The question of philosophy and the new, of both philosophys relation to the new and its own production of the new, is intimately connected to the matter of capitalism. The above questions remain abstract so long as they are posed outside of the context of this relation. Throughout Deleuzes work we find an attempt to think this relation between philosophy and capital, in which the question of the and is perhaps the most crucial: difference and repetition, capitalism and schizophrenia, absolute deterritorialization and relative deterritorialization. In his book on Leibniz and the baroque Deleuze argues that if Baroque is to be associated with capitalism it is in terms of an emergent crisis of property, in which questions of the proper, of ownership and possession, undergo the transmutation of a certain nihilism, since the crisis is connected with the emergence of new machines in the social field and the discovery of new and myriad living beings in the organism. The question of philosophy in this context concerns the critical and clinical relation of philosophy to the nihilistic movements of capital, movements articulated by both Marx (all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned) and Nietzsche (nothing is true, everything is permitted). For Deleuze it is always a question of two nihilisms, namely, the one kind which destroy old values in order to conserve the established order and which never produces anything new, the other kind which extracts from nihilism something that belongs to the untimely, to the monstrous future, to the monstrous future, remaining faithful to the promise of a time to come. In other words, it is a question of being modern, but not at any cost, argues Deleuze. When the world loses its established principles the only radical (im-proper) response is to invent and proliferate new ones. We shall have the chance to critically examine the nature and force of this distinction between the two nihilisms at key moments in the drama of this study. Let me draw this Introduction to a close by expressing the principal concern I have over Deleuzes project. A philosophy of immanence always encounters the greatest dangers not only because it freely takes on and undergoes these dangers, as Deleuze readily appreciates, but also because it runs the risk of producing a purely narcissistic method and mode of critique. The conception of Being as univocal and the experiment of the plane of immanence are clearly the source of the most important innovations of Deleuzianism, but they are also the site of its principal predicaments. Both need to be attended to and the kind of attention we give them is, ultimately, an ethical matter. It is also the occasion for a speculative affirmation of the event of thought.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 11:52:17 +0000
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