On the Genealogy of Post-Nietzschean Genealogy:
From Nietzsche’s Genealogy to DeLanda’s Morphogenesis”
The proposed title stakes out an attempted exegetical foray into a philosophical method for which there is no clear textual referent: no interpreter of Nietzsche writes as though he understands himself developing anything referred to explicitly as post-Nietzschean genealogy, and those that understand themselves as employing or developing a properly Nietzschean genealogy are often ambiguous, imprecise, or straightforwardly mistaken about how their interpretations of Nietzsche derive from the letter of his texts. Nevertheless, this essay will attempt to demonstrate that certain philosophical methods, ranging in title from simply genealogy to “archaeology,” “anti-genealogy” or “geology,” and the study of morphogenesis, have as highly relevant to the understanding of their own historical context, technical definition, and character as responses to genuinely philosophical problems some source, however partial, in Nietzsche’s writings on genealogy. As will be seen, the obvious fact that any formal discussion of methods significantly deriving from genealogy must be founded on a precise technical definition of genealogy itself will, rather than simplify their explication, complicate it, since Nietzsche, and indeed I, remain restricted to write, as both titles indicate, not in the mode of genealogy, but on the mode of genealogy. The nature of genealogy, as Nietzsche writes of it, is itself inherently problematic and diffuse or obscure.
So, what is genealogy? What kind of values or forms does it seek to examine and measure, how, and why? That is, what for all this is its value? What conditions this value? And in what way does it condition philosophical methods, such as “geology” or “geophilosophy,” that in some fashion claim to derive from it? These are the questions that must be asked and answered. Perhaps no other philosophers have suggested implicit answers like the philosophical “enfants terribles” Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, philosopher-historian Michel Foucault, and the Deleuzian philosopher of contemporary science Manuel DeLanda, and certainly because none have so infamously and creatively adapted genealogy to ends beyond the purported “inquiry into the origins of moral phenomena,” (CITE) or “critique of the value of values,” (CITE) than each—all spawning, in addition to some of their own distinctive versions of genealogy, similar methods with their own names: “archaeology” for Foucault; “anti-genealogy,” or “geology,” and “geophilosophy” for Deleuze and Guattari; and the study of morphogenesis for DeLanda. On the other hand, perhaps no authors have done so poorly in providing a clear, thorough, and valid textual explication of the highly ambiguous, perhaps even contradictory way in which Nietzsche speaks of genealogy in On the Genealogy of Morals and its companion book, Beyond Good and Evil, in order to found and supplement their discussions of genealogy’s transformations—as has been indirectly documented by a good handful of less celebrated academics outside the continental tradition who came before me. Providing this deliberately explicit, meticulous account of genealogy’s transformations from Nietzsche to Foucault, to Deleuze & Guattari, and finally to DeLanda—as well as, in supplement, from a method of ambiguously metaphorical narrative critique of normative values to one of precise literal description of morphogenetic or geomorphological processes—is exactly what this essay will attempt to accomplish.
How, precisely? By what method will my own examination proceed, and in what way does it relate to that of genealogy or any of its concomitant methods of interpretation as presented in the texts I will examine? Broadly speaking, the essay, as hinted in the title, will proceed by a method of reading I will refer to, per the blog-writing of Levi Bryant, Object-Oriented Ontologist at Collins College, as problematic reading, originally proffered by one of the primary authors to be interpreted, Deleuze. The method supposes the following:
The history of philosophy isn’t a particularly reflective discipline. It’s rather like portraiture in painting. Producing mental, conceptual portraits. As in painting, you have to create a likeness, but in a different material: the likeness is something you have to produce, rather than a way of producing anything (which comes down to just repeating what a philosopher says). Philosophers introduce new concepts, they explain them, but they don’t tell us, not completely anyway, the problems to which those concepts are a response. Hume, for example, sets out a novel concept of belief, but he doesn’t tell us how and why the problem of knowledge presents itself in such a way that knowledge is seen as a particular kind of belief. The history of philosophy, rather than repeating what a philosopher says, has to say what he must have taken for granted, what he didn’t say but is nonetheless present in what he did say. [emphasis added] (Negotiations, 136)
As Professor Bryant expands, such a method of interpretation:
...everywhere grapples with the letter of the text… [yet] nonetheless looks for something that is everywhere present in the text but which the text does not itself say. Put a bit differently, a problematic reading seeks the horizon, the problematic field, [sic] that renders the concepts invented by a philosopher as solutions. Such a reading strives to reconstruct the problem that renders a particular constellation of concepts intelligible as solutions… The advantages of a problematic reading are threefold. First, problematic reading opens the possibility of immanent critique. Some philosophers seem to think that critiquing [sic] a philosophy consists in the activity of pointing out contradictions or invalid arguments in their reasoning. These philosophers behave like civil servants and bureaucrats worrying over whether the paperwork has been filled out correctly… Where the reading of texts in terms of whether or not they are logically consistent and composed of valid arguments brings extrinsic criteria to bear in the evaluation of the text, a problematic reading provides us with immanent criteria for the evaluation of the text. Does the text, work of literature, or work of art respond to its own problem? Moreover, a problematic reading now reveals the reason these contradictions and invalid arguments inhabit the philosophical text. It reveals the agency that maintains these contradictions… Yet all of this is still a largely scholarly affair. The second advantage of problematic reading is that it is the space of our freedom. Non-problematic scholarly reading is always authoritarian in the precise sense of tying us to the authority of the text. “Yes I agree with that text!” “No I disagree with that text!” It’s all so dismal. “You use a hammer to pound nails, damn it!” We are forced to become Lacanians, Kantians, Deleuzians, object-oriented ontologists, Hegelians, and Spinozists. We become disciples able only to ape the solutions that the master has provided. By contrast, when I understand the problem to which a hammer responds as a solution a space of freedom is opened up. Now a minimal gap between solutions and problems appears, such that the hammer and the text are subject to critique. Why? Because a problematic field is always in excess of any of its solutions, allowing for a variety of different solutions. Is a hammer the best solution to this problem? Are there other solutions available or that are possible?... Finally, third, problematic reading opens the possibility of critiquing [sic] problems themselves, such that a space is open for the posing of new problems… The archaeology[1] of a problem would thus be a means of freeing us from false problems, of escaping false problems and the sad monsters they engender, creating a free space in which other problems can be invented and new solutions can be invented as well. Through a dis-attachment to poorly formed problems, the possibility of posing new problems is open. [emphasis added] (“Problematic Reading,” Larval Subjects[2])
As has likely already been inferred, such a method suggests the metaphor of genealogy in addition to that of archaeology insofar as it aims to uncover the implicit problematic field which functions as the genesis of the solutions that constitute the explicit material of the text under examination. That is, a problematic reading is genealogical in character to the extent it operates as immanent critique.
But I must make explicit one key peculiarity of this essay that delimits its potential impact as an example of problematic reading. It is an incomplete immanent critique, which is to say, it will not seek any new solutions to the problems implicitly constructed and explicitly solved by genealogy, archaeology, geology, or the study of morphogenetic processes, by uncovering those problems anew. Rather, it will seek to explicate the ways in which each method transforms from one problem-solution set to the other, how each different method of solving the problem genealogy responds to changes relative to the problem, a trajectory which remains as implicit as each individual problem does to its individual solution. In this way, this essay will not attempt any novel philosophical contribution, either through the invention of a novel solution or by the invention of a novel problem with or without its correspondent solution, but will attempt to explicate precisely that which these authors of novel philosophical contributions have left implicit, the trajectory or genealogy of genealogical problem-solution sets as they develop in sophistication from the metaphorical normative critique narrated by Nietzsche to the philosophical-scientific speculation on morphogenetic processes described by DeLanda. In so doing, I will perform a partial problematic reading of several problematic readings which I will assume to be ‘complete,’ or perhaps better phrased, unabridged, though also controversial, at least partly obscure, and with an excess of their respective problems left over, leaving me hopefully to be able to at least indicate for further inquiry possible new solutions, even should I remain devoted not to solve any anew.
Along the way, so as to provide conceptual clarity, I will place each version of genealogy or one of its derivative forms within a schema designed to differentiate it according to its distinctive formal structure and ontological aim (that is, attempt to solve a philosophical problem it responds to), or lack thereof. The schema is outlined in sets of questions formatted as follows: a) How does the version of genealogy or one of its derivative methods conceive of the origin or genetic processes of its chosen phenomena? Where does it locate its philosophical problem or critique of an attempted solution to a philosophical problem relative to this origin? What comportment does it deem the proper way of gaining knowledge or relating to its origin or problem?; b) Is the version of genealogy a mode of critique, speculation, or both? If both, is critique or speculation the primary term in the relationship? That is, does it first attempt to offer an (alternative) solution to a philosophical problem (speculation primary), or does it merely attack a prior mistaken solution and fail to seek an alternative, or only seek one in vain (critique primary, incomplete immanent critique)?; c) Is the version of genealogy transcendent or immanent in its critique or speculation? That is, is the solution offered immanent to the field of actual phenomena implicated by the problem, or is it a critique in immanent attack of a solution that remains transcendent to the field of actual phenomena, and thus still transcendent? Or is the problem itself posed transcendent to the actual phenomena implicated by it?; and d) Does the version of genealogy offer a metaphorical or a literal explanation of its solution? How does its metaphorical or literal status relate to its transcendent or immanent status? Is there a correlation here, and, if so, why? With this schema, I hope to provide a framework of questions designed not only to ensure clear transitions between and overall coherence among the essay’s FIVE sections, but also to set the stage for a conclusive evaluation of each method, both respective to their designated philosophical and respective to each other, explaining in what way I think one or some achieve more insight than others.
[1] This is not a reference to the method of archaeology proposed by Foucault.
[2] Bryant, Levi. <http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/>
2. Current Draft of Introduction
See proposal.
3. Current Draft of Section on DeLanda
DeLanda’s Explication of Deleuzian Ontology: The Progressive Literalization of the Genesis of Form
Introduction
Thus far I have examined, in broad view, the ways in which Nietzschean genealogy and the interpretive methods which derive from it, such as Deleuzian genealogy, Foucauldian genealogy, and Deleuzoguattarian geology, have employed the term in its original or derivative form as metaphors, metaphors which, as such, derive from and operate on a plane transcendent to the plane of objects or problems being studied.
Enter more about relation between metaphor and transcendental, essentialist, typological, or “preformation” thinking after your research on metaphor and transcendence in Metaphors We Live By and What is Philosophy? has been completed.
Now it is time I describe how DeLanda’s explication of Deleuze’s account of morphogenesis, or how the diverse individual forms of extensive and qualitative properties we encounter in the actual world generate themselves, rather than find themselves generated by essentialist preformations, achieves a level of analysis unknown to any genetic story thus far examined, a nearly literal, scientifically-grounded speculative account immanent to the world of matter and energy of which this dimension of the actual is but a part. Though previous genetic stories functioning under the title of genealogy have either offered a form of critique immanent not to the world of matter and energy in which we exist but to the essentialist patterns of thought operating on a plane of general preformed essences transcendent to the immanent world of individual historical processes (Nietzche, Foucault), or a speculative account that remains critical of such transcendental thought, but by less through attack than through providing its own alternative explanation of how formations are generated without the support of scientific theory (Deleuze on Nietzsche), the genetic stories proffered by Deleuze and Guattari as geology and explicated by DeLanda as morphogenesis escape the limitations of metaphorical and transcendental thinking to present a genuinely constructive alternative explanation to essentialist and typological accounts of the generation of actual forms driven by interpretations of scientific theory.
I will proceed through the first part of this section by first detailing the way in which DeLanda introduces three mathematical fields, those of dynamical systems theory, group theory, and differential geometry, all of which Deleuze borrows from so as to contrive his conception of how virtual multiplicities drive intensive processes of progressive differentiation to generate actual forms, paying particular attention to the way in which DeLanda uses a hierarchy of geometrical fields to provide a metaphorical picture for the way in which the dimension of the actual, the dimension of metric space we live in and physicists study, is produced out of the virtual through intensive processes. Then I will go on to describe the way in which this metaphorical depiction provided in the first section comes to lose, in piecemeal fashion, nearly all metaphorical content so as to become a more technical or formalized, and thus more precise, description of morphogenetic processes.
Part One: DeLanda’s Geometric Metaphor for How the Intensive Produces the Extensive
In order to complete my foreground task of this section, that of outlining the geometric metaphor for the “cosmic genesis of spatial structure” (DeLanda 56), I will first need to describe the three ontological dimensions Deleuze introduces as the underlying structure out of which such genesis occurs. These three ontological dimensions are that of the virtual, the intensive, and the actual. To structure this description, I will leap ahead to the conclusion of the second part of this section and offer three summative formalized statements, one for each dimension, and then present a single statement for the way in which the hierarchy of geometries functions as a metaphor for the way in which the extensive forms of the actual dimension condenses out of intensive processes, themselves determined by virtual multiplicities.
The virtual dimension consists of multiplicities, themselves defined by singularities or attractors, which are arranged into infinite ordinal series of ideal events that become affected, or, roughly, made to communicate through resonances or echoes, by quasi-causal operators—all of these elements constituting a heterogeneous continuum termed the plane of consistency, or a space of spaces, so close together in fact that they form between each other zones of indeterminacy. The intensive dimension consists of dynamical processes of progressive differentiation, processes that differentiate differences. These processes produce the individuals that constitute the actual dimension, the individuals of differing spatio-temporal scale that we perceive and measure at their equilibrium states, defined by their aspects of extension and quality. These dimensions do not exist as a hierarchy but constitute a flat ontology, an ontology in which individuals differ not in ontological status but only in spatio-temporal scale and no one dimension has priority over the other. Nevertheless, the hierarchy of geometries proceeding from top-to-bottom as “topological—differential—projective—affine—Euclidean” may be seen as “representing an abstract scenario for the birth of real space” consisting of “a relatively undifferentiated and continuous topological space undergoing discontinuous transitions and progressively acquiring detail until it condenses into the measurable and divisible metric space which we inhabit” (DeLanda 24, 56).
With these two conclusive statements laid out, I will now fill in the details for this “morphogenetic view of the relation between the different geometries” functioning as a metaphor for the genesis of actual individuals. I will begin by explaining the necessity for this metaphor by providing an initial sketch of how virtual multiplicities replace preformed essences as a way of explaining the genesis of actual forms. Then I will...
My current thoughts on the project: Speed the fuck up if you want this thing mostly done in a week and a half. You've got a lot of intricate work ahead of you, and if you don't improve your focus and sense of time you'll be working on it into March, leaving little time for the independent study project you want to do, much less any plans to study French while holding down enough hours to pay your own rent and board for once, ya schmuck.
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