NEGATIVITY AND POLITICS ‘This book offers a highly nuanced and productive reading of the play of negativity, and its link with politics, within the modern and late-modern continental tradition of political theory, providing new insights into the likes of Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Adorno, Merleau- Ponty, and Kristeva. ... Both the student and scholar of contemporary philosophy and political theory will find much to engage with, and learn from, in this brave and ambitious study.’ Keith Ansell Pearson, University of Warwick Although frequently invoked by philosophers and political theorists, the theory of negativity has received remarkably little sustained attention. Negativity and Politics: Dionysus and dialectics from Kant to poststructuralism is the first full length study of this crucial problematic within philosophy and political theory. Diana Coole clearly and skilfully shows how the problem of negativity lies at the heart of philosophical and political debate. First, she explores the meaning of negativity as it appears in modern and postmodern thinking. Second, she sets out the significance of negativity for politics and our understanding of what constitutes the political. A key theme of Negativity and Politics is the recurring hostility between the dialectical use of negativity found in Hegel and running through Marxism and critical theory, and the Dionysian use of negativity as developed by Nietzsche and found in important strands of French thought. Diana Coole shows how the appropriation of negativity in both cases threatens but also informs our understanding of politics and the political. A fascinating and bold intervention in political theory and philosophy, Negativity and Politics will be of interest to all those in politics, philosophy and contemporary social theory. Diana Coole is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory and Head of Department at the Department of Politics, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. She is the author of Women in Political Theory (1988; 2nd edn, 1993). NEGATIVITY AND POLITICS Dionysus and dialectics from Kant to poststructuralism Diana Coole London and New York First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2000 Diana Coole All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Coole, Diana H. Negativity and politics : Dionysus and dialectics from Kant to poststructuralism / Diana Coole. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Negativity (Philosophy) 2. Political science–Philosophy. I. Title. B828.25.C66 2000 149–dc21 99-052690 ISBN 0-203-13135-5 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-17734-7 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-03176-1 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-03177-X (pbk) CONTENTS Note on textual sources ix Acknowledgements x Introduction: negativity and politics 1 Exploring negativity 1 Pursuing the political 7 1 Negativity and noumena: critical reason at the limit 13 Kant’s transcendental method and the limits of theoretical reason 13 The ambiguities of the subject and the refutation of idealism 22 The divided subject 22 The challenge of scepticism 24 Negativity and noumena 27 Totality and disintegration 35 Conclusion: critical reason and negativity 40 2 Hegel and his critics: dialectics and difference 43 Hegelian dialectics 45 The rhythms of negativity 45 A question of method 51 The undecidability of the Hegelian dialectic 54 Negativity and materialism: the Marxian dialectic 61 From nature to communism: a materialist history 63 The politics of negation 68 Marx’s dialectical method 70 From dialectics to différance 72 3 Nietzsche: negativity as will to power 85 Primordial contradiction 89 v CONTENTS Negativity as will to power 93 Cosmology and methodology 97 ‘[L]ife itself is will to power’ 103 Man ‘is the sick animal’ 106 Will to power and the political 114 4 Negativity as invisibility: Merleau-Ponty’s dialectical adventures 122 Rationalism and dialectic: the problematic of the negative 124 Nature: a dialectical ontology 128 The phenomenal body and the flesh of the world 129 Perception and the visual field 132 Subject–object: subjectivity, philosophy and language 136 A phenomenology of mind 136 Perception, thinking, are ‘structured as a language’ 137 Phenomenology and hyperdialectics 139 Intersubjectivity: history and politics 141 Humanism and coexistence 142 Towards a philosophy of history 144 Negativity as praxis 147 Subject–subject and subject–object dialectics: Merleau-Ponty and Habermas 151 5 Subject–object relations again: identity, non-identity and negative dialectics 156 Materialism and epistemology: the project of a critical theory 158 Dialectic of enlightenment 162 Adorno’s ‘Subject and Object’ 168 ‘The Actuality of Philosophy’ 172 From Hegelian dialectics to negative dialectics 180 Conclusion: practising negativity: philosophy and politics 185 6 Subjectivity and the semiotic: gendering negativity 195 A materialist negativity 195 Subjects and objects 195 Freudian energetics 197 Semiotic negativity 205 Negativity and its representation 210 Language, negativity and politics 215 Negativity and sexual difference 218 vi CONTENTS The maternal body 219 Negativity and the feminine 221 The mothering subject 223 Feminist politics: the third generation as third-degree negativity 225 Conclusion: politics and negativity 230 Deleuzean interlude 237 Notes 246 Index 268 vii NOTE ON TEXTUAL SOURCES I have tried to keep footnotes to a minimum. Because I have made extensive use of primary texts, I have incorporated the main references into my own text. These are given as abbreviations followed by page number, in parentheses. Lists of abbreviations and the bibliographic details of editions can be found at the beginning of the notes for each chapter. The references given are for English translations. I have not included a bibliography, but references to all material that has been explicitly used, plus selected references to texts of particular relevance to my arguments, are included in the notes. ix