically requires that the
philosopher return to the origins of thought,
to plumb the depths of being in pursuit of its
foundations. This is what Kant does in the Cri-
tique of Pure Reason, what Heidegger does in
Being and Time, and even what Deleuze and
Guattari do in What is Philosophy? But not
Laruelle. This kind of question is the very
kind that he refuses to answer, refuses even to
pose. Not what philosophy, then, or how philos-
ophy, or even where or when philosophy. If Lar-
uelle asks anything, he asks why philosophy?
And, more importantly, why not? Why not no
philosophy?
alexander r. galloway
THE AUTISM OF
REASON
Avoiding his own first principles, then,
Laruelle passes instead to the last, the last prin-
ciples, or more precisely the last instance.
Where philosophy is always vying to be first,
non-philosophy is content to be last. After all,
Laruelle’s One is no prime mover, no ultimate
substance. In fact, it is quite the reverse:
Laruelle’s One is a “last mover,” a finite and
immanent real.
“The question Quid facti? is the object of
metaphysics,” writes Deleuze in his book on
Kant.2 What is the fact of knowledge? Not
this or that particular piece of knowledge,
what Laruelle calls the regional knowledges,
but the very condition of knowledge itself, its
fact.

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/14/020073-11 © 2014 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.950863

73
 autism of reason
From Kant to Foucault and beyond, the per-
vasive question of philosophy is not so much
what something is, or even how something
behaves, but what are the conditions of possi-
bility for any x whatsoever? In other words, if
Plato asks what is truth, Kant asks what are
the conditions of possibility for truth? Kant
makes the stakes known on many occasions:
“How is metaphysics at all possible?” “How is
cognition from pure reason possible?” “How
are synthetic propositions a priori possible?”
“How is pure mathematics possible?”3 Not so
much what is philosophy, but what are the con-
ditions of possibility for philosophy itself?
In the end, though, the two questions are the
same, for as Laruelle defines it philosophy is
synonymous with the decision to reveal the con-
ditions of possibility for philosophy. In this
sense, Kant would be, in Laruelle’s opinion, a
philosopher par excellence, a philosopher
raised to the second power, for Kant is not
simply enacting the philosophical decision
(and thus doing philosophy), nor reflecting on
the philosophical decision (asking what is
philosophy), but rather demonstrating the
philosophical meta-conditions for any kind of
philosophical reflection whatsoever.
This is why Laruelle never “returns to first
principles,” as many philosophers are wont to
do. He never seeks to found a new philosophy,
or to reinvigorate an existing one by reflecting
on its own specificity. He is no modernist after
all. Instead, Laruelle seeks the “last principles.”
And if anything, Laruelle’s work is a question of
“last philosophy.” Deviating from the aspira-
tions of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philos-
ophy, one might say that Laruelle’s project
constitutes a series of meditations on last
philosophy.
But Laruelle’s “last” is not a chronological
last, nor is it “last” like a trump card (which
is always played last). It is a messianic last. Lar-
uelle’s last philosophy is last only in the sense of
“the last instance,” an immanent and finite last-
ness that trumps nothing, supersedes nothing,
and indeed is not a “meditation” at all in the
proper sense of the term as reflection-on or con-
sciousness-of. Rather, Laruelle’s in-the-last-
instance means roughly “in the most generic
sense.” Laruelle’s messianism is therefore
neither ancient nor modern, neither special
nor particular. But merely generic. The last,
the least, the finite.
How would Laruelle fare if it were possible to
superimpose him onto Kant’s two-by-two
matrix of a priori/a posteriori and analytic/syn-
thetic?4 The answer is not entirely clear, not
least because Laruelle would likely reject these
dyads themselves as hopelessly philosophical,
even as he conserves some of the terminology
for his own purposes (particularly the terms
analytic and a priori). The first difficulty is
that the terms a priori and a posteriori,
defined by Kant as “prior to or independent of
experience” and “posterior to or dependent on
experience,” do not make much sense within
non-philosophy. Because of its correlationist
overtones, “experience” is not a viable concept
for Laruelle, so Kant’s use of these terms as
they stand is essentially incompatible with him.
For this reason, and in the interest of making
some headway with Laruelle, one might remove
the term “experience” from the definitions and
re-jig them to mean simply “from what comes
before” (a priori) and “from what comes later”
(a posteriori). Only as defined in this manner
can we begin to explore the possibility of an a
priori Laruelle or an a posteriori Laruelle.
Likewise the analytic/synthetic distinction is
only partially applicable to Laruelle. To begin,
the synthetic, defined by Kant as a judgment
containing an additive predicate, is roundly
refused by Laruelle. There are few concepts
more antonymic to non-philosophy than syn-
thesis. Laruelle endlessly stresses the non-
synthetic nature of the clone, or the irreversible
logic of unilateral duality, or the mono-
directional nature of determination-in-the-last-
instance. The One does not enter into a
synthesis with anything. Laruelle labels it
“in-One” precisely because it is not synthesized
into other things. The One is non-hermeneutical
because it does not open up onto any interpret-
ation; it is non-phenomenological because it
does not reveal itself to a solicitous subject. In
this sense, the One “has no holes” and thus
cannot be a socketed and linked up with
anything else that might produce a synthesis.
74

If Deleuze and Guattari meditate on the
deterritorializing potential of the face (because,
as they explain, it is the part of the body with
the most holes), Laruelle does something quite
different, instead singing in praise of the non-
connectivity of the One, in praise of the absol-
ute and radical territorialization of the One.
The One is, in this sense, a mode of hyper-terri-
torialization in which nothing can pass or com-
municate – a prophylactic ontology might be
the best name for it, just as much of philosophy
proposes an endless series of promiscuous ontol-
ogies. Thus synthetic judgments, on the face of
it, would have to remain resolutely philosophi-
cal, not non-philosophical.
Likewise, the analytic, which Kant defines as
a judgment that expresses nothing in the predi-
cate that is not already known in the subject,
would also not entirely qualify for non-philos-
ophy. The issue here, however, is more of a tech-
nicality than a fundamental incompatibility: the
One is not a judgment or concept nor is it the
object of a judgment or concept, it is radically
real and hence cannot constitute the subject
(or predicate) of a proposition. So in a strict
sense there can be no analytical judgments
made about the One. And more pointedly, the
process of non-philosophy is never the mere pro-
duction of analytical claims made in or around
some sort of primary “One axiom” that seeds
all the rest.5
Yet in a more general sense the Laruellean
universe is an analytic universe through and
through. If Kant sought to expand the window
of the synthetic a priori as wide as possible,
and thereby steal some of the thunder of
Hume’s own skepticism toward that domain,
Laruelle seeks to expand the window of the ana-
lytic a priori as wide as possible. Indeed, just as
Kant used synthetic a posteriori judgments to
help generalize outward into the formal con-
ditions of all cognition, Laruelle is using the
conditions of cognition themselves (Kant’s syn-
thetic a priori, Heidegger’s “foundations of
metaphysics,” or what Foucault would call the
“conditions of possibility” for knowledge) and
cloning them into transcendental axioms and a
priori dualities. Rather than root thinking in
difference, as philosophy does, Laruelle roots
75
galloway
thinking in identity, from the Latin idem
meaning same. And as Kant reminds us,
the two key poles of the analytic are identity
(n = n) and contradiction (n =
n). The
latter, contradiction, does not play much of a
role in Laruelle’s non-philosophy, but identity
is crucial, practically coterminous with all of
non-philosophy itself. This indicates his affinity
with the kingdom of the analytic.
Likewise, even the most cursory understand-
ing of Laruelle’s One-in-One indicates the ana-
lytic, albeit a more unilateralized and generic
version of the analytic seen in Kant and
others. One-in-One refers not to a condition of
ontological difference (One/Other) but of
immanence and identity. The expression
“One-in-One” contains no additive predicate
and thus is analytical. (Of course “One-in-
One” literally contains no verb or predicate at
all and thus is not grammatically additive; yet
even considering “in” as a predicative copula,
the second “One” is not additive vis-à-vis the
first “One.”)
For these reasons, one might describe Lar-
uelle’s project as an extreme formalism, or
extreme rationalism, albeit a gnostic or mystical
rationalism. His is an eclipse of the world by the
a priori, in which the domain of the a priori is
splayed open as widely as possible. Laruelle is
not so much inverting Kant as reshuffling his
coordinates: instead of a certain portion of the
human condition reserved for the a priori, Lar-
uelle wants to widen the a priori window to
include domains incompatible with previous
philosophical formulations.
So at first glance it seems clear that Laruelle
resists the synthetic (Kant’s primary interest)
and roots non-philosophy entirely within the
analytic.6 This would make it logical to assert
the following, even if only in a naı̈ve way: “Lar-
uelle’s world is an a priori world,” or even “if
Kant defines metaphysics as the synthetic a
priori, Laruelle defines non-philosophy as the
analytic a priori.” Such claims might not be con-
troversial, however there is considerably more
to be said about how Laruelle accomplishes
such a reshuffling of the Kantian coordinates,
and indeed whether they are reshuffled in pre-
cisely this way.
 autism of reason
To see how Laruelle deviates from metaphy-
sics, let us push further into Kant and his
“grand bargain” between a priori truths, a pos-
teriori judgments, and a more or less balanced
relationship or correlation between man and
world. Two main deviations are possible. In
the most straightforward sense, if a thinker con-
siders the universe to lie essentially within the
synthetic a posteriori realm, the result is empiri-
cism, the world of Hume that so inspired Kant
to embark upon the Critique of Pure Reason
in the first place. But if a thinker considers
the universe to lie essentially within the analytic
a priori, the result is something much closer to
Laruelle.
Herein lies the secret of Laruelle’s strange
thought. His goal is to articulate a pure analyti-
cal immanence of the a priori, and to do it in a
way that is not overly simple or ultimately
pointless (as Kant would have qualified such
an endeavor; indeed, Laruelle is closer to
Fichte than Kant in this regard, particularly
Fichte’s interest in the purely ideal a priori
realm).7
For this reason it is common to see Laruelle
dwell on identities such as n = n or the imma-
nent identity of the One-in-One, attributing
profound and lasting (and indeed practical)
utility to them. For other thinkers, such
expressions would remain classified as relatively
meaningless tautology, or at best classified as
part of the fundamental laws of analysis (e.g.,
the Law of Contradiction). Yet, surprisingly,
expressions like n = n are very powerful for Lar-
uelle, because they ratify the law of identity
necessary for the ultimate step into radical
immanence (One-in-One). The tautology, in
other words, gains a newfound respectability
under Laruelle.8
To summarize, under classical Kantian meta-
physics the a priori is the realm of the transcen-
dentals (space, time, identity, scientific truths,
etc.) and the a posteriori is the realm of the
actuals, the real, the empirical (you, me, my
thoughts, my body, this place, this world).
Kant’s approach is to maintain a division
between these two realms, to privilege the trans-
cendental somehow of course, but also admit
that the transcendental is just one component
of experience even if it perpetually infuses and
subtends it.
Of course, many thinkers working in the
wake of Kant have reconfigured these terms –
for Deleuze the point is to flatten the division
entirely, such that the virtual is real, and any
transcendental categories are defined and
experienced purely and immanently in the
self-expression of matter. And Hegel, via
Fichte and Schelling, emboldened the realm of
idea into a pure logical science of self-
expression.
It would be tempting to say that Kant is to
Laruelle as Hegel is to Marx, the former produ-
cing a bourgeois idealism that must be inverted
– Hegel was standing on his head, after all, so
why not Kant too – into a new science, be it
the science of political economy for Marx or
the science of non-philosophy for Laruelle. But
again, while seductive, this does not entirely
capture Laruelle’s precise intervention into phil-
osophy, Kantian, Hegelian, or otherwise.9
Under Laruelle, the realm of the analytic a
priori is no longer the minority realm, but the
majority realm. The a priori is no longer
simply the transcendental but the real as well.
Likewise, the things formerly considered real
(you, me, my body, this place) are now transcen-
dental, for they are the transcendental clones of
the One.
To borrow a term of his own creation, Lar-
uelle “apriorizes” the world. He reverses the
real and the transcendental (from their
Kantian positions), and recasts both real and
transcendental as a priori. Hence the real,
which Laruelle calls the One, is a priori by
virtue of its being immanent: true immanence
can only be obtained if the real is a priori. Like-
wise, the transcendentals are also a priori, from
the subject, to axiomatic and theorematic
claims, to non-philosophy itself. The only
domain that remains steadfastly a posteriori is
philosophy itself, and the regional knowledges
and sciences that ape the basic philosophical
conceit. They are the new “data,” the new
empirical knowledge offered up for non-philoso-
phical axiomatization and dissection.10
Granted, the use of a priori in the context of
non-philosophy invites some confusion, since a
76

priori, defined as “from what comes before,” is
inherently based on the concept of relation, in
this case the relation of genetic or structural pri-
ority. But this is a red herring, one of the many
false pitfalls that non-philosophy must weather
as it navigates the vocabulary of philosophy.
Rather, the sense of relationality inherent
within the a priori must be recast, under non-
philosophy, as a unilateral and determined
relation or “non-relation.”
But Laruelle remains a good Kantian in one
sense at least, for just as Kant located philos-
ophy in the domain of the a priori (metaphysics
as the synthetic a priori), so too does Laruelle
locate non-philosophy in the a priori (non-phil-
osophy as axiomatic transcendental identity
and theorematic a priori duality).
It is now more difficult to assess whether or
not non-philosophy is ultimately “synthetic.”
For from one perspective non-philosophy is
resolutely not synthetic, as it withdraws from
all the various synthetic logics such as recombi-
nation, amplification, mixing, dialectical contra-
diction, difference, hybridity, and so on.
Laruelle says on many occasions that non-phil-
osophy is not additive vis-à-vis the One. Thus,
using the strict definition of synthetic as “con-
taining an additive predicate,” non-philosophy
is not additive or ampliative in any way.
Yet in a different sense one might describe
non-philosophy as “synthetic” (or, to lapse to
Laruellean language, in the sense of a “non-syn-
thesis” or a “synthesis-without-synthesizing”)
by virtue of the way in which it brings forth
non-philosophical axioms out of philosophical
mixtures. Thus the various philosophical chi-
meras of Being/Other, Being/being, or One/
Other are set into an identity with the One.
The dyads themselves are not merged or decon-
structed, but merely left intact as data. “Each
one of these [dyads] is by and large treated as
an a priori possessing an identity,” explains Lar-
uelle. “For example, ontological difference
becomes the unilateral duality of Being and
being.”11 So it appears to be at least minimally
“synthetic” – and here the scare quotes matter
– in the sense that it contains something in the
predicate (the unilateral duality of Being and
being) not already evident in the subject
77
galloway
(Heidegger’s ontology or any other ontology of
difference). Yet Laruelle would ultimately not
classify this transformation as additive,
because the process of cloning philosophical
data never produces a combination or mixture
in the strict sense. It only produces a clone or
dual, which is a transcendental identity vis-à-
vis the One and the empirical world of philos-
ophy that it unilateralizes.
Herein lies Laruelle’s curious use of the a
priori. For on the one hand the philosophical
chimeras of Being/Other, Being/being, etc.
are taken to be a priori, just as Kant considered
time and space to be a priori. But on the other
hand Laruelle asserts that these philosophical
chimeras are themselves data: they are what
are given over to non-philosophy as a more or
less empirical or worldly reality that must be
cloned or dualized. Thus as empirical data
“experienced” or processed by non-philosophy,
philosophy occupies the realm of the a poster-
iori. So while philosophy may be a priori to
itself, or for its own purposes, philosophy
itself is also reduplicated as a posteriori data
for non-philosophy.
This is further proof of philosophy’s pro-
miscuous convertibility. The very things that
are profoundly “pure and necessary” or a
priori vis-à-vis philosophy – whether it be Hei-
degger’s Ereignis, or Parmenides’ similitude
of being and thought – flip and reconvert into
empirical assets that may be “measured”
according to the methods of dualysis or
cloning. The empirical assets of philosophy are
translated one into each other, and what
results is the “universal idiom” of non-philos-
ophy. “Non-philosophy is this translation of
Kant ‘in’ Descartes, of Descartes ‘in’ Marx, of
Marx ‘in’ Husserl, etc.”12
Based on this, one might construct the fol-
lowing analytical hierarchy: (1) physics/empiri-
cal data, (2) philosophy/metaphysics, (3) non-
philosophy. Each step exists as an a posteriori
condition that renders up its data for the a
priori claims of the successive steps. Hence (1)
physical laws produce a posteriori data, that
(2) are “possibilized” or abstracted into “con-
ditions of possibility” constituting the a priori
bounds of metaphysical cognition (Kant
 autism of reason
et al.), which themselves (3) are brought forth
according to the brute visibility of the One
(the vision-in-One) as a posteriori data for the
transcendental identities and a priori dualities
of non-philosophy (Laruelle). Such a hierarchy
is purely heuristic, however, since Laruelle
insists that non-philosophy is not morally or
structurally after, higher, or otherwise better
than either philosophy or the empirical world.
To generalize, the a priori/a posteriori dis-
tinction in Kant is more or less territorial,
meaning that the two terms aim to map out
realms of cognition. Whereas in Laruelle the
terms are rational, meaning that they exist at
the level of determination or messianic cause
(e.g., determination-in-the-last-instance, or
force (of) thought). In fact the a priori/a poster-
iori distinction is precisely the kind of distinc-
tion that Laruelle would classify as
irredeemably philosophical. Hence the distinc-
tion per se has little currency as such within
non-philosophy. Like the Being/being distinc-
tion, it acts as data for non-philosophical
analysis.13
But in the end it is the a priori that survives –
the a posteriori does not play much of a role in
non-philosophy – since the One is, in a certain
sense, the radical a priori, shall we not call it
the “prior-without-posterior,” and non-philos-
ophy too is the realm of the transcendental a
priori as it, perforce, clones the One’s own a
priori status.
Granted, there is one sense in which non-phil-
osophy can be understood as a posteriori: non-
philosophy runs posterior to the One, which
determines it. So just as Kant’s time and space
constitute the conditions of possibility for a pos-
teriori experience, one might describe the One
as constituting the conditions of possibility for
non-philosophy. However, this is merely to
articulate things using the parlance of philos-
ophy. In truth of fact, the One is not constitu-
tive of anything, and thus could never
“produce” the possibility matrix that would
allow for the pure vs. the practical or the prior
vs. the posterior. The One is not a “pure
reason” that makes possible a “practical
reason.” That would be to philosophize the
One. Rather, as Laruelle insists over and over,
the One is immanent to itself, and thus can
only be understood as “in” itself (i.e., as “in-
One”). In this sense, the a posteriori is only
ever a provisional category in Laruelle. For the
most part he prefers to radicalize or apriorize
the a posteriori into a pure transcendental
rationality. (In this sense, Laruelle suppresses
the a posteriori in the same way that Deleuze
suppresses the negative: one might say that
Deleuze produces an “absolute value” of the
negative resulting in a cosmos of affirmativity;
whereas Laruelle produces an “absolute value”
of the a posteriori resulting in a pervasive trans-
cendental a priori.)
So whereas Laruelle seems to collapse the a
priori/a posteriori distinction, in essence aprior-
izing it, this does not necessarily mean that non-
philosophy is the domain of the before, the
pure, or the prior.14 On the contrary, non-phil-
osophy is the domain of the last, not the first,
as evidenced by its being causally determined
in the last instance. Laruelle never summons
us to go back to first principles or determine
the universal possibility of cognition, as philo-
sophers like Kant or Heidegger do. Rather, he
entreats the non-philosophical subject to with-
draw from the decision, and dwell alongside
the last, the least, the finite.
So the usual laws of the a priori/a posteriori
give way to reveal a new bizarre logic: non-phil-
osophy is both a priori and a posteriori simul-
taneously. (And here we see some sort of
kinship, however remote, with Deleuze’s
concept of a metastable virtuality.) As a rigor-
ously axiomatic and theorematic science, non-
philosophy transpires exclusively within the a
priori. Yet at the same time it is posterior to
and determined by the One, and for that
matter posterior to philosophy as well, making
it a posteriori vis-à-vis its determining instance.
In sum, while Laruelle and Kant do not use
their terminology in the same way, and indeed
sometimes scarcely speak the same language,
Laruelle has essentially achieved the very thing
that Kant said was impossible: not simply the
analytic a priori – which is not a difficult
achievement, simply endorse identity – but
the analytic a posteriori, something deemed
impossible by Kant.
78

Where does this leave the modern transcen-
dental subject, the kind found in Kant or Des-
cartes? If there is univocal being, as Deleuze
says, there must therefore be monaural existing.
If being expresses itself in one voice, as Deleuze
says, we must have one ear in our reception of
the givenness of being. Laruelle says something
similar, yet unilateralizes the Deleuzian con-
dition into a more radically immanent con-
ception of the human person. Laruelle’s ethics
is a monaural ethics. Not so much an ethics of
the same, his is an ethics of the mono, an
ethics of identity. As an exercise, then, let us
run through Laruelle’s method. Let us clone
and unilateralize the transcendental subject
and see what the result is. Laruelle does not
begin from the One. Instead he begins from
philosophy, from, say, the philosophical
notion of the Ego. From the outset, the Ego
may remain in a fully immanent state, what Lar-
uelle calls the Ego-in-Ego. Or the Ego can also
split into historically and philosophically
specific conditions, the modern Ego, for
example, as seen in the Cartesian contract
between thought and being (cogito ergo sum).
In this sense, the “transcendental dialectic” or
“amphibology” between Ego and subject takes
on a specific, regional profile, which is to say a
certain type of subject grounded in the pact
between thought and being. “The principle of
‘Modernity,’ of ‘Spirit,’ is the amphibious
quality of the Ego and the subject, their
reduction one to the other,” writes Laruelle.
“This subject is the synthesis – but more or
less immediate or mediatised than differentiated
– of Being and thought.”15 There are four terms
at play: Ego and subject, but also thought and
Being. When the Ego takes the form of the Car-
tesian subject, that subject consists of a riven
core in which thought and Being are interrelated
and “amphibiously” intermixed. Laruelle is
offended by the local amphibology of thought
and Being within the Cartesian subject, but he
is also offended by the larger amphibology of
subject and Ego. What Laruelle seeks is a
theory of the subject rooted in an immanent
Ego (the Ego-in-Ego). In other words the anti-
nomy itself does not ground anything at all; its
very auto-positionality – I am a subject in
79
galloway
relation to the transcendental Ego, and the
transcendental Ego manifests itself in individual
subjects like me – is evidence of its vain and
bloated self-sufficiency. The antinomy itself
must be explained. And in this sense, the Ego-
subject antinomy is the philosophical fodder
that allows non-philosophy to begin its work.
As Laruelle says, “we must explain theoretically
why the philosophies of the Ego and the subject
are enmeshed.”16
Thus Laruelle does not begin from the One.
He begins from philosophy, in this case with
the Ego–subject relation in Descartes. Then,
second, by virtue of the force (of) thought he
asserts axiomatically the identity of both Ego
and subject (something like E = s). This consti-
tutes the first movement into non-philosophy
proper. It asserts the transcendental identity
that is “before” or “more generic” than both
Ego and subject. “A theory of the subject is
only possible on the basis of an invalidation of
the confusion of the Ego with the subject or
with the structure of the Philosophical
Decision: the Ego is no longer subject but
rather Real, and the subject is ‘emptied’ too of
its mixtures with the Ego (but not of the Ego
itself).”17 Asserting the identity of Ego and
subject (E = s) is what invalidates the confusion.
Only by virtue of Cartesianism being so auto-
reflexive – the self as it orients back on the
self – can Cartesianism indicate to Laruelle
the way forward toward a generic identity of
the Ego. In other words, the very narcissism
of the Cartesian subject becomes the raw ingre-
dients for immanence within the non-philoso-
phical Ego. And finally, according to the
principle of unilateral duality, he aprioristically
converts the identity into a duality (i.e., con-
verts E = s into E – s). This is non-philosophy
proper. During the process, the One never
really enters in. It only appears “in the last
instance,” because at the end we have arrived
at a condition of the generic real.18
So if it is indeed fair to label Laruelle’s work a
series of “meditations on last philosophy,” a
basic characteristic begins to emerge: Laruelle’s
is a rational messianism, or a messianism of
reason – which he would likely further qualify
as something like “the messianic without the
 autism of reason
messiah.” With a stress given not to first philos-
ophy but to last philosophy (as non-philosophy),
Laruelle injects a messianic temporality into
thinking. Under such messianic temporality
non-philosophy dualizes, Deleuze might say vir-
tualizes, the first and the last, the prior and the
posterior, the a priori and the a posteriori into a
metastable identity of after–before and before–
after. Indeed as in Matthew 20.16, the last
shall be first, and the first last.
•••
First, second, last – what are the most philoso-
phically important numbers? Heidegger evokes
the fourfold; Deleuze and Guattari a thousand
(but it could have been more). For Badiou, the
multiple plays its role, as does infinity. For
Hegel the triad and the operation of the nega-
tive. For Irigaray it is sometimes two, and some-
times not one. For others the binary. For others
still the key numerical concept is simply
nothing. But as we have seen, two numerical
concepts are central in the work of Laruelle:
the One and the dual.
As Laruelle explains, there is no synthesis or
dialectic of the world, only the One and its
various identities:
In immanence, one no longer distinguishes
between the One and the Multiple, there is no
longer anything but n = 1, and the Multiple-
without-All. No manifold watched over by a
horizon, in flight or in progress: everywhere a
true chaos of floating or inconsistent determi-
nations […] Between Identity and Multiplicity,
no synthesis by a third term […]19
In this way, there is an easy shorthand for
remembering the three most important meta-
physicians of the last half century: Deleuze is
n + 1. Badiou is n – 1. Laruelle is n = 1.
Deleuze is the thinker of propagation and rep-
etition, of additive expression (never negative
or dialectical expression). For Deleuze, the
One is the additive product of pure multiplicity.
Hence the plenum is Deleuze’s ontological
terminus.
Badiou, on the other hand, is a subtractivist.
The Badiousian event is never counted as part of
the situation, it is always subtracted from it, as
something apart from being. Hence Badiou’s
terminus is the void.
Laruelle, by contrast, is neither additive nor
subtractive, his operator is neither plus nor
minus, but equals. Laruelle is the great
thinker of radical equality, what he calls identity
(which again etymologically means “same”). He
cares little for the plenum or the void; his termi-
nus is identity, the One as radically immanent
and same without ever having to go outside
itself.
In sum, if Ricoeur’s “hermeneutics of suspi-
cion” framed critique as paranoia, and Deleuze
and Guattari painted philosophy as schizo-
phrenia, Laruelle renders non-philosophy as
autism. Like an autistic child we have difficulty
communicating with the Real. We cannot form
real relationships directly with the One.
Abstract philosophical concepts do not help
much. The One is absolutely foreclosed to us.
Instead we run alongside it, committed to its
Sameness, a life “of science and of the reality
that science can describe, naively in the last
instance.”20 If Deleuze’s heroes are Spinoza,
Hume and other philosophers of radical materi-
alism, Laruelle descends from a different line,
the autistic philosophy of Fichte (I = I) or
Henry (ego).
“Yes, I am autistic in a certain
sense,” Laruelle admitted, with a
sparkle in his eye. “Like a par-
ticle that passes through a
mountain.”21
notes
1 Laruelle, Concept 123.
2 Deleuze 11.
3 Kant 1, 24, 25, 26, 31 passim.
4 “Science and philosophy meet in the universality
of the synthetic a priori,” writes Laruelle, giving
credit to Kant’s centrality in modern philosophical
discourse.
As an example of a non-philosophical under-
taking, we focus directly on the problem of
the a priori. We take the “synthetic a priori
80

judgment,” which Kant revealed to be the
basic essence and algorithm of philosophy in
the form of a hybrid between metaphysics
and science, and treat it as our material.
(See Laruelle, Principes 321, 314)
5 I am grateful to Ray Brassier for his ideas here
and throughout. Needless to say, however, I take
responsibility for the various claims, and possible
shortcomings, of the present essay.
6 Why are additive/synthetic and non-additive/
analytic the only two options? Indeed, a number
of thinkers, among them Alain Badiou and
Giorgio Agamben, have demonstrated the limit-
ations of the analytic/synthetic model. Instead of
additive or non-additive predicates, such thinkers
propose a different approach: a subtractivist
model in which predicates are subtracted from
subjects, not added to them. Using concepts like
the “generic” or the “whatever singularity” these
writers have essentially proposed an alternative
mode irreducible to either the synthetic or the
analytic. See, for example, the sections on the
singular and the generic in Badiou, Being and
Event, or the chapter titled “Whatever” in
Agamben, The Coming Community. While he is not
a “subtractivist” per se, Laruelle can, in a very
general sense, be included in this tradition to the
extent that he endorses a generic state of imma-
nence, whether it be the real as One-in-One or
humanity as Stranger or Man-in-person (Homme-
en-personne). See, for example, Laruelle, “Generic
as Predicate.” On the term “Man-in-person” see
also Laruelle, Future Christ 2, 5, 20 passim, and Lar-
uelle, L’Ultime honneur 26, 50 passim.
7 Laruelle discusses Fichte on a number of
occasions, particularly his treatment of the “I”
(the Self) and the relation “I = I” (Self = Self) only
to dismiss Fichte’s I as an “intellectual intuition”
unable to achieve true immanence within the
real. See, for example, Laruelle, Principes 105–06,
168–85.
8 Recall that while tautology is merely useless for
many, it is more malevolent for others, sympto-
matic of the depraved circularity of modern life.
Marx, for example, begins his explication of the
general formula for capital with the tautological
expression M-M, or money-money, a contracted
form of the C-M-C-M-C-M chain (commodity-
money-etc.). This allows him to inject the
concept of surplus into the chain, resulting in a
81
galloway
cycle of M to M′ (money to money prime) where
money is “not spent [ … but] advanced” (Marx,
Capital 1: 249). Later, theorists like Jean Baudrillard
and Guy Debord would lament the closed circuits
of society and culture precisely for their seemingly
impervious, tautological and therefore repressive
effects. “The spectacle is essentially tautological,
for the simple reason that its means and its ends
are identical” (Debord 15, par. 13). Laruelle, for
his part, is content to shrug off such nefarious con-
notations. Immanence is too seductive a prize for
him. Laruelle maintains that the tautological iden-
tity formula (for example One-in-One) is the
only true expression of immanence.
9 On the theme of Marxism, Laruelle is admittedly
somewhat vulnerable to the same critique that
Rancière makes of Althusser in Althusser’s Lesson.
In that book Rancière indicts Althusser on the
grounds of intellectual elitism, that Althusser, by
making Marx more scientific, was only making
Marxism “safe” for university professors and
other elite technicians. See Rancière, La Leçon 35.
We might be wary, therefore, of similar accusa-
tions made against Laruelle, something like “Lar-
uelle’s Lesson.” There will be those who indict
Laruelle on the grounds that he is transforming
philosophy into the ultimate elite science, non-phil-
osophy, available to few and practiced by almost
none. But this seems to be something of a cheap
shot, as it was in Rancière. So let the indictment
be voiced here, merely paratextually, in the
hopes of pre-emptively inoculating Laruelle of
such a vulnerability in the eyes of others.
10 Laruelle uses data (an Anglicism, in fact, despite
French being closer to Latin) to distinguish it
perhaps from the more prosaic données (data).
Regardless, the Latin origin of data – from the
verb dare, to give – is revealing, particularly for
its phenomenological overtones: data are the
things having been given.
11 Laruelle, Principes 227, 228. One particularly
interesting demonstration of this method of non-
philosophical cloning is Laruelle’s short experimen-
tal piece “Variations on a Theme in Heidegger.”
Starting from one of the most important and
often-quoted passages in Heidegger’s Being and
Time, the section in which Heidegger describes
the ontic distinctiveness of Dasein in terms of its
being ontological, Laruelle repeats and modulates
Heidegger’s language through sixteen successive
paragraphs, like a musician circling back through
 autism of reason
various motifs, until Heidegger’s claims become
more or less globally transformed into non-philos-
ophy. As Laruelle summarizes at the end:
Two series of variations divide up the Philo-
sophical Decision and open it up to “non-
philosophy.” On the one hand, variations
on the circle or the circle as variation:
Being-as-being, Saying-as-said, Logos-as-
differe(a)nce, Desire-as-lack, Everydayness-
as-subject and even Difference-as-One […]
And on the other hand, in effect, variations
that affect the ontical itself, either as being,
as Other, as lack, as substitute – in short, as
One […] When at last man – through the
Vision-in-the-One that he “is,” prior to all
comprehension of Being – sees the circle of
circles pass by again, it’s so he can glimpse it
as it passes outside and under the One,
above and even “over” him, like a cloud
over the moon, or like the sun of reason
over the inalterable opacity of man. It is
then that philosophy floats, indifferent,
through the air of “non-philosophy.” (Lar-
uelle, “Variations” 93–94)
12 Laruelle, Principes 273. Indeed, during his
summary of the axioms and theorems of non-phil-
osophy, Laruelle combines all of the following
figures into a unilateralized, transcendental
identity: Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant, Fichte,
Marx, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Gödel (ibid.
276–77).
13 To be clear, analysis, defined as the process of
dissecting something into its constituent parts, is
typically held at arm’s length by Laruelle, even if
the realm of the analytic is attractive to him. In
other words, analysis per se is no more appetizing
than its complement, synthesis; whereas the ana-
lytic opens the door toward a purely immanent
and generic condition of the a priori.
14 Admittedly, Laruelle speaks in such historio-
graphic terms from time to time, as in his assess-
ment of the Hellenistic and Hebraic wings of
philosophy, both antedated by non-philosophy:
“The ‘historical’ signification of non-philosophy is
established thus in the following way: neither
Greek nor Judaic nor the two combined, non-phil-
osophy is the ante-Greek and ante-Judaic identity of
thought, the experience of thought ‘before’ its Greco-
Judaic disjunction” (Laruelle, Principes 211).
15 Ibid. 99.
16 Ibid. 97.
17 Ibid. 99.
18 The name of Laruelle has at times been
associated with Speculative Realism, due perhaps
to Ray Brassier’s pivotal role in introducing Lar-
uelle to an anglophone readership, and thus
with Object-Oriented Ontology via its association
with Speculative Realism. But it is here, with Lar-
uelle’s theory of the subject, that we see at least
one incompatibility with the kind of realism
espoused by Object-Oriented Ontology. One of
the central tenets of that movement is the so-
called “equal footing” thesis which states that all
objects are on an equal footing. This includes
man, who is just one object among all others.
The “equal footing” thesis suggests essentially
that man, with his outsize pride, has sinned and
must therefore, as compensatory penance, be
reduced to the level of all other objects. In
other words, man, with his aggressive correla-
tionism, has extended his tentacles too far into
the workings of the world, and only a non-corre-
lationist realism can unseat man from his privi-
leged position as arbiter. But as Laruelle writes
in a tantalizingly short piece titled “Theorems
on the Good News”: “It is not man who colo-
nizes the planet, but the planet and the cosmos
who transgress the lonely threshold of man”
(Laruelle, “Théorèmes” 84). Hence Laruelle’s
realism is a very different kind of realism from
that of the “equal footing” thesis. Philosophy
has sinned, not man. The object world has
sinned, not man. Philosophy and the object
world are the progenitors of this depraved corre-
lation, not man. If only they would leave us alone!
Only then could man unilateralize the equality
claims embedded in the “equal footing” thesis.
And having accomplished that, replace this
profane “democracy of objects” unloosed on us
by the planet with a radically immanent object
identity, a unilateral identity between man and
object. That, according to Laruelle, would be a
realism worth talking about.
19 Laruelle, Concept 99.
20 Ibid. 10.
21 From comments made by Laruelle during a
panel discussion at Miguel Abreu Gallery,
New York, 6 April 2011.
82
 galloway

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Michael Hardt. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,
1993. Print.
Badiou, Alain. Being and Event. Trans. Oliver
Feltham. London: Continuum, 2005. Print.
Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Trans.
Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone, 1994.
Print.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant’s Critical Philosophy. Trans.
Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam.
London: Athlone, 1984. Print.
Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena to Any Future
Metaphysics that Can Qualify as a Science. Trans.
Paul Carus. Chicago: Open Court, 1902. Print.
Laruelle, François. The Concept of Non-Photography.
Trans. Robin Mackay. Falmouth and New York:
Urbanomic/Sequence, 2011. Print.
Laruelle, François. Future Christ: A Lesson in Heresy.
Trans. Anthony Paul Smith. London: Continuum,
2010. Print.
Laruelle, François. “The Generic as Predicate and
Constant: Non-Philosophy and Materialism.” The
Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and
Realism. Ed. Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek, and
Graham Harman. Melbourne: re.press, 2011.
237–60. Print.
Laruelle, François. “Obscénité de la philosophie.”
Théorie-Rébellion: Un ultimatum. Ed. Gilles Grelet.
Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005. Print.
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Paris: PUF, 1996. Print.
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Laruelle, François. “Variations sur en thème de
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Alexander R. Galloway
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Gallimard, 1974. Print. E-mail: galloway@nyu.edu
 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 19 number 2 june 2014

P ublished in 2007, François Laruelle’s book

Mystique non-philosophique à l’usage des
contemporains suggests a post-secular turn in
Laruelle’s project of non-philosophy. While Lar-
uelle’s interest in mysticism and the philosophy
of religion is long-standing, Mystique non-phi-
losophique, along with the recently translated
Future Christ, forms part of what Laruelle
refers to as a “triptych” devoted to the theme
of “mystical theorems.”1 For Laruelle, the
stakes of such a project are high; instead of
the familiar debate between “Ancients” and
“Moderns,” Laruelle proposes another debate
– that between the “Moderns” and the eugene thacker
“Futures,” or those subjects co-existent with
and inseparable from an immanent notion of
the world: “In short, if the Moderns, who are
traditional, seize philosophy by the tail of a NOTES ON THE
mathematical real, then the Futures seize philos- AXIOMATIC OF THE
ophy by the head of an other real, that of mysti-
cism. The Moderns are materialists, the Futures DESERT
are spiritualists.”2
At the center of Laruelle’s post-secular turn is contemporaries a commitment to the notion of
the concept of immanence. For Laruelle, mysti- immanence in itself (Deleuze would say a
cism is of interest because it offers a way of “pure immanence”), apart from the classical
thinking about the concept of immanence in axis of transcendence–immanence, but also
philosophy, while also refusing the “decisions” apart from the post-Kantian variant of transcen-
that philosophy must make in order to think dental immanence (for which a philosophy of
immanence as a concept (one of which is the immanence demands a vantage point that is
decision that the very task of philosophy is to not itself immanent).
think of the “everywhere” of immanence as There is an additional point to note, and it is,
encapsulated in the “somewhere” of a philoso- perhaps, the point on which Laruelle begins to
phical concept). In this way Laruelle’s interests depart from both Deleuze and Henry. Lar-
overlap with his fellow-travelers in immanence, uelle’s position is, at first glance, confusing.
Gilles Deleuze and Michel Henry. Like On the one hand, he is committed to thinking
them, Laruelle is skeptical of a “container” immanence in and of itself (thus allying him
concept of immanence, in which immanence is to philosophers of immanence like Deleuze
either immanence “in” something or “of” some- and Henry). On the other hand, Laruelle’s
thing. Similarly, Laruelle shares with his approach of non-philosophy refuses the very
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.950864

85
 axiomatic of the desert
idea of a “philosophy of immanence,” and the
“soft” or “weak” forms of transcendence that
it eventually inculcates – simply by virtue of
being philosophy. The only avenue left open
for Laruelle is to think immanence “non-
philosophically,” by taking the “philosophy of
immanence” as the raw material for a non-
philosophy of immanence (indeed, saying
“non-philosophy of immanence” is redundant;
there is a sense in which, for Laruelle, all
non-philosophy is a non-philosophy of imma-
nence). This means bypassing all philosophical
attempts to “get at” immanence, in favor of a
thought that would think “alongside” imma-
nence. Less the thought of immanence, and
more immanent thought.
Laruelle’s philosophical wager is a grand one
– he refuses to situate immanence within the
category of being, and in so doing refuses all
the dichotomous attributes drawn from this
(intelligible vs. unintelligible, accessible vs.
inaccessible, substantiality vs. nothingness).
Not even a philosophy of flux and flow, of the
virtual and actual, of a plane of immanence or
a field of auto-affection – none of this is
sufficient for Laruelle. In the philosophy of
immanence, one still remains within the
category of being, one still makes it the task of
philosophy to capture (and create) its object of
thought, one still relies on a pre-philosophical
decision that guarantees the intelligibility of
whatever is philosophizable, however horizon-
tal, dispersed, and undulating it may be.
To think immanence and yet to refuse a phil-
osophy of immanence – this is one way of
describing Laruelle’s interest in mysticism. In
a way, mysticism for Laruelle comes in to
perform a shift in philosophical discourse,
from a philosophy of immanence to philosophy
as immanence, from a philosophy capable of
encompassing and encapsulating immanence
“philosophically” (and thus still beholden to a
principle of sufficient philosophy), to a philos-
ophy which, though still concerned with imma-
nence, refuses the territorial imperative that is
part and parcel of philosophical decision
itself. In short, “mysticism” for Laruelle
performs this shift from philosophy to
non-philosophy.
But we should be clear here – mysticism is
not, for Laruelle, a more successful philosophy,
or more philosophical than philosophy. Neither
is mysticism understood naively, as that
“poetic” or “irrational” discourse that superla-
tively exceeds reason, an occluded form of
wisdom that simply proceeds via clichés or gen-
eralities. For Laruelle, mysticism is not even
that branch of theology that negatively allows
us to comprehend the unknown and the
divine. What is it, then? In the opening of
Mystique non-philosophique Laruelle cites
three traditions that feed into his own engage-
ment with mysticism: Gnosticism, eschatology
and apocalypticism, and the tradition of desert
theology. It is in this last tradition – that of
the fourth-century desert hermits, the ascetic
practice of hesychia or stillness, and the desert
motifs in the work of Meister Eckhart – it is
in this eclectic tradition that we can see Laruelle
thinking (alongside) immanence in a non-philo-
sophical way.
•••
In the mystical traditions that Laruelle refer-
ences, the central problem is not just mystical
experience, but the accounting for and of mysti-
cal experience. For mysticism, immanence
arises out of mystical experience, an experience
most often described in terms of a union with
the divine. Such a union may be articulated in
a range of diverse linguistic and conceptual reg-
isters, from affirmationist motifs of divine light
and purging fire, to negative motifs of dark
nights and clouds of unknowing. Often these
two dovetail into a contradictory logic of mysti-
cal union, as when Dionysius the Areopagite
describes the divine as a “ray of divine dark-
ness.”3 Whatever the approach, the mystical
union entails two interrelated aspects – a discur-
sive strategy for indicating the divine as beyond
human thought and language, and a necessary
negation of the self in the moment of union
with this superlative divinity. Many mystical
texts not only attempt to describe the divine
through various rhetorical devices but also
attempt to account for the no less superlative
loss of self in the moment of mystical union.
86

The texts of such well-known mystics such as
John of the Cross or Teresa of Ávila are
replete with a poetics of self-abnegation that is
a necessary component of mystical experience.
On both “sides” of this union, a superlative
divinity meets a mystical subject in the
process of negating itself, thereby passing
beyond discursive thought and language. In
mystical union, thought and language come to
a halt – or, put differently, they arrive at a
point of silence that is the fulfillment of
thought and language. All of this is, of course,
easier said than done. And this is part of the
reason why mysticism is, for a thinker like Lar-
uelle, a privileged discourses on immanence. On
one level the challenge of mysticism is how to
achieve this union with that which is, by defi-
nition, beyond all subject–object relations
within which something called “union” can
possibly take place. Mystics sometimes do
anthropomorphize God (e.g., the erotics of the
“spiritual marriage” motif), but more often
than not the mystical union with the divine is
a union with that which is radically non-
human, with that which is not simply an other
subject “out there,” and for which subject–
subject, human–human relations are but an
impoverished comparison. In mystical union,
one cannot even point to that with which one
is unified.
This challenge is abetted by another one.
Even if we grant that such a union does take
place, the further challenge is how to account
for, and give meaning to, such an experience,
when, strictly speaking, it cannot really be
called an experience at all (an intuition evi-
denced early on in Augustine’s famous question
“What then do I love when I love my God?”). In
mystical union, that with which one is united is
not any thing in particular, neither another
subject nor an abstract concept. In addition, in
mystical union there is no coherent subject
that can possibly have an experience, in that
mystical union necessitates the radical diffusion
of the subject to the point that it overlaps with
the “divine darkness” itself. Immanence per-
vades the mystical problematic, though from
two different “sides” – the immanence of the
divine and the immanence of self-abnegation.
87
thacker
The pinnacle of mysticism is the perfect over-
lapping of these two aspects of immanence.
And, in this sense, the challenge of mystical
union is a philosophical challenge: how to
account for the relation between thought and
world, when that relation is understood
immanently (in which the world recedes into a
non-world, and thought abandons itself in
non-thought).
•••
Though Laruelle does not use such terms, we
can describe the problematic of mystical union
as a problem of mediation. Mediation operates
at several levels, from the primordial mediation
between the mystical subject and the divine
(between the divine and earthly, the superna-
tural and natural), to the communicational
possibility between one subject and another
(the primary concern of the mystical text).
The mystical problematic bifurcates in two
directions. One can achieve union, but then
this necessitates the negation of the subject
that would be united with the divine, and by
implication the relation between thought and
world. One must then relinquish not only the
possibility of adequately describing the mystical
union but of verifying it as well. Mystical union
becomes impossible precisely at the moment
that it is fulfilled. Mystical union is so immedi-
ate that it cannot, in fact, be mediated.
In the other direction, the near opposite is the
case. Due to the loss of the subject (and the
relationship between thought and world pre-
sumably embedded in the subject), any union
with the divine will always be a conciliatory,
partial union. The very act of redescribing or
even of linguistically performing the mystical
union re-establishes the coherence of the mysti-
cal subject and the relation of thought to world.
Thus one cannot achieve union (at least in an
absolute sense); but this failure comes with a
fringe benefit, which is that the persistence of
thought relating to world makes possible a
knowledge of the impossibility of mystical
union. The divine in itself cannot be known
and cannot be the object of a possible experi-
ence, but this impossibility can be known, and
 axiomatic of the desert
the divine only known negatively. Here mystical
union is rendered so opaque that, while it cannot
be known, it can be mediated.
The problem of mystical union, understood
as a problem of mediation, therefore stretches
out in these two directions. If, in the former
instance we have immediacy, or better,
immediation, then in the latter instance we
have its near inverse, or antimediation.4 Both
revolve around the central communicational
axis of mystical mediation – that between the
human, mystical subject and a non-human,
superlative divinity, and that between the mys-
tical text and its reader.
•••
For mysticism – as for philosophy – immanence
is at once self-sufficient and yet a horizon that
thought and language are always in pursuit of.
Immanence is at once everywhere accessible at
all its points, and yet in itself not an existent in
the world or an object for thought. Immanence
is at once the fulfillment of thought and language,
and their silence; at once everywhere, right here
and now, and yet always elsewhere, in some kind
of non-relational “out there.” For mysticism, as
for philosophy, immanence always seems to be
a “distance” that is covered, or discovered, or
traversed.
Conventionally, the way this distance is tra-
versed is via language, and in particular the fig-
urative language of metaphor. In mystical texts,
for instance, topographical metaphors abound
in the description of the divine, from nights
and clouds to deserts and oceans. Laruelle
refers to this as the “phoricity” (phoricité) of
mystical language, the phoros (wορος) being
the capacity “to carry” the unsayable into the
sayable. Phoricity is the operator of mysticism,
in that it traverses the “distance” of mystical-
philosophical immanence. Phoricity is not
simply the linguistic or poetic afterthought of
a more substantial, “philosophical” thought;
rather, for Laruelle, phoricity is at the core of
philosophical thinking itself, the means by
which philosophy is able to think a concept of
immanence at all (and this applies, above all,
to philosophies of immanence).
In a section from Mystique non-philosophique
entitled “Axiomatic of the Desert,” Laruelle
focuses on a central metaphor in mystical texts
– that of the desert. As Laruelle notes: “[i]n
its most arid forms, speculative mysticism
experiences the divinity of God, his sur-
essence, his ground without ground (Eckhart)
as ‘desert.’”5 Historically speaking, the desert
was both a literal and a figurative term in early
Christian mysticism. The so-called desert theol-
ogy of hermits such as Antony and the other
Desert Fathers has come down to us through
hagiographies (such as Athanasius’ Life of
Antony) and collections (such as the
Apophthegmata patrum or Sayings of the
Desert Fathers). Neither philosophers nor theo-
logians, the desert hermits understood the spiri-
tual vocation as inseparably figurative and
literal, the deserts of fourth-century Egypt pro-
viding the literal topography for what Antony
metaphorically names an “inner desert” of soli-
tude, stillness, and abandonment.6 When a later
thinker such as Eckhart speaks of mystical
union as the “silent desert of no distinction,”
he is extending the desert theology tradition to
the philosophical problematic of immanence
and an immanent notion of the divine.7
However, Laruelle is not simply interested in
resurrecting a lost tradition. The phoricity of
mystical-philosophical immanence, with its pri-
vileged exemplar of the desert, forms the basis
for what Laruelle describes as three approaches
to the problematic of immanence:
The Desert is a metaphor for a change of field
[changement de terrain] in metaphysics,
whereas it is an epekeinaphor, a performative
term of this change in its traditional mystical
usage. Finally, it is a first name [nom premier]
of the One-in-One, which can also be said of
mystical-fiction as the desert of philosophy,
thought, and language.8
The desert is for Laruelle more than a poetic
metaphor for God or mystical experience; it is
a stand-in for the problem of divine immanence,
though it stands-in in different ways. In the
passage above Laruelle delineates three facets
of the desert, three ways in which immanence
is thought: the desert as metaphor for
88

philosophy, the desert as what he calls an “epe-
keinaphor” for mysticism, and finally the desert
as the absence of any “phoricity” whatsoever,
leading to a practice Laruelle provocatively
terms mystique-fiction. We can address each
of these in turn.
For philosophy the desert signifies the separ-
ation of philosophy from its object, a separation
from an immanence with which it was primor-
dially unified, but which in and of itself is not
an existent and therefore non-being or
“nothing.” Philosophy thus seeks a re-unifica-
tion with this primordial, pre-philosophical
“nothing” via the analogy of figurative language,
and the metaphor of the desert. Here the desert
metaphor indicates a tendency towards the
thought of negation and non-being, though
this still takes place within the representational
framework of figurative language, which thinks
this negation and this non-being philosophically
(through absence, privation, subtraction). This
is encapsulated for Laruelle by the phrase
changer de terrain, or the way in which philos-
ophy is able to philosophize everything – includ-
ing nothing – by shifting its focus, by changing
gears, by a change of pace.
By contrast, the desert in mysticism is less
concerned with representation and more con-
cerned with presentation. The emphasis in mys-
ticism on mystical union with the divine favors
immediacy over mediation, spontaneity over
rehearsal – but mysticism, like philosophy,
must find some way of “getting at” the non-
being of the desert while preserving the site
from which it may speak (even if spoken nega-
tively). And so whereas philosophy uses meta-
phor, mysticism employs what Laruelle terms
an epekeinaphor – from επεκεινα or
“beyond.” Whereas the metaphor of philosophy
rises above immanence by encapsulating it in
figurative language, the epekeinaphor of mysti-
cism attempts to pass beyond immanence by
embodying it, by speaking it, and by performing
it. Whereas philosophy forms the desert
through discourse, mysticism performs the
desert in the ascesis of prayer and spiritual exer-
cise. Whereas philosophy seeks a lost union with
immanence via metaphor, mysticism seeks an
89
thacker
adequate distance from immanence via a perfor-
mative language of epekeinaphor.
However, both philosophy and mysticism
presuppose a vantage point from which the
desert (as immanence, as the One) can be
accessed, or a vantage point in relation to
which the desert can be discursively engaged.
With philosophy/metaphor, language produces
a lost synthesis via a phoricity of affirmation
(e.g., mystical theology’s orthodox systematiza-
tion of symbols and metaphors for God,
Christ, and divine theophanies). With mysti-
cism/epekeinaphor, language manifests an
already-existing synthesis, though via a phori-
city of negation (e.g., apophatic turns of
phrase in mystical poetry).
•••
Ultimately, the desert for Laruelle cannot be
just an argument or a poem, a concept or a
prayer. The desert, as a nom-premier or “first
name” of the One, is neither figurative nor
literal, but always en-desert, to use an Eckhar-
tian phrase, one that Laruelle employs repeat-
edly: “The Desert is en-desert and only
discovers itself in this manner.”9 The desert is
at once inaccessible and yet intimate, an imma-
nence that can only be articulated as unilaterally
opaque and yet always “in-person” (en-
personne), here and now. As Laruelle notes,
borrowing terms from mystical theology, “the
Heart and the Word find in the Desert a presup-
posed real, but the Desert is foreclosed to the
Soul and to the Heart, to the Word or to
Prayer.”10 But if one relinquishes any and all
vantage points, any fidelity to discourse or per-
formance, any investment in the syllogism or
the song, then what remains?
This is where Laruelle evokes a non-philoso-
phical mysticism, a non-mysticism that must
remain impervious to the double criteria of
reason and faith, something bearing within
itself both truth and falsehood. This non-mysti-
cism would refuse both philosophy (and its
metaphor) and mysticism (and its epekeina-
phor), a double refusal of the “above” and the
“beyond”:
 axiomatic of the desert
The split desert of mysticism is only one of a
duality of deserts, of which the other is
neither in God nor in the World but in-Man
[en-Homme]. It is the Deserted, the Forsaken
desert, the “in-desert” of the Without-con-
sistency [Sans-consistance]. It distinguishes
itself from Nothingness, which partakes of
Being. It is not even of the “realized” as is
the unconscious – it is the Real … The
desert is “en-desert” [en-désert] and only dis-
covers itself in this manner; it is content to
“en-sist,” whereas things exist and meaning
insists.11
Laruelle calls this a mystique-fiction, which we
can roughly translate as “mystical fiction” or
even “mystic-fiction.” A mystique-fiction
doesn’t make the philosophical claim to more
authentically “get at” the truth of mystical
experience and the hermeneutics of mystical
union. But neither does it simply dispense
with all the fetters of thought and language, in
a romanticized and hyper-authentic free verse.
The mystique-fiction is, for Laruelle, this third
alternative to philosophy and mysticism, the
double refusal of the “above” and the “beyond.”
But what is this language, this mystique-
fiction, that is neither metaphorical nor epekei-
naphorical, neither figurative nor performative,
neither a signifying language nor a language of
action? At some points, Laruelle’s descriptions
tend towards negative descriptions, evoking a
mystique-fiction that would entail “a new
usage of language that is non-metaphorical and
non-epekeinaphorical,” a language “cloned by
the Desert itself,” a usage of language that
relies neither on the “intuitive” nor the
“naive” concept of the desert (where “the
desert” is a kind of stand-in for the One).12
Such descriptions seem to point to the need to
create a new language beyond philosophy or
mysticism. But Laruelle’s general approach
suggests that such a language cannot simply be
created de novo, though the call for a language
that is neither figurative nor performative
points to a language that can hardly be said to
be a language at all. Here one senses an almost
Wittgensteinian preoccupation, in which philo-
sophical language – in order to become non-phi-
losophical – delimits its own possibilities.
At other times Laruelle suggests a tactic of
appropriation and transformation, an approach
perhaps more indicative of non-philosophy, in
which non-mysticism and the language of the
mystique-fiction takes mysticism and mystical
language as its raw material. Laruelle demon-
strates this throughout Mystique non-philoso-
phique, in his appropriations of the language
of theology and mysticism (the desert, hesychia,
prayer, Hell, heresy, Messiah, and so on): “The
subject draws on this vocabulary and transfig-
ures it […] like the Word detached from intui-
tion and from philosophical naı̈veté, from
‘phoricity’ in general.”13 Here Laruelle takes
up the Christian theological apparatus and
“clones” it as the “first names” of the One,
Vision-in-One, and Unilateral Duality. Here
mysticism neither gives voice to a faith beyond
reason, nor is it a testimony in an enigmatic
language beyond language. Mysticism – or
rather, this non-mysticism – comes to be under-
stood as a set of practices that are at once deter-
mined “in the last instance” by a foreclosed One
or Real, and yet which are never separate from
this One/Real, in so far as it is radically imma-
nent, here and now, “in-person.”
To these approaches we should also add
another one, which is the role of silence in
relation to the mystique-fiction. Earlier, we
noted how the desert in mysticism was both a
literal and figurative terrain, a topology across
which philosophy is able to cast its epistemo-
logical gaze, and through which mysticism is
able to empty itself of philosophical concepts.
As a “first name” of the One, the desert for Lar-
uelle therefore evokes both discourse and its
negation, both language and silence: “To
change terrain – this inaugural formula in
effect signifies the limitrophic exceeding of all
terrain, thus the terrain of language, exceeding
the World towards God, God towards Divinity,
and finally Divinity towards Silence.”14
Passages such as these dovetail with a
number of Laruelle’s terms in Mystique non-
philosophique – prayer (which Laruelle calls
“the axiom of the heart”), hesychia or stillness,
the Word-without-logos (Verbe-sans-logos), and
the Invocable, a suggestive term which indicates
the saying of that which cannot be said. Does
90
 thacker

Laruelle indicate this silence as the culmination 10 Ibid. 258.

of mystique-fiction, as its ground, or both? Is
Laruelle’s silence then similar to the silence of
a thinker like Maurice Blanchot or Wittgen-
stein, or is this silence a reference to the mysti-
cal tradition of hesychia, asceticism, and
quietism? If silence is neither the pinnacle nor
the failure of language, then what comes
“after” silence for the mystique-fiction?
Whereas the call to create language anew and
the call to reappropriate an existing language
are both practices, what would be the practice
(the ascesis) of this silence, this “in-the-last-
silence” (en-dernier-silence)?
Perhaps, using Laruelle’s terms, we can say
that the desert, as the “first name” of the One,
is only silence “in the last instance.” These
and other terms all revolve around language
and silence, or, perhaps, the silence in language
– silence as another “first name”
of the One, unilaterally deter-
mining the language of mysti-
cism and yet immanent at each
turn of phrase, “in-the-last-
silence.”
11 Ibid. 259.
12 Ibid. 258.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
bibliography
Athanasius. The Life of Antony and the Letter to
Marcellinus. Trans. Robert C. Gregg. New York:
Paulist, 1980. Print.
Dionysius the Areopagite. Pseudo-Dionysius: The
Complete Works. Trans. Colm Luibheid.
New York: Paulist, 1987. Print.
Laruelle, François. Mystique non-philosophique à
l’usage des contemporains. Paris: L’Harmattan,
2007. Print.
Meister Eckhart. The Complete Mystical Works of
Meister Eckhart. Ed. and trans. Maurice O’C.
Walshe. NewYork: Herder, 2009. Print.

notes
1 Arguably, Laruelle’s interest in mysticism, both
as a topic and as a style, stretches back to the
1980s and the series of short, experimental texts
he published in his journal La Décision philosophique
– texts such as “Du Noir Univers,” “Biographie de
l’Oeil,” and “Théorèmes de la Bonne Nouvelle.”
2 Laruelle 8–9. All translations from this text are
my own.
3 Pseudo-Dionysius 135.
4 I attempt to draw out these ideas of immediation
and antimediation in “Wayless Abyss: Mysticism,
Mediation, and Divine Nothingness,” Postmedieval
3.1 (2012): 80–96.
5 Laruelle 159. Eugene Thacker
School of Media Studies
6 Athanasius 68. The New School
7 Eckhart 310. 79 Fifth Avenue, 16th Floor
New York, NY 10003
8 Laruelle 258.
USA
9 Ibid. 259. E-mail: thackere@newschool.edu
 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 19 number 2 june 2014

I present here sixteen points articulated prin-

cipally using Decision, a form of combative
enunciation called upon by Chairman Mao
Tse-tung in 1966, the Khmer Rouge in 1975,
Guy Lardreau in 2001 and me for the first
time in 2006. (The line has been reconstructed
with such clear continuity in order to put
others at ease – we know how important it is
to be gentle with people, to reassure them, and
not to rush them.) These sixteen points are
worth no more in themselves taken one by one
than when they follow one another in a well-
linked continuity: they are some principles,
not in the sense of an image of the origin, of
the beginning, of a source acting as Principle
(with an upper-case P), first principle or even gilles grelet
principle of principles, but in the sense of
elements, laws, or formulas of an apparatus [dis- translated by anthony paul smith
positif], and also of the theatre of war, the front
lines of an army. Against every discipline sired
from difference, let this be a mass order of the PROLETARIAN GNOSIS
last instance.
[1.2] By proletarian gnosis one should understand
[1] Proletarian gnosis [Gnose prolétarienne] has the engagement, always and forever, of a rebellion
the same kind of relationship to gnosticism, and that might not be a semblance.
religious and learned gnosis in general, as the
Gauche prolétarienne (the French Maoist organ- [2] I say: the world is a whorehouse where prac-
ization that existed from 1968 to 1973) had with tice is the whore and philosophy the great
leftism and the political and ideological left in madam.
general. Meaning virtually none.
[2.1] A world reduced to its essential traits and
[1.1] This term, proletarian gnosis, which has been mechanisms is an agnostic world. It is born and
lingering in my mind for some ten years, desig- perpetuates itself, immortalizing itself and
nates an apparatus of thought and action, of a wanting to know nothing of gnosis.
thought-act, faithful to the desire for an intensifica-
[3] The agnostic world is the self-encompassing
tion of existence, of hatred for the world and its
sanctity – it is all one, which has animated so set of all the facts, of everything that takes place,
many rebellions, rebellions of all kinds but particu- it is what determines human existence through
larly religious and political ones, for which the and through as having no other horizon, no
names Plato, Mani, the Desert Fathers, and Rous- other meaning except for sufficiency and
seau provide some obscured impressions. survival.
ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/14/020093-6 © 2014 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.950865

93
 proletarian gnosis
[3.1] The agnostic world – as sufficient totalization
fundamentally deprived of an orientation, fore-
closed to meaning, proceeding by successive circu-
larities, by encircling – is the empire of facts: the
Empire(cal).1
[3.2] A place simultaneously of prison and protec-
tion, reduced to the strict entanglement of flesh
endowed with speech, of the general equivalent
and horizontal law; a place that disposes integrated
organization for a systematic disorientation or
metaphysical “Occidentalization”: a whorehouse,
how could it be said any other way?
[3.2.1] There is an essential mysticism in empiricism, in
the discursive construction that maintains and spreads
the empire of facts. It is only because empiricism
opposes itself less to idealism and idealism’s central fea-
tures fused with empiricism that they do not constitute
together the major modes of spiritualism – spiritualism
being the thought for which there is a Principle through
which everything is engendered, to which everything is
related as to its origin and end, there being some name
that receives this Principle, Spirit for example. And
with spiritualism, if we push the explanation of it to
the point where we recognize the power of self-encom-
passing or of world-forming by which, over innumerable
local masters, it acts as mastery of masters: well then this
is nothing other than Occidental philosophy, from Aris-
totle to Badiou. (For indeed Badiou is a spiritualist,
albeit an ultra-progressive neo-Stoic spiritualist, and so
is just as falsely Platonic or materialist as he is falsely
Maoist. This was already clear enough with the first
volume of Being and Event; it has become semi-
evident now with the second volume, Logics of Worlds.)
[3.2.2] A whorehouse, how could it be said any other
way? Cave-dwelling culture. Or just culture in general.
[4] Without philosophy the world, as self-
encompassing set or sufficient totality, would
not form itself nor, a fortiori, would not main-
tain itself within being. Philosophy is that self-
encompassing mastery that constitutes the
world: able to shut away, and shut others up
with it [puissance de bouclage, et de faire
qu’on la boucle] (for gnosis at least, because
for the rest philosophy lets loose the most
uncontrollable chatter).
[4.1] Self-encompassing is the proper power of
philosophy. It is by and through such self-encom-
passing that philosophy exists omnipresently,
beyond the academic discipline that seems to be
the only one still pushing the brand. Philosophy
envelops man in each place, in each moment of
his existence, but, like the devil, philosophy’s
ruse is that of passing itself off as an insignificant
thing, an old tired woman who keeps harping
away and who nobody really takes seriously.
[4.2] Encompassing and self-encompassing power,
philosophy, madam mother of the agnostic whore-
house, finds its principle of perpetuation in suffi-
cient s(p)ecularity or SS, and its machine in
practice, a dialectical or transactional essence
(rather than prostitutional so that we can cover
these procedures with a veil of hypocritical propri-
ety), a matrix of universal semblance and the
“sékommça” effect.2
[4.2.1] Let us pose the quasi-equation unfailingly over-
seeing and facilitating life: practice = dialectic = trans-
action = prostitution, I throw the amateurs of nuance
back to their vices. (Spitting out these nuances does
not, however, mean we can ignore certain subtleties,
those, firstly, that consist in admitting the existence
of a non-transactional dialectic, a dialectic that is not
unified, an absolute dialectic that is another name for
the Two, for war as the real of reality. Still, not speak-
ing here of an anti-dialectic seems greatly abusive.
Undoubtedly it does not happen by accident that this
abuse of language is sometimes the doing of pro-
fessional philosophers, and not even the worst ones.)
[5] Gnosis is the truth itself, known by the act
that establishes it in averting all the facts that
deny it.
[5.1] There is an agnostic truth, relative, tied to the
cut between Being and Thought: “The cut between
Being and Thought, that which expresses itself in
the series of discourses grounded there, this is
the same condition for the bursting forth of the
notion of truth. Through this, philosophy and
Western science exhaust themselves in affirming
that, in grace, the miracle of some adequacy, of
some agreement, this gaping void that they have
birthed and that erodes their existence disappears,
affirming that they have the power to link up what
has always been separated” (Guy Lardreau, Le
Singe d’or (Paris: Mercure, 1973) 185). The agnos-
tic truth is a matter of content and adequacy, it
concerns objects and the knowledge that we can
have of them: it is the truth of the world, by and
for the world, the truth that is world-forming
[fait-monde] or through which the readymade-
world [ faire-monde] is kept.
[5.2] There is a gnostic truth, gnosis-truth, that is
absolute. Formal or without an object, it only
exists on the cutting edge of a bias, of a decision:
it concerns a subject, and the knowledge
94

[connaissance] that it is in person. Weak and infall-
ible (although indefinitely rectifiable), the gnosis-
truth or subject-truth is the only truth that
merits the name.
[6] In order to be within the truth, one must
dare to be decisive and to make a cut, one
must dare to take a stand, so that every relation
to the truth or rather every relation of truth is
always in some way a relation of terror.
[6.1] If in order to be within the truth, if in order to
not be within illusion or lying, it is necessary to be
decisive and to cut, because the truth is both arrow
and target all at once and in the same gesture: the
truth separates truth and semblance.
[7] Contrary to the facts, needing nobody to
spread their empire (the facts only sometimes
need agents, who in fact being substitutable
one for another, are precisely no one), the
truth requires a subject in order to establish it,
in order to bring about the cut that follows it.
[7.1] The subject of truth, a kind of squat truth
that repulses [révulse] the world (and even who
makes the world), is what the late Lacan means
when he says, “I rebel against philosophy [ je m’in-
surge contre la philosophie]” (qtd in Slavoj Ž ižek,
The Ticklish Subject (London and New York:
Verso, 1999) 250, which I use because this excel-
lent remark is notably qualified there by Ž ižek as
“pathetic”).
[7.2] The subject of truth is the anti-philosopher,
in the very precise sense that begins with the
gnostic determination of truth, that is: the
subject of anti-philosophy as rigorous gnosis.
[8] Between (gnostic) truth and (agnostic) world
there is nothing in common, no possible agree-
ment – and likewise no more indifference,
except when simulated for specific tactical
results. In short, a war.
[8.1] A war, the basic tenets of which Sloterdijk
recently outlined: “[ … S]ince Plato, a civil war
has been waged over the definition of human
society. Some define it as a unity for survival, as
the association of those who look to maintain the
genetic line. Others say that society must be under-
stood as a confederation of those who seek the
Truth. With regard to survival, those in the
second camp, often single and close to death
without children, have with a certain flippancy
95
grelet
distinguished themselves. There is a war between
those who seek the Truth and those who sustain
the illusions useful for survival, the simulacra
that make us want to continue living, beginning
with theatre and literature … ” (Peter Sloterdijk,
“Pour être philosophe, il faut devenir un person-
nage de roman,” interview with Jean Birnbaum,
Le Monde, 21 May 2010).
[8.2] Correcting Sloterdijk’s last sentence, I instead
say: beginning with philosophy, which within the
metaphysical Occident globalizes control by cover-
ing each particular master, philosophy acts as a
(transcendental) mastery of all the (empirical) mas-
teries, of all the fabrications of simulacra that
fasten man to the world.
[9] In the war of the world and truth, the philo-
sophical arsenal is endowed with a number of
first-rate weapons: the reformist intellect, first,
by which the two ways, the two parties, the
way (or party) of the truth or the way (party)
of the world, are said to require (and thus can
be) compromise, ceding ground to a progressive
compromise; the ideal, then, that substitutes
itself for the truth within the framework
[cadre] of the dialectic of intellect; the event,
finally, which takes the place of truth at the
moment when conditions ultimately make revo-
lution more preferable than reform.
[9.1] To be intelligent, or to be a philosopher, is to
refuse unilaterality (always narrow-minded, or
even fanatic, fundamentalist, or downright delir-
ious), it is to be capable of reconciling the irrecon-
cilable via a compromise, an intermediary solution
that respects the two part(ie)s by not making them
give up anything essential, etc. We all know the
speeches and pseudo-virtues that these settlements,
be they little or great, drape themselves in: toler-
ance, liberty, etc. and so on. But there is more:
the ceding ground with which it would be necessary
and thus possible to dispose of total defeat, either
regarding the truth or the world, at the cost or
rather by virtue of a “win-win” transaction is the
very form of intelligence itself, and yet it is in
any case the nadir of intelligence.
[9.2] The agreement obtained through that dialec-
tical grace between the truth (meaning what is
impertinent to every compromise) and the world
(for which compromise is the essential ground
and impulse) is a transactional arrangement
(a bribe) [une passe] where what is called truth is
 proletarian gnosis
in reality the ideal – all of this being just another
name for lying (hocus pocus [tour de passe-passe]).
[9.2.1] “You have no need of that exalted word ideal,
when we have that excellent native expression lying”
(Henrik Ibsen, The Wild Duck).3
[9.3] Revolution, a procedure systematically rotat-
ing a homogeneous world, pivots around an event-
of-truth. Revolution is the absolute dialectical
weapon which philosophy uses in order to reassure
its mastery when the means of harmonization (hap-
piness, intellect, dialogue and correction, this is the
quartet of the ideal, whether it is concrete or not is
beside the point) or the means of everyday ideologi-
cal policing have failed.
[9.3.1] There is an ambiguity in this dialectic, driven
back into its bunker, which in playing its role as guard-
rail for the world’s eternity must flirt with the Two (cf.
§4.2.1). This ambiguity being the way of the devil, of
the “prince of this world.”
[9.3.2] Here is the formula that Tancredi (Alain Delon)
addressed to his uncle, the Prince of Salina (Burt Lan-
caster), in The Leopard (dir. Luchino Visconti, 1963):
“If we want things to stay as they are, we have to
know how to change everything.”4 This formula crys-
tallizes the full circularity of revolutionary practice,
and it argues too that revolution and reaction are in a
reciprocal relationship, like the One and the Multiple
are in Neo-Platonic henologies.
[10] In the war between the world and truth the
ones who refuse to play the crude game of the
world (played by refusing the truth, either in
that cynical way or in that vitalist way, in the
name of the demands of survival, sensual and
dominating for the first, or devoted to bustling
activity for the second) and who refuse to
submit to the ideal (to the travesty of the cat-
egory of truth in that manner pretending to be
compatible with the world’s revolutions) are
the ones who may rupture with the sphere of
the world, rupture with the sphere of the poss-
ible, with the sphere of mastery and its rules of
imperial composition. These are the ones who
can aim at the impossible. To them is given
rebellion.
[10.1] The impossible, let it be the advent of this
monster: a gnostic world, a world that is in each
of its points a negation of the world and its prin-
ciple of survival, a world that is an anti-world. To
make truth and world coincide in the blink of an
eye, realizing the systematic return or the
conjuring of the world, this is not the ideal but con-
crete-reality, here and now, of the sequences of
rebellion said to be cultural that traverse and punc-
tuate history (culture, cf. §3.2.2, being brought
back to the general mastery, of which the local
masters are ideological emanations).
[10.2] Contrary to revolutions (which inscribe their
relationship to power within the element of a
general mastery that they respect, what we might
call dialectical ontology), rebellions do not aim at
power, to occupy power, but emancipation from
power, of every power, of the sphere of the
Empire(cal) that conditions every power. “We
can speak of an ontological difference between
‘rebellion’ and ‘revolution.’ A ‘political’ position
is not necessarily meant by ‘rebellion’, but rather
a slipping outside the lines of political servitude,
outside of the world devoted to the masters who
subjugate man to desire, to lack, to socialization”
(Christian Jambet, “Philosophie angélique” in
Cahiers de L’Herne: Henry Corbin, ed. Christian
Jambet (Paris: L’Herne, 1981) 105).
[10.3] The way of the impossible, the quest for the
impossible straight from the sensible, of its realiz-
ation here and now, crosses out all the rules of
worldliness. The way of the impossible is the way
of delirium. No wonder then that the world takes
hold of this argument so that it can splay its
blade into the discourse of madness and thereby
completely refuse an autonomous treatment. But
we are able to consider delirium instead, for only
delirium separates delirium from madness.
[11] In its time the Gauche prolétarienne or GP,
both as subjective upheaval and organized
action, constituted the last real, not anecdotal,
collective effort in France to “mount an assault
on heaven” and to “touch people to their very
souls,” in order to live a life here below in
strict adherence to the absolute and with no
quarter given to the world, a life of the angel
[vie d’ange] that would be at the same time an
emptying [vidange], a purging of the world
completely.
[11.1] In a truncated form we could say that its pro-
gramme was this: proletarization and militariza-
tion. The former corresponds to the line of
formation (dozens of militants abandon the intel-
lectual life so they can establish themselves in a
factory, there they pursue militant activism and
re-educate themselves with the masses, with the
96
 grelet
working people); the latter a doctrine of symbolic
violence in order to change things in their heads
and to arouse an uprising of the spirit on the
widest scale: “We wanted only a clearing away for
a workers’ world, rising up little by little, clearing
away the bourgeois world and all society, and even
the city,” wrote Péguy in Notre jeunesse (an
edition preceded by De la raison (Paris: Galli-
mard, 1993) 232), which is a much-loved citation
even by the older members of the GP.
[11.2] Inevitably it was a failure, massive and
pathetic, but not a submission to the world: the
auto-dissolution took place, sending a message
from the real/refusing to bestow the least laurels
onto reality.
[12] Proletarian gnosis, being both subject and
object within an analogical unfolding (analogy
being the only fertile reasoning, the only
method of invention within thought), again
takes up the programme of the GP: proletariani-
zation through formation and militarization
through symbolic violence. Its structure
brings together two instances, soul and body,
theory and method, (anti-philosophical) canon
and (non-religious) organon, within the
pulsing interstice of real and reality. With this
commitment: establish a subject and arm it.
Establish it (within the domain of the real,
meaning nothing to do with reality). Arm
it (against reality, meaning against the
Empire(cal), the empire of facts, that which
appears and makes the world).
[12.1] Or just as well: be a saint, without divine
guarantee. (God being understood here as a
supreme reality, as a Name for a Principle with
an upper-case P. As that by and in which World,
Cosmos, Creation consist, mutatis mutandis.)
[13] There is necessarily the following quadri-
partition, which describes the order (of the)
real, the order of the last instance: real or (r),
real of reality or R, reality of the real or S,
reality or I.
[14] Let (r R/S < I) be the working formula
for proletarian gnosis.
[14.1] (r), root and remainder, the parentheses
marking the radical absence of reality, positivity,
or the empirical – designates the last poor, solitary
to the end, he who remains, without flesh, without
97
words or world, man reduced to his hickceity
[manance], to his melancholic base, neither imma-
nent nor transcendent, and within which the
elementary determination bathes each reality
(hence enveloping the formula by parentheses).
For, the essence of man, the real-man, the
radical hick [manant], is not the set of social
relations (which, however deep the determination
might be, never touches the existence of man,
human reality); it is melancholy, which is to man
as divinity is to God.5
[14.2] (r) X, for any X whatsoever, designates the
determination in the last instance or the proletaria-
nization of X, its establishment within the real
element. Yet at the same time it designates the
foreclosure of (r) to every reality, that this (r)
acts on X, determines it, without being determined
in return. Acting as a negative and intensive uni-
versal cause, (r) calls for every X to take leave
from itself, to divide itself, forbidding it all suffi-
ciency as much as forbidding every pretension to
the real.
[14.3] R designates the instance of nothing or the
void, the respective immanent and transcendent
dimensions of the Dispierced, that is the cleaved
identity of dispersion and the pierced, of war and
love, of despondency and enthusiasm, of horror
and beauty within which the real of reality consists.
This radical Two, rather than a radical absolute, is
theory, soul, subject without form or substance,
without body or flesh: nothing but a whirlwind of
immense energy, a can(n)on reaching towards the
heights or settling much lower than the earth,
giving its brilliance to reality and pulverizing it,
robbing it of its splendour.
[14.4] S designates the instance of the symbolic or
form, body and method: organon. Formula, law,
institution, scene, screen, boat … the reality of
the real is such that, by and through it, a subjective
circumscription can take place, an antidote to the
empirico-transcendental circles of this hell-world,
even of philosophy. This non-worldly circumscrip-
tion is the invention of a line finally opened onto
infinity, of a body whose very violence of finitude
at once and in the same gesture forms a blockage
or screen to the world and conditions access to
the infinite.
[14.5] X/Y, for any X and Y whatsoever, signifies
the articulation-division or montage in truth of X
and Y. When X = R and Y = S, we speak of the
canonization of S by R and of the militarization
 proletarian gnosis

of R by S. The subject (as real of reality, or soul) 2 This term was coined by Lacan and became a
and its symbolic arsenal (as reality of the real, or major concept for Guy Lardreau and Christian
body) are distinct, separated, but the first term Jambet in their L’Ange. It’s a homophone for
only truly exists supported by or montaged with “c’est comme ça,” which could be literally trans-
the second. Hence “/” designates the operation lated as “that’s how it is,” which is used in everyday
of truth, recalling the Christic statement, “I am French to denote a kind of realist fatalism in a way
the way, the life, and the truth.” Truth that, there- similar to the English expression “what are you
fore, is the arrow and the target. gonna do?”
[14.6] I designates the instance of the imaginary or 3 Translation slightly modified to match the
of auto-realizing substance. Mixture and movement, French.
fusion of flesh and spirit, of imagination and the
4 Translation slightly modified to match the
understanding, physical and mental, experience
French.
and representation, phenomenality and s(p)ecular-
ity, it is the life of the world, even the worldly. 5 Here Grelet is playing on a neologism of his cre-
ation manance, which is the adjectival form of the
[14.7] X < I, whatever the degree of humanity or
noun manant, normally translated as yokel or
real in X, designates its realization, worlding [mon-
low-born. Manance also plays on the manence of
danisation] or s(p)ecularization, the enriching and
Proclus, as that which remains or is radically
making the world eternal through the vampiric
present and individual, and thus is closely related
devouring of what is always the blood of man.
to the Latin haecceity, and so I have tried to
[15] The armed subject of proletarian gnosis is a capture both Grelet’s stylistic performance and
soul symbolically militarized, established by (r), meaning with the pun “hickceity” and have trans-
lated manant as “hick.”
that which is alone, abandoned, poor and rebel-
lious within the incessant revolutions of reality:
(r), soul [âme] and weapon [ârme] – an a(r)me.
[15.1] For this form of GP as for the other, where
there is rebellion, there is the subjective proletariat
(the truth in an a(r)me, the eternity of truth that
slices, that imposes a division between those who
are scared by death and everyone else); and so
where there is the objective proletariat, the factual
proletariat, there is not necessarily rebellion.

[16] How can we be neither living (client or

agent of this whorehouse-world), nor dead (or
too quickly lethal, particularly for oneself)? Pro-
letarian gnosis offers a solution to this problem:
be a living-suicide. A saint
without any glory except some
ravaged intensity much like the Gilles Grelet
sovereign in his act of being. Go E-mail: gillesgrelet@hotmail.com
to the sea. Twitter: Twitter@GillesGrelet

Anthony Paul Smith

notes La Salle University
1 The original French has Empir(i)e, which contains Department of Religion
both empire (Empire) and empirie, which refers to 1900 W. Olney Avenue
empiricism. I’ve tried to capture this pun in Philadelphia, PA 19141
English as Empire(cal). All notes are the USA
translator’s. E-mail: smithanthony@lasalle.edu
 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 19 number 2 june 2014

introduction

C arl Schmitt’s Political Theology (first

published in 1922) brings to light the
violent precondition of any law or political con-
tract: the act of introduction of a law, that is, of
inauguration of any self-organizing principle of
a society, carried out by the bearer of sover-
eignty, is “pre-legal.” It is the result of the
pure Will (the pure Desire, the Real or the
Unilateral Difference) taking place prior to
any form of social accord which is, in its
determination-in-the-last-instance, a discursive
instance. The inauguration of a law is an act of
violence and its origin is the pre-discursive katerina kolozova
domain of sovereignty. In its last instance, any
political order and any legal system does not
come to being from a certain rational or discur- VIOLENCE
sive principle, but rather from the Real-of-
Sovereignty. the indispensable condition
Amidst the discursiveness of the political of the law (and the political)
stands the bearer of sovereignty as a void, that
is, as a stance of pure power devoid of discourse,
as the sheer experience of unilateral assertion of engendered by violence but also continuously
will. All law stems from a certain “Because I sustained by it. He distinguishes between pure
said so.” The latter is a statement that is (or divine) violence and violence as means,
meager in terms of discursive contents, an apo- insisting that the latter is always either law-
phasis which consists in the empty performative making or law-preserving:
gesture (nonetheless, by recourse to discursive All violence as a means is either lawmaking
means) of power. It is but a sheer expression or law-preserving.3
of a “unilateral difference” which dispenses
with logical explication, with any desire to Violence is the “kernel of the Real” of all and
make sense.1 It works as Badiou’s “void”: fide- any law. Hence, it is the Real of any political
lity to this purely experiential instance, fidelity system and of all political life, since the politi-
to that sheer experience of an entirely new cal is but a derivative of the more radical
event is the source of or the cause for generation concept of the Law. We conceive of the Law
of an entirely new political truth, of an entirely as the Norm/ativity which enables societal
new law conditioning a new political situation.2 organization whereas we refer to the political
In his Critique of Violence, Walter Benjamin in the sense of the ruling Logos which sustains
explains not only that the Law is enabled and the Norm/ativity. (The latter is historically
ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/14/020099-13 © 2014 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.950866

99
 violence
conditioned and so is the content of the Logos.
Still, I understand both terms as universals,
although in a purely categorical and formal
sense.) The Law is a radical term, in the
Laruellian sense of the word, because it is
transcendentally minimal and descriptive of
the Real as lived. That is, it renders the
experience, the lived of the Law thinkable in
that “transcendentally impoverished” sense,
by describing it as an event of a barred flow
of desire (producing a secondary experience
of a particular type of frustration) by way of
introducing an instance of the Transcendental
(the Law itself) as its limit. It is a very
rudimentary concept describing an
occurrence on the border between the Real
(the lived) preceding Thought and Language.
It is, to reiterate, radical – minimally transcen-
dental and descriptive of the workings of the
Real.4
Antagonism is indeed the “kernel of the
Real” of the political, as Ž ižek maintains,5 and
it does not consist only in partisan politics or
in the opposition between different political dis-
courses; on the radical level it consists in the
grounding act of violence engendering the Law
and the political itself. This grounding gesture
of violence is made of the sheer taking place of
the decision (to introduce or maintain a
certain law, i.e., a certain political Logos), in
the political will or desire that only a posteriori
develops a discourse around itself.
The pure assertion of will or the unilateral act
of manifestation of power aiming at introducing
a rule or a norm which is always assigned the
status of universal, that is, which is always the
Law, works – let us resort to Lacanian parlance
– as the thrust of the Real into the Automaton
of the pleasure principle (the endless signifying
chain). Thus it works as trauma, that is, as the
trauma par excellence – the Real. The birth of
the Law is the working of violence in the
radical sense of the word (in the minimally
transcendental identity-in-the-last-instance of
the notion of “violence”).
A radical concept, according to François
Laruelle, is one that represents determination-
in-the-last-instance correlating with the Real or
the lived (experience) rather than with a
theory which, in its last instance, is part of
“philosophy.” Philosophy is but “auto-fetish-
ism” and “self-sufficiency” of reflection.6
Thought is but an occurrence of the transcen-
dental, and its subject is inevitably mediated
by way of the transcendental or language. A
radical concept is, thus, a transcendental
instance since it is the product of Thought.
Nonetheless, it is transcendentally “impover-
ished.” A radical concept is one which is mini-
mally transcendental and is, therefore,
fundamentally descriptive of an experienced or
empirical reality, one that follows “the syntax
of the Real.”7 Such is our use of the term vio-
lence here: it is determined in the last instance
by the effect of Trauma, that is, in its last
instance, it is descriptive of the lived (of)
Trauma:
[…] “trauma” designates a shocking encoun-
ter which, precisely, DISTURBS this immer-
sion into one’s life-world, a violent intrusion
of something which doesn’t fit in.8
It is this disturbance of one’s life-world, “intru-
sion of something which doesn’t fit in” bringing
in a sense of Trauma, that we will call violence
here.
And we will claim, along with Benjamin, that
all violence “as means” is either law-making or
law-preserving. Such is the determination-in-
the-last-instance of sovereignty as well: as
Schmitt has shown, it consists in the will of
the sovereign and its form is an act of decision,
an instance which is beyond legal justification
and holds a status “analogous to that of the
miracle” in theology.9 This is the core of sover-
eignty and the pre-legal source of the Law. The
violent, “pre-legal” contents of sovereignty and,
hence, paradoxically, of the origin of the Law is
most unequivocally and radically expressed in
the state of exception. The latter is a situation
in a state when all hitherto existing law is sus-
pended in favor of the sovereign’s (or, that of
the direct representatives of sovereignty) right
to carry out decisions that have direct bearing
on the lives of the citizens or the inhabitants
of a country. This absence of law is legally estab-
lished – the sovereign’s suspension (or that of
the subjects of sovereignty, of “the citizens,’”
100

re-presented by the parliament) of the legal
system becomes a law. It is a certain “non-
law,” or, put in a Benjaminian vein, it is a
state of law-making violence. The state of excep-
tion, and the suspension of law it entails, is
habitually vindicated through the instance of
“necessity,” explains Giorgio Agamben:
A recurrent opinion posits the concept of
necessity as the foundation of the state of
exception. According to a tenaciously
repeated Latin adage (a history of the
adagia’s strategic function in legal literature
has yet to be written), necessitas legem non
habet, “necessity has no law” which is inter-
preted in two opposing ways: “necessity does
not recognize any law” and “necessity creates
its own law” (nécessité fait loi). In both
cases, the theory of the state of exception is
wholly reduced to the theory of the status
necessitatis, so that a judgment concerning
the existence of the latter resolves the ques-
tion concerning the legitimacy of the
former.10
Necessity is yet another name for the interven-
tion of the Real into the discursive Automaton
of a society. It is an event instilling the sense of
a “must,” and the latter is a sheer experience, a
lived Trauma brought upon by (a) force to
which one’s individual desire and intention
must succumb. It is the force of the unadulter-
ated taking-place of an event (such as sover-
eign’s will, a war or a natural disaster) of
which only an a posteriori discursive explication
is developed and justification of the unavoidable
law-making processes is produced. Necessity is
habitually deemed to be induced by a threat,
it is violence induced by violence. Unlike the
philosophical meaning that could be ascribed
to the term ananke in Antiquity which could
also refer to events such as love, in modern
legal terminologies necessity is always defined
by the potentiality or actuality of negative
events, threatening with annihilation. The con-
temporary colloquial use of the term necessity,
however, allows its positive connotations. Yet
again, in the Western legal terminology since
the Roman law (until nowadays), the figure of
necessity par excellence is the state of
exception.11
101
kolozova
the idea of pure violence: in-itself
and for the law
In his Critique of Violence, Benjamin repeat-
edly affirms and demonstrates that all violence
(“as means”) is either law-making or law-preser-
ving. He claims that if the violence “[…] adds
no claim to neither of these predicates, it forfeits
all validity.”12
A few pages further, Benjamin writes:
Lawmaking is power making, and, to that
extent, an immediate manifestation of
violence.13
In opposition to the violence which is always
already law-making or law-preserving, Benja-
min introduces divine violence which is “law-
destroying” rather than law-making; it is
“expiating,” unlike the law-making violence
which brings in “guilt and retribution”; it
doesn’t threaten but “strikes” and it is “lethal
without spilling blood.”14
In spite of the fact that the “pure” and “law-
destroying” violence of expiation is defined as
divine, according to Benjamin, a human rendi-
tion of it is possible and it is one that can
bring about true revolutionary change toward
a stateless society or a society which has under-
gone “the abolition of state power.” So Benja-
min concludes:
But if the existence of violence outside the
law, as pure immediate violence, is assured,
this furnishes the proof that revolutionary
violence, the highest manifestation of unal-
loyed violence by man, is possible […]
Divine violence, which is the sign and seal
but never the means of sacred execution,
may be called sovereign violence.15
Divine violence is “the sign and the seal” of
sovereignty as violence and it can be the
source of revolutionary violence. According to
Benjamin, this type of violence is different
from the law-making or law-preserving type. In
spite of the fact that I concur with the distinction,
I would, nonetheless, argue that the violence
which is used as means of either law-making or
law-preserving is not different in its substance
or in its determination-in-the-last-instance from
 violence
the pure, that is, the “divine violence.” Substan-
tially or in their determination-in-the-last
instance, they are the same. Violence in the last
instance cannot be defined other than as violence.
In the last instance, it is the advent of pure force
of (political) desire – it is always already pure or
divine violence, which only via the instance of lin-
guistic mediation becomes enmeshed with the
Law or political discourse.
Benjamin has explained elsewhere that
purity does not exist in itself, but is rather
the result of a process of purification.16 A
thing is pure relative to something, and
always already relative to human intellectual
activity, that is, to language.17 A concept can
be “contaminated,” for example the idea of
violence can “lose its purity” by virtue of
defining it as mere means (of law-making/
law-preserving), that is, by way of defining it
according to the transcendental rather than
the Real. In other words, a concept is “con-
taminated,” its purity is reduced or it is less
radical when the determination-in-the-last-
instance is a claim of a certain doctrine, a
system of thought – or simply the Thought –
rather than a concept “affected by imma-
nence” or by the Real.18
A concept can be “purified,” that is, seen in
its purity, or, put in Laruellian parlance, ren-
dered radical, when it is determined-in-the-
last-instance not relative to other concept/s
but rather by the event of the Real that this
concept is aiming at capturing or mediating.
Benjamin’s “pure or divine violence” is a
radical concept in the Laruellian sense of the
world, that is, it is determination-in-the-last-
instance by the advent of the Real, by the
event of violence taking place stripped of any
justification, any “making-sense,” that is, any
mediation through language – any “law-
making.”
The radical concept is determined and shaped
by the “syntax of the Real,” while inevitably
making use of the transcendental.19 The latter,
being yet another term for the (Laruellian)
“Thought,” is descriptive of the workings of
the Real, using concepts (products of the trans-
cendental) as unorganized material (chôra)
without conforming to conceptual cosmologies
(theories, systems, doctrines, discourses
defined as schools of thought). This type of
truth-generation is termed by Laruelle as non-
philosophical, a process in which Thought suc-
cumbs to the dictate of the Real, a process
which resorts to philosophy albeit by virtue of
introducing that “non-,” that epoché vis-à-vis
philosophy as a whole.
The radical concept is always the product of a
“Vision-in-One,” a thought which is non-rela-
tive to the transcendental and correlative only
to the Real.20 The Real is the lived and it
always already precedes – or rather, is beyond
(au delà) – language, maintains Laruelle. It is
thus the sheer experiential or rather the mere
“taking place” one is exposed and subjected
to. It is homologous to Alain Badiou’s notion
of the “evental.” Seen as the sheer “taking
place,” seen as an event prior to any language
of it, infinitesimally prior to any possibility of
being rendered the “means” of the Law, vio-
lence appears in its purity. Thus, a non-philoso-
phical reconceptualization of “pure violence” is
the product of a “Vision-in-One” which is
attuned to the singularity of the event rather
than to its relations to other concepts and frame-
works of thought the concepts belong to and
within which/in terms of which they are
thought (philosophical or theoretical systems,
schools of thought, doctrines). It is a concept
which has been extracted from a philosophy,
from a universe of thought and, thereupon,
divested of its transcendental status determined
within a particular framework of thought.
At this point, it is interesting to note that
Benjamin explains the property of conceptual
purity in a way that is very similar to the Laruel-
lian process of concept’s radicalization:
It is a mistake to postulate anywhere a purity
that exists in itself and needs only to be pre-
served […] In other words: the purity of
every (finite) being is not dependent on
itself […] For nature, human language is
the condition of its purity that stands
outside of it.21
In fact, Benjamin claims that the property of
purity (also as an ontological category) does
not exist as an in itself, it is but a concept, an
102

idea, which has been radicalized, “purified”
from all that is not – put in Laruellese – its
determination-in-the-last-instance:
[…] at the origin of the creature stands not
purity [Reinheit] but purification
[Reiningung]22
Unlike the pure violence which is “divine” and
“expiating,” which is the instance of violence
itself taking place (the sheer advent of violence
in the form of the Laruellian “Lived”), the vio-
lence exercised by the state and its mechanisms
of law enforcement, for the purposes of preser-
ving (and/or making) laws, is always “degener-
ated violence,” maintains Benjamin:
[…] the police intervene “for security
reasons” in countless cases where no clear
legal situation exists, when they are not
merely, without the slightest relation to
legal ends, accompanying the citizen as a
brutal encumbrance through a life regu-
lated by ordinances, or simply supervising
him […] its [the police’s] power is formless,
like its nowhere tangible, all pervasive,
ghostly presence in the life of civilized
states.23
Within the Benjaminian universe of thought,
law, and its enforcement through mechanisms
of the state, is always already degeneration of
violence since legal violence is “impure.”
However, the “greatest conceivable degener-
ation,” according to Benjamin, takes place in
democracies:
[…] it cannot finally be denied that their
spirit is less devastating where they [the
police] represent, in absolute monarchy, the
power of a ruler in which legislative and
executive supremacy are united, that in
democracies where their existence, elevated
by no such relation, bears witness to the
greatest conceivable degeneration of
violence.24
The level of degeneration is the “greatest concei-
vable” since the institutions of a democratic
state, in their attempt to claim that the violence
they produce is not what it is (= violence), that
is, feigning it is not through violence that they
rule, unavoidably transform it into its own
103
kolozova
reverse – the Law. However, this re-version of
violence is a per-version rendering violence
invisible, misrepresenting it to be the opposite
(law as the “non-violent way” of ruling a
state). It is an endless chain of ever more elabo-
rated legal mechanisms whose purpose is to
present the violence with which a state is
ruled, and its citizens controlled, as non-vio-
lence. The transmutation of violence into law
is an endless, unstoppable chain of linguistic
production which consists in covering the
trails of the sheer violence that is always
already there and at work under the guise of
the Law. This process represents a ceaseless
automatism of (auto-)generating legal pro-
visions, policies of institutions and prescrip-
tions of procedures.
Moreover, the Law is always already main-
tained by force, namely by a system of penaliza-
tion which also executes physical violence over
its subjects (including detention depriving the
body of its freedom of movement) and by the
constant threat of punishment if not observed.
Its power is all-invading through the unstoppa-
bly self-reproductive administration. The demo-
cratic legal system attempts to neutralize
(render it imperceptible and relative and, at
the same time, control) the presence of violence
inherent in it by way of transforming it
into a legal and moral order we will call the
Norm(ality), which acts as its proxy. The mean-
ings of the legal and the moral collapse into the
meaning of “normality” (as a unity of the prac-
tical, the moral, of preserving rights and
improving state institutions’ efficiency – all at
once) reflected into and by the administrative
policies. Considering that violence is inbuilt in
the Law, considering also that the adminis-
tration of a country is also a manifestation and
exemplification of its culture (i.e., morals), the
administrative procedures and styles represent
subtle yet omnipresent exercise of state violence
by virtue of transforming it into a structure sup-
posed to represent a universally commonsensi-
cal order (and normality).
Can the legal system and the administration
be “purified” from the presence of violence,
and is this done by reclaiming, reaffirming and
re-instituting pure violence? In other words,
 violence
must we endorse pure violence in order to
invent and establish an administration, a law
and institutions that are purified from violence;
is a revolution necessary and is it always the
product of “divine violence”?
radical politics and (non-)violence:
if we exclude the metaphysical
grounding instance of violence,
radical politics is non-violent
One can easily establish an analogy between
pure or divine violence, on the one hand, and
the Badiouian void as well as the Laruellian/
Lacanian Real, on the other. It is the traumatic
par excellence: the violence that has been “pur-
ified” from language is a sheer thrust of Tuché
into the Automaton of the signifying chain, to
put it in Lacanian parlance. Having defined
the Lacanian Real as traumatic – moreover, as
the Trauma itself – Ž ižek has demonstrated
that it is not an abstract instance deprived of
qualities. On the contrary, the Real is always
already a status assumed by an occurrence that
bears a specific name. For example, “antagon-
ism” is the name of the kernel of the Real
behind the “political” pertaining to contempor-
ary democracies,25 whereas the repressed Real
of the hegemonic political concept defining our
contemporary era as neoliberal is called
“Capital.”26 In other words, the Lacanian
Real, as elaborated by Ž ižek, is always already
an instance occupied by a certain substance.
By the latter I mean an event, an occurrence
resulting in a purely experiential instance –
that is, a certain lived, put in Laruellian par-
lance. The lived that has not been mediated by
language, in its last instance, is determined as
traumatic. The body in its helplessness, in its
state of mere exposure to the Event prior to
any subject’s assuming its always already mas-
terful position, which is by definition linguisti-
cally exercised, is but traumatized. If the event
one is subjected to is experienced as a mere
“taking-place of the Violent-Itself,” one is
faced with the intervention of the Real par excel-
lence. Violence is the Real-in-itself. Affliction of
pain (causing Trauma) is the sole possible result
of such event. In a political context, its purpose
is to impose will and exercise power which is
always already done through acts of linguistic
mediation, that is, acts of “giving meaning” to
an event of force by recourse to the Law as its
paradigmatic discursive form.
Pure violence is an instance of the Real – as it
is also its “substance,” it’s what the Real as
sheer Trauma is “made of” – and as such it pre-
cedes the Law and all forms of the “political
making sense.” The Law (in its widest, abstract
sense, encompassing also the meaning of the
Political) is a product of the event of decision,
of the violent, forceful, “unilateral affirmation
of difference.” The decision is a sheer event, a
pre-linguistic moment of an “It is so because I
say so” inasmuch as a sheer lived. And this is
what sovereignty consists of. The act of
decision, the taking place of a force that carves
into the void (the evental is) what is going to
become a law, is the “abyss of an empty
call.”27 The abyss is made up of a sole
substance, namely that of “divine” violence:
[…] the abyssal tautological authority (“it is
so because I say so” of the Master) does not
work only because of the sanctions (punish-
ment/reward) it implicitly or explicitly
evokes […] what seduces us into obeying it
is the very feature that may appear to be an
obstacle – the absence of a “why” […]28
The Real of sovereign power, the Real of the
decision that “something is to be so,” precedes
its symbolic rendition, its translation into a
law and via the Law, its making sense carried
out – instituted and sustained – by the Subject
of the Law. Indeed, its initial making sense con-
sists in the tautology “it is so because I say so,”
as Ž ižek puts it:
[…] the Lacanian “Master-Signifier” desig-
nates precisely this hypnotic force of the sym-
bolic injunction which relies only on its own
act of enunciation – it is here that we encoun-
ter “symbolic efficiency” at its purest. The
three ways of legitimizing the exercise of
authority (“authoritarian,” “totalitarian,”
“liberal”) are nothing but three ways of cov-
ering up, of blinding us to the seductive
power of the abyss of this empty call.29
104

The “empty call” or the “divine violence” is
wherefrom all and any law is generated. The
sovereign Will mediates itself through
Language, that is, transforms itself into a law/
the Law, only a posteriori, nonetheless necess-
arily. Living the Real-in-itself, at its purest, is
impossible – it would be a sheer destruction,
an uninterrupted Trauma (since all possible
interruptions of Trauma can be but linguistic).
Divine violence, just as every rendition of the
Real, necessarily translates itself into language,
and into its paradigmatic linguistic form – the
Law. Divine (or pure) violence constitutes the
sovereignty and is also the origin of the Law
(as the Real unavoidably translates itself into
language). This means that “divine violence”
cannot be outside the Law since it is the Real
which unavoidably must be mediated through
language. So, it is inextricable from the Law
not only as its means but also as its divine
origin. It is what any law is grounded upon
and enabled by. It is the “kernel of the Real”
of the Law. This implies that we cannot separate
the Law and the divine violence ontologically,
as the Language cannot do without the “kernel
of the Real” which produces it. The Real
necessitates the Language, it necessitates its
own mediation since, in itself, it is unbearable
– the Real is pure Trauma. By way of auto-
alienation of the lived30 – analogous to the
Hegelian self-negation – or as the result of
the Real’s mediation through language (or the
Thought, in Laruellian parlance), the funda-
mentally estranged Subject is produced.
Pure violence – or the violence in-the-Real –
is indeed a “divine” instance, one that is cer-
tainly not accessible as such to the finite
beings that humans are. By pretending to
master this linguistic black hole (this void-),
one can be but engulfed by the Real of the
divine violence, paralyzed and rendered split
from within, put in a schizoid position. Such
pretension can only be hubristic and, hence,
bring in the tragic demise of a paradigmatically
tragic character – that of the revolutionary
subject carrying out divine justice. My conten-
tion here is not that the revolutionary political
change or a revolutionary subject is impossible.
I will claim quite the contrary. I will, however,
105
kolozova
argue that the revolutionary stance is not deter-
mined in the last instance by the divine violence.
Rather, it is determined as radical political posi-
tioning – one “affected by immanence.”31 The
latter implies that the grounding political
concept is correlating with the Real, that it is
conditioned by and shaped according to the
“syntax of the Real.”32 However, the Real in
itself is inaccessible, uncontrollable and
lacking the possibility to produce either an
agency or an instrument – a “weapon” – of pol-
itical struggle. The political agency is always the
Subject, and it is one linguistically constituted;
or, in Laruellian parlance, constituted by
Thought whose agency is the “Stranger.”33
The Real of the divine violence can intervene
into the discursive world of the political struggle
– it can be the thrust that is the impetus for
introducing a revolutionary political stance.
While the latter constantly correlates with the
Real, it is not the Real itself. It is rather a het-
erogeneous occurrence, a hybrid which is the
product of the intersection between the Real
and the Discourse.
Therefore, revolution is always already that
which contains a certain form of violence inas-
much as it incessantly correlates with the
Lived, with the purely evental or experiential
– with the Real which is always already trau-
matic. Revolution also strives not only to
bring justice (strike as “divine violence”) but
also establish new laws. It is hence law-
making. The latter is, as Benjamin has shown,
always already determined by violence. Introdu-
cing a law is an act of sovereignty which is con-
stituted by the sheer event of a decision, the
occurrence of determination and imposition of
will. It is the fruit of an unadulterated exercise
of power. Yet again, it does not take place in
the form of divine or pure violence. That is, it
immediately institutes – and, hence, partici-
pates in – the heterogeneous linguistico-experi-
ential topos of the political by way of
introducing the new Law, and the new horizon
of that which is politically thinkable.
Any revolution aims at inaugurating new laws
– it is about installing a new political order;
therefore, it cannot be reduced to pure – or
for that matter, divine – violence.
 violence
pure violence originating from
human vulnerability rather than
divine justice
If we adopt the position that any imposition of
will, any winning of one will over another, is a
form of violence, it will be impossible to claim
the possibility of a politics and, for that
matter, a world without violence. Is the differ-
ence between a peaceful politics and aggressive,
military politics only one of quantity – or level
of intensity, or of degree – as far as the presence
of violence is concerned? Is it a difference in
modality or is there a difference-in-the-last-
instance? Is there an immanently non-violent
politics?
I believe that the latter is possible, although it
does not imply that there could be a political
order or a world which is entirely and in the
absolute sense “violence-free.” Violence must
exist in the event of a sovereign decision, that
is, of introducing, imposing and enforcing a
certain political will. Yet again, this type of vio-
lence, in its last instance, is non-political. It is
one of a transcendental – or, perhaps, metaphys-
ical – status, one which concerns the relation-
ship established by the World-of-the-Language
and the Domain-Beyond-Language. It concerns
the ontological abyss out of which a sovereign
decision stems, namely the fact that a political
“making-sense” and an introduction of a law
are a posteriori with respect to the “taking-
place” of a decision, to the enactment of force
(will or power).
Violence (its presence/absence or form) is
not the political determination-in-the-last-
instance of a political order, regardless of
whether violent or non-violent. Embracement
or refusal of violence is not the “thought-
force”34 that drives a political Logos and a
system of laws. Yet again, there are violent
and non-violent political regimes, within which
the instance of violence holds a specific position
in relation to the discursive or to the political
Logos, and to the Law. In a “non-violent” politi-
cal world, violence does not use the laws as its
means. Contrary to Benjamin’s claims, I will
argue that repressive regimes are determined
in the last instance by reducing the laws to
mere means of violence. (In other words, since
violence is always already “divine,” and it is in
fact the “divine violence” that is law-making,
the mark of a violent politics is the law function-
ing as “violence-producing,” rather than vio-
lence acting as “law-making.”) I will, however,
concur with him that a degeneration takes
place when one of the two (either violence or
laws) is rendered a means to the other – or
simply, when the violence becomes something
other than the inaccessible Real that has
grounded the law-making and Logos-making
processes of the political.
Still, it is not merely the violence that degen-
erates when rendered means of the Law (or vice
versa), but another vital force that may be
derived from that of violence or be of similar
origin – the (anta-)agonism as that which
defines politics. Political enmity as the inter-
play, as the competition and the dialectics
between different and opposed political wills,
is a form of violence. And it is so in that afore-
mentioned transcendental (or metaphysical)
sense – violence as a transcendentally minimal
instance35 which acts as the force of sovereign
decision. This force can be destructive, but it
is not necessarily so; that is, the Desire which
is its determination-in-the-last-instance is
life-bringing. The act (the event) of producing
a sovereign (political) decision is a gesture
of a “unilateral affirmation of difference”
(Deleuze), it is life’s auto-affirmation (in Spino-
zan-like infinite expansion). Thus, it is an enact-
ment of sheer will, an instance of violence but
one which precedes language and politics. The
utter legalization of the dynamics established
by opposed political wills, the suffocation by
discursive control of the free and unpredictable
circulation of the (anta)agonism which defines
the political, is that which is endangered
through relentless legalism.
In his book Violence (2008), Ž ižek interprets
Benjamin’s concept of “divine violence” as an
explosion of “retaliatory destructive rage”
(187), as “unjust, as an explosion of divine
caprice” (ibid.). Later in the text, Ž ižek claims
that the only human and political renditions of
divine violence today would be forms of
“violent explosion of resentment” ranging
106

from “mob lynchings to organized revolutionary
terror.”36 Let us recall that we have already
established that divine violence takes place as
the pure advent of the Real. Along the lines of
a similar logic, Ž ižek equates divine violence
with the Badiouian “event.”37 Consequently,
when one unleashes pure violence, it is done in
radical solitude – without the presence of the
“big Other”; or, in Ž ižek’s own words:
Divine violence should be thus conceived as
divine in the precise sense of the old Latin
motto vox populi, vox dei: not in the perverse
sense of “we are doing it as mere instruments
of the People’s Will,” but as the heroic
assumption of the solitude of sovereign
decision. It is a decision (to kill, to risk or
lose one’s own life) made in absolute solitude,
with no cover in the big Other. If it is extra-
moral, it is not “immoral,” it does not give
the agent license just to kill with some kind
of angelic innocence. When those outside
the structured social field strike “blindly,”
demanding and enacting immediate justice/
vengeance, this is divine violence.38
Enacted in radical solitude, without the support
of the “big Other,” pure violence, conceived as
blind attack “demanding immediate justice,”
seems indeed to be carried out as divine. It is
an inherently hubristic stance.
That is, the revolutionary subject, having the
status of the “divine-justice-bringing Subject,”
adopts a godlike stance and perspective – s/he
strikes as God would strike since there is no
Law s/he fears. The revolutionary subject exer-
cising divine violence is marked by the preten-
sion to directly represent the Law itself. Even
if the latter means that there is no longer any
law to be respected, the event of executing
justice is the result of a decision (in the Benja-
minian or Schmittian sense) based upon a judg-
ment according to which something is unjust or
wrong. Such a decision is a gesture of “undoing
a wrong” and it is enabled by the distinction
between right and wrong. The act of discrimi-
nation between right and wrong, accompanied
by an action of punishment, is in itself law-
making and law-preserving. The justice and ven-
geance bringing violence is never pure in the
sense of being devoid of any relation to the
107
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Law. The territory of “divine violence” as such
– just as any instance of the Real – is impervious
and it must be mediated through Language and,
thus, by the Law.
I will argue that, if it is immediate justice or
vengeance which is being executed by way of
divine violence, the latter is not an event in
the Badiouian sense as Ž ižek would have it.
Badiou’s “event” is something which simply
occurs and one is never really in control of. If,
contrary to this, the divine violence were
indeed justice that is carried out, it would not
be something which merely happens to the
subject-executor of justice. As justice made,
the divine violence would be the product of
the Subject, its invention and its creation –
not the unpredictable, stupefying, beyond-
sense, ungraspable occurrence of the “void”
(which the Badiouian event is).
The event, in Badiou’s theory, always and by
definition precedes the Subject. The latter is
produced through the relation of fidelity with
the former.39 Thus, pure violence happens to
us, the “human animals.” It is not something
we can carry out. It emerges as a “void”
amidst a “situation,” and it commands a new
“subjectivization.” Or as an incursion of the
Real, it radically destabilizes the Subject and
generates fundamentally new subjective
configurations.
Conceived as the Badiouian event, pure or
radical violence can be – let us resort to
Ž ižek’s own words – but an “explosion” of
anger, originating from the most rudimentary
survivalist stance: “I am striking against you
in revolt, because I must stay in life!” It is the
“explosion” of the physical, bodily rebellion of
the subjugated body against another, subjugat-
ing body. Its determination-in-the-last-instance
can be defined as life-expansion not destruction
(in the form of punishment) in spite of the inevi-
table presence of destructive effects.
Revolutionary violence stems from the
conatus of survival, from the (Spinozan) appe-
tite for life and desire for pleasure. It is an incur-
sion of one’s desire to affirm life and annihilate
pain – revolutionary violence is an occurrence of
the expansion of life, of the unstoppable appe-
tite toward pleasure and/or an “increased level
 violence
of life” (Spinoza). Hence, revolutionary violence
is but a rendition of the life force aspiring –
putting it again in Spinozan terms – toward its
infinity which consists in life’s relentlessly reaf-
firming life. It is a strike of force aiming against
all that which introduces pain into life as an
instance of immanent infinity (in spite of the
fact that it is embodied by finite beings). Infin-
ity, understood as the mode of intensity not of
temporality or spatiality, consists in incessant
aspiration, appetite, in life endlessly feeding
itself with life. Revolutionary violence as an
expansion rather than destruction of life is an
expression of the desire to “increase the level
of life” (Spinoza) and acts against all that threa-
tens this immanently unstoppable tendency by
becoming an obstacle to the auto-generative
force life is.
The revolutionary stance is one which is
established in fidelity to the event. The latter
is a pre-subjective experience, or rather pure
experience. It is the lived prior to its linguistic
mediation. Its linguistic rendition is, however,
inevitable, truth-generation as discursive
process is unavoidable. Revolutionary discourse
is one which is constantly checked by the sense
of fidelity to the event, to the “truth” (= bearing
witness to) the experience of the event rep-
resents. In its capacity of pure experience, fide-
lity to the event is an almost bodily knowledge –
or rather, it is also bodily. It takes place beyond
discourse, in a domain where the distinction
between bodily and psychic does not apply –
in the domain of the Real. The occurrence of
the Uncanny, the thrust of the Real into a politi-
cal situation, happens at a point when political
discourse is shocked by a “radical crisis”
(a symptom of the Real that can no longer be
accommodated by the existing Symbolic)
demanding radical political reversal. The
thrust of the Real destabilizes the political
subject and provokes in the human animal a
sense of threat of physical annihilation. This
experience is the source of unheard of and unex-
pected discursive reversals and for radical
re-inventions of the political language. Such a
life-expanding stance that is radically human
(inherent to the human animal) rather than
divine is one of revolutionary potential.
postscript: questions about
the “transition” from the radical
lived to radical revolutionary
concepts
Laruelle, Badiou and Ž ižek argue for a political
thought that would correlate and succumb in
the last instance to the authority of the lived,
the event and the real rather than to a “transcen-
dental universe.” All three authors insist that
whilst the correlation with the Real is necessary
– at least for the generation of a revolutionary
political truth and event – it is always in (by
way of and also for) the Language that the revo-
lution takes place.
The question they do not seem to attempt to
answer is that of the transition from the mere
correlation – an ontological positioning and
epistemic posture – with the Real to a thought
which is affected by the immanence that the
Real (or the event) is. The radicality of a
concept – a foundation of a potentially revolu-
tionary horizon of thought – is enabled precisely
by its affectedness by immanence. Is it possible
to check the factuality of affectedness by the
Real, to provide confirmation that the concept
we deem radical (potentially revolutionary) is
indeed radical, one produced in a process of
faithful correlation with the Real? If we could
imagine the transition, if we could create the
possibility and invent ways of thinking this
process of transmutation of the lived (the
Real, the event, the pure experience) into
thought, perhaps we could also conceive ways
of providing confirmation (for a concept’s
affectedness by the Real).
The Real is a void. It is “unthinkable” in
itself. The Real or the lived necessarily under-
goes a process of auto-alienation in order to
become thinkable by, for and as the Stranger
(Laruelle). This, however, does not mean that
the Real is unthinkable, impossible to be
“touched” by thought, described by it, that is,
mediated by the Language. The Real cannot
be thought in itself since this is a logical and
ontological impossibility. Thought is mediation.
Ergo, the Real, or the in-Itself, is not accessed
directly. To think the Real is to mediate it,
that is, to incessantly alienate it in order to
108

correlate with it. And it is for this reason that
the transition cannot be thought, and its “truth-
fulness” evaluated. Radical concepts are the
product of the sovereignty of the thinking
(and revolutionary) subject, they issue from
his/her decision to “follow the syntax of the
Real” (Laruelle).
The only confirmation of a concept’s radical-
ity, that is, affectedness by immanence, there
can be does not take place on the territory of
the Language. It is not the product of the
Thought. It is unthinkable and the sense is
not its “identity-in-the-last-instance.” It is
purely experiential, it is lived – in the event
of revolution. If a concept and the horizon of
thought whose foundation it serves generate
an event that produces a reversal, radical desta-
bilization and re-structuring of the Symbolic
order or the World (in the Laruellian sense),
the pure lived of this event can serve as the con-
firmation of its radicality. Yet again, this confir-
mation is not linguistically rendered. It remains
unthinkable (in-Itself). The only domain in
which we can know “the proof” is the domain
of the experiential itself – the
Event, the Lived, that is, the
Real. To the Thought it rep-
resents a void. And out of this
void only a revolution can be
born.
notes
1 See Deleuze.
2 Badiou 173ff.
3 Benjamin I: 287.
4 According to Laruelle, it is precisely the
radical dyad of Thought and the Real conveying
the unbridgeable fissure between the two
terms that, in its most fundamental impossibility,
determines the possibility of Thought. Laruelle
writes:
It is impossible, even in Freud and in Marx,
and even more so within a philosophy, to
find radical concepts of the Real and the
uni-versal – solely the unconscious and the
productive forces, desire and labor. As soon
as one arrives at this discovery,
109
kolozova
psychoanalysis and Marxism gain one utterly
new sense – a transformation of their the-
ories into simple material […] These sorts
of disciplines require more than just a
simple theoretical transformation – a discov-
ery from within a “non-” that would be the
effect (of) the Real or its action
or in the French original of the text:
Il est impossible, même dans Freud et dans
Marx, à plus forte raison dans une philoso-
phie, de trouver les concepts radicaux du
Réel et de l’uni-versel – seulement l’incons-
cient et les forces productives, le désir et le
travail. Mais cette découverte faite, psychana-
lyse et marxisme en reçoivent après coup
plus qu’un nouveau sens – une transform-
ation de leurs théories comme simple maté-
riau […] De telles disciplines exigent plus
qu’une refonte simplement théorique – une
découverte en “non-” qui soit un effet (du)
Réel ou son agir. (Laruelle, Introduction au
non-marxisme 61)
5 Žižek, Interrogating the Real 259–60.
6 Laruelle, Philosophie et non-philosophie 17.
7 Idem, Introduction au non-marxisme 47.
8 Žižek, On Belief 47.
9 Schmitt 36.
10 Agamben, State of Exception 24.
11 Ibid. 24–31.
12 Benjamin I: 287.
13 Ibid. 295.
14 Ibid. 297.
15 Ibid. 300.
16 Benjamin, Briefe I–II: 206/138 qtd in Agamben’s
State of Exception 61.
17 Ibid.
18 Cf. Laruelle, Introduction au non-marxisme 48.
19 Ibid. 47.
20 Laruelle, Philosophie et non-philosophie 46; idem,
Théorie des identités 93ff.; idem, Introduction au non-
marxisme 47ff.
21 Quoted in Agamben, State of Exception 61.
 violence
22 Benjamin II: 455.
23 Benjamin I: 287.
24 Ibid.
25 Žižek, Interrogating the Real.
26 Butler, Laclau, and Žižek.
27 Žižek, On Belief 120.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 See Laruelle, Théorie des Etrangers.
31 Idem, Introduction au non-marxisme 48.
32 Ibid.
33 See idem, Théorie des Etrangers.
34 Ibid.
35 Radical concepts are descriptive of the Real,
“affected by its immanence,” and, hence, minimally
determined by the transcendental; or, in Laruelle’s
words, the radical concept is established according
to the following procedure:
On dira que la représentation, dans la
vision-en-Un, est un reflet non-thétique ou
non-positionnel (du) réel, qu’elle est descrip-
tive, en dernière instance du moins, et
non constitutive comme prétend l’être la
philosophie. (Laruelle, Introduction au non-
marxisme 57)
36 Žižek, Violence 193.
37 Ibid. 208.
38 Ibid. 210.
39
I term subjectivization the emergence of an
operator, consecutive to an interventional
nomination. Subjectivization takes place in a
form of a Two. It is directed toward the inter-
vention on the borders of the eventual site.
But it is also directed toward the situation
through its coincidence with the rule of
evaluation and proximity which founds the
generic procedure. Subjectivization is inter-
ventional nomination from the standpoint of
the situation, that is, the rule of the intra-situa-
tional effects of the supernumerary name’s
entrance into circulation. It could be said
that subjectivization is a special count, distinct
from the count-as-one which orders presen-
tation, just as it is from the state’s reduplica-
tion. What subjectivization counts is
whatever is faithfully connected to the name
of the event. (Badiou 393)
bibliography
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Stanford: Stanford UP, 2004. Print.
Agamben, Giorgio. State of Exception. Trans. Kevin
Attell. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005. Print.
Badiou, Alain. Being and Event. Trans. O.
Feltham. London and New York: Continuum,
2005. Print.
Benjamin, Walter. Selected Writings. Vols. I–II.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP/Belknap, 1999. Print.
Butler, Judith, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Žižek.
Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary
Dialogues on the Left. London and New York:
Verso, 2000. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles. Différence et répétition. Paris: PUF,
1993. Print.
Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan,
Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Trans. A.
Sheridan. New York and London: Norton, 1998.
Print.
Laruelle, François. Introduction au non-marxisme.
Paris: PUF, 2000. Print.
Laruelle, François. Philosophie et non-philosophie.
Liège and Brussels: Mardaga, 1989. Print.
Laruelle, François. Théorie des Etrangers. Science des
hommes, démocratie et non-psychanalyse. Paris:
Kimé, 1995. Print.
Laruelle, François. Théorie des identités. Paris: PUF,
1992. Print.
Schmitt, Carl. Political Theology. Trans. Georg D.
Schwab. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1985. Print.
Žižek, Slavoj. Interrogating the Real. Editorial
material, selection and translation Rex Butler and
Scott Stephens. London and New York:
Continuum, 2006. Print.
110
 kolozova

Žižek, Slavoj. On Belief. London and New York:

Routledge, 2001. Print.
Žižek, Slavoj. Violence: Six Sideways Reflections.
London: Picador, 2008. Print.

Katerina Kolozova
Bul. “Partizanski odredi” 171/5-2
1000 Skopje
Macedonia
E-mail: katerina.kolozova@isshs.edu.mk
 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 19 number 2 june 2014

Rather than an anti-humanism, the set of

these new perspectives on man constitutes a
sort of “non-humanism”, a science of man
more universal than all philosophy.
Laruelle, Théorie des Etrangers 110

[…] maybe we could universalise non-philos-

ophy even more. It would require making a
body of knowledge accessible not only to
humankind but to all individuals. So is that
possible “for all individuals”? I don’t know.
I don’t believe that it would be possible. It
has to pass through this mediation, this dis-
torted mediation that is humankind. john ó maoilearca
Laruelle, “Non-Philosophy” 251

THE ANIMAL LINE

introduction: a radical human
L aruelle is a great user of the word “radical.”
Apart from the basic premise of his non-
philosophical project being, from almost the
very beginning, an exercise in radically imma-
nent thought, the term appears in numerous
contexts: “radical liveds,” “radically immanent
phenomenology,” “radical subjectivities,”
“radical atheist,” “radical fiction,” “radical
experience,” the “radically immanent structure
[of thought],” etc.1 Radical immanence itself
is said to be non-decisionistic – that is, it is
not “one of the fundamental operators [with
transcendence] of Philosophy”; it is, rather,
axiomatic.2 According to Katerina Kolozova,
for Laruelle a radical concept is one that
denotes a determination-in-the-last-instance
(DLI) that correlates “with the Real or the
Lived (experience) rather than with a theory
which, in its last instance, is part of ‘philos-
ophy.’”3 The axiom is the lived itself. But
whose lived, or which lived? In the context of
his critique of philosophical humanism,
on the possibility of a
“laruellean” non-human
philosophy
Laruelle’s Théorie des Etrangers charges the
all-too-philosophical Nietzschean valorisation
of the “Inhuman,” “too human,” or “overhu-
man” with “ignoring the radical ‘human.’”4 By
contrast, his is a project concerning, as Philoso-
phie et non-philosophie puts it, the “radical
humanisation of thought” – it is a thoroughly
“humaine philosophie.”5
This reference to humanisation will be rel-
evant to our unearthing of Laruelle’s radicalism,
especially given that the etymological root of
“radical” is “forming the root,” from the Latin
radix, radic- “root” (one must imagine how
much Laruelle enjoys this fractility). Given
that “radical” is also described by Laruelle as
“self-immanent,”6 I am going to argue that a
radical concept of the human is one that is

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.950867

113
 the animal line
used consistently, both towards itself (its root)
and others: it is an amplified concept that
applies it non-philosophically, that is, generic-
ally. But, again, the question will remain as to
what this entails more specifically: an anthropo-
morphism of non-human objects (the inflation
of the object as found in recent new forms of
panpsychist metaphysics) or a deflation of the
human to a “base” object (which, as we will
see, has been Laruelle’s most frequent com-
plaint against the philosophical abuse of
humans)?
The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to
outline how Laruelle’s work can be seen (or re-
visioned) as performing something other than
an inflation or deflation of either side of a
fixed philosophical dyad (subject/object,
human/non-human); rather, it can be seen as
unilateralising the couple, that is, expanding
(amplifying, mutating, superposing) the
meaning of the two alongside the One Real
that resists any lone philosophical version’s
attempt to commandeer that meaning (and so
the essence of what is human and what is non-
human). It is the performative mutation that
counts, not the terms of the dyad. As such,
this essay contends that what Laruelle explicitly
does with philosophy – namely its de-authoris-
ation and democratisation – is also what must
be done, by implication, through the non-philo-
sophical radicalisation of the human. Non-stan-
dard philosophy does not know what the human
is (such definitions are the task of philosophy),
but this negative capability is precisely what
allows it to expand performatively the
meaning of the human in its ongoing search to
discover what the human may be.7
From this perspective, no less than the
“non-” of “non-philosophy” is not a negation
but a broadening of philosophy (on the model
of non-Euclidean geometry), so a Laruellean
non-human(ism) is not a negation of “man”
(post-humanism, anti-humanism) but an expan-
sive mutation or alteration – an alter-human-
ism or pluri-humanism that reverses the
narrowing action of philosophy that always
condenses the human according to a single
model. Alexander Galloway has recently
described the non-Marxism of Laruelle as a
Marxism for non-anthropocentric thought.8
Katerina Kolozova thinks of it as a Marxism
of the non-human. As an extension of Lar-
uelle’s project to show that philosophy does
not have a monopoly on exemplary thought
(and so, conversely, how one thought is author-
ised to be “philosophical”), my question con-
cerns the politics of an extended Marxism, of
how some people are authorised to be
“persons,” how others come to be seen deroga-
tively as “animals” or even “objects,” and how
these processes might be reversed.9 What kind
of structure of regard or vision has come about
to allow this to happen, and how can we mutate
it for the democratic good of “all individuals”?
In what follows, then, we will make the case for
a performative mutation of non-philosophy
towards a non-humanism of the animal,
looking at materials in Laruelle’s corpus that
both support and undermine this view. And
we follow this with a conclusion concerning
how liberal – how expansive, in other words
– we can be in our, or any, mutative reading
of non-philosophy.
democratising the “dēmos”: the
anthropomorphic stance
Laruelle can also refer to the “lived” and
“experience” as conceptual standards, though
in neither case without any reliance on a vitalis-
tic Life or empiricist experience. Yet, when one
realises that, no less than the human or “Man-in-
person,” none of these concepts are actually
defined by Laruelle or deemed given, and are
only hypothesised (and used) as identical with
the Real, “in-the-last-instance,” it becomes
evident that they too call for non-philosophical
treatment. In other words, we should think of
the “non-lived,” say, as an amplification of the
normal set of definitions for the lived (or,
indeed, the human). This is not a mere relati-
vism or historicism but a consistent democrati-
sation of what one might mean by “us.” And it
touches on what we mean by “person,” “people”
(or the “dēmos”), no less than the “self,” a
radical consistency being one that is equally
brought to bear on the first-person or self.
114

In this light, non-standard philosophy is a
democracy of thought that extends the defi-
nitions of philosophy (logic, questioning,
wonder, etc.) beyond the authority of standard
philosophical approaches that always humanise
it according to one type. Instead, one might say
that Laruelle’s is the first fully non-human phil-
osophy, though not one achieved through the
negation of man, but his extension, a “man-
without-humanism” that discovers the human,
and so philosophy, in myriad other realms (yet
without these terms becoming vacuous).10
This is why the question of “man” is the funda-
mental one for non-standard philosophy, but
only in question-form: non-philosophy does
not know what or who man is, only that man
is indefinite. Indeed, it is the practice, the imma-
nent performance of non-standard philosophy
that enacts its own truth, that is its own stan-
dard, one that is achieved by the performative
extension of the human (and philosophy) to
other things. This is a thinking according to
the Real, and not just through “human” philoso-
phical representations that anthropomorphise
the Real.
The question of anthropomorphism towards
objects and animals is linked here to the issue
of the non-human. Philosophy, according to
Laruelle, not only anthropomorphises the
Real, it anthropomorphises man too (or rather,
it philosomorphises both after its own
image).11 The radicality of non-philosophy is
rooted in its non-decisionism: it is an axiom,
or better, a stance or posture, an embodied atti-
tude. As Laruelle’s Concept of Non-Photogra-
phy puts it, “stance” means “to be rooted in
oneself, to be held within one’s own immanence
[…] If there is a photographic thinking, it is
first and foremost of the order of a test of
one’s naive self rather than of the decision.”12
When, for example, Daniel Dennett, qua cogni-
tivist philosopher, forwards a possible “Inten-
tional Stance” whereby certain animals and
objects can be interpreted charitably as
mindful,13 perhaps there is, in a quite non-cog-
nitivist and non-decisionistic manner, a Human
stance that can be adopted, in-the-last-in-stance,
towards everything – an expanded act of charity
or radical anthropomorphism that gives the
115
ó maoilearca
benefit of the doubt to myriad non-humans.14
This is not one more philosophical thesis, infer-
ence, or interpretation that inflates the “non-
human” (via panpsychism, say), as if we
already knew what human and non-human
mean. It is the theoretical practice – the hypo-
thesis, axiom, stance or posture – that enacts a
unilateral expansion of “human,” through a
reworking/reviewing, of the various philosophi-
cal anthropologies of man, according to the
Real. This is the “radical humanisation of
thought” whereby “philosophy […] has to be
identified with man rather than the inverse.”15
This expansion reverses the narrowing action
of philosophy that always contracts the Real
into one type, reducing “man” to “animals,”
as Laruelle is wont to say, but also (I would
add) reducing “X” to “animals” too, and even
further to “objects,” the terms “animal” and
“object” serving here as empty place-holders
for whatever reduction we have in mind
for “X.”
So, the question, “how does a human come to
be ‘seen as’ (only) an animal?” is a close compa-
nion to another: how do some thoughts come to
be seen as “unphilosophical,” or even, “how
does a concept come to be seen as (only) an
affect?” Non-philosophy reverses these reduc-
tive visions, and thereby re-views their
victims: it is “an experience (of) the Other,
(of) Being and (of) Unity that have finally
found their basis in the One”; it is “a new
experience (of) the Other […]”16 As such,
what the non-philosophical opus of Laruelle
offers us, according to Kolozova, is
an entire “science of humans” – which is not
a humanist science but rather a radical sub-
version of it […] One of its most meticulous
elaborations can be found in Théorie des
Etrangers, and one of the central arguments
of Laruelle’s “science of humans” is that
the kernel of “humanity” is the Ego-in-Ego,
an instance of the lived and of the “Joui”
insofar as [sic] non-reflected experience.17
The question of the animal, or non-animal, is
equally live, then, for non-philosophy and its
science of humans, setting up the possibility of
an animal-in-person (rather than “philosophical
 the animal line
animal”) alongside the man-in-person (rather than
“anthropological man” – this being the other half
of the human–animal philosophical dyad).18
individualised equalities
Of course, Laruelle has his own menagerie of
abstract animals, fish (the immanental
“poisson-eau” that, “being generic or idempo-
tent, superposes himself with his element”),19
cats (of the non-Schrödinger variety), as well
as all the animate processes of cloning,
mutation, etc. Yet, apart from a theoretically
motivated discussion of the animal-in-person
in Théorie générale des victims, which we will
turn to below, Laruelle’s explicit references to
animals remain under-theorised, as indeed
does the potential for a Laruellean non-human-
ism relating to animals. But it does strongly
exist. Admittedly, the language of “Man” and
“Man-in-person” can easily sidetrack the
novice reader of non-philosophy, not only on
account of its gender specificity (which is more
than an artefact of French), and Idealism (equat-
ing man with the Real) but also because of its
apparent speciesism.20 And yet, just as the
first two impressions (sexism and Idealism) are
misplaced, so too is the third. As En tant
qu’Un makes this all the clearer with a more
helpful vocabulary – it is the question of the
“individual” that has directed Laruelle from
the start: “how can one think the individual
and the multiplicity that is attached to it?”21
The individual is the undivided One, the Real.
It is certainly not the Kantian (philosophical)
subject: “the subject is not a centre […] I
reject the Copernican revolution. The Kantian
version of subjectivity […] must be abandoned
with philosophy.”22 The aforementioned
Théorie des Etrangers, in another shift of voca-
bulary, is interested in “human multitudes” and
Strangers beyond the “empirical cleavages
(nation/people, nation/race, group/individual,
state/civil society, subject/sovereign, proletar-
ian/capitalist),” and, we would again add,
man/animal.23 Hence, “humans, in so much as
[they are] Strangers, exist-multiply [existent-
multiples],” and, furthermore, imply “that
man only exists as absolutely relational.”
Strangers are not persons, individuals or sub-
jects in the “transcendent philosophical sense
of these words […] they are radical subjectiv-
ities, but in-the-last-instance […]”24 However,
the question remains as always: how strange
can the Stranger be for Laruelle?
The implication of Laruelle’s theoretical
democracy (rule by all theories equally,
beyond the “anti-democratic spirit of hierarchy,
primacy or domination which is that of philos-
ophy”25) is that all Strangers, all Individuals,
are equal, are equally One. To respond to this
with the query “equally one what?” is to miss
the point of the performative gesture, for even
to say “equally different” (with Deleuze), or
“equally Being” (Heidegger), or “equally mul-
tiple” (Badiou), remains too philosophical. Indi-
vidually, they are all One – and this is a
performative gesture rather than a philosophical
(and ontological) thesis:
He who, in virtue of being performed or of
his humanity-in-the-last-instance, also does
what he says and says what he does, or sup-
ports the axiom – there is philosophisable
equality but this equality is not Real, or
must be determined in-the-last-resort by
individuals.26
Individuals make equality, they do not possess
it (as a philosophical property of difference,
multiplicity, etc.). Hence, even a Christo-
centric (and so seemingly anthropocentric)
text like Future Christ can be read performa-
tively as widening the meaning of individuality
as “the new cogito in which the Future Christ
performs, that is to say every man or every
Lived thing [Vécu] that becomes a subject.”27
All the same, given the weight of ostensible evi-
dence against non-humanism in Laruelle, in the
next section we will look at the counter-argu-
ment, which is presented in sharpest form
when he deals with the struggle of humans
against attacks from philosophy.
protect the human
Philosophy constantly harasses the human,
according to Laruelle, Alain Badiou’s
Maoist philosophy being only the latest such
116

attack – “disquieting when we think what it
might have in store for humans.”28 In fact, the
victim-status of man in Théorie générale des
victims is contrasted with that of the animal at
numerous points: “Man is well entitled to the
being-persecuted or victim; the animal is only
persecutable by the intermediary of man who
is himself persecuted, but if it is an original
trait for this one, it is certainly not a priority.”
He goes on to say that the “lot [‘sort’] of
animals cannot exceed that of humans, their suf-
fering, ours.”29 Non-philosophy must protect
the human, then, from the anthropologies of
philosophy – Laruelle’s slogan or order-word
being “Philosophy is made for man, not man
for philosophy.”30
But why protect “us”? Because it seems that
we are the (Real) world. In Non-Standard Phil-
osophy, an almost Bergsonian, cosmic optimism
now appears whereby humans are described as
“perhaps an imitation, itself inventive of the
universe.”31 In an even more extreme human-
ism, the early sections of Future Christ can
sometimes appear almost Sartrean:
Man (in-person) is the only being which is
not religious as a metaphysical “animal”
endowed with an essence, but which prac-
tices only for that reason a religious
relationship to the world and makes a
World of religion.32
The scare quotes around “animal” notwith-
standing, the next page is also intentionally
naive in its address to “we human beings
[…]”33 Laruelle also writes here that “only an
atheist practice can make God and Christ intel-
ligible without simply renouncing them or
believing in them, an atheist practice without-
(doctrinal) atheism, like a radical atheist man-
in-person, but as such without any ‘man’ of
philosophy.”34 The “Man-in-person” or “Man-
in-Man” is designed to “rethink the Christian
and Gnostic experience [of the Real] under
ultimately human forms.”35
The problem with all of this, as Ray Brassier
has pointed out, is that identifying the Real with
the human would seem to re-ontologise it
(as Idealism or even solipsism). He continues
as follows:
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ó maoilearca
The slide from “I think according to my
ultimate identity with a real that is already
given” to “this real of the last-instance is
the human that I am” is as precipitate as
the more familiar leap from “I think” to “I
am”. This slide envelops what by Laruelle’s
own lights amounts to a decision: “I am
human”. But what can “being-human”
mean given that the radically in-consistent
real is not? What I think I am can have no
privilege vis-à-vis the identity of a real
already given independently of anything I
may happen to think about it. To claim
that I harbour some sort of pre-ontological
understanding of my own being-human is
to plunge straight back into Heidegger’s her-
meneutics of Dasein […] The privileging of
the nomenclature “man” to designate the
real cannot but re-phenomenologize and re-
substantialize its radical in-consistency and
invest it with a minimal degree of ontological
consistency. By insisting that “the human”
remains the invariable site of the last-
instance, Laruelle risks regressing back into
Henry’s pathetic transcendental egology.
Worse, this ultimately arbitrary identifi-
cation of the real with the human
individual threatens to reduce Laruelle’s
vaunted non-philosophical radicalism to a
transcendental individualism wherein
each human self becomes the ultimate
determinant of philosophy; a position
which is all too redolent of Fichtean
solipsism to be convincingly described as
non-philosophical.36
So, although Brassier probably goes too far in
the opposite direction when castigating all
aspects of selfhood (which is understandable
given his own faith in the objectivity of
the “scientific image”), his point as regards
the twin gestures of identifying the Real with
the human and taking “being-human” as
given (in the phenomenological sense) are
valid. But this is the case only in so far as if
what is given and if what is identified were
understood through a definite, logical, essence
rather than open, Real identity. It is the possi-
bility that – pace Brassier – it is the latter that
are operative in Laruelle’s descriptions that
gives his account renewed tenability as a non-
humanism.
 the animal line
non-animals in laruelle: the “no true
man” fallacy
In terms of good old-fashioned argumentation,
Laruelle’s exploration of the various empirico-
transcendental doublets employed by philos-
ophy (actual/virtual, existentiell/existential,
phenomenal/noumenal … ) has been a corner-
stone of non-philosophical practice. And this
is no less true of his own critique of philosophi-
cal humanism. Indeed, such humanism,
being continually based upon some form of phi-
losophical anthropology, may well be the ulti-
mate form of empirico-transcendental doublet.
There is always some selected feature that
occurs empirically amongst one or more individ-
uals – now dubbed “true” humans – that all
“humans” should have “in principle” (transcen-
dentally). A few examples (individuals, fea-
tures) are defined as the essence of all, but an
“all” that is refracted through the few, or
rather certain defined features of the few. One
defines thinking or suffering, for instance, in
such a way (X) as to mirror only one set of indi-
viduals (who embody “true/genuine/proper
thinking or suffering”) that thereby creates an
exception (“species-being”) and excludes (in
fact, must exclude) other definitions that bring
actual continuities with counter-examples, with
Strangers. Empirical exceptions to the transcen-
dental rule of exception (putative humans who
do not think and suffer as X) are precisely
that, mere exceptions to the rule, no matter
their empirical prevalence. Moreover, the excep-
tion to the exception that might replace the dis-
continuity with a continuity (with Strangers)
must be outlawed most vigorously, even if to
do so one must continually redefine X in more
and more exclusive terms. The “No True Scots-
man” fallacy – redefining the terms of your
exemplary cases in the face of counter-examples
– becomes the “No True Man” fallacy. Conse-
quently, faced with counter-examples that re-
inscribe a continuity between the human and
non-human animal – for instance, in reasoning
ability, language powers, thinking, or culture –
one redefines what true, i.e., “transcendental”
or “virtual” or “ontological,” thinking, reason-
ing, language, etc. is for humans. And this
must be the fact of the matter even should the
vast majority of humans never manifest this
true version (in which case, all humans will
have it in posse rather than in esse). The dice
are loaded from the start (or as the saying
goes, “in philosophy, the whole thing is over
by the end of the first page”). Who these
humans are, given their secretly shared ability
(X), must remain a mystery beyond which we
can only say that “they” are human. This
“they” is not an objectifying corruption of
human existence (Das Man) but its essential
and objective bulwark.
This doublet, then, is a kind of anthropo-
morphism – a projection onto individuals of
one image of man. It operates in a restrictive
direction: a contracting, projective stance that
refracts the Real through a philosophical idea
or definition, rather than an expansive, introjec-
tive vision that allows the definition to mutate
and multiply in the face of the Real’s resistance
to any totalisation.37 These mutations are not ad
hoc redefinitions in order to salvage a losing
argument but pluralisations that allow an
expanded philosophy, now considered as raw
material, to think alongside the Real.38 Here,
there is a reversal of direction going from the
Real back to philosophy (which mutates in
response). When one starts down the first, con-
tracting route – projection over introjection –
one is led inevitably through all the elitisms
from vitalism, through speciesism, racism,
sexism, ageism, until one finally arrives at the
egological auto-affection of the solipsist. Lar-
uelle, evidently, by discarding the definitions
of the philosophers – each of them self-pro-
moted as “first philosopher,” as the friend of
wisdom – is happy to leave man undefined,
such that his entire project is about restoring
an indefinite status to man: “man only exists
as a multitude of Strangers, in a manner that
gives meaning again to the old concept of multi-
tude transcendentalis and of posing democracy
at the heart itself of the science of men.”39
Indeed, not defining man is his way of protect-
ing the human, or victim, from humanism.
Certainly, the mixtes that Laruelle sees in
philosophical anthropology are myriad in
number yet fairly invariant in form, jumping
118

back and forth between “devalorisation” and
“overvalorisation,” between the philosopher
and the unremarkable man, between the
public philosopher and the private/man or
“idiot” – always exceptional in either case:40
As a philosophical concept, man is a huma-
noid simultaneously traced from the anthro-
poid which has hardly gone beyond Greek
anthropological thought and the Judeo-Chris-
tian “creature” […] Philosophy desires the
inhuman, the pre-human, the all-too-
human, the over-human without recognizing
the “ordinary” nothing-but-human. The phi-
losophical heaven is populated with anthro-
poid and artificial creatures, Dasein
included, which escape from a cloven
thought and lead to a host of masks and tra-
vesties, after which demons and angels
become fully rationalized. Humanism is an
inferior angelism and a lie concerning man.
Because of this dishonor, philosophy is
saved with great difficulty through the
thesis of a theoretical anti-humanism
(Althusser) which will not have been suffi-
ciently radicalized.41
The “man” of philosophy, even in the Greco-
humanist tradition, is effaced by Being and its
avatars, so that it can only appear in mediated
form as “daimon-man, creature-man, individ-
ual-man, subject-man, overman-man, Dasein-
man, etc.” Man is likewise submitted to
“Being, to the Cosmos, to Physis, to God, to
Spirit, to the Subject, to Dasein.”42 There is
even “a ‘humanist’ racism in western philos-
ophy” for Laruelle, whereby “man is a wolf,
an eagle and a sheep, etc. for man” (the therio-
morphic medium for this racism is notable).43
Hence, Laruelle is sceptical of approaches such
as Deleuze’s animalist philosophy wherein man
is seen as a “bridge,” “becoming continuous,
the becoming-animal of man and the becom-
ing-human of the animal.”44 For non-philos-
ophy, these are all reductive (constricting)
stances, even when they purportedly “inflate”
the human.
And yet, for all that texts like Théorie des
Etrangers attempt, as best they can, to insert
some distance between “man” and “animal”
without defining the human either against or
119
ó maoilearca
with the non-human (in the negative
sense of the term), there are points when
the non-human is allowed to stand on its own
feet, without either contrast or (indirect)
negation:
Rather than an anti-humanism, the set of
these new perspectives on man constitute a
sort of “non-humanism”, a science of man
more universal than all philosophy and
capable of integrating this under the title of
a simple meta-language without authority,
pragmatically then, an a priori of all experi-
ence. Critical and legal humanism, to return
to this example, from now on is one decision
amongst others […] The non-humanism that
results is the set of rigorous knowledges that
relate to the Ego and the Stranger and not to
the negation of humanism.45
Non-humanism is a “science of man more uni-
versal than all philosophy.” And the Théorie
générale des victims, even with its back-
handed compliments,46 makes further gestures
towards a radicalised democracy when discuss-
ing the installation of a “unilateral complemen-
tarity […] between man-in-person and the
animal”:
[…] as if the animal was a figure of the Stran-
ger amongst us, such that it belongs to the
responsibility of humans that the animal
itself accedes in some way, by this mediation
or this protective treatment [traitement de
sauvegarde], to the status of animal-in-
person […]47
Yet, Laruelle continues, this accession of
animals to the status of “animal-in-person”
would also be a
[…] defense of humans in the same act, not
only by which they subject animals, but
also assign them their last use, a use in-the-
last-instance in which animals escape from
the vicious circle of massacre and suffering
overall, to also become victims-in-person
themselves.48
Consequently, a complete anthropomorphism –
wherein the “human” (philosophy’s “the-man”)
is altered by the Real too – becomes admissi-
ble.49 In Laruelle’s own words, this is a
 the animal line
“simplified and unfolded Humanity […] a
hyper-philosophical generality […] We call
this universal Humanity. Man is this Idiot who
exists also as universal Humanity of Stranger”
as opposed to the “cosmo-logical or cosmo-phi-
losophical closing” of a half-humanism predi-
cated on philosophical values. He, or she, or
it, then, is certainly not the “wise one,” the
master, but the Idiot – or, we might add, the
stupid beast (bête bêtise). This turn to a “trans-
cendental Idiot of an ante-decisional simplicity”
would be a “non-rousseauian mutation.” In a
full, “universal” democracy, it is the Idiot or
Stranger that becomes the norm rather than
the exception.50
And such performative expansiveness, which
is not one that only quantitatively increases an
extant concept (as of science, or philosophy, or
the human) but also mutates it qualitatively in
the very same act, is the founding gesture of
non-philosophy: to extend, to admit more:
“science is widened to every phenomenon that,
from now on, can become the ‘object’ of a
science, or rather, give place and indication to
a new science.”51 Hence, for instance, when Lar-
uelle produces a “concept of non-photography”
it is, simultaneously, a non-concept of photogra-
phy – photography’s concept (of a concept), not
philosophy’s. Normally, as Philosophie non-
standard claims, philosophers place their prac-
tice at the immobile centre, and their object of
thought moves relative to it. If there is any con-
tingency or chance, it is only and always in their
surroundings and not in them as well: “philoso-
phers refuse to wager on their philosophy;
perhaps they wager on such and such an event
but they are not in the state of, or conditions
for, betting their own philosophy against non-
philosophy.”52 However, as Laruelle goes on to
say:
[…] should you have an interest in betting on
generic man, on a non-humanist or in-man
vision, you will only lose philosophical suffi-
ciency, but you will also win something
from philosophy which is a richer and
newer materiality; the “balance” here
cannot give rise to a double-entry book-
keeping of symmetric gains/loses, given the
violation of inequalities.53
The “non-” of non-philosophy wagers on what
counts as thought; it expands rather than
negates philosophy, and so opens it up to the
Real rather than relativising it (via language,
history, or culture) into nothing. It in-defines
(verb), not in order to generate a vagueness for
the sake of vagueness (noun), but to simplify
in such a way that the copious, warring defi-
nitions of philosophy are re-viewed as materially
One. As such, it is always a practice, a material
process.
the animal as a figure of the
stranger: who are the beneficiaries
of “our” doubt?
So, how does a complete, indefinite humanism
that would wager on the human as Stranger,
Idiot, and Animal, compare with the “man-in-
person” of Laruelle, where the human is only
defined “in-the-last-instance”? The last possible
wager “is a wager on man,” says Laruelle in Phi-
losophie non-standard. Yet the great task of
non-standard thought, we recall, is always to dis-
cover who or what man is:
We will not say that nothing is lost and that
one wins everything [tout]. But that, losing
the sufficiency in simplifying the Whole
[Tout], one wins the possibility of an ethics
in particular, an aesthetics, and also of a
faith, by wagering on humans as generic
subjects.54
Hence, we can still ask how any wager (or
fiction, or quantum probability) is connected
with a humanism indefined via the generic
rather than any particulars.
Here is our mutation, then. The Marxian idea
of DLI could be both a wager and a hypothesis, a
test (perhaps of other-mindedness) that gives
the “benefit of the doubt” concerning others’
minds – disorienting a Cartesian doubt that
now, in the last-instance, concerns anyone,
human and non-human. The leap of faith
beyond autistic doubt. Overcoming doubt
becomes a stance: not the intellectual “inten-
tional stance” of a philosopher like Daniel
Dennett, but a lived, bodily stance that
“gives” the benefit of doubt as unknowing, as
120

positive indefiniteness, as expansive gesture
with regard to what mind, thought, and other-
ness may be. The benefit, the “good deed,” of
unknowing or indefinition, is given or
donated-without-giving beyond our solipsism
and solitude.
Of course, DLI can appear to be a form of
humanistic Messianism – the “Future Christ”
who may already be amongst any of us,
perhaps within the most excluded of “us” (and
so not what commonly counts as “us” at all).
Or again, such “occasionalism” can be seen as
a quasi-Pascalian wager, a Marxist utopianism
– again, no less humanist. In its temporality,
moreover, DLI adopts a retrospective logic – a
future anteriorism of what “will have been”
made possible – being made so by the Real in
a retro-action. Yet anticipating and so partially
“knowing” this unforeseeable Real action does
not appear as a calculative wager (as if the
benefit of the doubt were another epistemic
state of meta-doubt or counter-doubt) but as a
lived, affective openness that, we would argue,
takes it away from an intellectual, philosophical
humanism of any kind (and towards full anthro-
pomorphism). Such a wager gives the all the
benefit of the doubt to the Stranger. It begins
with what Laruelle also calls “humanité a
priori” – a hypo-thesis, an axiom, the stance of
complete or absolute relativism (i.e., one that
takes one’s own philosophical point of view or
stance into account – mobilising it too).55 It is
also a full anthropomorphism rather than a
half-anthropomorphism because it issues from
the Real towards me – not to change me philo-
sophically but to de-mixte philosophy from me
(anthropo-logism) such that I am re-viewed,
immanent to the Real.
In fact, non-philosophy has always pitted
hypo-thetical probability against the philosophi-
cal faith in its own sufficiency. After all, and at
“the end of the day,” after two-and-a-half mil-
lennia what are the odds that any one philos-
ophy is now or ever could be the one science
(the correct representation of the Real)? Such
a presumption that it might ever have been, or
is now, truly is a matter of faith (often versed
as “when all the facts are in,” God alone
knowing when this time will come). Yet the
121
ó maoilearca
supposed failures of philosophy are not seen
here as questions of scientific falsification or ver-
ification (at least by Laruelle). They are all a
matter of the Real, and so philosophy’s “fail-
ures” – its abandoned practices, its history, its
would-be dead – are something other than epis-
temic insufficiencies in need of never-ending
supplementation. Their odds of success and
failure are a question of probability (in the
language of Philosophie non-standard) and
thereby scientifically real – a probability-
wave. Surely then, it is worth backing another
horse – to reorient our regard and turn it
(back), not simply to one more philosophy of
the animal, but the chance that philosophy
will have been “animal” all along (retroactively).
To back “X,” not as a matter of “philosophical
faith” but as scientific knowing.56
beyond philosomorphism
Clearly, what Laruelle says of anthropology –
that it uses man for philosophy – can also be
said of any philosophy of (or representing) the
animal: if the animal appears by name at all it
is as an avatar for one or other philosopheme
of what the animal means to (human) philos-
ophy. Often, in separatist mode, these appear-
ances have only been to inflate the human at
the animal’s expense: the human is defined, in
wide-ranging ways, with some depictions
simply opposing properties attributed to
“animals” (man as the non-animal, the immater-
ial, the unnatural, and so forth), others offering
continuist images of humans as sentient
animals, conscious animals, rational animals,
linguistic animals, political animals, temporal
animals … (hence, Aristotle describes man as
exclusively political, Descartes as exclusively
sentient, Kant as exclusively rational, etc.).
This positive account consequently provides us
with another list of attributes for the animal:
the non-sentient, the non-linguistic, the non-
political, the non-temporal, and so on. All of
this is simply the flip-side of Laruelle’s anthro-
pological harassment of man, which harasses
animals to even greater extents.
Yet the “animal turn” in recent philosophical
thought – much of which now inflates, or
 the animal line
restores, the value of the animal – is no less phi-
losomorphic. Deleuze’s “becoming-animal,”
Agamben’s “bare life,” Derrida’s “animal that
therefore I am,” or even Badiou’s depiction of
Deleuzianism as a philosophy of “the Animal”
(opposed to his own of “Number”),57 transform
the animal into a normative and metaphysical
idea. Philosophy still mediates the animal for
its own purpose by seeing it as only one instance
of aporetic différance (Derrida), proliferated
becoming (Deleuze), bare life (Agamben), or
even the exemplar of “bad philosophy”
(Badiou). Yet any reduction of the animal to
that of a proxy for différance, rhizomatics,
bare life, or whatever else partly gains its force
by disregarding other aspects of the animal
that are placed in the background, namely
those that do not fit (or resist) the philosopher
and his/her favoured philosophemes. The
various philosophies that try to capture the
animal in their epistemological, ontological, or
metaphilosophical nets are resisted in such a
way that it is the very idea of philosophy
itself that must be reshaped in order for it to
say anything significant about the animal.58 Be
it positive or negative, inflationary or deflation-
ary, such philosomorphism is indeed repelled
by the Real of animals by mutating or morphing
what counts as philosophy – including the defi-
nitions of thought, reason, and logic.59
philosophical behaviours: the
animal line
Throughout this essay, we have said that Lar-
uelle’s use of “man” called for its own non-phi-
losophical treatment. Of course, the call to
explain his usage of philosophically saturated
terms such as “a priori,” “ordinary,” “empiri-
cal,” “immanence,” “transcendence,” and the
“transcendental” is usually rebuffed by him as
no more than a typical philosopher’s stratagem,
either in tu quoque mode or in the name of
greater consistency, of being “more Laruellean
than Laruelle.” Nonetheless, if we invoke it
here, as we have elsewhere,60 it is on account
of a non-philosophical consistency that aims to
radicalise such words so that, at its root, in its
own performance, it too is equally implicated.
In this context, the charge of tu quoque can
even be embraced such that any one perform-
ance of non-philosophy (of X) is radicalised in
consistency and so only remains outside (or
transcendent to) X momentarily. Hence, the
normative call (“advocacy”) for a consistent
treatment of terms actually entails nothing
other than the extant fact that non-philosophy
always practises what it preaches by mutation
– it transforms itself through its own operations:
this is why its transcendence is momentary
(temporal) and quickly becomes immanent in
order to transcend again (that is, it too must
mutate).
The Vision-in-One, in its articulation through
philosophical vocabulary (its ongoing explica-
tion to “philosophers”) only provides a
glimpse rather than a permanent account
(logos) and fixed methodology. As a permanent
account, it quickly falls into performative self-
contradiction (immanence) but this fall is
itself what allows it to mutate. This, perhaps,
is why non-philosophy, at least as understood
in a lived body of practices, postures, or
stances, exists only in the flexuous, serpentine,
animal line between philosophy and the Real,
between transcendent philosophies (of the
Real) and the pure immanence (which is the
Real) that transcends (and resists) those trans-
cendencies.61 Doubtless, “betweenness” too
has a lineage in philosophical terminology
(Merleau-Pontian and phenomenological in its
transcendence), so it too must mutate, to
become the “immanental” and undulatory
line, as Philosophie non-standard calls it, or
the “fractal” line (in the language of Théorie
des identités): “the reality effect [of the Real]
is not only fractal in essence, but its description
too is of this nature.”62 Nonetheless, we are
betting on the “serpentine,” “undulous,” or
“flexuous” line, in a language that comes from
Laruelle’s earliest work on Félix Ravaisson. It
is also the animal line.63
Be it in amplificatory or deflationary mode,
equating the animal with Laruelle’s use of the
postural or gestural, no matter the physical
and biological, may well be just one more philo-
sopheme (tu quoque), but it will not be of the
122

same type provided we radicalise (self-implicate
or self-enfold) it. In other words, we must use it
absolutely democratically rather than egocentri-
cally (whether that ego be a personal, human, or
philosophical one). We will not attempt to
anthropomorphise the Real through one
image, but allow it to anthropomorphise “us”
(metamorphose the anthropos), through a host
of images that expand (the meaning of) anthro-
pos (and dēmos) in a reverse mutation that
comes from the Real to us “human philoso-
phers.” Though En tant qu’Un will claim that
“it is precisely because man is in-transformable
that he can and he must transform philosophy
and put it to the measure of the real,”64 the
immutability of “man” here stands for its axio-
matic status, not its defined one. We begin, Lar-
uelle says, with the “The One, The Real, Man”
(“it’s all the same to me” (même combat)), as
an undivided, real identity in-the-last-
instance;65 hence, in wagering on such an
axiom, test, or hypothesis, we can also add the
name Animal to the Real and see what
happens to thought (and even to a philosophy
of man – how anthropology shape-shifts too).
In Principles of Non-Philosophy Laruelle
speaks of a philosophical “ventriloquism” of
the Real. Yet his own seemingly quasi-mimetic
approach to philosophy can equally be seen as
a ventriloquist’s act that re-voices philosophical
material (in an immanent mode). One might
read this in terms of its performative stance
that “plays the dummy” – so that it can re-
enact the speech of philosophy – and as
another way of understanding what Laruelle
means when he says that non-philosophy
“clones” philosophy. However, the game of
charades – a mime that, optimally, attempts to
embody a concept “in-One” gesture – might
be an even more suitable analogue for this
cloning.66 If it is a mime, though, it is what
Laura Cull describes as “immanent mimesis,”
rather than a species of representation.67 The
mime is not a picture of a philosophy, but a con-
tinuation that re-orients, or dis-orients, philoso-
phy’s sense of direction (stemming now from
the Real to philosophy rather than vice versa).
As an immanent mime, it apes, parrots, or
copy-cats philosophy – rendering it
123
ó maoilearca
behavioural, though without any of the reduc-
tive simplification that might imply: “science
is not a question of decision (= the philosophi-
cal); it is a question of ‘posture’, which is to
say of ‘behaviour’ [tenue] or of ‘being seated’
[assise] in oneself, realised solely by the
means of immanence.”68 Behaviour as posture,
stance, or style (so important also to Merleau-
Ponty, author of The Structure of Behaviour).
It is a philosophical behaviourism in this mate-
rialist and immanent sense, then, because it ani-
malises philosophical thought by replacing any
of its self-styled authority of reference with an
animal mimicry – “to mime a fish, one throws
oneself into the sea” (or Laruelle’s “poisson-
eau”).69 It is noteworthy here that the etymol-
ogy of “mime” goes back both to a “buffoon
who practices gesticulations” and to the Greek
pantomimos, “imitator of all.”70 The buffoon,
naı̈f, or transcendental Idiot makes a mockery
of the philosopher’s truth by rendering it a
“philo-fiction.”
Certainly, it is pain behaviour that has
allowed Katerina Kolozova to expand Laruelle’s
notions of victim and body so that they also
involve those we currently call “animals.” In
The Lived Revolution, a solidarity with the
“body in pain” becomes the new “political uni-
versal.” The real, lived revolution becomes a
bodily gesture (struggle) against pain, shared
by human and non-human animal alike: “at
the root of the Human is that which is beyond
(or rather, behind) Humanity – the Body, the
organism subjected to pain and confronting
the irrevocable call for self-preservation,
always already immersed in the struggle for sur-
vival.”71 Moreover, she continues,
The animal, both human and non-human, is
ontologically deprived of the potentiality of
recognition and of achieving its own liber-
ation. The body or the animal can produce
a sheer gesture, pure act of revolt – it can
produce a speechless revolution, brutal and
bodily. And it will exhaust itself in that
brutal bodily revolt, without bringing the
necessary recognition […] François Lar-
uelle’s non-philosophical theory, the think-
ing in terms of the Real and by means of
radical concepts provides an epistemological
 the animal line
stance which makes the Thought in fidelity to
the Animal-Body possible.72
Hence, there must be a “solidarity-with-the-
suffering (bodies)” of human and non-humans
because “suffering” or “pain” is a radical
concept “in the Laruellian sense of the word.”73
reverse mutation: the monstrosity
of being “laruellean”
Clearly, Kolozova is radicalising (or amplifying)
Laruelle’s concepts in her own way, but what is
the logic of this amplification – both hers and
our own? How far can we expand the idea of
man or Person or Non-Human before it is no
longer Laruellean? Is there, finally, here, the
prospect of a non-Laruellean practice, with the
“non-” understood now only as negation?
Perhaps its potential for all-encompassing
scope borders on vacuity. In other words, not-
withstanding the virtues of radicalism under-
stood in terms of self-consistency (that is, at
root, a rigorous practice that implicates itself,
that is egalitarian with itself also), how far
can Kolozova, or we ourselves, extend Laruelle’s
ideas before they become really identical (and
synonymous) with the Real in toto, and there-
with explain both everything and nothing? In
En tant qu’Un Laruelle writes of a non-philos-
ophy where the “the field of possibles of
thought is considerably enlarged,” and in
Théorie des identités we read that “it would
be a question of being given the means of a con-
ceptual and theoretical mutation likely to give a
new élan to philosophy.”74 Yet is there no enlar-
gement that can be deemed impossible, no
mutation that is so monstrous that it becomes
non-Laruellean, or a heresy within non-philos-
ophy?75 Kolozova, for one, is happy to entertain
“Monstrously Hybrid Concepts,” and argues
that radicalising Laruelle’s ideas leads to some-
thing like Julia Kristeva’s notion of the
“abject,” which Kolozova glosses as “bordering
a ‘thérion,’ a monstrosity” (or “wild beast”).76
Significantly in En tant qu’Un too, Laruelle’s
“non-thetic transcendence” is likened to the
monster from Alien, a “rigorously faceless”
and monstrous Other. It is one, we would add,
that reveals the Laruellean ventriloquist as
more than simply manipulating a philosophical
“dummy,” but as the hand that smashes
through the dummy’s chest.77 Both idiot and
monster. And each is equally exposed in the
self-consistent, or radical, usage of non-philos-
ophy, in an auto-biography of the ordinary
man. This radicalism means, then, that who
the self is, what human and man-in-person
means, must also mutate, become monstrous,
and indeed a “thérion” or wild beast (or
rather, the abject human–animal hybrid). In a
recent interview, Laruelle remarks as follows
on the question of the origins and destiny of
non-philosophy:
People may ask me, but how then did you in
fact arrive at non-philosophy? Then I must
say that I have made my “auto” non-philos-
ophy. It is contingent, arbitrary, it depends
on lots of things which are mine – maybe
we could universalise non-philosophy even
more. It would require making a body of
knowledge accessible not only to humankind
but to all individuals. So is that possible “for
all individuals”? I don’t know. I don’t believe
that it would be possible. It has to pass
through this mediation, this distorted
mediation that is humankind.78
We could “universalise non-philosophy even
more” but, Laruelle adds, “I don’t believe that
it would be possible.” Nevertheless, it might
be that such a universal could be achieved
should the “distorted mediation” (of) human-
kind distort or mutate even more. A demon-
stration is needed that would make it possible
(retroactively). And that is the wager. A
reverse mutation (reversion to the “wild type”)
– one that alters our Vision, which Théorie
des identités describes as “more than an enlar-
gement of the detail and a variation of the
optical field” but as a “mutation in the con-
ditions themselves of the ‘optic’ of thought.”79
This reconditioning of our optical and concep-
tual field may well be the extended practice
that forms what is “preached,” or rather the
form that complements and superposes a
content at another level. A new structure for
our regard. Strictly speaking, it is, therefore,
124

irrelevant whether or not a certain extension of
non-philosophical concepts goes too far,
whether or not it enters into a linear state of non-
sense or vacuity: it is the non-linear, extensive
practice, as gesture, as animal line, that is of
value. Indeed, in the absence of standard episte-
mic norms, “better and worse” might be imposs-
ible to evaluate in a performative thought such as
Laruelle’s, for how can one say that one perform-
ance is better than another? Certainly, not
because one is truer. Rather, then, we take our
stance on account of a performance that is
more democratic, more universal, and so more
radical or self-consistent – equal to itself.
Such performances are ever-increasing,
broadening performatives that incorporate and
acknowledge the most faceless, strange, and
alien others: they de-monstrate (show,
perform) monstrosity in ever-widening circles,
with ever-more attentive optics and ethologies.
Going backwards in order to move forwards,
these are “revertants” or “hopeful monsters” –
philo-fiction inventions that also reinvent phil-
osophy: they expand the human
into the non-human and vice
versa – mutation and reverse
mutation coming “not only to
humankind but to all
individuals.”
notes
1 Laruelle, Théorie des Etrangers 57, 68, 166; idem,
Future Christ 25; idem, Philosophie et non-philosophie
92; idem, “Controverse” 72; idem, Théorie des iden-
tités 76.
2 Idem, Dictionary 61.
3 Kolozova 158.
4 Laruelle, Théorie des Etrangers 40.
5 Idem, Philosophie et non-philosophie 32, 21.
6 Idem, Dictionary 61.
7 Laruelle has described non-philosophy simply as
the unending search to discover what is man
(London Graduate School Non-Philosophy Work-
shop, 7 Dec. 2011).
8 See Galloway.
125
ó maoilearca
9 This, of course, reorients the Hegelian view,
as articulated by Adorno (in Negative Dialectics)
that
not even as an idea can we conceive a subject
that is not an object; but we can conceive
an object that is not a subject. To be an
object also is part of the meaning of
subjectivity; but it is not equally a part of
the meaning of objectivity to be a subject.
(Adorno 183)
It is this conceptual possibility that needs to be
reinvented.
10 See Laruelle, En tant 37, 109, 110.
11 See Mullarkey, “Animals Spirits.”
12 Laruelle, Le Concept 12.
13 See Dennett 3–22. At one level, all
philosophy is cognitivist for Laruelle – a reduction
of thought into inferential, representational,
knowledge.
14 This stance is worth comparing with what
Bergson (38) describes as the “open soul” in his
Two Sources of Morality and Religion:
The other attitude is that of the open soul.
What, in that case, is allowed in? Suppose
we say that it embraces all humanity: we
should not be going too far, we should
hardly be going far enough, since its love
may extend to animals, to plants, to all
nature. And yet no one of these things
which would thus fill it would suffice to
define the attitude taken by the soul, for it
could, strictly speaking, do without all of
them. Its form is not dependent on its
content. We have just filled it; we could as
easily empty it again. “Charity” would
persist in him who possesses “charity,”
though there be no other living creature on
earth.
15 Laruelle, En tant 32, 33.
16 Idem, Philosophie et non-philosophie 90, 91.
17 Kolozova 199.
18 Laruelle can use “animal” with scare quotes
one moment – as in Future Christ (“it is still an
‘animal’ essence there [of aggression]” (7)) – to
mark his distance from a philosophical abuse, but
then muddy things by identifying the animal as a
 the animal line
true philosophical entity (rather than victim
of abuse): “[…] heresy is the innocence of
Man, undoubtedly because it is not completely
a metaphysical animal, which is to say an
animal” (70). Or see also Laruelle, “Le Tsunami”
(9–15):
In the history of the “evolution” of the philo-
sophising species, the properly human stage,
of which the model would be the fish-
water, has been preceded by the stage of
the actual philosopher. The philosopher has
features of the ancient animal, but not of
the most archaic, that was forced out of its
first element, water […]” (14)
19 See Laruelle, “Le Tsunami” 10.
20 Idem, En tant 250: “The One, The Real, Man”
(“it’s all the same to me” [même combat]).
21 Ibid. 207. See also 59, 185, 210–11.
22 Ibid. 216. As Anthony Paul Smith points out,
“the meaning of individual in English does not
capture all that Laruelle intends when, in French,
he differentiates individual from individuel. The first
is a neologism of his own construction playing on
the sense of “dual” in order to express the funda-
mental duality of individuals and the second is the
term that is usually translated into English as indi-
vidual, but he plays with the “duel,” which means
the same in English as it does in French, to signify
that it is a fundamentally antagonistic concept”
(Smith 241 n. 18).
23 See Laruelle, Future 2: “The-man of the philoso-
phers and of common sense is a generality that
levels out a special duality, an indivi-duality
through which it is a cause or determinate identity
of the subject in-struggle with the World, Chris-
tianity, gnosis and Judaism included.”
24 Idem, Théorie des Etrangers 162, 166.
25 Ibid. 162.
26 Laruelle, “Is Thinking Democratic?” 236.
27 Idem, Future 23; my emphasis.
28 Idem, Anti-Badiou 11.
29 Idem, Théorie générale 147, 149.
30 Idem, Philosophie et non-philosophie 250.
31 Idem, Philosophie non-standard 320.
32 Idem, Future 25.
33 Ibid. 26.
34 Ibid. 25.
35 Ibid. 25, 30.
36 Brassier 137. Significantly, what Galloway calls
Laruelle’s “autism” (Galloway 202), and Kolozova
his necessary humanism of the “Ego-in-Ego,” Bras-
sier here rightly traces back to an influence stem-
ming from Michel Henry’s egological philosophy,
which has itself been accused of borderline solip-
sism. Where Laruelle escapes such solipsism,
despite his personalism of the ego, will be seen
below.
37 Elsewhere, we have called the second
form a “complete-anthropomorphism” (complete
because it changes man too) that should be con-
trasted with the half-anthropomorphism (projec-
tive) that is usually held up as its only form
simpliceter – see Mullarkey, “Tragedy of the
Object.”
38 We should note that this is not to state a thesis
that “the human is multiple,” but rather to perform
a multiplication of theses concerning the human.
Hence, when Théorie des Etrangers proposes “the
most general possible science of man in as much
as he is man, and of man existing in a
multiple state” (23), it is the gesture of proposing
this science (in all its detailed performance) that
counts.
39 Laruelle, Théorie des Etrangers 24.
40 Ibid. 40.
41 Idem, Dictionary 30.
42 Idem, Théorie des Etrangers 22, 41.
43 Idem, En tant 37.
44 Idem, Théorie des Etrangers 40.
45 Ibid. 110.
46 See idem, Théorie générale 147, 148: “Man-in-
person is not a kingdom within a kingdom any
more; he does not have priority over the animal”
(yet man does have a “before-priority”); or man
is not exceptional, “everyone is victimisable” and
the “simple animal” too can be “protected even
defended” (but “it cannot be treated better than
man”).
47 Ibid. 148–49.
126

48 Ibid.
49 Even with respect to non-humans like the
sea, Laruelle posits that “Man can finally see
his fixed and moving image, his intimate open-
ness as the greatest secret in the ocean,” as
well as – “the sea which is also human in the
way which the human is every Last Instance” (Lar-
uelle, “L’Impossible” n. pag.). See also Smith
173–74 on this.
50 Laruelle, Théorie des Etrangers 78, 110, 96, 160.
51 Idem, Théorie des identités 92.
52 Idem, Philosophie non-standard 521.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid. 507.
55 Idem, Philosophie et non-philosophie 251.
56 See idem, En tant 137ff.
57 Badiou 55.
58 See Laruelle, En tant 33: non-philosophy “redis-
tributes” thought (materiau disponible) “to every
man. Philosophy can really become ‘for us’ or
‘popular’ only in becoming non-philosophy.” In
that non-philosophy does not know what man is,
we aim to distribute thought even further than
“man.”
59 See Mullarkey, “Animal Spirits.”
60 See idem, “1 + 1 = 1.”
61 Laruelle, En tant (34) speaks of “[…] postural
‘mutations’ more profound still than changes of
philosophy or of ‘positions.’”
62 Idem, Théorie des identités 309.
63 See idem, Phénomène, especially 254 on the
serpent as (for Ravaisson) the “unique object of
philosophy” that embodies an “animal figuring
(of) grace” (animal figurant la grâce). See also Mul-
larkey, Post-Continental 153–56.
64 Laruelle, En tant 34.
65 Ibid. 250.
66 Idem, Principles of Non-Philosophy 217; see also
Brassier 134.
67 See Cull 122.
68 Laruelle, En tant 50.
127
ó maoilearca
69 This last quote here is attributed to the
mime artist Marcel Marceau. Significantly, Ron
Broglio has recently described the performance
art of Marcus Coates in terms of a “knowing
idiocy” that he compares to that of Diogenes’ per-
formance of a “dog philosophy.” See Broglio 101;
Cull 109.
70 In Book III of The Republic, Plato promises that
“pantomimic gentlemen, who are so clever that
they can imitate anything” will not be “permitted
to exist.”
71 Kolozova 113; my emphasis. What Kolozova
refers to here as the “behind” is analysed in cine-
matic and philosophical terms as the “background”
in Mullarkey, “1 + 1 = 1”; idem, “Animal Spirits”;
idem, “Tragedy of the Object.”
72 Kolozova 138.
73 Ibid. 144.
74 Laruelle, Théorie des identités 312–13; idem, En
tant 242.
75 En tant 225: “My project [ … is] to introduce
philosophy to heretical experience.”
76 Kolozova 27, 33.
77 Laruelle, En tant 224.
78 Idem, “Non-Philosophy” 251.
79 Idem, Théorie des identités 302.
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and Ben Woodard. 2009. Web. Feb. 2012.
<http://speculativeheresy.wordpress.com>.
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Laruelle, François. Théorie générale des victimes.
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 ó maoilearca

Ó Maoilearca, John. Postural Mutations: Laruelle and

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Smith, Anthony Paul. A Non-Philosophical Theory of
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New York: Palgrave, 2013. Print.

John Ó Maoilearca
Film and Television Studies
School of Performance and Screen Studies
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Kingston University, London
Kingston upon Thames
Surrey KT1 2EE
UK
E-mail: j.mullarkey@kingston.ac.uk
 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 19 number 2 june 2014

introduction

W e seek to construct a still partly

unknown object, which we call
“generic epistemology.” Such an epistemology
does not limit science to a logic of proof and jus-
tification, but includes within it the creation of
objects, objects that are new in the sense that
zones of genericity, zones of uncertainty, and
zones of inseparability are constitutive parts of
them, rather than extrema or shadowy zones
that we might hope to obviate. A generic epis-
temology maintains that the development of a anne-françoise schmid
theory of design not only sheds light on the
process of innovation but could be significantly
armand hatchuel
extended to science itself – assuming in science
the distinction between concepts, which are not translated by robin mackay
discipline dependent, and knowledge, which is
in general disciplinary. A generic epistemology
depends upon no particular discipline; neither
ON GENERIC
does it depend directly upon the present. EPISTEMOLOGY
We think generic epistemology in order to
understand and to evolve representations of
science, the relations between disciplines,
relations with other areas of knowledge, and to 1 collaboration and current state
somewhat pacify the current situation. A of research
generic epistemology supposes fundamental
1.1 the collaboration
changes in the way we think the sciences (they
would no longer be mere logics of proof, verifi- The two authors work in fields which, according
cation or refutation), their logics (they would no to institutional custom, do not seem conducive
longer be solely disciplinary), their objects (they to collaboration: Anne-Françoise Schmid has
would no longer be given, nor could they be con- published in contemporary philosophy and epis-
strained within a subject/object relation) as well temology, bringing to light some general
as disciplinary relations (they would no longer hypotheses of epistemology and demonstrating
consist merely in the combination of the latest that the latter are no longer capable of giving
acquisitions of knowledge). This article an account of contemporary sciences. Armand
attempts to give an idea of what we believe is Hatchuel has elaborated a new theory of
a change of paradigm; but this time a change design and creation (C-K Design Theory)1
without crisis, because it is not a matter of sur- which formally distinguishes the space of con-
passing a “normal science.” cepts from the space of knowledge, and which

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/14/020131-14 © 2014 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.950868

131
 on generic epistemology
maintains a strong relation to mathematics, in
particular Paul J. Cohen’s method of forcing
and algebraic extension. This theoretical
stance allows one to speak of innovation and
the sciences without opposing the two.
The collaboration was precipitated by the exist-
ence of theories of “fiction” that bear close simi-
larities to those presumed by C-K (Concept/
Knowledge) Design Theory. In analytical philos-
ophy of mathematics, the method of fiction
allows one to avoid reducing mathematics to its
most well-known objects, and instead to extend
its concept. In François Laruelle’s “non-standard
philosophy,” fiction allows one to generalize phil-
osophy by compelling it to abandon its claims vis-
à-vis the real and other disciplines. Now, it turns
out that the technique of fiction is the same in
each of these cases: what is a mathematics
“without” object, a mathematics “without”
number, a philosophy “without” a transcenden-
tal, a technical object “without” one of its classical
properties? In each case the “without” does not
designate a lack, but brings about an approach
conducive to putting into play areas of knowledge
other than those usually evoked in research into
the characteristics of an object or a discipline.
Here, the object one seeks to characterize
through a certain extension is not merely a well-
known object with the addition of a new and
interesting property; it is an “X” from which
one subtracts or to which one adds a property,
thus making possible an extension of both knowl-
edge and concepts. The use of this method in
different domains, languages and traditions
seemed to us to furnish a philosophical basis for
C-K Design Theory, and to suggest new relations
with French philosophy and analytic philosophy
of mathematics.
What is more, it is important that any theory
of design be able to do justice to notions such as
that of the unknown, the heterogeneous and the
future. For innovation does not take place
according to “rules,” nor does it consist in
adding a new property to a list of more well-
known properties. C-K Design Theory allows
us to deal with these notions, and grant them
a central place in the act of innovation. A
similar problem is posed in epistemology:
must we characterize the sciences only in
terms of the traits we can extract from their
history, progressively adding those which
appear better to capture contemporary practices
– modelization, simulation, digital models, etc.?
This approach leads to exclusions in the rep-
resentation of sciences, as current debates (on
climate change, or on creationism) demonstrate.
We must be able to introduce into epistemology
the notions of the unknown, the heterogeneous
and the future in order to take account, in
more synthetic fashion, of the non-reducible
variety of contemporary sciences, somewhat as
Kant did in his time for negative quantities.2
To achieve this, we must not set out from one
discipline so as to add others afterwards as
necessary, as has been done historically in epis-
temology, where everything was considered as a
part of mechanics. Instead we must admit from
the very outset the multiplicity of disciplines,
and set out to “neutralize” them – that is to
say, we must not accept any one as dominant,
and must undo each one’s claims vis-à-vis the
others. To achieve this, we need a generic epis-
temology, which depends neither upon one par-
ticular discipline nor upon a privileged time.
There remain “live issues” to resolve here. We
have recognized from the start that fiction was an
operator passing from real to real, and not from
possible to real, as is generally believed. Neither
technological nor scientific inventions are the
realization of a possible. We have accepted that
the “force-(of)-thought” that animates scientific
research surpasses disciplinary practices even as
it presupposes them, and that it must be admitted
that we can comprehend the sciences only by
acknowledging many regimes at once (those that
are disciplinary and those that rebel against disci-
pline, the scientific continents but also the no-
man’s-land between continents, etc.)
Finally, we have been particularly attentive to
what Balthasar Gracian calls “agudeza,”
whereby fiction brings together apparently inde-
pendent things unexpectedly, whether in techni-
cal innovation or in the sciences.
1.2 survey of the current situation
Epistemology was formed at a moment of mul-
tiplication and explosion of disciplines, when
132

the latter could no longer be recognized entirely
according to the characteristics of classical
mechanics. It became necessary to constitute
criteria of scientificity, elaborated in terms of
the opposition between the true and the false,
so as to operate a “triage” of the methods and
disciplines that were being constituted: the ver-
ifiability (the Vienna Circle), and refutability
(Karl Popper) of scientific propositions, their
unification under a research programme (Imre
Lakatos) or, finally, their anarchic dispersion
(Paul K. Feyerabend). It has been held since
the end of the twentieth century that these cri-
teria, at the crossroads of disciplines and the
opposition true/false, can no longer be admitted
as universal criteria of science. Certain voices
have concluded from this that an epistemology
of the sciences in the strict sense is no longer
possible, and that it must be replaced, for
example, by a sociology or psychology of the
sciences.
We believe that an epistemology remains
essential in order to understand current sciences,
but that it can no longer depend on an implicitly
disciplinary conception of those sciences.
The notion of discipline functions as a
general framework in the epoch of criteria.
Thus our initial survey will consist in character-
izing this notion.
1.2.1 the concept of “discipline”
The question of disciplines is historically dated;
it is not an “absolute” of the sciences. In the
nineteenth century, one spoke more readily of
specialisms. The characteristics of a discipline
are not homogeneous, which means that the
question of disciplines conceals and smoothes
over realities of a quite different type. A disci-
pline might be defined precisely as that which
is delimited by the usage of principles that are
to serve as an indirect definition of primitive
notions, as in mechanics. It is this sense of “dis-
cipline” to which one refers when one seeks
criteria – a structure usually called “hypothe-
tico-deductive” (according to Mario Pieri’s
term, at the end of the nineteenth century)
bringing into relation measurements, obser-
vations, and experiments.
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schmid & hatchuel
Michel Foucault has described another form
of discipline that emerges contemporaneously
with the “scientific disciplines”: discipline as a
set of rules, habits, productions of enunciations
– which demands a broadening of the term “dis-
cipline.” This broadening is not merely socio-
logical; it is institutional, epistemic, and
involves the convergence of numerous bodies
of knowledge and practices.
Finally, discipline is the site of the recog-
nition of what is evident, of ways of reasoning,
of types of hypothesis, of concepts, specific
however complex they may sometimes be.
Even in the case of “hybrid” disciplines,
where different forms of scientific knowledge
are brought together, a characteristic type of
problem can be recognized, even if one does
not know exactly the limits or the definition of
the discipline.
In the epoch of the quest for criteria, these
three senses of “discipline” almost merged
into one another. They formed something like
a sense of the unity of science: well-delimited
disciplines, well-determined practices, affects
of recognition as to what is a good scientific
problem, what is conducive to the posing of
good analogies. Nowadays, in the “era of
models,”3 these notions tend to become disso-
ciated. The evident truths of a discipline can
be “recognized” without knowing its limits,
and it is believed that an account of sciences
can be given on the basis of practical rules.
The idea of discipline may not be called into
question, but the multiple senses of the term
are separated and each assigned a different
destiny.
1.2.2 the discipline as condition of
visibility of discoveries
The discipline comes about when science can no
longer be considered entirely as an “image of
nature,” and when it becomes important to dis-
tribute the role of the scientist and the role of
nature in the sciences; that of “discovery” and
that of “invention.” Our hypothesis is that this
distance created by disciplines is the condition
of visibility for “great discoveries,” even if the
latter surpass any particular disciplinary
 on generic epistemology
character. But pluridisciplinary and/or
modelizing work suffers a sort of invisibility in
relation to classical theoretical and disciplinary
work.
Generic epistemology must be able to alter
modes of seeing and perceiving advances in
science, when those advances no longer
depend upon disciplinary perspectives. This
does not mean that theories and disciplines
become less important, but that their mode of
existence must be a mode of “co-existence”
with other approaches, a mode of “pro-exist-
ence” and “prosence,” or of “futurality”4 that
no longer depends only upon the present and
upon that which is well established, but which
elaborates a thinking whose materials are the
three classical times (past, present, future).
This new mode of visibility supposes an
“outside-discipline” and a new conception of
the scientific object, previously occulted by the
epistemology of theories, too fascinated as
they are by the criteria of the true. A generic
epistemology does not consider science merely
as a machine that creates proofs and verifica-
tions, but as a creator of objects. We move
from a critique of truths to the construction of
objects.
Now, if we seek to characterize classical epis-
temology from the point of view of its image of
science, its logic is the logic of proof, its process
an administration of proof, of prediction and
justification; and its politics, a disciplinary
enframing.
Generic epistemology allows us to show that
scientificity is not the same thing as the admin-
istration of proof, but that the scientific also
encompasses the creation of new objects,
whose dimensions are disciplines. The logic of
such an epistemology is one of expansion, of
forcing, in the form of C-K Design Theory,
which separates the space of creation of concepts
(which has no logical status) and the space of
knowledge (logically structured, with the
axioms of choice and excluded middle). This
type of conceptive forcing permits the creation
of propositions which are neither facts nor prop-
ositions tenable within a particular discipline.5
Its processes and its methods suppose
the creation of sites (M. Mambrini-Doudet),
interdisciplinary or even indisciplinary objects,
experimental objects, incomplete objects with
zones of uncertainty, zones of genericity, zones
of inseparability. The outside-disciplinary is
the site of “perspicacious reverie” (Hatchuel)
rather than of “free-floating attention” – an
interdisciplinary space, the space of the exten-
sion of concepts and of knowledge (Hatchuel).
Generic politics is an indisciplinary ethics, a
technological ethics, elaborated with the aid of
experimental texts, so as to elaborate the perti-
nent parameters of the partly unknown objects
we shall characterize below as “integrative
objects.”
2 prolegomena to a generic
epistemology, a paradigm-shift
without crisis
Generic epistemology is organized around
several principal poles, which are a way of
responding to the question of the heterogeneity
of problems and objects in contemporary
science. These poles will pertain to certain inde-
pendences: independence from disciplines,
independence from the present, independence
from the known. Of course, we do not claim
that disciplines, the present, the known, do
not exist; we suggest that rather than setting
out directly from the latter we should construct
an approach that would be compatible with
them without depending upon them. The
generic is like a particular type of Occam’s
razor: rather than selecting against certain
notions, it “cuts them off” from what had
appeared to be the starting-point of classical
problems. The consequence is a sort of democ-
racy of disciplines, between which we shall
create links by way of iterations that are more
than formal repetitions; and the creation of a
site of interdiscipline or a common site for the
non-disciplinary identity of science.
2.1 the principle of independence
These new ways of relating the concept of disci-
pline to the development of epistemology are so
many ways of suggesting that we find ourselves
134

in a paradigm-shift, where it is a matter of
passing from a disciplinary regime where the
outside-discipline is a void, to a disciplinary
regime where the outside-discipline is “full,”
and where discipline is seen on the basis of the
outside-discipline. The aim of generic epistem-
ology is to not exclude new practices and new
disciplines in the name of an anachronistic
image of science. It is important to have the
epistemological means to address new forms of
science – above all during an historical period
where the putting-into-relation of fragments of
disciplines and bodies of knowledge endangers
the image of science. The identity of science
must be rediscovered, otherwise these new
relations will be expelled, relegated to sociology
and politics.
However, generic epistemology does not
depend upon the current predicament of epis-
temology; it is independent of the formation
and the construction of disciplines. It cannot
accept a universalizing typology of disciplines.
Similarly, generic epistemology does not
depend upon the present situation in order to
characterize the identity of sciences. French
epistemology has systematically linked together
the history of sciences and epistemology, insist-
ing that one must do history of science and one
must do epistemology, but without making the
latter a consequence of the former. On the con-
trary, the two must be separated so as to recon-
struct their relations in richer fashion.
2.2 the principle of the integrative
object
The new objects can be described through the
methods of generic epistemology. But one
must proceed via disciplines, for the latter are
in a certain sense the “measure” of objects.
Objects might be given directly “within” a disci-
pline, like the nebula of astronomy, as an
“object” at the end of a telescope; they might
be explicitly constructed, like the “galaxy” of
astronomy, but as a set of models, certain of
which pertain to connected domains. There are
“complex” objects, in Legay’s sense,6 whose
description is conditional upon the decision to
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schmid & hatchuel
bring various disciplinary perspectives into con-
vergence, but which are still partly given. All of
these characterizations depend very closely
upon the conception of disciplines.
We think that contemporary sciences form
objects of a different type, whose heterogeneity
is far less dependent upon disciplinary diversity.
In certain regards, information technology and
computer simulations have taught us to manip-
ulate heterogeneity in pluriformalized modeliza-
tions. But we postulate a heterogeneity that
would no longer be on the margins, or which
would be the remainder of that which the
logics and modes of homogeneity of disciplines
can no longer account for.
We shall call such an object an “integrative
object.” It is formed by the superposition of
fragments of different bodies of knowledge,
and its coherence owes to the individual or col-
lective “intention” (M. Mambrini-Doudet) or
“projection” (William Clancey) of researchers
and to the identity of this intention with the
real. There is scientific objectivity, but it is no
longer positivist, it is no longer a matter of con-
necting “theory” with “facts.” There is theory,
there are facts, but there are also many other
ingredients, whose coherence can no longer be
guaranteed by the opposition of regulative
notions. Hence the environment of science
becomes just as important as its “internal”
structures. Intention is something like the
thought of the relation of the environment to
the object in the object, and not within a “phe-
nomenological distance” that would once again
oppose subject and object, theory and fact.
Such an object is not the consequence of one dis-
cipline along with the collaboration of others.
Rather, its dimensions are constituted by frag-
ments of disciplines, and it is a sort of disciplin-
ary “hole.”
“Integrative objects” are no longer complex
objects, explicable by the convergence and the
overlapping of disciplinary perspectives. They
are not given, they are unknown, their dimen-
sions are fragments of disciplines, but articu-
lated in a heterogeneity such that a milieu, a
mid-site, is necessary to conceive and to
receive them. They are formed of superpositions
of bodies of knowledge, unified by the partial
 on generic epistemology
and mobile continuity of intention. They can no
longer be seen as variations of facets within a
phenomenological distance; the distance is now
internal to the object under the auspices of het-
erogeneity. It no longer separates subject and
object, which are in an equilibrium that itself
is not given either, but can only be deciphered
from the perspective of futurality. The integra-
tive object thus induces a new logic of interdis-
ciplinarity7 and a relation to the virtual and to
the future that cannot be neglected.
2.3 the principle of genericity
The question of genericity and of independence
from disciplines has not been thematized in
epistemology. In what follows, we detail
several rules to produce the generic. They
allow for the conservation of an unimpaired
form of objectivity for the sciences. It is a
matter, in each case, of producing concepts by
extracting them from their disciplinary logic
or doctrinal system. We shall propose several
procedures, certain of which are already well
underway, with the concomitant results.
(1) Each ingredient that can be observed in
scientific practice must be allowed its consist-
ency and relative autonomy, without making it
an intermediary or a mediator between theory
and experience. If it is a non-pertinent object
this will be discovered as work progresses.
This way of working allows for the recuperation
of all the distinctions of the epistemology of the-
ories, but makes an indirect usage of them, in
view of a characterization of science.
Result: an epistemology of modelization and of
invention; a new consistency for the notion of
hypothesis, which no longer depends upon the
opposition between the true and the false.
(2) We must seek to identify “zones of insepar-
ability” or “zones of genericity,” between disci-
plines, between problems, between concepts,
etc. In each problem, a discipline can be
brought to bear as a parameter rather than as
“content.” Thus, philosophy and ethics might
be understood as parameters. This is an
interpretation of new types of immersion
between sciences and philosophies.
Result: work on “sites of interdiscipline,” the
elaboration of new relations between sciences
and philosophy that do not depend upon disci-
plinary territories. Every passage from one frag-
ment of science to another fragment of science
supposes a philosophical medium, every
passage from one philosophy to another, a scien-
tific medium. One must think a matrix of
relations between philosophies and sciences,8
such as that developed in François Laruelle’s
Philosophie non-standard. Générique, quan-
tique, philo-fiction.9 This matrix has been
partly put to work at the Centre des recherches
INRA de Jouy-en-Josas by its president, Muriel
Mambrini-Doudet.
(3) We must develop the writing of experimen-
tal texts to construct hypotheses on the par-
ameters and the dimensions of objects and of
disciplines. Such writing enriches a collective
knowledge regarding the sciences that does not
depend directly on disciplinary logics and con-
tents. It is the work of ethics as a “generic
science of frontiers.”
Result: the construction of new dimensions and
parameters, to think both revisited disciplines
and interdisciplines within the conception of
integrative objects; the development of epis-
temological work and of an experimental
ethics which go beyond historical commentary.
This could also be a means to enrich the quest
for the “ingredients” of science.
(4) We must construct the place of a dynamic
“cartography” of sciences where problems,
objects, ingredients and hypotheses are put into
relation with disciplines in indirect, supple and
multiple fashion. This cartography is not flat; it
superposes bodies of knowledge rather than
putting them into opposition. These superposi-
tions are rendered coherent by the fusion of the
researcher’s intention and the identity of the
problem in relation to the real.
Result: a “quantum” method that does not bear
directly upon objects, but upon “operators”;
something like a “non-epistemology” or a
“generic epistemology” which does not pursue
136

the illusion of bearing directly upon the
“object” sciences, but produces generic
concepts to characterize them indirectly.
(5) New relations between scientific integrative
objects and common sense must be constructed.10
We must no longer seek a technical democracy
subtended by decision, but a more expansive
form of democracy, with the invention of generic-
ities, new expertises, etc. …, a democracy of dis-
ciplines in the site of interdisciplinarity.
Result: in all scientific problems, which now
bear the same name as those of common sense
(cancer, climate, environment, alternative ener-
gies, etc.), research and extra-scientific partner-
ships forge links that are becoming more and
more important, and the debates around scienti-
fic objects can no longer be content with exclu-
sively “scientific” parameters, in the sense that
the epistemology of theories gives such par-
ameters. The epistemology of theories is insuffi-
cient for this; what is necessary is an expertise in
modelizing – inventive and integrative, more
supple and predictive.
Each time we find ourselves confronted with a
difficulty we must place it into relation – but
not too soon – with the disciplinary ground,
and seek the points of inseparability between
problem and disciplines, and between disci-
plines and other disciplines. Thereby we redis-
cover the act of scientific invention in a way
that is relatively independent of disciplines. It
is no longer necessary to seek “obstacles” to
science, as is the case when one seeks criteria;
rather, we must invent points of inseparability,
which will be our “real,” so as better to put into
perspective the scientific approach. It must be
shown how the latter remains scientific even
once one admits philosophical, ethical, etc. par-
ameters into the construction of problems.
Research on modelization and on pluriformali-
zations11 can be a guide in this enterprise.
In principle, each discipline could be a term
of modelization, but without being doubled –
something which, for philosophy or ethics, is a
sort of tour de force if one holds to the idea
that they are disciplines that are the horizon of
others. Philosophy and ethics become common
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schmid & hatchuel
partners, and can find the form of their
objects only by relating themselves to other dis-
ciplines. To decentre disciplines, but without
making them into an horizon – this is what is
at stake, such is the challenge. This decentring
is a “fiction,” as we shall explain below – a
form of passage and of invention between
these points of inseparability. Hence, the knowl-
edge drawn from the disciplines is not the same,
nor is it of the same order, as that which may
seem the most “advanced” from the point of
view of the discipline alone.
All of this is possible only if we place the idea
of the object at the centre, and if we do not
remain within a linguistic, “creole,”12 or prag-
matist13 vision of models. Language does not
allow the decentring of disciplines; the consider-
ation of objects and new objects, on the other
hand, contributes towards it. Of course,
models are also “of” language, but this does
not suffice to understand their efficacity in the
sciences. This problem is very much at stake
in current debates. The scientific is no longer
articulated by frontiers, but by identities, in
which resides its relation to the real; and by
the intention of the scientist, which determines
identity as a function of the problem of the
organization of knowledge. This is no longer a
positivist point of view on the sciences, but a
stance in which the scientific can recognize
itself as such by the superposition of identity
and intention within an “object.”
It is thought, for example, that philosophy and
epistemology bear directly upon their object, the
sciences, or that in reading and practising the
sciences one can generalize their experienced or
lived characteristics so as to make a philosophical
representation of science. But on the contrary,
the object creates around it a sort of “disciplinary
hole,” so that no discipline can speak directly of
it. It is important to be more prudent concerning
the relations between disciplines themselves, and
between disciplines and their objects: there is no
disciplinary relation. Questions of the identity
of science are not disciplinary, but make use of
disciplines all the while remaining indifferent to
them.
To treat of such problems we do not need a
“creole” as mode of exchange, but a “collective
 on generic epistemology
intimacy” of science,14 no longer created by
doubt and monodisciplinary in principle, but
by the “troubled” nature of interdisciplinary
experience.
2.4 the principle of futurality
These new objects suppose the extension of time
into the future, to future generations and future
sciences, of which we know nothing. How to
think objects according to this unknown? Here
also, classical descriptions of science prove
insufficient. Ultimately, such a thinking sup-
poses an “inversion of the arrow of time,” so
that evaluations of such objects do not depend
on a logic that goes from the present to the
future (as in, for example, ethics committees),
but from the future to the present (in a logic
closer to that of scenario planning).
To this end, what is necessary is a fundamen-
tal notion to think the future otherwise than as a
realization of the present, but which allows us to
give an account of the classical states of time.
This notion we name “prosence” or “pro-exist-
ence.” It is a matter of articulating propositions
that engage the future without ever reducing it
to the present, in such a way as to create a
language for the unknown. This brings in the
idea of intention or projection, moving us
towards an epistemology of action wherein a
partly unknown subject constructs a relation
with a partly unknown object.
Such a stance supposes that, in considering
concepts and objects, one does not begin at
the end – as if they were already known and
engaged with via their practical effects, for
example. The concept is what creates this inter-
disciplinary, or even indisciplinary, space – the
site of expansive partitions, indeterminate from
the point of view of disciplinary logics;
“magma” (Castoriadis) or “porridge” (Mam-
brini-Doudet).
We do not deny disciplines. We affirm both
sites of discipline and sites of indiscipline, but
in making the former “dérive” from the latter.
These sites are not homogeneous and isotropic
“spaces,” they are pregnant with common tra-
jectories and interdisciplines. They allow also
the surmounting of the classical opposition
between a “universal” science and its local insti-
tutional conditions. There are thus two criteriol-
ogies, two systems that we do not oppose: from
now on there will be two ways for science, each
inseparable from the other. If we remain with a
disciplinary epistemology, there can be but one
logic and one process. The relations between the
two systems, disciplinary and generic, are not
the result of a crisis-period. This is not
Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm – normal science,
crisis, new normal science – but a new paradigm
without crisis, a paradigm of fiction vs. the para-
digm of critique. There are two systems or two
regimes of thought, which reveal other things
to us. Currently, generic epistemology is indis-
pensable for understanding the blossoming of
new disciplines (synthetic biology, predictive
biology, etc. … ), making comprehensible the
new indirect relations between disciplines, and
establishing a democracy amongst them.
We maintain that science is not only a matter
of proof but also one of the constitution of an
object of a type which implies a new relation
to disciplines, where one admits from the
outset that they are multiple, where they are
decentred and undergo a “translation” or a
“dérive” in relation to integrative and concep-
tive objects, around which are constituted new
logics of interdisciplinarity.
2.5 the principle of inventive reason
and “poincaré’s criterion”
Critique allows us to master the limits of disci-
plines. But this mastery supposes a certain dis-
tancing. One of the myths of disciplinarity is
that there is one discipline capable of accounting
for all others, surveying them. The effect of the
progressive dissociation of the disciplinary
characteristics (disciplines’ practice, theoretical
limits, or system of recognition of evidence) is
that such a relation between philosophy and
the sciences no longer appears appropriate.
This is also the idea of “relativism,” of course:
we can group together philosophies and
sciences, since in every “object” we can
discern some philosophy, some science, some
technique, etc. without being able to separate
138

them. It is one thing to be able to advocate the
separation or the proximity of philosophies
and sciences, or to think them, however. But
what relativism posits is a continuity between
disciplines, without seeking to understand the
presuppositions that this putting-into-continu-
ity depends upon.
This continuity poses a problem, because it
can only set out from, and justify itself on the
basis of, given information and current states
of affairs. Poincaré had already remarked that
a scientific generalization cannot rest on mere
continuity, that it must undergo a “decompo-
sition” in order to relate that which is observed
to disciplinary languages and bodies of knowl-
edge. This is what we call “Poincaré’s cri-
terion”; it allows us to give an identity to
science independently of its disciplines, and to
construct dimensions for scientific invention.
There is a criterion of scientificity for the
interdisciplinary.
C-K Design Theory has given what appears to
us a very productive interpretation of this
“decomposition”: in science one decomposes
elements which function as “concepts,” and
which can be extended to new types of knowl-
edge. It is this that we shall examine in the fol-
lowing section, which describes the resonances
between these prolegomena to generic epistem-
ology and the practices of fiction and immersion.
This approach allows the treatment of
objects otherwise than as the result of a combi-
natory of the already-known. One sets out from
an impossible and desirable concept, to recon-
nect in “unknown” objects series of cognitions
that have remained separate until now. This
unknown is a part of “integrative objects.” It
is a matter of opening structures, of seeing
the “thickness” of notions, of hypotheses, of
reasoning, in such a way as to relate them at
once to a site of interdiscipline and to multiple
disciplinary dimensions.
3 generic epistemology: which
practices, which sites?
Generic epistemology offers new spaces of reflec-
tion and brings into play new practices – between
sciences, between sciences and philosophies,
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schmid & hatchuel
between knowledge and non-knowledge. It is to
these practices and to their site that we dedicate
this third section: practices of fiction, to under-
stand non-critical but instead expansive relations
of generic concepts; practices of immersion, to
suggest matrixial relations between disciplines;
sites of interdiscipline, to manifest the collective
intimacy of science, as a new type of scientific
exchange.
3.1 the practice of fiction
One of the things that suggest that the critical
paradigm is in the process of being effaced in
favour of another (which does not mean that it
will disappear) is the lack of visibility of contem-
porary scientific work. The relations between
disciplines are no longer wholly the same, and
it is perhaps this that modifies the type or the
genre of discovery.
Confronted with this invisibility, “fiction” is
a method that allows us not to reduce an
object or a discipline to the state of a fact, to
its known objects, but to extend it to other
series of knowledge. It emerges contempora-
neously yet independently in analytic philos-
ophy of mathematics,15 in non-philosophy and
in C-K Design Theory. As a technique it pre-
sents certain invariants:16 it consists in seeking
the properties or characteristics of an object or
a discipline, characteristics neither too rich
(which would lead to a dead end of particular-
isms and technical impasses) nor too impover-
ished (since then one would remain in the
indeterminate). One of these properties is
chosen, to see how that which one seeks can
be developed or can find new objects in the
latter: mathematics without proof, mathematics
without object, without number, without magni-
tude, epistemology without mechanics, philos-
ophy without authority. Such a way of posing
problems seeks to develop and invest other
bodies of knowledge, or partly ordered series
Kn of knowledge, other than those usually
employed to characterize the object or discipline
in question. It brings into relation a problematic
concept and partly ordered sets of knowledge.
Fiction is a generic method or the generic
writing that replaces critique.
 on generic epistemology
Object and disciplines, in such a method, are
no longer considered as given or as completely
determined; they comprise zones of incertitude,
zones of genericity, zones of inseparability.
These latter are not to be taken as failings but
as specific characteristics of integrative objects.
Fiction is a method of neutralization of disci-
plines and of expansion of knowledge.
Generic epistemology is the fruit of such an
expansion (epistemology without discipline,
discipline without critique, etc. … ), as are
“non-philosophy” (what is philosophy without
authority over the Real?) and C-K Design
Theory (what is an invention without decision?).
Rather than a set of partly ordered knowledges,
one can consider them in their generative form –
and here the technique of fiction gives us the
means to displace the disciplines to sites other
than at the centre of scientific practice, and to
create unexpected links between them. Unlike
the story, which fabricates its discourse in the
absence of the real, fiction passes from real to
real. One passes from the analysis of one situ-
ation to provoke another situation, and accord-
ing to concepts created in this analysis –
concepts which allow one to find other relations
with the disciplines, and an other basis for
interdisciplinarity.
3.2 the practice of immersion
The immersion of philosophies in sciences
allows new types of generalization and mutual
understandings between science and philos-
ophy. This is the hypothesis upon which we
shall construct our work on disciplines and
interdisciplinarity.
Philosophy can be characterized as a
relation between a specific concept rendered
minimal and general – the transcendental –
and specific bodies of knowledge, whether phi-
losophical17 or related to other fields, other
sciences. Take a relation T × K (Transcenden-
tal/Knowledge) or rather a multiplication of T
by K. This is a characterization of philosophy
which puts it immediately and explicitly in
contact with other disciplines. The immersion
of philosophy in sciences will then be the
idea of T × K under K (K/TK), which
allows one to avoid all logic of opposition. In
the same way, C-K Design Theory can be
characterized as the relation of a space of con-
cepts – logically indeterminate – and a space of
knowledge – endowed with a logical structure,
with the axioms of choice and excluded middle
– that is, a relation O × K. In the same way,
indisciplinary ethics could be described as
the relations of ethics with bodies of knowl-
edge E × K, where ethical concepts are ren-
dered in their genericity, related to minimal
traits of the human rather than to theories of
values. In a certain way, every “discipline” is
transformed in the zigzag18 relation between
concept and knowledge. Disciplines are
opened out into two spaces, their critical
unity destroyed, but at the same time they
are taken into account as a set of tools and
dimensions for the construction of the new
identical/intentional/integrative (3I) objects.
Fiction is the ordinary of their interactions.
The ordinary is a notion that emerges in phil-
osophy when the latter seeks new interactions
with the sciences.19
This conception opens up disciplines and
practices, generalizes them in unprecedented
fashion. Philosophy’s losing its authority by
an extension over K opens it up to bodies of
knowledge that are not its own; it can be
immersed in the fields of other knowledge,
other sciences, without losing its identity. It is
force-(of)-thought, invention, that is the
impetus that allows the creation of new objects
– not disciplines and their principles. It is some-
thing more minimal than disciplinary compli-
cation – a sort of force that allows interactions
between disciplines on the way to being con-
ceived, and objects that remain partly
indeterminate.
3.3 new sites
The practices of fiction and immersion place us
in new sites. Firstly, those where minimal con-
cepts drawn from disciplinary logics, from phi-
losophical systems or theories of value, can be
received outside-discipline. One cannot engage
with these new practices without postulating a
140

site of immanence, which cannot be reduced to
formal, spatial properties. A site pregnant with
concepts, with times, with locality, but also
with universals reduced to the generic. The
opposition between local science and universal
science here loses all meaning, as does that
between discovery and invention. This site is
not that of the combinatorial of positive
acquisitions of knowledge, but that of the
expansion of virtual and future notions. The
site is a site of immanence, a milieu or mid-
site, but also that site where the transcendence
of disciplines can be manifested by means of
the concepts that have been extracted from
them.
These sites, “natural sites of interdiscipline”
(Muriel Mambrini-Doudet) – “natural”
because not imposed by any authority – are
no-man’s-lands for the disciplines, clandestine
zones for known scientific practices.
The problematic of sites shows us that a lin-
guistic conception of science is not enough. To
think science, one needs a real that precedes
human action, and this site is that of an identity
of the minimal traits of science and those of the
human, where distances are neither metric nor
phenomenological. With the practices of
fiction and of immersion, we postulate a
human practice of science.
conclusion: heterogeneity,
genericity and sites of
interdiscipline
The central idea of this article is that without a
thinking of these three terms, heterogeneity,
genericity and sites of interdiscipline, we end
up with agonistic models of science. From this
perspective, interdisciplinarity is thought as a
finality of scientific activity, and even, in a
certain way, its condition. One can only under-
stand this new conception by reformulating in
rigorous fashion the question of the future,
and making of the latter a “logic of the
unknown.”
The displacement of disciplines and the
putting-to-work of “sites of interdisciplinarity”
produce very different dimensions, which do
141
schmid & hatchuel
not permit the clear discernment of “great dis-
coveries” in the same sense as that of relativity
and quantum theory. To regret an anterior situ-
ation is one thing, but one must not allow this
regret to become an obstacle to the comprehen-
sion of that which effectively comes to pass.
Heterogeneity with regard to disciplines, to
languages, to scales, to objects means that habit-
ual points of reference and disciplinary frame-
works no longer suffice; but this is not to say
that this heterogeneity no longer has anything
to do with the sciences. This heterogeneity is
expressed in the integrative objects by the idea
of the superposition of fragments of knowledges
and non-knowledges.
The idea of heterogeneity has been under-
stood by Gilbert Hottois as the “black transcen-
dence” of the calculative in discursive culture.20
This image of strangeness and rupture is doubt-
less not sufficient, and too simple, to apply to
current sciences, and to the way in which they
mix the operational, the calculable, the “compu-
tique,”21 and discourse with the future. The dis-
ciplinary and the non-disciplinary, already
present under the wave of the “generic,”
suppose as a “site” or a dynamic “milieu” a
sort of matrix of creation, a matrix of disciplin-
ary relations. Interdisciplinarity will no longer
be played out two by two, or in passing from
one discipline to another, but as in a milieu of
this heterogeneity where relations between frag-
ments of bodies of knowledge re-form, accord-
ing to compatibilities and orders unforeseeable
from within any of the disciplines taken in iso-
lation. How to discern “great discoveries” in
the era of the generic? In the era of displace-
ments that are multiple, and not only two by
two, as was customary in the good old days of
interdisciplinarity? In all probability, the final-
ity of discourse does not lie in occupying the
interstices left empty between the equations.
“Fiction” would be a name between “compu-
tique” and “prosence,” a minimal between the
operatory and discursive prolongation, allowing
the manifestation of this superposition of het-
erogeneous bodies of knowledge according to
logics that do not depend on any of them in par-
ticular. “Fiction” would be a way of deploying a
space or a landscape where the deployment of
 on generic epistemology
disciplines could take place according to these
new rules of heterogeneity of elements and
theory of disciplines, unified no longer
through a model discipline, but through an
identity of science, respecting Poincaré’s
criterion.
We suppose that the emergent disciplines
mark the limits of the sociology of sciences,
and that the techniques of fiction enable an alli-
ance between philosophy, invention, and ethics,
not so as to survey and master the sciences, but
as an instrument of immersion to
create and manifest new inter-
actions and to prepare future
sciences. It is to this end that
we work towards a generic
epistemology.
notes
We heartily thank Muriel Mambrini-Doudet and
Benoît Weil for their attentive reading of this
article and their numerous suggestions.
1 See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-K_theory>
(accessed 28 Aug. 2012) for a summary – the
article also contains references and links to
several papers on C-K Theory by Hatchuel and
others. [Translator’s note.]
2 Kant.
3 Legay.
4 Laruelle, Philosophie.
5 Hatchuel and Weil.
6 Legay and Schmid.
7 See Schmid, Mambrini-Doudet, and Hatchuel.
8 François Laruelle, Seminar at Petit Collège, 18
June 2007, to appear in Nicole Mathieu and
Anne-François Schmid, eds., Modélisation et interdis-
ciplinarité. Six disciplines en quête d’épistémologie
(Paris: Quae, 2014).
9 Paris: Kimé, 2011.
10 Schmid, “Question.”
11 Varenne, Du Modèle; idem, Formaliser le vivant.
12 Galison.
13 Armatte and Dahan-Dalmedico.
14 This expression could be interpreted wholly
within the framework of Alvin Goldman’s Social
Epistemology.
15 Some examples of the putting to work of
“fiction” in philosophy of mathematics: Mathemat-
ics without Foundations, Science without Numbers
(Hartry Field, 1908), Mathematics without Truth
(Field, 1990), “Mathematics without Numbers”
(Geoffrey Hellman, 1989), Structuralism without
Structures (Hellman, 1996), Truth and the Absence
of Fact (Field), Mathematics with no Objects
(Burgess and Gideon), Foundations without Founda-
tionalism (Shapiro), etc. … In French: Jean-Pierre
Cléro, (2004), Les Raisons de la fiction, les philo-
sophes et les mathématiques, Armand Colin and
Hamdi Mlika, Quine et l’antiplatonisme (Paris: L’Har-
mattan, 2007).
16 In a paper entitled “Epistémologie générique,
fiction et raisonnement mathématique” (<www.
M2Real.org>, INSA de Lyon, 10 Dec. 2010), we
have demonstrated that fiction can be understood
through the generalization of the notion of hypoth-
esis such as Poincaré conceives it.
17 Granger.
18 Recall, for example, Russell’s “zigzag theory” to
avoid contradiction, or again the importance of this
notion in the reflection on diagrams (Mullarkey).
19 Analytical philosophy is the proof of this, but
one finds it also in Continental philosophy, in Fran-
çois Laruelle’s Une biographie de l’homme ordinaire
(Paris: Aubier, 1985), which, through non-philos-
ophy or non-standard philosophy seeks new inter-
actions between sciences and philosophies.
20 Hottois.
21 Varenne, Qu’est-ce que l’informatique?
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 on generic epistemology

Varenne, Franck. Formaliser le vivant. Lois, théories,

modèles? Paris: Hermann, 2010. Print.
Varenne, Franck. Qu’est-ce que l’informatique? Paris:
Vrin, 2009. Print.

Anne-Françoise Schmid
33 rue de Fontarabie
75020 Paris
France
E-mail: anne-francoise.schmid@insa-lyon.fr

Armand Hatchuel
Mines ParisTech
60 bd Saint Michel
Paris 75012
France
E-mail: hatchuel@ensmp.fr

Robin Mackay
Urbanomic
The Old Lemonade Factory
Windsor Quarry
Falmouth TR11 3EX
UK
E-mail: robin@urbanomic.com
 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 19 number 2 june 2014

Son point de départ est Dieu, son point

d’arrivée est la sans-limite.
Suhrawardi

the first axiom of non-theology

P hilosophers always feel that they are finally

done with religion. Whether they think
they have neutralized it by placing it within
the limits of reason alone or they’ve decon-
structed it through the principles of laicity and
philosophical universalism, religion always
seems to return, if witnessed only by the fact
that philosophers seem to constantly be accus-
ing one another of being theologians. It
perhaps says something that, though this
charge functions as an allegation in the realm
of philosophy, there are others who very
proudly take on this title. There are still those
who call themselves, in public even, theologians.
Of course, religion and theology are not synon-
ymous and between them there is a real separ-
ation. But theology is at least concerned with
the materials manifest in religion, meaning
that theologians concern themselves with the
practices and beliefs of peoples, who direct
their lives maybe to illusion but also to experi-
ences and experiments in what it means to be
a human being, to be a creature. It would be
misguided and haughty to deny that, thus far,
all of these experiments have failed on the
grand scale. We ought not to hold up any of
these attempts at living as if immortal, to
living as truly free, instead of just surviving or
living as a slave in this World. They are not
the answer. And all too often the theologian
comes along and idealizes some aspect of reli-
gion, some idea within it, and projects it over
the whole phenomenon, trying to veil the
ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/14/020145-15 © 2014 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.950870
anthony paul smith
AGAINST TRADITION
TO LIBERATE
TRADITION
weaponized apophaticism
and gnostic refusal
concrete, actually existing form. Perhaps,
then, the epithet “theologian!,” shouted by
one philosopher with extended forefinger point-
ing to the other, is deserved in those moments
when it means “idealist.”
But then again, if this simply is a particularly
brutal epithet for those thinking through ideal-
ist forms, then perhaps philosophers would do
well to put their swords away lest they perish
by them. For what François Laruelle has
argued in his critique of philosophy is that phil-
osophy, too, projects an idea over the Real. Phil-
osophy is all too often almost invariantly
idealistic in its approach. Philosophy – even
those philosophies of difference of the twentieth
century – always raises the idea to the position
of the Real, forgetting that prior to the idea is

145
 against tradition to liberate tradition
always an underlying Real, an underlying iden-
tity, in-person, that will always be a stumbling
block and offence to that idea. Laruelle summar-
izes his criticism of philosophy from Plato to
Deleuze and Derrida succinctly in his Philos-
ophies of Difference, which deserves to be
quoted at length here for the reader:
Thus all contemporary philosophy of Differ-
ence offers despite everything a strangely
Platonizing spectacle: the interminable pro-
cession of the most communal entities,
Being, Nothingness, Desire, Power,
Language, Text, raising themselves up from
the ground of experience each in turn like
shades at once bloodless and laden with
chains, trying to lift themselves in infinite
file towards a mirage of the One where they
would believe themselves capable of being
regenerated and saved from empirical hell
as if at a wellspring of life. It is truly a
bizarre and certainly quite “philosophical”
merry-go-round, philosophical because it is
simultaneously ascending and descending
and playing itself out finally in a circle and
in a place. As if these larvae wished, by
their hesitations, their stumblings, their skid-
dings, the allure of their approach continu-
ally spoiled, to abandon the weighty forms
of being or non-being in order to yield and
sink into their limit, to abandon their deter-
mined forms of existence, to prove to them-
selves that they still exist when in truth
they only exist as fleeting larvae on earth.
They seek the One precisely because they
have not found it, and they will never find
anything but their own hallucination. They
neither find nor become anything other
than what they already are: them-“selves.”
They possess no more than tautological life,
but they still do not know that tautological
existence does not exhaust the real, that
Being, Nothingness, Desire, Text, Power,
etc., all this is absurd and these tautologies
are unnecessary. They have their aims,
hatreds and desires, but they continue to be
unaware that if they possess meaning relative
to one another and truth relative to them-
selves and as a system of them all, all of
this taken together – and taken together,
the system itself included as well, which
cannot now exceed or escape itself and its
destiny – is as absurd and unnecessary as a
tautology. For the One, the World is a
redundancy.1
This seems to me the most succinct and poetic
summary of the deflationary aspect of Laruelle’s
non-philosophy. Philosophy always confuses
itself with the Real by way of treating its con-
cepts as maximal, as all-encompassing of
reality. Philosophy, through its philosophers,
fails to see that it is itself part of the Real,
that it too is material. But Laruelle’s early defla-
tionary project serves a productive purpose: to
create theory freed of this shortcoming. I have
already written much regarding this project
and its move from criticism to production,
especially in relation to religion where I have
taken up explicating and developing Laruelle’s
own promise of a non-theology.
This non-theology is the focus of this essay
and so builds off a number of other essays of
mine, most directly “What Can Be Done with
Religion? Non-Philosophy and the Future of
Philosophy of Religion.”2 In addition to
suggesting how non-theology can be used to
protect non-philosophy from certain theological
temptations inherent in its focus on the Real,
non-theology is also used as a name for a non-
philosophical unified theory of religion and
philosophy, where religious materials are made
relative to the Real and used to construct new
theories. The practice of non-theology, I claim,
operates on two axioms: (1) the Real is fore-
closed to authority and tradition, and (2) what
is true(-without-truth) in theology is what is
most generic and thus what is most secular
(though this must necessarily modify the usual
meaning of the term “secular”). This essay is
concerned with explaining the first axiom,
leaving the second to be developed later. As
such, it is not an essay directly on Laruelle,
and it is not primarily a work of explication,
as some of my other essays have been, but
rather the development of a nascent theory
using means taken from Laruelle’s non-philos-
ophy. So I will continue to reference Laruelle,
as well as some others, but nothing here is
written under the name of Laruelle or is directly
about Laruelle. For what Laruelle has done with
non-philosophy is to open up the possibility of
146

thinking differently, of thinking as if a stranger
in a land that is not one’s own.
The essay begins by examining the identity
of tradition, arguing that traditions as contem-
porarily conceived cast themselves as an end
rather than as a means. This takes place
through a consideration of the writing of
MacIntyre before turning to a non-philosophi-
cal interpretation of tradition as a kind of theo-
logical decision centred on the question of a
power principle (symbolized by the name of
God). This opens up to an explanation of the
concept of weaponized apophaticism, which
describes the way in which traditions cast
themselves as an end through a process of theo-
logical claims to authority that are ultimately
made all the more powerful through a process
of deferral. The essay then concludes with a
discussion of gnosis as a kind of non-tradition,
a generalized form of tradition which escapes
being mistaken or “hallucinated” as an end
because gnosis is cast as prior to origin. Tra-
dition is revealed in its identity (as means,
not end) through gnostic refusal, which ulti-
mately illuminates the meaning and conse-
quences of what we are terming the first
axiom for a non-theology to be completed in
a future project.
the identity of tradition as means
Let us return to that notion of thinking as a
stranger in a land that is not one’s own, thinking
a stranger thought and from that position ask
the question “What is a tradition?” From a
non-philosophical perspective this seemingly
ontological question must be recast, for to dis-
cover the identity of what has become a quasi-
transcendental we have to bring it back to
earth, down to the level of the creature, and
ask “What does a tradition do?” It is my conten-
tion in this essay that a tradition is a product of
creatural labour which has no intrinsic end or
telos, but is simply put to creatural ends.3
However, a tradition becomes quasi-transcen-
dental or an end unto itself, which ends up har-
assing the very creatures upon whose existence
it depends. To expand on this claim I will turn
to MacIntyre’s conception of tradition and the
147
smith
way in which tradition has become the source
of authority in philosophical theology through
an operation I have termed “weaponized apo-
phaticism.” Allowing this weaponized apophati-
cism to come into vision is a way of uncovering
the identity of tradition as a simple means, as
well as the way tradition is hallucinated as an
end unto itself.
The two most prevalent anti-liberal con-
ceptions of tradition are Burkean and what
could be termed Neo-Aristotelian-Thomist
(MacIntyre). While the first, where Burke sees
tradition as static and unchanging, is clearly a
reactionary conception of tradition arising out
of a Whig ideology that desperately clings to
any form of order over the seeming disorder
of things, something even MacIntyre himself
recognizes, the second, that of MacIntyre
himself, is more complicated.4 One might even
refer to this conception of tradition as pseudo-
Marxist both in terms of influence (MacIntyre
is quite explicit in his Marxist sympathies,
though also explicit that he is not a Marxist as
such) and in its theoretical practice. The
second is shown in the appeal to a structural
conception of the self where the self is depen-
dent upon social and material relations that
reside outside the individual subject. What is
interesting about this seeming hegemony
amongst anti-liberal theorists is the ambiguity
it introduces into any theoretical attempt to
break out of the reactionary circle. We can see
this by setting Burke’s clearly reactionary char-
acter aside and focusing on MacIntyre’s con-
ception of tradition and the way he allows for
an idealist overcoding of his conception
through an appeal to virtues. I will argue that
virtues in this sense are as abstract as the tra-
ditions which produce them, and so not an
end, but still merely a means projected or hallu-
cinated as an end. This becomes especially pro-
blematic, even nefarious, when this now idealist
conception of tradition treats tradition as a
transcendental amongst other transcendentals,
the principal among them God, to which the
other transcendentals – tradition included
though privileged – are related. For now the
transcendental character of tradition, even as
narrative, takes on a particularly apophatic
 against tradition to liberate tradition
character weaponized to protect not the
creature (humanity included) but the tradition
itself.
MacIntyre’s account of tradition is entirely
dependent upon virtues, as is well known, and
ultimately those virtues are directed towards
the end (telos) of the good. However, it is
unclear for rational subjects what the good actu-
ally is in itself as the good clearly takes on a
supernatural dimension in MacIntyre’s work,
meaning its full identity ultimately lies outside
of human experience. The telos thus transcends
the human, as MacIntyre explains:
I have suggested so far that unless there is a
telos which transcends the limited goods of
practices by constituting the good of a
whole human life, the good of a human life
conceived as a unity, it will both be the case
that a certain subversive arbitrariness will
invade the moral life and that we shall be
unable to specify the context of certain
virtues adequately.5
Since a tradition is related to the end proper to
humans that is only achieved in some sense
through virtue, we find that MacIntyre’s
entire definition of a tradition rests upon this
supernatural good that is the only true
measure of the limited goods. So, in MacIn-
tyre’s view, traditions are attempts to resist
the “subversive arbitrariness” of the limited
goods of individuals that “invade the moral
life” while still allowing for conflict over the
true character of the good (this emphasis on
conflict marks out the difference between
Burke and MacIntyre).
However, traditions can never meet on equal
footing. Indeed, this is often held up as one of
the strengths of MacIntyre’s theory since it
argues, against liberalism, that there is no
neutral sphere where the claims of rival tra-
ditions may be adjudicated. MacIntyre presents
a rather Pollyannaish vision of the meeting of
rival traditions where
it is possible for one such tradition to defeat
another in respect of the adequacy of its
claims to truth and to rational justification,
even though there are no neutral standards
available by appeal to which any rational
agent whatsoever could determine which tra-
dition is superior to which.6
This is a fantasy precisely because it ignores the
question of power in the construction of such
truth claims. Of course, MacIntyre purposely
pitches his own virtue ethic vision of traditions
against the idea that “might makes right,”
chalking this up to an undesirable Nietzschean
view of politics and society. But this is to misun-
derstand Nietzsche and the ways in which his
philosophy of the will to power have been devel-
oped in the twentieth century, mostly by French
post-’68 philosophers. For what figures like Fou-
cault and those who have come after him have
shown is that a hegemonic tradition will
always make demands on the manifestation of
the minority or weaker tradition. While, from
Foucault’s perspective as well, there is no
neutral perspective from which to adjudicate
claims, that does not mean that the victor of
the rivalry is in possession of the truth; it does
not mean that they “deserve” their station in
some way that appeals to a transcendent
measure of value. Take an evolutionary
example, for just as the success of one species
over another in the biosphere says nothing
about the value of the extinct species
(a modern form of theodicy, a “biodicy”) so
neither does the success of one tradition over
another in the social biosphere say anything
about the value of the extinct tradition. Talal
Asad sums up this reality succinctly when he
takes up the specific case of European liberalism
as it played out in the British demands on its
minority cultures that came to the fore in the
“Rushdie Affair”:
The core values of nonwhite immigrants are
not – so the hegemonic discourse goes –
part of British culture, and therefore to live
permanently in Britain they must – as politi-
cal minorities – assimilate into that culture.
However, minorities have not always had to
make this kind of adjustment. When Eur-
opeans went to Asia, Africa, and the Ameri-
cas, as settlers, administrators, missionaries,
they did not need to adopt the core values
of the majority populations among whom
they lived. On the contrary, they sought
with great success to change them. But that
148

immigrations from those populations should
now presume to act as though they had a
right to something that power did not
accord them – that is quite another story.
In that story it is their presumptuous behav-
ior that needs explaining and correcting, not
the postures adopted by the British.7
Here, the philosophically inflected anthropol-
ogy of Asad can be seen as having tempered and
corrected MacIntyre’s philosophy, by perform-
ing a kind of non-philosophical completing of
MacIntyre in thinking elements of his work
with Nietzsche/Foucault: a kind of unified
theory of Tradition and Power.8 For liberalism
is also a tradition and so in practice it is
always in conflict with the other traditions it
has in the past claimed to provide a neutral
space for. Asad, following MacIntyre in part,
shows the ways in which liberalism’s abstract
claims to neutrality are exposed as a falsehood.
He sums up his argument this way:
I am not arguing against multiculturalism or
syncretism in the abstract. Instead, I have
tried to indicate that the specific way in
which they have been practiced in contem-
porary Britain has meant the reinforcement
of centralized state power and the aesthetici-
zation of moral identities, that therefore
neither has been seen as a potential threat
to British identity.9
However, it would be a mistake to simply stop
here, at the exposing of the falsehood as if now
the Truth-with-a-capital-T will simply shine
forth. Asad moves beyond those Christian thin-
kers, like MacIntyre, who hold up this gap
between what liberalism proclaims (the protec-
tion of difference) and what it practises (the
establishment of homogeneity) as the end of
the critique. For what Asad claims matters is
not this gap itself but rather the way in which
the hegemonic discourse (in this case European
liberalism) plays both sides of the gap as another
means at its disposal in order to decide the very
coordinates by which abstraction and practice
unfold: “In that context what is crucial for gov-
ernment is not homogeneity verses difference as
such but its authority to define crucial homoge-
neities and differences.”10
149
smith
Government for Asad refers, of course, to the
actual British government that is the focus of his
anthropological inquiry. But we could take it in
some sense to mean any bureaucratic structure
of a tradition, which must also include its intel-
lectuals. Those Christian intellectuals who have
come after MacIntyre are no less part of the
bureaucratic structure of their traditions than
the bureaucrats of the ultimately hegemonic
liberal regime of capitalist nation-states. But
Christianity, even as a tradition or set of tra-
ditions with elements that attempt to resist
this hegemonic liberalism, is intimately
weaved into the very fabric of this hegemony
such that a kind of background of Christian
culture is inoffensive. This inoffensiveness
allows for those in the majority culture to
ignore the ways in which this Christian culture
is often held aloft as a moralizing sceptre in
the hands of the liberal sovereign.11 Exploring
the ways in which its intellectual-bureaucrats
have engaged in what I call weaponized apopha-
ticism will reveal the ways in which traditions
are hallucinated or turned into golems.
weaponized apophaticism
In his influential text of philosophical theology
God without Being, Jean-Luc Marion both
puts forth a critique of God as conceptualized
in the tradition of ontotheology and discusses
the way a tradition explicates a culture of the
Word. The Word is that hybrid Christian
concept of the Messiah and the Scriptures that
are repeatedly re-read in order to bind the com-
munity together (“re-read” and “binding” being
two of the possible meanings of the Latin
religio). There the discourse of theology is a
hermeneutic of words on the Word that is, for
the Roman Catholic tradition, ultimately
enacted in the Eucharist (the ritual of sharing
of bread and blood amongst the congregants).12
Marion’s critique of ontotheology would seem to
be a secular project, following as it does from
Heidegger’s own destruktion. But what we see
in Marion’s challenging of the tradition of
ontotheology is far from Heidegger’s secular-
ism, for Marion claims that only the authorities
 against tradition to liberate tradition
of the Roman Catholic Church can speak for
God as theologians. He writes:
if finally only the celebrant receives authority
to go beyond the words up to the Word,
because he alone finds himself invested by
the persona Christi, then one must conclude
that only the bishop merits, in the full sense,
the title of theologian.13
But Marion is clear that all of this goes beyond
mere theological fan fiction and actually makes
a political claim, rare in his work:
All is given to the Church (space: the nations;
time: the days) so that the Church may return
it (keep the commandments) to the Word,
because he already received all (exousia [auth-
ority]) from the Father; in theology it is not a
question, anymore than elsewhere, of working
to a completion yet to come: completion, for
the Church, is accomplished definitively at
Easter, hence at the origin (tetelestai [it is fin-
ished], John 19:28 = 13:1).14
The two Greek words have purchase within the
political economy of the Roman Empire and
thus purchase for the political theology of the
early Christian sects. While the second, the
word of Christ before he dies upon the instru-
ment of capital punishment, was an economic
term written on the bottom of receipts indicat-
ing that a debt had been paid in full, discharging
the two parties from their legal responsibilities.
Obviously the giving of authority to a man mur-
dered by the authority of the state is a radical
political act and that is carried in the recasting
of language present here. But Marion repur-
poses these terms and mystifies the way they
worked as a rebellion against worldly powers
in the first and second centuries. He simply ahis-
torically accomplishes the transfer of transcen-
dent authority from one power to another, and
the paying of debt stands in for the always-
already character of the accomplishment of the
Christian tradition. That is, as Marion says,
this mystified end (“completion”) is carried
already in the origin, which is supernatural
and so beyond human cognition.
Here, the theological method of apophaticism
is on display. Apophaticism, as many students
of theology and religion may already know,
comes from the Greek apophasis which literally
means “unsaying” and is developed by medieval
Latin Christianity in the via negativa. In terms
of theological claims about God, apophaticism is
summed up by the French neo-Thomist Etienne
Gilson this way: “To make God known by way
of negation is to show not how He is, but how
He is not.”15 But as Gilson goes on to explain,
this form of reasoning concerning God’s iden-
tity is not a simple denial of knowledge, a
saying, for example, that “God is not knowable”
tout court. This apophaticism is actually reveal-
ing of God’s identity, since the negations flow
out of certain theological decisions in favour of
monotheistic simplicity implied by God’s
transcendence:
Moreover, this is what we have already begun
to do in establishing His perfect simplicity.
To say that God is absolutely simple, since
He is pure act of existing is not to have a
concept of such an act, but to deny Him, as
we have seen, any composition whatsoever.16
But there is something subtle going on here in
terms of the claim to possess knowledge,
which is also the claim to posses power, as
Marion himself demonstrates by locating auth-
ority in the Word that always escapes ontotheol-
ogy and in those who speak and represent de
jure that Word. For talk about God is never
simply talk about some divine personhood;
rather, the Name of God stands in for the prin-
ciple of authority and sovereignty itself within
monotheistic theology. This becomes even
clearer in the ways in which apophaticism pro-
ceeds in St Thomas Aquinas’ theology.
Thomas apophaticism, and theology in
general, operates through a certain unilateral
duality of the natural and the supernatural.
The natural is always the base on which
human beings begin to reason about God
(again taken as the principle of principles, auth-
ority itself), but natural reason is always taken
to be ultimately grounded upon the superna-
tural it attempts to think. The consequence of
this is that nature provides the vocabulary for
beginning to think about God, but the syntax
is provided by the decision of faith, the decision
150

that ungrounds any substance being found
within nature itself. Nature always points
towards the supernatural, yet this pointing is
only possible because it is given the power to
do so by the supernatural. Thus, from the per-
spective of the supernatural, everything is
supernatural in terms of cause. Only from the
perspective of the effect, the natural, is there
any duality.17
What does this mean from a political per-
spective then? MacIntyre signals his belonging
to this school of thought when he writes of
the good to which every tradition is devoted,
that “The good for man is of course a superna-
tural and not only a natural good, but superna-
ture redeems and completes nature.”18
MacIntyre here is following the Catholic
Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac, whose nou-
velle théologie was heavily influential for
Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, and so even
this seemingly universal discourse on tradition
as such is entirely dependent upon a Christian
– specifically Roman Catholic – conception of
the good arising out of this unilateral duality
of the natural and the supernatural. But ulti-
mately this good is beyond knowledge,
because the good is only another apophatic
name for God. Even the way the good func-
tions in MacIntyre mimics the same unilateral
duality, where the good is the telos upon
which all means are grounded. Though the ulti-
mate truth of that grounding is always tem-
porally deferred, metaphysically these means
are always subjected to the end for their very
substance. This can be called a weaponized apo-
phaticism in so far as the form of reasoning
here has the effect, if one follows this vision
of tradition, of setting up the very terms of
any conflict and form of life. By collapsing
the natural under a deferred supernatural
MacIntyre and those who follow him are able
to cover over the questions of power that lie
at the heart of thinking through the conflicts
of rival traditions and in so doing obscure the
potential of those traditions as means beneath
the duality of secularism and post-secularism
set up in contemporary liberalism.
To illustrate this further, and before moving
on to our alternative, I want to look at a recent
151
smith
attempt by another Christian theorist to chal-
lenge the hegemonic power of liberalism by
debunking its “creation myth,” while ultimately
deferring the question of power sought after by
Christian theology itself. This is found in The
Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology
and the Roots of Modern Conflict by William
T. Cavanaugh, whose work unfolds in ways
largely dependent upon MacIntyre. There he
attempts to challenge secular liberalism’s
claim to neutrality by showing its underlying
narrative to be false. That narrative claims
that liberalism arose in response to the irrational
and endless violence waged in the name of reli-
gion. As he states in Myth:
What I call the “myth of religious violence”
is the idea that religion is a transhistorical
and transcultural feature of human life,
essentially distinct from ‘secular’ features
such as politics and economics, which has a
peculiarly dangerous inclination to promote
violence.19
Cavanaugh’s book can be placed alongside a
number of recent post-secular works of theory
(he makes use of the work of post-secular
critics of Christianity, like Asad and and
Tomoko Masuzawa); but unlike their work, his
is an unrelentingly negative work: negative in
a double sense, subordinating both “the
secular” and “religion” under a supernatural
good beyond these two traditions. In each
chapter the goal is not to provide some better
theory of religion and violence, or even a new
theoretical framework for thinking about ques-
tions generally treated under that academic
pursuit, but simply to negate through reason-
able doubt the power of the prevailing “myth”
and in so doing to “unsay” that myth and
open up space for another. This opening up of
space for another myth, that of Christianity, is
given in the negative deployment of the idea
of religion, in so far as he allows this term to
still function in a liberal way, not with regard
to Christianity, but with regard to Islam.
Though Cavanaugh often provides Islam a
modicum of defence against the explicit racism
of the New Atheists, he also takes pains to
emphasize that he is not saying “religion is off
 against tradition to liberate tradition
limits” or that he is out to just defend religion
(sometimes he says “Christianity” and some-
times just “religion,” despite doubting the exist-
ence of religion or at least showing reasonable
doubt regarding its existence as a genus; rarely
does he refer to any of the other traditions we
would normally refer to as “religious”). Yet in
the first instance of this hedging it is in fact
Islam that is used as the example of a religion
that can be interrogated: “I think that the separ-
ation of church and state is generally a good
thing. On the other side, there is no question
that certain forms of Muslim beliefs and prac-
tices do promote violence.”20 Now, Cavanaugh
is clear that Christianity is up for debate too
(namely the relationship between violence and
the sacrificial atonement of Christ), but consider
the difference in his presentation of Islamic
countries in relation to America. He accepts
that countries like Iran and movements like
Palestinian liberation are a theopolitical
mixture that can be identified as Islamic. Yet
his description of America as a largely secular
country that has felt the need to separate out
Christian religious commitments from civic
commitments is an intellectual bait and
switch. While, yes, America seems to have a
civic religion that goes into full swing when
America goes to war, it does so with a whole
army of clergy who belong mainly to sects of
Christianity. What is it that allows Cavanaugh
to label the theopolitics of the Islamic world
Islamic as such and to claim that the American
system of civil religion is not Christian, but a
secular and liberal counter-tradition? This
covers over the way in which the Christian
form of post-secular politics lobbies on behalf
of Christian institutions’ inclusion in the state
apparatus in some way, even if that inclusion
is just as a founding and privileged member of
the Big Society. This post-secular form of Chris-
tianity does so by presenting itself as an “inte-
gral part” in the development of Western
culture and an integral part in a way that other
traditions are not allowed to claim.
The question of the identity of Christianity
is, of course, deferred by Cavanaugh, and that
is not just an accident of academic writing, but
goes to the heart of a conception of tradition
within the Christian vision of the post-secular.
As Daniel Colucciello Barber has argued, build-
ing on Richard King and Daniel Boyarin, “the
invention of Christianity amounts to the inven-
tion of religion, and vice versa.”21 Prior to the
invention of Christianity/religion, or what
Barber also refers to as Pauline universalism,
traditions were not a matter of truth or falsity;
only after the development of Pauline universal-
ism is religion “worship of the true.” Thus,
Pauline universalism cannot accommodate a
plurality of religious traditions, at least not
insofar as these are ultimately determinative
of identity. Similarly, the new people of
Christ cannot be yet another religion [or tra-
dition], insofar as religion refers to particular
cultural practices. The only way forward is to
remake religion in the image of Christianity.22
That is, Christianity requires that in any conflict
the terms are unilaterally produced and con-
trolled by Christianity (even as it absorbs
Judaism and Greek pagan philosophy), while
ultimately deferring the question of the true
source of such principles, grounding them
upon a supernature beyond the tradition but
pointed to it most faithfully by the tradition of
Christianity above every other one.
gnostic refusal as pre-origin
Speaking about liberalism, though he could be
talking about any authority hallucinated as
transcendent, Asad writes: “Like any imperializ-
ing orthodoxy, this doctrine demands of us a
universal way of ‘being human’ – which is
really a singular way of articulating desire, dis-
course, and gesture in the body’s economy.”23
Asad’s statement here connects up to our non-
theological exploration of tradition because he
shows that imperializing orthodoxies are con-
cerned ultimately with the identity of the
human. What the axiom of non-theology ulti-
mately means, and has as a consequence, is
that there is no universal definition for being
human and that the concept of identity for the
human, qua creatural, is radically different
from the transcendental or standard philosophi-
cal concept of identity. Gnostic refusal, as
152

outlined by Laruelle in Future Christ and
Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Phil-
osophy, is the breaking from tradition as an end,
revealing it merely as a means suspended from
origin and end. For gnosis reveals, in its ques-
tioning of the simple “what is” and its question
of what it means to be a human creature, the
ways in which all traditions are ultimately uni-
laterally dependent upon the creatures who
make them manifest, who are ultimately fore-
closed to reified tradition. But why is Gnosti-
cism, or what we will also refer to as simply
gnosis, privileged? Is this simply a puerile
anti-Christian move? Does it tarry dangerously
close to a more threatening anti-Judaism,
which appears to many ignorant of the study
of religion as simply anti-Semitism?24 In the
story that Orthodox Christianity tells about
itself, the heretical gnostic traditions came
after the origin of “true Christianity” that
Marion spoke about. In reality, as has been
long established by scholars, many of the
various sects called gnostic (the majority of
which no longer exist, often having been phys-
ically wiped from the face of the earth by
other human beings) came before the establish-
ment of what we would recognize as Christianity
and its institutions today. As any institution of
the practices of gnosis have passed from this
world, theses gnoses take on a strange identity
as having no origin, or coming from a pre-
origin, utterly useless for the ends imposed on
the human by the traditional institutions of
today.
The neo-conservative philosophy of Eric Voe-
gelin was made famous when William
F. Buckley popularized his criticism of contem-
porary politics with the phrase “Don’t imma-
nentize the eschaton!” Voegelin’s own
conception of Gnosticism is known to be
rather unscholarly, but though eliding any his-
torical depth it does touch on what we may
call the gnostic impulse. He wrote:
The truth of gnosticism is vitiated, as you
will remember, by the fallacious immanenti-
zation of the Christian eschaton. The fallacy
is not simply a theoretical mistake concern-
ing the meaning of the eschaton [ … but] in
153
smith
so far as they apply their fallacious construc-
tion to concrete social problems, they misre-
present the structure of immanent reality
[…] Specifically, the Gnostic fallacy destroys
the oldest wisdom of mankind concerning the
rhythm of growth and decay which is the fate
of all things under the sun […] Gnosticism,
thus, has produced something like the
counterprinciples to the principles of
existence.25
To this we can only say, simply, yes. While his-
torically it is fallacious to suggest that historical
Gnosticism comes after Christianity (and Voe-
gelin’s characterization is especially suspect by
the standards of historical scholarship on the
myriad of traditions collected under the
general term “Gnosticism”) there is something
to the here-and-now demands of gnostics that
goes counter to the kind of Christianity which
eventually settled throughout the world.
Against a Christianity reconciled with the
World, with the state, where any hope of over-
turning the Powers of this World is always
deferred until the end of time, the Gnostic
sects and heretics that historically are found
throughout history were demanding an immi-
nent change in the here-and-now.26 And so
also yes to the notion that Gnosticism “misre-
presents the structure of immanent reality.”
Here the issue is one of a kind of sterile, essen-
tialist naturalism common to conservative phil-
osophy. By immanent reality Voegelin means
something akin to the modern use of the word
“natural” or even “what simply is.” This is the
pivot point of conservative ideology, turning
“immanent reality” into a normative transcen-
dence before which all creatures must bow in
their own radical immanence. And so, yes, the
key here is to misrepresent that hallucinated
“immanent reality,” to turn the representation
of an oppressive transcendence on its head.
And so, finally, a yes to the production of the
counter-principles of existence. It is precisely
against the principles of existence given in this
transcendent presentation of immanent reality
that gnosis provides the counter-principles to.
Specifically, there is a rejection of a survival
under the laws of tradition taken as ends.
Instead, gnosis requires something like a
 against tradition to liberate tradition
living in truth, something like a lived experience
as truth.
Thus gnosis, as it is more correctly called,
refers to a transhistorical or metahistorical
form of practice and thought that one can see
run throughout religions. As Henry Corbin,
the forgotten and maligned philosopher of reli-
gion, has put it:
Gnosis is not a phenomenon particular to one
religion: it is a Welt-Religion. There was a
gnosis in Islam, just as there was a gnosis in
Christianity, and these gnoses certainly
have more affinities with one another than
the official religious forms into which they
secretly made their spirit penetrate.27
The issue here does not concern origins;
whether or not gnosis comes prior to Christian-
ity, or prior to Islam, or prior to both but after
Judaism, is not of interest here. Gnosis instead
is the name for a form that can be seen running
parallel to these established religions. A kind of
force that remains undetermined by their
constituted power. A practice and thought, a
weapon, fashioned out of the materials
present in that religion, but changed in the
form of gnosis. In many ways this fits within
a generally dualistic theory of religion and pol-
itical-social life that we can see in thinkers as
divergent as Bergson, Negri, and Bloch.
Where Bergson posits a difference between
open and closed religion, and Negri posits a
difference between constituting power and con-
stitutive power, the non-theological theory of
religion posits a difference between gnostic
revolt or even “cultural revolution” and consti-
tuted, compromised piety. In its stranger status
as passed from this world and without origin,
gnosis names a refusal. A refusal of authority
and tradition as transcendent, and an insistence
that they are instead merely means that can be
taken in hand or that must be disempowered by
any means necessary.
The problem is not with a simple rejection of
all authority – that would be adolescent and
puerile – but rather the rejection of the belief
that authority is good. It is a rejection of believ-
ing in any form of theodicy, or any anthropodicy
after the death of God. It is a rejection of belief
in any authority that will come and save us,
rather than enslave us. Laruelle sums this up
beautifully in his comparison of what he calls
“the two atheisms,” writing:
We already know through the victim’s com-
plaint and the courage of certain heretics,
perhaps without knowing it because of a
certain blessed philosophy, that in God
hides the Great Persecutor. The true
atheism is not nearly as simple as philosophy
imagines it, it goes through two stages, the
banal refusal to believe in a God is self-con-
tradictory and satisfies small-thinking, but
the refusal to believe in a good God is the
true rebellion. There is always a good God
in ambush, who prepares his return in any
negation, like a negation of his existence,
even if it is a materialist negation, but it is
important that this is a malicious God, a
thesis that only an “ultra”-religious heresy
can confront. Indifferent atheism is weak
and surrenders in calling on philosophy; the
second is a strong heresy, the “non-”theologi-
cal radicalisation of the malicious God, the
extension of this malicious God to every divi-
nity that presents itself as One or Multiple, as
Unique and Great as much as natural and
pagan.28
It is gnosis that provides, again just as simple
means and models, a prior form of thought
which undoes this belief in a good God, a good
Authority. Gnostic refusal is found in the
impossibility of tradition as a real end by way
of a more radical weaponized apophaticism,
this time turned upon the idea of principle
itself. The gnostic text “The Apocryphon of
John” undoes any form of knowledge by declar-
ing that one cannot even speak of the “true
God” (which for gnostics was beyond the god
who created this world) as Divine. This prin-
ciple does not rule this world at all and so is
not at all related to this world. There is a
radical, complete, utterly irreversible and untra-
versable break between what is actually highest
within thought and this world. Or, in less
archaic terms, there is a radical break between
the Human-in-person (the radical identity of
the human stripped of all transcendent attri-
butes) and the structures and authorities that
154

determine the human as subject (the human as a
blended identity of immanence and attributes
separate from that lived identity). Thus the
gnostic naming of “God” always rejects the
claim that the authority of God is a good name
(think of names like Lord or even the name
God) and goes so far as to speak of an
“Unknown Silent One” and an “Existent alone
by itself” without any attributes.29
Clearly this completely foreclosed identity
beyond authority, beyond that who gives auth-
orization to speak, to theorize, to practise, is
taken up in some way by Laruelle in his thinking
of the human. To close I want to suggest that
this gnostic refusal allows us to approach tra-
ditions in a new way, enabling us to think
through politics in a seemingly post/secular
age (the slash speaking to the fundamental
amphibology of the secular and post-secular
today). One that looks to traditions, not within
the coordinates set by Christian, secular liberal-
ism, but as means for the construction of human
identities.
Let’s look at an example taken from a student
of Asad, Hussein Ali Agrama, in his recent
Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty,
and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt. While
I am not trying to collapse Agrama or Asad
under a general non-theological schema, their
anthropological work shares much in common
with what Laruelle calls the “defence of the
human” in their refusal of any straightforwardly
universalist schema for human flourishing or
ways of being, as well as in their focus upon
“ordinary human life.” Agrama’s ethnography
focuses on the fatwa courts in Egypt and the
people who come there seeking help. As he
explains, the reason why Egypt is such a fruitful
country in which to examine secularism is
because, as a secular state, it has written a fun-
damental ambiguity into its very modern consti-
tution: its legal structure is modelled on the
secular legal system of France while simul-
taneously claiming the Islamic tradition of
Shari’a. This mixed constitution is not
altogether different from the United Kingdom
and the United States, though the presence of
Islam may often cause a hasty observer to
assume a kind of exotic confusion while
155
smith
ignoring the parallel confusions of the West.
As Agrama writes:
secularism itself incessantly blurs together
religion and politics in Egypt, and […] it is
a form of power that works through and
relies upon the precariousness of the cat-
egories it establishes. This, however, is not
peculiar to Egypt; it is also a characteristic
of many states considered to be paradigms
of modern secularity, such as France,
Germany, and Britain.30
Like these European countries, Egypt simul-
taneously draws power from its majority reli-
gious tradition and attempts to control and
circumscribe the claims to authority within
that tradition. This is most clearly seen in the
way the fatwa courts exist technically outside
the civil law and yet Shari’a, technically the offi-
cial basis for that civil law, is also practised here
by muftis whom people respect although they
have no actual police powers. Shari’a is thus
practised in such a way that it is no longer
“entangled in the question of religion and poli-
tics” that exists at the level of civil law and so
exists in a place that Agrama intriguingly
refers to as one of “asecularity.”
Why might we need such a concept? Because
the dialectic of the secular and post-secular is
established firmly upon a monism of “the politi-
cal” where everything is taken as needing to
submit to this all-too-concrete abstraction: poli-
tics as a master attribute which is mixed with
anything and everything else. Agrama’s explora-
tion of Egypt’s secularity points to something
about secular power that has not been con-
sidered by many other thinkers:
Usually it is thought that secular power
renders religious traditions irrelevant by rele-
gating them outside the domain of politics.
Where religion remains or becomes political,
then this is where secular power is seen to
have failed, remains incomplete, where its
normative impetus has broken down, or
where its impossibility stands revealed. But
the discussion here points to another possible
way that secular power renders religion irre-
levant, not by rendering it outside of politics,
but precisely by politicizing it. In politicizing
 against tradition to liberate tradition
religion in broadly similar ways across
various polities, by attaching it to broadly
similar sets of conceptual and affective
associations, secular power renders the speci-
ficities of religious traditions irrelevant.
This, I submit, is a more profound form of
irrelevance than depoliticization.31
This monism of the political, upon which the dia-
lectic of the secular and post-secular plays out,
cuts off other forms of life, other stranger forms
of subjectivity from being developed. Agrama
explains that he chooses the term asecularity
because of what we could term its generic element:
The term nonsecular is too easily confused
with the notion of the religious. And unlike
postsecularity, asecularity is not a temporal
marker. It allows for the possibility that
asecularity has, in different forms, always
been with us, even from within the traditions
on which state secularity is based.32
In our terms, derived from Laruelle’s non-phil-
osophy, asecularity may refer to the way in
which a creature’s radical identity is ultimately
foreclosed to the individuals who may destroy
her subjectivity (which is not to downplay the
real harassment and oppression indicated in
such destruction).
In thinking tradition from an asecular lens we
may see the ways in which traditions are used as
means in the construction of those contingent
subjectivities, for greater or lesser forms of
liberty. Consider this beautiful passage from
Agrama detailing the ways in which the fatwa
intersects with the subjectivity or self-formation
of those who seek a law outside of the massive
objects of religion and politics:
This image of the fatwa as facilitating a
journey takes us far from the conventional
view of it as primarily a doctrinal pronounce-
ment and an instrument of doctrinal reform.
It also helps us to see beyond the idea of
Islamic tradition (and its authority) as stuck
between its past and a future of incessant
novelty. This is because it shows us how the
tradition moves towards a future, in the
way that it puts a self on a path toward a
final destination. One’s place on that path,
however, is always rendered uncertain, but
this is not because endlessly, irreducibly
“new” circumstances bring on unforeseeable
change. Rather, it is because the familiar fric-
tion that arises from the heterogeneity of
life’s affairs, of being young and growing
old and sick, of dying along the way, never-
theless renders obscure whether one has
fully arrived at a given place on the path, or
whether one is even still on it. Here it is
not the creativity of the fatwa that matters,
but rather its capacity to enable a self to
stay and advance upon an already defined
path toward an ideal Muslim self. And that
capacity is found not in the pronouncement
of doctrinal principles and rules for how to
act, not in reforming them to fit modern
times, but in the skill of using them discer-
ningly to say “the right words at the right
time” for the person who seeks guidance.33
The heterogeneity of life’s affairs, those things
that these reified forms of tradition foolishly
claim to either give some control over or
bestow meaning upon, always ultimately
happen to a creature, they are lived by that crea-
ture. And though Agrama here speaks of a
certain telos it is spoken of in such a way that it
could be conceived as ultimately another
means. A means upon an uncertain path, acting
as a compass, a guide, but still material, still
abstract means. Traditions ought to be saved
from themselves, from the ways in which they
crush creatures beneath them in the very
moment that they seek to free them. Traditions
may be asecularly reduced to simple means
which start creatures on a path seemingly with
a power principle driving them, some end
driving from behind, reduced to means instead
of as an end to arrive at some
kind of liberty that remains to
be thought in itself. It may help
us move towards some kind of
thought and practice without-
limits.
notes
1 Laruelle, Philosophies of Difference 179. [Trans-
lation slightly modified to emphasize elements at
play in this essay. Some emphasis mine.]
2 Smith, “What can be Done?”
156

3 I use the term creatural here to refer to this pro-
duction not being a simply human production, but
one that includes all the non-human elements one
finds within ecology. See Smith, Non-Philosophical
Theory, esp. 218–20, for a fuller treatment of this
concept.
4
We are apt to be misled here by the ideologi-
cal uses to which the concept of a tradition
has been put by conservative political theor-
ists. Characteristically such theorists have fol-
lowed Burke in contrasting tradition with
reason and the stability of tradition with con-
flict […] Traditions, when vital, embody con-
tinuities of conflict. Indeed when a tradition
becomes Burkean, it is always dying or
dead. (MacIntyre 221–22)
5 Ibid. 203.
6 Ibid. xiii.
7 Asad 273.
8 Laruelle sums up his “collider” model of non-
philosophy in a recent interview, saying:
I have always used two philosophies at the
same time. Heidegger and Nietzsche, then
Derrida and Deleuze. So it is always a
matter of how to eventually combine
several philosophies […] I had the feeling
that in order to completely change the
concept of philosophy, two philosophies
were always necessary, as if each of the philo-
sophers represented half of philosophy, basi-
cally, which I felt to be the non-completeness
of a particular philosophy; this problem
would have to be resolved each time by the
combination of two philosophers. I have fol-
lowed this way of doing things, a little bit in
spite of myself, always combining two philos-
ophies as if each of them was lacking what the
other had. You could think that this is a dia-
lectical relation. But in fact that was not
that at all, because it was, each time, two phil-
osophies and not one philosophy and the
entire history of philosophy in addition.
Thus, I am part of a conjugation, I like this
term a lot, of philosophies which replaced
the missing concept. What was missing was
the One, the One-in-One. (Laruelle, “Non-
Philosophy” 239)
157
smith
9 Asad 266.
10 Ibid. 267.
11 Consider, for example, the strangely amor-
phous Roman Catholic Archdiocese for the Mili-
tary Services, USA, which, unlike nearly every
other archdiocese in the world, has no central
seat and no cathedral but serves in an almost
Deleuzian rhizomatic way the network of Ameri-
can imperialist bases throughout the world
despite the Roman Catholic Church’s official line
of propagating a whole cloth “culture of life.”
12 There is likely something interesting in the
Gnostic rejection of the Eucharist. Here we see a
different understanding of the relation to authority
and power and the possibility of resistance to them
through sacrifice. As Brakke summarizes it:
the Gnostic author of the The Gospel of Judas
severely criticizes the Eucharist as a cer-
emony that offers praise to Ialdabaōth, the
god of this world. The sacrificial victim that
other Christian leaders offer on their altars
is not bread or the body of Christ, but the
people that they lead astray into ignorance
and death ([The Gospel of Judas] 39:18–
40:1). “Stop sacrificing animals!” Jesus com-
mands his wayward disciples, referring to
the animals that symbolize their deceived
Christian followers (41:1–2). (Brakke 77)
13 Marion 153.
14 Ibid. 158.
15 Gilson 97.
16 Ibid.
17 This is a summary of an argument made at
greater length with regard to Thomas in Smith,
Non-Philosophical Theory 190–98.
18 MacIntyre 184.
19 Cavanaugh 3.
20 Ibid. 14.
21 Barber 91.
22 Ibid.
23 Asad 292.
24 There is a debate amongst scholars of the
history of religions about whether or not
 against tradition to liberate tradition
something as diffuse as the various groups col-
lected under the term gnosis even exist. Foremost
amongst those who argue for the uselessness of the
term is Karen King. See her What is Gnosticism?
However, as I argue below, I follow the work of
other theorists who are more structuralist in
their understanding of identity, like Corbin and
other more contemporary historical thinkers like
Gerd Lüdemann (see Lüdemann) who assert the
usefulness of this term in capturing a certain
spirit of a myriad of “lost” traditions.
25 Voegelin 165, 166.
26 Norman O. Brown makes a similar claim with
regard to the lived experience of time in Islam,
marking out Islam as a kind of challenge to the
world as a universal prophetic tradition. See
Brown; Iqbal. Basit Kareem Iqbal’s contribution
goes beyond a mere review and deepens these
claims by suggesting ways in which Brown’s thesis
can be seen without the reference to a certain
kind of orientalizing of Islam through exclusive
focus on Shi’a sources.
27 Corbin 14; translation slightly modified.
28 Laruelle, Théorie 46–47; translation mine.
29 See Brakke 53, 60.
30 Agrama 71.
31 Ibid. 185.
32 Ibid. 187.
33 Ibid. 182.
bibliography
Agrama, Hussein Ali. Questioning Secularism: Islam,
Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt.
Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2012. Print.
Asad, Talal. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and
Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore
and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993. Print.
Barber, Daniel Colucciello. On Diaspora:
Christianity, Religion, and Secularity. Eugene:
Cascade, 2011. Print.
Brakke, David. The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and
Diversity in Early Christianity. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP, 2010. Print.
Brown, Norman O. The Challenge of Islam: The
Prophetic Tradition. Lectures, 1981. Santa Cruz:
New Pacific, 2009. Print.
Cavanaugh, William T. The Myth of Religious
Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern
Conflict. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.
Corbin, Henry. Avicenna and the Visionary Recital.
Trans. Willard R. Tasck. New York: Pantheon,
1960. Print.
Gilson, Etienne. The Christian Philosophy of Saint
Thomas. Trans. L.K. Shook. South Bend, IN:
Notre Dame UP, 1994. Print.
Iqbal, Basit Kareem. “Review of Norman
O. Brown’s The Challenge of Islam: The Prophetic
Tradition. Lectures, 1981.” Islam & Science 10.2
(2012): 146–50. Print.
King, Karen. What is Gnosticism? Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP, 2009. Print.
Laruelle, François. “Non-Philosophy, Weapon of
Last Defence.” Laruelle and Non-Philosophy. Ed.
John Mullarkey and Anthony Paul Smith.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012. Print.
Laruelle, François. Philosophies of Difference: A
Critical Introduction to Non-Philosophy. Trans. Rocco
Gangle. New York and London: Continuum,
2010. Print.
Laruelle, François. Théorie générale des victimes.
Paris: Mille et Une Nuits, 2012. Print.
Lüdemann, Gerd. Heretics: The Other Side of Early
Christianity. Trans. John Bowden. Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox P, 1996. Print.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral
Theory. Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P,
2007. Print.
Marion, Jean-Luc. God without Being: Hors-Texte.
Trans. Thomas A. Carlson. Chicago and London:
U of Chicago P, 1991. Print.
Smith, Anthony Paul. A Non-Philosophical Theory of
Nature: Ecologies of Thought. New York and
London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013. Print.
Smith, Anthony Paul. “What can be Done with
Religion? Non-Philosophy and the Future of
Philosophy of Religion.” After the Postsecular and
the Postmodern: New Essays in Continental
Philosophy of Religion. Ed. Anthony Paul Smith and
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 smith

Daniel Whistler. Newcastle upon Tyne:

Cambridge Scholars, 2010. 280–98. Print.
Voegelin, Eric. The New Science of Politics: An
Introduction. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987. Print.

Anthony Paul Smith

La Salle University
Department of Religion
1900 W. Olney Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19141
USA
E-mail: smithanthony@lasalle.edu
 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 19 number 2 june 2014

I t is common when faced with the two terms

“religion” and “media” to relate them by
way of a conjunction that presumes their
initial separation. Religion and media, we
imagine, name two differing domains –
domains that intersect in interesting ways, to be
sure, but that nonetheless are initially distinct.
That this need not – in fact ought not – be the
case is the thesis propounded by Angela Zito,
who speaks of the possibility of “connect[ing]
the study of religion to the question of
‘mediation’ in the deepest theoretical sense of
that term.”1 Religion is linked to media – at
least when this last is seen in terms of mediation daniel colucciello barber
– in such a strong manner that they should never
be fully isolated from one another in the first
place. What Zito contends, to put it somewhat MEDIATION, RELIGION,
bluntly, is that the concept of mediation should
be seen as prior to the concept of media – AND NON-CONSISTENCY
mediation is not an extension of media; on the
contrary, media is more like a subset of IN-ONE
mediation. Our failure to see this has to do
with our failure to understand the double sense
of media. Broadly – this is the first sense – tendency that we falsely presume a substantive
media can be understood as “denoting any division between the domains of religion and
material mode of expressing aspects of socio-cul- media.
tural life.”2 She notes that such an account of The dilemma that Zito expresses, then, is one
media necessarily includes “religious life,”3 i.e., in which the failure to attend to the concept of
forms of socio-cultural life that are classified as media in the broadest sense permits a disavowal
religious, or as being determined by religion. If of the priority of mediation. This effectively
we held firm to such an understanding of installs a theoretically hegemonic frame that
media, where media means socio-cultural takes religion and media as givens, rather than
mediation, then the separation of religion and as products of a more expansive operation.
media could never take place in the strict sense The point is not that grasping this operation
that it too often does. Instead of comprehending would return us to a primordial wholeness, for
media in this broad sense we tend to foreground mediation is irreducibly differential. It is that
media’s second, narrower sense, which refers to such an operation is what must be thought,
“a particular cultural domain, ‘the media’ in and that we conceal this operation from our-
print or electronic form.”4 It is due to this selves by looking primarily at its effects rather

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/14/020161-14 © 2014 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.950878

161
 mediation, religion
than at its constitutive function. Furthermore,
such ignorance is generated by a kind of fascina-
tion with the historical present. If we define
media narrowly rather than broadly, if we ident-
ify it with “print, radio, television, film, video,
the internet,” this is because it is with these
that “commodified machinations are become
more and more obvious to more and more
people.”5 We tend to focus on the presently
obvious, and so we define media in these
narrow terms because we presume that media
must be something noticeable. But such a theor-
etical habit misses the way that mediation exists
unnoticeably, the way it takes place even, or
especially, when “most of us do not notice it
happening.”6
The aim of this essay emerges when we draw
an analogy between Zito’s remarks on the
concept of media and the manner in which the
concept of religion functions. If mediation is
at work when we do not notice it, and if the
concept of media is severely limited by failing
to interrogate the unnoticeable, or the already
normalized, and if the concept of religion is
also bound up in mediation … then might it
not be the case that our understanding of reli-
gion, too, is severely limited by its identification
with the noticeable? In other words, it seems
that we have good reason to look for the
concept of religion, especially in its mediatic
function, not where we are able to see it or
where we already know how to think about it,
but instead where it is no longer noticeable
and where our given philosophical practices do
not already possess an accumulated manner of
mediating it.
In what follows, I pursue this notion of the
concept of religion’s undecidability by looking
at how Philosophy of Religion (PoR) names a
practice that obscures rather than illuminates
the mediatic function of religion. Specifically,
I argue that this function can be rendered
noticeable only through a genealogy of “reli-
gion,” which PoR precludes. I then turn to
the thought of François Laruelle, focusing in
particular on its capacity to provide a means
of escape from the conceptual architecture on
which the mediation of religion depends. Lar-
uelle’s thought thus presents a significant
contrast to PoR: if the latter installs within
thought the mediation of religion (with all its
divisiveness) by obscuring it, the former
supplies the possibility of thinking the mediated
outside of mediation’s division. Having thus
affirmed Laruelle’s thought in this respect, I
conclude by arguing that its full power is
severely limited by the manner in which it
draws on religious material. In other words,
even as Laruelle escapes the conceptual div-
isions that enable the mediation of religion,
his peculiar use of religious material leads
him to redeploy divisions central to religion’s
genealogy.
from philosophy of religion to
genealogy of religion
PoR is an incredibly broad field, so much so
that generalizations regarding what it is
“about,” or how it functions, are bound to
harbor flaws. Having made that hedge,
however, it seems fair to say that philosophy,
when it is practiced within this field, is addres-
sing something that is different, something
that is – in one way or another – outside of phil-
osophy. This holds true even in those rare
instances when the two terms are brought
together, such as is the case with “religious phil-
osophy,” or with “philosophy as religion.” The
strangeness of such juxtapositions is evidence
of their enduring separation, of their taken-
for-granted disparity. Philosophy and religion
are not the same. And PoR, far from providing
a bridge between them, a moment of reconcilia-
tion, actually continues to effect their division.
My interest is not to overcome this situation but
to observe it, and to make this observation into a
matter of thought. The specific feature of the phil-
osophy/religion division that I find most striking
is, I have already hinted, the exteriority of religion
to philosophy. Religion is imagined as residing
outside, or at least at the fringes, of philosophy.
The fact that philosophy takes religion as its
object does not change this situation. Philosophy’s
encounter with religion does not seem open to the
possibility that what is encountered will somehow
change the very nature of what does the
162

encountering. It is hard to imagine PoR connoting
the possibility that the act of thinking about reli-
gion would somehow undermine the philosophical
endeavor. On the contrary, it seems far more
likely that philosophy’s encounter with religion
will allow the latter to be unmasked by the
former. Religion will be subjected to philosophy
– possibly through religion’s rejection, but at the
very least through religion’s delimitation or
reinterpretation.
The point of observing all this is not to set up
a condemnation, not to present religion as the
unjust victim of philosophy. The aim is not to
call for greater valorization of or respect for reli-
gion, such that religion would be seen as
impermeable to or incommensurate with philos-
ophy. Note, in fact, that to make such a move is
to leave the division in place: it does not matter
whether PoR subjects or maintains a distant
respect for its object, in either case the presump-
tion remains that PoR, when it does its thing, is
dealing with a different sort of thing. In short,
then, my attempt to observe this division has
no desire to engage in a moralizing discourse,
it is interested, more precisely, in finding a
way to articulate what it is that PoR does, and
to remain indifferent – at least for now –
about how to evaluate this operation. More
important is the question of why PoR does
this, or of what is being presumed, conceptually
speaking, when PoR does this. And one imagi-
nes the presumption to be huge, given that it
never appears to come into question. If one
were to ask philosophy why it takes the position
of the critic of religion, it is a good bet that phil-
osophy would answer by articulating, or likely
re-articulating, one of its criticisms of religion.
In other words, PoR proceeds by questioning
religion, not by questioning PoR. That is what
it does, and in order to do something else it
would have to stop doing PoR. The operation
of PoR never comes into the view of PoR, and
how could it? PoR, in order to begin, must
take, or at least find itself in, a position. To
look at the position would be to leave it, or at
least to contort oneself in-position to the point
of vertigo.
The point of all this is thus to point to the
inelidable exteriority of religion to philosophy.
163
barber
The aim, once again, is not to defend religion
against philosophy, nor is it to claim that the
division does not exist. It is to understand why
this division has been made, and specifically
to understand why religion is seen as being
outside of philosophy, or even why what is
seen as being outside of philosophy comes to
be called religion. The concern, at base, is to
understand PoR as a mediation, nothing more
and nothing less. PoR is a mode of thought
that at once divides and brings together things
– that burrows further into the presumption of
their division precisely by articulating their con-
nection in terms of the subjection of or respect
for religion’s exteriority to philosophy. On this
reading, PoR is not the interrogation of a
given category (religion) by a natural faculty
of the human (philosophy), it is the attempt to
avoid attending to the made, and mediated,
character of its terms, as well as to the fact
that it continues to make and mediate these
terms.
If PoR is going to start taking seriously its
mediated character, then it is going to have to
take seriously the genealogy of this concept.
That is, it will have to stop treating “religion”
as something that is unproblematically given
and instead begin to grapple with the way in
which religion has been made, including the
way it has been made into a naturalized object
for philosophy. It is in this sense that PoR
must address the genealogy of religion, and in
such a manner that it is willing to give up the
position secured under the heading “PoR.” In
other words, it must become possible to
imagine PoR as one nexus in a much larger
network, which has an ancestry essential to yet
pre-dating PoR. To make such a genealogy
into a matter of thought is to provincialize the
position of PoR.
A good amount of work has been done to
articulate the historically constructed nature of
the concept of religion.7 While this line of
research has given rise to innovations in the
field of religious studies, it unfortunately has
had very little impact on the actual practice of
PoR. This constitutes a very significant deficit,
a deficit that is, it must be admitted, not
subject to easy or obvious address, given the
 mediation, religion
apparent difference in approach between the
historical specificity of genealogical work and
the basically universalizing, a priori character
of philosophical work. The difficulty, in short,
is that the very thing a genealogical approach
wants to foreground is always already treated
as accidental by the philosopher. Thus one
might find philosophers of religion willing to
admit to a proviso running something like the
following: the concept by which we address
this exteriority, i.e., the concept of “religion,”
is of course an historically relative and con-
structed artifact. The difficulty with this
approach is not that such a proviso is false, it
is rather that the truth of the proviso does not
come to affect the practice of PoR. One gains
a postscript or preamble or footnote, but these
are all detachable, they leave PoR in its position,
ultimately unaffected. Furthermore, it is not
just the abstract awareness of a genealogical
element or function that matters, it is also the
specific contours of the genealogy of religion
that must make a difference in the PoR. Accord-
ingly, let me offer a very brief account of these
contours.8
The concept of religion, insofar as it is recog-
nizable to us today, first emerges in conjunction
with the rise of Christianity. Prior to this emer-
gence religion named cultic, traditional prac-
tices that allied an individual with one (or
more) geographical locations and ancestral
lineages. It had, as Richard King has observed,
a seemingly unbreakable link with the notion of
“tradition.” Prior to Christianity, he says,
religio was “virtually synonymous with tradi-
tio,” which is to say that “it represented the
teachings of one’s ancestors and was essentially
not open to question.”9 It was precisely this link
that Christianity sought to break with its insis-
tence that religion had to do not with maintain-
ing fidelity to one’s ethnocultural tradition but
rather with the commitment to right belief.
Religion is at once made into a discourse of
truth and severed from connotations binding it
to geographical and ancestral articulations. It
cannot be overemphasized that such a construc-
tion of religion is effected by Christianity; it is
precisely because Christianity seeks to make
religion in its own image that such a
construction is set forth. This is to note, in
other words, that the construction of religion
has everything to do with the construction of
Christianity: if Christianity makes religion in
its own image, this is not just so that religion
will conform to Christianity, it is also done
with an eye to making available a category to
which Christianity is able to (perfectly)
conform. Accordingly, we can speak of the
concept of religion and the concept of Christian-
ity mediating one another, and in such a way
that their identification – or at least their co-con-
stitution and mutual dependence – is secured.
This kind of identity between religion and
Christianity is no longer apparent, for today
religion seems to name a genus with many
species, a genus so much broader than Chris-
tianity that it would seem inadequate, even irre-
sponsible, to insist too heavily on the
identification of Christianity and religion. But
this is the very point of a genealogical approach,
namely to render noticeable certain determina-
tive moments that have force precisely in their
capacity to obscure themselves.10 Applying
this point specifically to the concept of religion,
what we need to hold in mind is that the contem-
porary excess of religion to Christianity –
whereby Christianity appears as merely one
amongst many religions, and whereby the classi-
cal problem of the One and the many appears as
that of the One concept of religion and the many
empirical religions (including but not limited to
Christianity) – serves to obscure the still deter-
minative identification between Christianity and
religion. In other words, when it comes to
religion and the One/many problematic, Chris-
tianity does not belong to the many, it belongs
to – in fact produces – the One.
In asserting this, however, I may be getting a
bit ahead of myself. After all, what I have thus
far advanced is the notion that the concept of
religion emerges through Christianity, and in
such a way that each secures the identity of
the other. But even if one admits this identifi-
cation of religion and Christianity, it does not
provide the basis for comprehending how
today, when religion names many religions, reli-
gion has to do solely or even primarily with
Christianity. In order to comprehend this,
164

then, we need to develop the way religion under-
goes a transmutation with the rise of the secular.
We can, in order to track this transmutation,
return to the Christian construction of religion
in terms of right belief, i.e., the making of reli-
gion in the image of orthodoxy. It is orthodox
faith that provides the object toward which indi-
viduals are interpellated as aspiring. This devel-
opment has a couple of consequences that
should be observed. First, once this develop-
ment takes place any piety oriented around
local or ancestral fidelity appears as impious,
for it now registers as an obstacle to right
belief, as a kind of stubborn insistence on tra-
dition that hinders one’s proper orientation
around orthodoxy. Additionally, this sort of
insistence becomes interpreted as a denial
of universality, which is provided by the unity
of humanity in Christ. What is imperative
here, for emergent Christian religion, is the
theological affirmation and explication of the
famous Pauline claim that, “There is no
longer Greek or Jew […] for all of you are one
in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3.28). This theologeme
interpellates every insistence on the determi-
nacy of local or ancestral fidelity as a refusal of
the novel universality of Christianity. Religion,
as orthodoxy, is not just Christianity, it is also
universality; belief stripped of locality and
ancestrality becomes the intrinsic form of the
universal.
The second consequence that should be
observed is the way religion, even as it is
ideally named by and as Christianity, has to be
applied to other forms of life that are not Chris-
tian. This seems strange, for if Christianity and
religion are mutually identified, then how could
that which is not Christian be called religion? In
order to dissolve any confusion we need only to
recall what we have said about the importance,
for Christianity, of defining religion not just in
terms of belief, but more so in terms of right
belief. If Christianity is right belief, there
must be wrong belief; if Christianity is the
true religion, or religious truth, then there
must be some kind of religion that fails to
achieve the truth that Christianity incarnates.
In short, Christianity needs others to be wrong
if it is going to be right, it needs others to be
165
barber
aspiring toward that which it has achieved,
otherwise its achievement fails to be universal
in scope and falls back into the very sort of par-
ticularity that it accuses all others as having.
Christianity thus knows itself to be religion, in
a perfected sense, only insofar as it is able to
know others that are imperfectly religious –
hence the emergence, coeval with that of Chris-
tianity, of “Judaism” and “Paganism.” But still
more categories are needed, for not only must
one find religions that fall short of Christian
truth, one must also find those who interpret
Christian truth incorrectly. After all, if Chris-
tian truth is to be One, then it cannot bear a
kind of irresolvable polysemy, it must
somehow be fixed, even if only by negation.
And this is exactly what occurs under the
heading of heresy: heretics are not exactly
adherents of another, non-Christian religion,
but neither are they proper adherents of Chris-
tian religion, rather they are heterodox, they
maintain an “other” belief – one that is not so
other as to be identifiable with a distinctly diver-
ging religion, yet that is still not identifiable
with the right belief.
The upshot of this (admittedly brief) genea-
logical tour is that the construction of Christian
religion is a construction of the One, and a One
that – importantly – can be articulated only
through a division of the many. We have an
operation that is irresistibly focused on produ-
cing the One, on including everything within
it, whether nearer or farther from it, and that
can succeed in this production only insofar as
it sets forth a whole host of divisions, whether
they are the divisions internal to religion (Chris-
tianity divided from other religions) or the div-
isions internal to Christianity (orthodoxy
divided from heresies).
Of course, we are no longer Christian, rather
we are secular (or even “post-secular); the hege-
mony of Christianity has passed away in the
name of the hegemony of the secular. Does
this mean we are no longer under the sway of
this massive conceptual architecture of Chris-
tian religion? Or, to loop back to my earlier
claims, in what sense does this Christian archi-
tecture of the One and the many remain deter-
minative for the contemporary account of
 mediation, religion
religion as a concept so variously exemplified
that its scope would extend beyond Christianity,
rendering it not as the One of the many but
instead as one among many? There are a multi-
tude of responses to this line of questioning, but
the response that I want to foreground empha-
sizes that the modern concept of religion does
not appear without the concept of the secular.
Put simply, it is only because there is a self-con-
scious secular identity that the category of reli-
gion is displaced from its identification with
Christianity. Religion ceases to be that which
belongs to Christianity and instead becomes
that which belongs to those who do not belong
to the secular. The transmutation of religion,
then, is the movement whereby religion no
longer positively converges with Christianity
and begins to negatively diverge from the
secular. So while the meaning of religion
shifts, its centrality to the definition of the hege-
monic conceptual regime remains. If religion
once distinguished this regime in terms of
what the regime had, it now distinguishes the
regime in terms of what it knows how not to
have. Ultimately, what makes all religion equiv-
alent today is that religion, however it is articu-
lated, is conceived as hindering the achievement
of secular universalism. All of this is to say that
even as religion undergoes a transmutation, the
conceptual architecture of the One and the
many remains, and it remains as a construction
of religion – though now negatively rather than
positively. There is still universality, and parti-
cularity is still the obstacle, it is just that
whereas particularity was once determined as
the obstacle of false religion or heresy, it is
now determined as the obstacle of religion
itself. What remains, in short, is the mediation
of religion, and especially the mediation of reli-
gion as problematic excess, as a division that
impedes – but also secures, conceptually speak-
ing – the One.
It is within this very problematic that we
ought to situate the contemporary practice of
PoR. Far from being an operation whereby all
the contingencies of historical particularity are
successfully transcended in virtue of a philoso-
phically grounded universality, this practice is
constituted through the inheritance – conscious
or not – of these contingencies. The entirety of
the difficulty is not that such an inheritance is
at work; the difficulty runs deeper, it is that
this inheritance is never even made into an
object of thought. In fact, the difficulty is that
PoR frames the exteriority of religion in a
manner homologous with its framing by the
secular, which itself inherits the frame – via
transmutation – constructed by Christianity. It
is precisely at this point that a genealogy of reli-
gion ought to force PoR to question its position,
but it is precisely because PoR takes this genea-
logical product as a given (rather than as the
effect of historical mediation) that such a force
remains unthought. The fact that PoR might
very well critique claims made by Christianity,
just as it critiques claims made by other reli-
gions, does not alter anything I am arguing,
for this critique labors in virtue of the very
form of universality – still, as always, mediated
by way of “religion” – handed down to the
secular from Christianity.
non-consistency: one without
mediation
It is with respect to the difficulties I have just
named that the work of François Laruelle
appears as tremendously useful. This is the
case, first of all, because of the explicitly “non-
philosophical” orientation that he gives to his
thought. The meaning of such an appellation,
as many commentators have noted, has
nothing to do with being simply beyond or
against philosophy. What is intended by this
term, more exactly, is a thought that, while
remaining proximate to the material we call
philosophy, proceeds from a position – or non-
position – that is foreclosed by the practice of
philosophy. And it is as a practice, in my
view, that non-philosophy most notably
departs from philosophy. Thus the significance
of Laruelle’s thought, when it intersects with
the PoR, is its capacity to make available a
way of thinking about, with, through, or
alongside religion that would not be conditioned
by the normative practice of the PoR. In
fact, when I have thus far indicated my
166

dissatisfaction with PoR’s inability to take leave
of the position in which it has established itself,
I have done so with Laruelle’s own evasion of
such positionality in mind.
What Laruelle’s non-philosophy has to offer,
I propose, is a way of thinking that escapes the
mediation of religion – as opposed to PoR,
which unnoticeably takes on this mediation –
but that does not, at the same time, simply
ignore the highly determinative force of the
history of philosophical practice. Laruelle,
along these lines, provides a way of thinking
that at once takes leave of philosophy and
refuses to proceed as if philosophy did not
exist. Such an approach, I should add, is simi-
larly beneficial with regard to religion, for reli-
gion – I hope to have made evident – is at
once a deeply flawed construction and a concep-
tual field that cannot be ignored. In fact, a large
part of the difficulty today effected by the con-
struction of religion is a result of our tendency
to ignore it in its essentially problematic charac-
ter. The concept of religion, like the practice of
philosophy, requires a subtle engagement
whereby it is treated both as something to
escape and as something to address with a new-
found attentiveness. It is only along these lines,
in fact, that the exteriority that religion poses to
philosophy might begin to make manifest an
outside that is not relative to philosophy or
even to the concept of religion.
What I have in mind, in short, is way of being
outside of PoR (or, more broadly, outside of
philosophy and religion). One must proceed
carefully here, of course, for even as there is a
need to be outside, there is also a need to
avoid turning the outside into another place
that would carry into itself the very conditions
of the “inside.” The outside must not repeat
what it leaves. Neither can it be allowed
simply to invert what it leaves – as would be
the case with an inversion of philosophy or an
invocation of religion’s exceptionality with
regard to philosophy. The outside I have in
mind, then, is one that would have nothing to
do with, that would be independent from, the
divisions effected by a construction of the One
– an outside, in other words, that is indifferent
to the entire architecture of the One and the
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many. After all, it does not matter whether we
have to do with the construction of Christian
religion, or the construction of the secular’s dia-
lectical opposition to religion, or the more
specific practice of PoR – in each instance, we
find ourselves oriented around a position that
sets forth the One over against, or perhaps as
hierarchically inclusive of, the many. If we
want to escape the dominant regimes of
thought mediated through religion, then we
must commence with a disengagement from
the architecture of the One and the many that
props up and is propped up by this mediation.
If Laruelle’s thought is of interest, then it is
above all because of the possibility it
maintains of thinking the One outside of its
opposition to the many, i.e., outside of its divi-
sive relation to the many. And this possibility
emerges, most basically, in Laruelle’s account
of the Real.
The Real, for Laruelle, is not something that
one thinks about, nor is it something that one
thinks to or achieves. It is not an object of
thought. On the contrary, it is what thought
thinks from – as Laruelle will frequently
remark, one thinks “according to” the Real.
There are no doubt a variety of ways by which
this thinking according to the Real may be con-
veyed, but a fair rule of thumb is that one has
lost the thread at the very moment one imagines
thought as a kind of work. The Real is fore-
closed as soon as it appears as something
toward which thought moves. To think accord-
ing to the Real is thus to be radically ateleologi-
cal. Knowledge that would need to be learned is
knowledge envisioned as the product of a work,
knowledge envisioned as achievement – knowl-
edge that cannot think from the Real. On the
contrary, Laruelle holds in view an “ultimate
knowledge” that is fundamentally an
“unlearned knowledge.”11 Such knowledge, he
claims, belongs to the “vision-in-One,” and it
is this vision that proceeds according to the
Real.
“Vision-in-One” is immanent, but the
immanence at play here is not an absolute
immanence, for absolute immanence begins
with the presupposition that there are a multi-
tude of beings in the world. These beings are
 mediation, religion
immanently related, and so the term “imma-
nence” is apposite, but the limit of this
manner of thinking is that it makes immanence
relative to the already given multitude of beings.
Immanence, as articulated via absolute imma-
nence, is still a matter of achieved knowledge:
it is envisioned as something that thought,
given a multitude of beings, must put together.
What absolute immanence renders thinkable is
the One, but such a One – even though it is
said to be in immanence with all beings –
remains conceptually distinct from such
beings. In other words, there is still a duality,
as there is in all philosophy. What radical imma-
nence denotes, on the other hand, is an imma-
nence that would not be in relation to all
beings but would instead be envisioned prior
to the division between the (absolutely)
immanent One and an immanent multitude of
beings.
This is, of course, difficult to think – and that
is precisely Laruelle’s point. The tendential
habit of philosophical practice is to think
together what it has already distinguished, to
achieve some sort of overcoming of a given div-
ision. What non-philosophy calls for, on the
contrary, is to refuse to begin with such div-
ision, to refuse to take it as given, as something
to be mediated, and in this way it dissolves the
need to overcome the divided. The Real
escapes philosophy because it is, in its radical
immanence, prior to division and consequently
outside of any need to work toward – to
mediate – the overcoming of such division.
Yet, once again, the radical immanence of the
Real itself cannot be achieved, for this would
transform it into the absolute immanence of phi-
losophical labor. It is therefore only by thinking
according to the radical immanence of the Real
that one allows thought to proceed “prior” to
philosophy and thus to refuse philosophy’s
mediatic operation of division and overcoming,
which is very often expressed in terms of the
many and the One.
While it is possible to track this dynamic
throughout Laruelle’s work, for the purposes
of this essay it suffices to look at a basic instance
of its articulation, in “A Summary of Non-Phil-
osophy.” Here we find Laruelle’s claim that
philosophy “associates [the One], whether expli-
citly or not, to Being or to the Other whilst for-
bidding it any measure of radical autonomy.”12
The One, or the vision-in-One, as Laruelle wants
to conceive it, must be understood in its inde-
pendence from philosophy’s congenital habit
of linking it to Being, or if not to Being then
to the Other, i.e., to non-Being. In both of
these cases, the One is subordinated to the
duality of philosophy, it is relativized through
its association with one side or the other of phi-
losophy’s division. The One, in philosophy, is
always relativized, and in either of two
manners: first, it is lost in the name of Being,
or second, if its exteriority to Being is recog-
nized, then it is handed over to the Other and
then lost in the name of this Other. Within phil-
osophy, either Being prevails over the One, or
the Other prevails over the One. Hence the
One is like the child of warring parents: it is gen-
erally unattended to, and when it does receive
attention it is only as a useful weapon, as some-
thing valued in virtue of the agonistic philoso-
phical marriage bond of Being and the Other.
When this is the situation, it does not suffice
to take sides – in fact, it should be emphasized
that it will not be enough to turn the Other
against Being. This last is exactly the sort of
move that falls prey to the dangers I’ve
already mentioned, those that merely protest
against philosophy by inverting it or by isolating
and seizing a singular exception to it. Again, it
makes no difference whether the One belongs
to Being or to the Other, for in both cases the
One is subjected to an already decided upon
differentiation. What Laruelle calls for is some-
thing quite apart from this oscillation, namely
the One thought in its undivided radicality, a
radicality rooted in nothing but itself. This is
the radical immanence of the One, and it is
only through a thought that proceeds according
to this radical immanence that the One will be
granted its autonomy. Only in this manner
will thought remain in the One and thus allow
itself to escape from the divisions that are
there as soon as the practice of philosophy gets
going.
Laruelle’s One is most obviously a kind of
dissent from the Neoplatonic One, and its
168

dissent consists in its refusal to see the One in
relation to supposedly distinct beings. Even if
these beings have exited from the Neoplatonic
One and are bound to return to it, such a One
remains relative – at the conceptual level – to
such beings. There is still conceptual division,
the Neoplatonic One still depends upon its dis-
tinction from that which would appear as
exterior to it, and thus this One is not truly
simple. (Laruelle’s dissent here is thus analo-
gous to his dissent from absolute immanence.)
This makes evident that the radically immanent
One’s autonomy, or its independence from
Being and the Other, stems from its refusal of
all composition. Laruelle’s call is to think the
One without division and composition and to
refuse every account of the One that depends
on these.
The most explicit import that this call has for
the concerns of this essay, then, is the way it
puts out of play the One of Christian religion
or the One of the secular, for in each of these
two cases the One proceeds by and depends
upon division. Laruelle’s One, the Real of
radical immanence, is intrinsically indivisible,
and as such it provides a theoretical paradigm
that would remain outside of conceptual archi-
tectures that unify through division and that
do so precisely by mediating religion. This “out-
sideness,” however, is not yet another space that
would be divided from division – we can already
see the difficulties this would entail. To be
outside division, in the sense that I am indicat-
ing by way of Laruelle, is to be prior to division.
It is to think in a manner that refuses to enter
into division as a necessary terrain. And it is
from the vision-in-One that the supposedly
given divisions, revolving around the various
iterations of religion – whether as something
to be achieved, something to be critiqued and
thus overcome, or something to be numinously
respected in its exceptionality – appear as con-
tingently constructed and ultimately escapable
products.
Having said all of this, however, we ought to
note that if Laruelle’s non-philosophy provides a
means of escape from division and its mediation
by way of religion – from the divisive mediation
of religion – it does not do so by supplying a
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position to which we might escape. The escape
itself is a kind of radical immanence, which is
to say once again that it is ateleological; the
escape succeeds because, and only insofar as, it
remains without end. In this sense, Laruellian
escape does not fall prey to the understandable
suspicion that any escape from mediation is
really just a disavowal of mediation. Laruelle
does not claim that there is no mediation,
more precisely he claims that the mediation
that does take place does not need to take
place in this manner. Mediation is not denied,
rather it is rendered contingent before a
vision-in-One that can leave the mediated in
place precisely because the One is prior to the
divisions of mediation. The effect of Laruelle’s
thought is not to say “decide for the immediate
and against the mediated,” it is rather to say
“envision the mediated in-One,” i.e., without
mediation’s divisiveness. The One does not go
to war with mediation, it instead is indifferent
to the wars set forth between the mediated.
To envision the mediated in-One is to envi-
sion the mediated as undivided. Yet “undi-
vided” ought to be understood here in the
strict sense, namely as without division. This
is not the same as saying that what is divided
is “really” unified, for such a unification still
functions in terms of a duality, namely the
duality between division and unification. To
envision the mediated without division is to
say that it is without both division and the
duality between division and unification. What
is at stake, in other words, is a refusal of the div-
ision between beings as well as the division
between One (or unification) and many (the
divided beings). But if Laruelle wishes neither
to affirm division nor to affirm the opposite of
division, i.e., unification, then how is that
which is mediated to be thought in another
manner? How can the mediated be thought
outside of mediation if this outside is neither
division nor unification?
The answer, I would wager, has to do with
what Laruelle calls “non-consistency.” As long
as we insist on consistency as a necessary con-
dition of One-ness, then the lack of consistency
must introduce division. Let us consider an
example that, while extremely simplistic, is
 mediation, religion
useful for purposes of exemplification. Given
five elements, numbered 1 through 5, we
might claim that 1, 3, and 5 are consistent
with one another in terms of their oddness,
whereas 2 and 4 are consistent with one
another in terms of their evenness. Here we
see how a principle of consistency introduces
the necessity of division; it is the need to
discern consistency that sets forth the appear-
ance of opposition (between the odd and the
even). Perhaps we might then wish to mediate
this opposition, the duality between odd and
even, by means of their consistency in terms
of numberness, but even at this point we
remain in duality between numberness, on one
hand, and oddness/evenness, on the other.
The mechanism of mediation does not escape
division; on the contrary, it furthers and even
depends on division.
What, then, would it mean to stop thinking
these elements in terms of division and
mediation? What, in other words, would it
mean to envision the mediated, i.e., the
elements, as undivided? We would obviously
have to stop thinking the elements in terms of
the duality of oddness and evenness, but we
would also have to refuse the tendency to
claim that the elements are unified in terms of
numberness or some other principle. The only
way to remove the frame of division and
mediation from these elements is to insist on
thinking them just as they are. It is precisely
by refusing to render them consistent –
whether in terms of oddness, evenness, or num-
berness – that we make possible an encounter
with them that would escape division. They
are in-One precisely as they are, and only
when they are left as they are, without the prin-
ciple of consistency, are they truly in-One. And
to do this is to valorize a notion of non-consist-
ency as a means of refusing the frame of div-
ision. The elements must be separated from
consistency. Yet this is not to say that they are
opposed to consistency, it is just to say that
their consistency is not the kind of consistency
that opposes itself to inconsistency. The
elements are in fact consistent, it is simply
that this consistency is in-One, it is in the
radical immanence prior to philosophical
duality (of consistency and inconsistency).
Such is the non-consistency of the Real.
heresy, judaism, and the division of
religion
The aim of my discussion of Laruelle, as it has
thus far proceeded, has been to show how his
thought allows us to conceive a One that
would evade the division of One and many
that motivates and is sustained by the mediation
of religion. In this sense, the concern has
focused on the “philosophical” framing of unifi-
cation and distinction. In the space that still
remains, I would like to turn to the relationship
between Laruelle’s thought and religion, or
more exactly to the way in which Laruelle’s
non-philosophical effort makes use of religious
material. Obviously a clear distinction between
what is called philosophy and what is called reli-
gion is something that I want to irreparably
trouble. That said, their distinction is the
effect of a massive historical effort and thus
cannot be straightforwardly ignored. With this
qualification in mind, my contention is that
while Laruelle’s thought bears incredible
promise when it comes to escaping the concep-
tual architecture of mediatic divisiveness, the
way in which he draws on religious material
ought to be addressed much more critically.
Specifically, my contention is that Laruelle’s
escape from division, in the name of the radi-
cally immanent One, does not fully take
account of its imbrication in the “religious” div-
ision between Christianity and Judaism.
First of all, let me make clear that I am not
contending that Laruelle sides with Christianity.
Laruelle is not a Christian thinker, at least not in
the strict sense, rather he is a heretical thinker.
In fact, the principle of non-consistency that I
have just now been advancing is linked, in Lar-
uelle’s thought, to heresy. It is heresy, he says,
that “is the essence of thought’s non-consist-
ency.”13 Moreover, heresy is not just an histori-
cal accident that has introduced non-
consistency. It would be more apt to say that
heresy is the way in which an intrinsic non-con-
sistency, or a non-consistency that emerges
170

through thinking according to the One, appears.
Thus heresy, even as it appears (historically
speaking) in relation to the mediation of Chris-
tianity – that is, as the heresy of Christianity – is
in a basic sense prior to this historically
mediated religion. Indeed, heresy, he says, “is
more than a new ‘category of thought,’ it is its
transcendental force.”14 Heresy is not one cat-
egory mediated by another (religious) category,
it is not something that takes place within the
divisions of thought, it is instead thought
itself. Thought is heretical.
We can thus see that Laruelle’s thought is
essentially heretical, and that it therefore
cannot be Christian. Having said this, we need
to think more carefully about the relation
between Laruelle’s heretical thought and Chris-
tianity. I do not wish to argue that Laruelle’s
thought, because it is named in terms of
heresy, is somehow dependent on or relative to
Christianity. On the contrary, it is precisely by
insisting that the appellation “heresy” is
granted to what thought always already is that
Laruelle evades anything like this accusation.
Before Christianity there is thought, and so
even if the term “heresy” arises historically
only after Christianity emerges, what is thus
interpellated as heresy is nothing other than
the thought that was there prior to Christianity.
In short, it is Christianity that introduces div-
ision, and heresy is valorized by Laruelle not
in virtue of its duality with Christianity but
rather in terms of its insistence on the One-
ness that Christianity divides. There is, in this
sense, a severe asymmetry between the Chris-
tian and the heretic. Whereas Christianity
achieves identity through its division from its
others, heresy, defined by the vision-in-One,
has no identity to achieve and thus has no
need for division. Heresy is indifferent to the
war that Christianity wages on it. There is no
better example of this than the conversation,
reported by ethnographer Karen McCarthy
Brown in Mama Lola, between herself and
Alourdes Margaux, a Vodou priestess: when
Brown, having heard a priest condemning
Vodou practitioners to hell, asks Alourdes,
who also practices as a Catholic, what she
thinks about this, she says, “Oh, didn’t you
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know, Karen? That’s the way priests talk!”15
Such a response is indicative of the heretic’s
non-participation in the Christian’s war. Div-
ision is not fought against, it is simply set
aside as the idiolect of the mediation of religion.
It thus seems that heresy, as Laruelle articu-
lates it, is a use of religious material – since
heresy figures, within the genealogy of religion,
as a division that constitutes the supposed uni-
versality of Christianity – that undermines the
mediatic divisiveness of religion. And this is
true. In fact, we should make explicit that the
brilliance of this move consists not simply in
the effect of refusing religion’s mediation, but
furthermore in the capacity to do so by
drawing on religious material rather than
turning to philosophy, which wants to divide
itself from religion. This is to say that Laruelle
has escaped the division of religion without
relying on yet another division between religion
and philosophy. What, then, is still to be said?
In what sense could any difficulty remain?
And, more specifically, how could one claim,
given Laruelle’s undermining of Christianity’s
division, that his thought remains imbricated
in the religious division between Christianity
and Judaism?
The blunt answer to this set of questions is
that escape from the division between Christian-
ity and heresy is not the same thing as escape
from the division between Christianity and
Judaism. We should recall, from the previous
discussion of the genealogy of religion, that
Christianity had an “internal” division by
which it defined itself in opposition to those
“Christian” sects that failed to be properly
Christian (heresy), but that it likewise had an
“external” division by which it defined itself in
opposition to those religions that failed to be
properly religious, i.e., that failed to be Chris-
tian. Given the fact that one of these interpel-
lated religions, Judaism, has been subjected by
Christianity to horrifying (and recurring) inju-
ries, it seems inarguable that the capacity to
escape the division set up by Christianity
between itself and Judaism is a necessary con-
dition for any successful attempt to get outside
of the mediation of religion. And it is here
that Laruelle’s thought runs up against a
 mediation, religion
rather noteworthy difficulty. This difficulty
appears in some of his own written remarks,16
which are worth attention on their own, but I
want to focus here on the way it appears in the
essence of his thought.
Specifically, I want to call attention to the way
that Laruelle’s thought, even as it poses heresy
against Christianity, seems to reduplicate the
structure of Christianity. This last, we should
keep in mind, is established as a third term
that overcomes a duality – the duality of Greek
and Jew. The Pauline claim that unity in Christ
supersedes the division between Jew and
Gentile is not fully identical to the Laruellian
claim that vision-in-One undermines the division
between Being and the Other, for (at the level of
content) the One is not the same as Christian
identity, and of course an operation that super-
sedes is not the same as an operation that under-
mines. That said, the homology at the level of
structure is striking. In other words, the point
is not that the Laruellian One is the Pauline
“in Christ,” it is more exactly that the former
is not immune to suspicion that it is a concealed
reemergence of the latter. The logic of Christian-
ity, our genealogy has suggested, is something
that is hard to kill off; it is able (for instance)
to survive events like the transmutation from
Christian religion to the secular’s dialectic with
religion. What I am adding, then, is that Lar-
uelle’s vision-in-One may very well end up
amounting to yet another transmutation of the
logic of Christianity. As long as one focuses on
Christianity’s opposition to heresy, this suspicion
has no ground, but it gains quite a bit of ground
when one focuses on Christianity’s opposition to
Judaism.
We should observe, along these lines, that
when Laruelle sets up the One as undermining
Being and the Other, he makes clear that
Being is the thought of the Greek and the
Other is the thought of the Jew. The effect of
this is that to affirm Laruelle’s One is to affirm
the loss of any Jewish distinction. And, in his
short text, “Theorems on the Good News” –
that is, theorems on what Christians call the
gospel, the news media that subtends any gen-
ealogy of religion’s mediation – he critiques
philosophy in the same breath as he critiques
“primitive Myth” and “Jewish Law.”17 The
implication is thus that non-philosophy’s
thought according to the One spells the end
not only of philosophical division but also of
that by which Jewish existence has marked
itself as a particular form of life. Further on,
he speaks of “Man,” i.e., the being who thinks
according to the One – and questions of
gender trouble ought here to be related to ques-
tions of “religious” particularity trouble – as
“neither Greek nor Jew,” but rather as the “soli-
tary son of man,” which is, of course, to borrow,
valorize, and redeem yet another Christian
name.18
All of this is to say simply that Laruelle’s
One, for all of its capacity to escape the concep-
tual divisiveness enabling the mediation of reli-
gion, does not ultimately escape the divisiveness
involved in his selective use of religious
material. Heresy, after all, could be imagined
as a kind of stubborn (and divisive) insistence
on a particular position that has the effect of
ultimately obstructing One-ness. But Laruelle
– rightly – does not take this approach; rather,
he attends to the way in which the division of
the heretic is caused by Christianity, which is
clearly the aggressor. Instead of blaming
heresy, Laruelle subtly shows how heresy is
the victim of Christianity’s attempt to install a
universality by way of unity and division, or
the mediation of the One and the many. Yet
when it comes to Christianity’s division of
Judaism, Laruelle does nothing of the sort. In
fact, he seems to echo – implicitly at the very
least – the Christian notion that Jewish particu-
larity is an obstacle obstructing One-ness and
thus in need of removal. Why, we must ask, is
heresy envisioned as prior to or outside of Chris-
tianity’s divisive universalism, while Judaism is
envisioned, in line with Pauline rhetoric, as
holding onto an identity that threatens the pre-
sumed good of universality? Why is heresy
made the occasion to challenge Christian div-
ision but Judaism kept within the frame of the
very same division? Why not see in Jewish par-
ticularity an exemplary occasion for the practice
of non-consistency, which leaves things as they
are instead of excluding them in virtue of their
singularity?
172

Such questions ought to have particular force,
given the historical past, for a European thinker
whose thought bears the structure of the univers-
ality expressed in Christianity. In fact, one would
not be entirely without basis in supposing that
Laruelle’s thought presumes that even as Chris-
tianity was wrong in its attitude toward heresy,
it was not entirely off the mark in its sense that
Jewish particularity essentially undermined the
possibility of universality. Laruelle, for all of
his success in undermining the divisiveness of
philosophical duality, and even of the Christian-
ity/heresy duality, fails to take seriously – in
fact, he seems actively to oppose – the capacity
of Jewish particularity to undermine the divisive-
ness of universality as such. This is a severe
failure of Laruelle’s thought, one that might
raise for some the question of whether the
failure extends to the core of Laruelle’s work,
or whether we might be able to see it as one acci-
dental instance of Laruelle not becoming ade-
quate to his own best insights. It is advisable,
however, to avoid deciding on either of these
responses – even to avoid holding onto the ques-
tion, given its weddedness to duality – and
instead to see, precisely as it is expressed, the
unresolved tension in Laruelle’s work. This
work indicates a line of exodus from the
mediation of religion at the same time that it
actively devalorizes actual experiments in
exodus. The force of the former is not fundamen-
tally negated by the fact of the latter; presuming
that we address the exigent difficulty produced
by this devalorization, we can still take lessons
from this force. If there is a larger lesson,
however, it is that even the
radical intention of non-philos-
ophy, with its concern to evade
connotations of achievement,
remains interpellated by the
demand to convert to Christianity.
notes
I would like to express my thanks to the ICI Berlin
Institute for Cultural Inquiry for its support of my
work.
1 Zito.
173
barber
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Those who have been most influential on my
own attempts to do simultaneously philosophical
and genealogical work on religion include:
Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab; idem, Semites; Asad, For-
mations; idem, Geneaologies; Boyarin; King;
Masuzawa.
8 I have provided a much fuller account of this
genealogy in Barber.
9 King 35.
10 The way in which Christianity has thusly
obscured itself, under cover of the secular, is
most forcefully explained in Anidjar, Semites.
11 Laruelle, Future Christ 13.
12 Idem, “A Summary of Non-Philosophy” 138.
13 Idem, Future Christ 43.
14 Ibid.
15 Brown 277.
16 For instance, Laruelle compares the victimiza-
tion of the heretic and the victimization of the
Jew in order to show that the former is more
radical than the latter:
The heretic is more elusive than the uncon-
scious accessible to anamnesis, or than the
Jew accessible of the Law. The World itself
symbolizes by fire its act of foreclosure. Fire
consumes (consommé) or indeed engulfs
(consume) itself without remaining, it is the
performed par excellence which can only
“be done” with the heretic. One will object
that the fire set upon the Jewish people
does not allow heretics to be distinguished,
if it is only the Jewish people who have
been burnt-out by a transcendent and techno-
logical fire while the heretics are burned up
in an immanent fire without author. In one
case our living memory of being dead
remains in ashes, of traces that bind us to
the dead in our unbinding them. In the
other there is a radical consummation,
 mediation, religion
without trace in order “to light” our
memory. (Future Christ 107)
He continues by claiming: “Burning out the Jews
has been a true culture […] But more simply we
burn up the heretics, who are of immanence” –
that is, “we burn them in the name of their knowl-
edge rather than in the name of their ‘race,’
because of their spirituality rather than their
‘biology,’ ‘history,’ or ‘economy’” (ibid. 108). Lar-
uelle observes that the burning of the Jews is
“appalling” (ibid.); however, one cannot avoid
detecting here the claim that somehow the
burning of the heretics is more essential, since it
is a burning based on the “spiritual” rather than
on any more material categories. This seems to
be a continuation of Christian dualism, in which
the spiritual is divided from the material and ima-
gined as superior to it. And the effect of this con-
tinuation is to reemploy the long tradition by
which Jews are interpellated as “carnal,” i.e., as
stubbornly and wrongly wedded to notions of
materiality and otherness. It also seems ethically
mistaken – to put it mildly – to place the Shoah
in comparison to the killing of the heretics, as if
the atrocity of which we have an historical
record could be relativized in relation to a
“radical” killing that we can think about without
having to think about the still determinative div-
ision between the European and the Semite (who
now appears more often in the form of “the
Muslim”). This appears to be a means of evading
the force of one division of religion by subordinat-
ing it to another division of religion. It seems
necessary, on the contrary, to see them, in an ega-
litarian manner, as non-consistently in-One.
17 Laruelle, “Theorems on the Good News.”
18 Ibid.
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Theory, India, and “The Mystic East.” London:
Routledge, 1999. Print.
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Trans. Anthony Paul Smith. New York:
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galloway/pdf/Laruelle,%20Theorems%20on%20the
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Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: U
of Chicago P, 2005. Print.
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Apr. 2008. Web. 17 July 2014. <http://
therevealer.org/archives/2853>.
Daniel Colucciello Barber
ICI Berlin
Christinenstraße 18–19
Haus 8
D-10119 Berlin
Germany
E-mail: danielcbarber@gmail.com
 notes on the contributors
daniel colucciello barber
is a Fellow at the ICI Berlin Institute for Cul-
tural Inquiry. He is the author of On Diaspora:
Christianity, Religion, and Secularity
(Cascade, 2011), and Deleuze and the Naming
of God: Postsecularism and the Future of
Immanence (Edinburgh UP, forthcoming).
drew burk
is an editor, cultural theorist and translator of
contemporary French philosophy including
François Laruelle’s Struggle and Utopia at the
End Times of Philosophy (Univocal, 2012). He
is also the Director of Univocal, an independent
philosophy press.
alexander r. galloway
is a writer and computer programmer working
on issues in philosophy, technology, and the-
ories of mediation. He is author or co-author
of five books on digital media and critical
theory, most recently The Interface Effect
(Polity, 2012), and Excommunication: Three
Inquiries in Media and Mediation (U of
Chicago P, 2013), written with Eugene
Thacker and McKenzie Wark.
rocco gangle
is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at End-
icott College in the School of Arts and Sciences.
His work has appeared in Political Theology,
Philosophy Today, SubStance and the Journal
for Cultural and Religious Theory as well as
other academic journals and edited collections.
He is the translator of François Laruelle’s Phil-
osophies of Difference (Continuum, 2010) and
the author of François Laruelle’s Philosophies
of Difference: A Critical Introduction and
Guide (Edinburgh UP, 2013).
175
gilles grelet
holds a doctorate in philosophy and is the author
of nearly forty publications. Included amongst
those is his book Déclarer la gnose. D’une
guerre qui revient à la culture (L’Harmattan,
2002). He is the editor of the contemporary
theory series “Nous, les sans-philosophie” for
L’Harmattan in addition to often teaching
(from the Université de Paris 8 to the pro-
fessional training of the Lorient football club
and in particular at the Collège international
de philosophie). He lives aboard his boat in Brit-
tany. His “théoriste” work, theoretical and sea-
worthy in the same gesture, attempts to reject
the World out of hand altogether.
armand hatchuel
is a Professor at Mines ParisTech where he co-
founded, with Prof. Benoît Weil, the Chair of
Design Theory. A mining engineer and holder
of a Ph.D. in Management, his work on
modern foundations of management and organ-
ization theory has shown how they differ from
classic economic or social theory. He introduced
a theory of “rational myths” as the modern form
of rationalizations which combines both knowl-
edge and actors’ renewal. After discussing
Simon’s ideas of substantial and bounded ration-
ality he introduced the notion of expandable
rationality; he is also, with Benoît Weil, the
author of a formal and domain-independent
design theory, known as C-K Theory, which
accounts for creativity both in objects and organ-
ization design. He has received several academic
awards in management and design theory, and is
a member of the French Academy of
Technologies.
 katerina kolozova
is the Director of the Institute of Social Sciences
and Humanities Skopje and a Professor of Phil-
osophy, Sociological Theory and Gender
Studies at the University American College
Skopje. She is also Visiting Professor at
several universities in Former Yugoslavia and
Bulgaria (the State University of Skopje, Uni-
versity of Sarajevo, University of Belgrade,
and University of Sofia, as well as at the
Faculty of Media and Communications of Bel-
grade). In 2009, Kolozova was a Visiting
Scholar at the Department of Rhetoric
(Program of Critical Theory) at the University
of California – Berkeley. Kolozova is the
author of The Lived Revolution: Solidarity
with the Body in Pain as the New Political
Universal (Euro-Balkan, 2010), The Real and
“I”: On the Limit and the Self (Euro-Balkan,
2006), The Crisis of the Subject, with Judith
Butler and Zarko Trajanoski (Euro-Balkan,
2002), The Death and the Greeks: On Tragic
Concepts of Death from Antiquity to Moder-
nity (Kultura, 2000), Cut of the Real: Subjec-
tivity in Poststructuralist Philosophy
(Columbia UP, 2014), and editor of a number
of books from the fields of gender studies and
feminist theory, among which is Gender and
Identity: Theories from/on Southeastern
Europe (Athena, 2006), co-authored with
Svetlana Slapshak and Jelisaveta Blagojevic.
She is also the Editor-in-Chief of Identities:
Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, and
is a member of the Editorial Board of
Punctum Books, and of the Non-Philosophical
Society (ONPHI) and AtGender (European
Network for Feminist and Gender Studies).
françois laruelle
is Professor Emeritus at the Université Paris-
Ouest – La Défense and the originator of a
movement called “non-philosophy” or even
“non-standard philosophy,” along with the col-
lectives around these movements. He has pub-
lished twenty-three books and collections,
several of which have been translated into
English, including some French–English bilin-
gual editions. Included among his published
works are Une biographie de l’homme ordinaire
(Aubier, 1985), Principles of Non-Philosophy
(Bloomsbury, 2013), and Philosophie non-stan-
dard. Quantique, générique, philo-fiction
(Kimé, 2010).
robin mackay
is a philosopher and Director of the UK arts
organization Urbanomic, which promotes
research activities addressing crucial issues in
philosophy, science and their relation to con-
temporary art practice, aiming to engender
interdisciplinary thinking and production. As
well as directing Urbanomic’s publishing oper-
ation and curatorial activities, he is editor of
the publication Collapse: Journal of Philoso-
phical Research and Development. He writes
and speaks regularly on art and philosophy
and has worked with several artists developing
cross-disciplinary projects. He has also trans-
lated various works of French philosophy,
including Alain Badiou’s Number and
Numbers (Polity, 2008), François Laruelle’s
The Concept of Non-Photography (Urba-
nomic/Sequence, 2011) and Anti-Badiou
(Bloomsbury, 2013), and Quentin Meillassoux’s
The Number and the Siren (Urbanomic/
Sequence, 2012).
176
 john ó maoilearca
teaches Philosophy and Film at Kingston Uni-
versity, London. He is an editor of the journal
Film-Philosophy, and chair of the Society for
European Philosophy. His work explores vari-
ations of non-standard-philosophy, arguing
that philosophy is a subject that continually
shifts its identity through engaging with
supposedly non-philosophical fields such as
film theory and animal studies (the realms of
“outsider thought” with which he is most
acquainted). He is currently finishing a book
entitled Reverse Mutations: Laruelle and
Non-Human Philosophy.
aaron riches
teaches at the Seminario Mayor San Cecilio as a
joint faculty member of the Instituto de
Teologı ́a Lumen Gentium and the Instituto de
Filosofı ́a Edith Stein.
nicola rubczak
has an M.Litt in Continental Philosophy from
the University of Dundee. Her main research
areas are the feminist critique and mutation of
philosophy, as found primarily in Luce Irigaray,
and philosophy as a performative practice. She
is the co-translator, with Anthony Paul Smith,
of François Laruelle’s Principles of Non-Philos-
ophy (Bloomsbury, 2013).
177
anne-françoise schmid
is an epistemologist and philosopher at the INSA
de Lyon and Mines ParisTech, a researcher with
INRA, Centre de Jouy-en-Josas, in animal
biology and the philosophy of the animal, and
an Associate Researcher at the Poincaré
Archives, University of Nancy 2. Her works
include Philosophie de l’interdisciplinarité. Cor-
respondance (1999–2004) sur la recherche scien-
tifique, la modélisation et les objets complexes
with Jean-Marie Legay (Pétra, 2004) and editing
and translating Bertrand Russell’s Correspon-
dance sur la philosophie, la logique et la poli-
tique avec Louis Couturat (1897–1913) (Kimé,
2001). She is a member of the editorial commit-
tee of the interdisciplinary scientific journal
Natures, Sciences, Sociétés (EDP Sciences), of
Philosophia Scientiae (Poincaré Archives,
Kimé), and of Russell: The Journal of Bertrand
Russell Studies (McMaster University).
anthony paul smith
is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Religion at La Salle University (Philadelphia,
USA) and a Research Fellow at the Institute for
Nature and Culture, DePaul University
(Chicago, USA). In addition to translating and
co-translating a number of Laruelle’s works and
co-editing with John Mullarkey Laruelle and
Non-Philosophy, he is the author of A Non-Phi-
losophical Theory of Nature: Ecologies of
Thought (Palgrave, 2013), François Laruelle’s
Principles of Non-Philosophy: A Critical Intro-
duction and Guide (Edinburgh UP, forthcom-
ing), and Laruelle: A Stranger Thought
(Polity, forthcoming). His current project con-
cerns a critique of the theological form.
eugene thacker
is the author of After Life (U of Chicago P, 2010),
In the Dust of this Planet (Zero, 2011), and co-
author, with Alexander Galloway and McKenzie
Wark, of Excommunication: Three Inquiries in
Media and Mediation (U of Chicago P, 2013).
He teaches at The New School in New York.