Experimenting with refrainsSubjectivity and the challenge of escaping modern

dualism

Isabelle Stengers

[Université Libre de Bruxelles, CP 175/01, 50 avenueF. Roosevelt, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgique.

istenger@ulb.ac.be]

It is quite clear that Subjectivity, the name chosen forthis new journal, does not refer to a modern, dualistframe, in opposition to objectivity. It probablyrather refers to what could be generically calledevents of “productions of subjectivity”, when what hasbeen silenced or derided finds its own voice, producesits own standpoint, its own means of resisting a moralconsensus, or a settled definition of what must betaken into account, or for granted. The importance ofsuch events is hard to overvalue. My own intellectualand political life has been marked by what I learnedfrom the apparition of drugs users groups claimingthat they were “citizens as all others”, and fightingagainst laws that were officially meant to “protect”them. The efficacy of this new collective voice,relegating to the past what had been the authorized,consensual expertise legitimating the “war on drugs”,convinced me that such events were the “politicalevents” by excellence, producing - as I discoveredafterwards, Dewey had already emphasized (Dewey, 1927)- both new political struggle and new importantknowledge .I even proposed that what we call democracycould be evaluated through its relation to thosedisrupting collective productions (Stengers & Ralet,1991). A “true” democracy would demand accepting the

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ongoing challenge of such disruptions, would not onlyaccept them, but also acknowledge those events as whatit depends upon.

However my wish in the present paper is to tryand slow down, that is actively resist the lure thatwith such definitions of subjectivity we have safelyescaped what can be named the “modern territory”, asruled by the critical opposition between objectivityand subjectivity. The point does not concern those whoenact the events, but “we”, who relate such events andothers with “production of subjectivity”. My paper’sconcern will not be to indict persons or intentions,but to characterize the modern territory as able tothrive on the ever-going process of capture of itsoutside. Following Bruno Latour, I will propose thatthis ability depends on modernity having not onedefinition, rather referring to a web of conflictingdefinitions, each one being able to capture theoutside and mobilize it in the denunciation of others.How then to avoid being part of this process? Togetherwith Deleuze and Guattari, I will envisage the“fabrication of a line of flight”, that does notdenounce, rather betrays, makes perceptible, thespecial power of the territory. The fabrication I willpropose may be characterized as experimenting withrefrains (ritournelles), both modern and betraying ones,in order to make perceptible the way territorialforces act, and what it may take to escape capture. Tobetray is never “in general”, always a matter ofencounter and connection. I will follow William James,arguing that connection is a matter of “coming intoexistence”, which demands both trust and an art ofimmanent discrimination, against the Dostoïevskianrefrain that we need some criterion of judgement, “orelse, anything would be allowed”. Working with theexample of the way I tried to connect with practices

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that seem to enact the ideal of “objectivity”,experimental scientific practices, I will introducethe question of the “milieu” that favoured thetransformation of the experimental achievement, thecoming into existence of very unusual “facts”, into ageneral propaganda enterprise. And in order to empowerthis question, I will experiment with a refraincrafted by the contemporary neo-pagan witch Starhawk,a refrain which challenges us to connect with the lastgreat eradication on European soil, the burning times.What may become perceptible, then, is the way ourmilieu is infected by the “adult” refrain, “we nolonger can”, that situates us as inheritors of thiseradication. The example of the philosopher AlfredNorth Whitehead will help me dissociate the answer tothis challenge from a call to conversion – to “believein witchcraft” – and connect it instead with the(pragmatic) art, or craft of forging efficaciouspropositions, resisting the lure of serving truthagainst illusion. At the end of my paper, a lastdouble connection is proposed, first betweenStarhawk’s refrain and the question of thevulnerability to Capitalism as a capture apparatus,then between the need to think and care about our ownsubjective stance and the empirical and pragmaticadventure of reclaiming which engages neo-paganwitches and other anti-capitalist activists.

Escaping the modern territory?

The need to slow down enacts the question of whatBruno Latour has characterized as “the invincibilityof the moderns”. Moderns, for Latour, are those who,one way or another, define themselves through a “greatdivide” separating them both from their own past, and

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from “non modern cultures”. For instance, Kantproduced such a divide when he announced, in “Was istAufklärung”, that “Man” was getting out of childhood,was now able to escape the authority of what presentsitself as a transcending truth, and to make a free useof his capacity to think. My first concern is thus:how, and at what price, can we escape such aninspiring characterization? And my second concernstems from the insistence of Latour that we should notunderstand “moderns” as defined by a particulardefinition of the divide. On the contrary, those whowould criticize Kant, and put into question ourcapacity to make a free use of our capacity to think,belong to the same territory as Kant. Latourianmoderns easily include those who calls themselves“post-moderns”, and more generally all the academic“post” denomination, each producing a new version ofthe “great divide”, making it even stronger,eventually thriving even on what criticizes it. Inother words, the modern territory is defined forLatour by a web of conflicting inter-definitions, andit is this web he associates with the invincibility ofthe forked-tongues moderns, their capacity to capturethe outside in the clutches of their own polemics.:

You think that the spirit of the ancestors holdyou forever hostage to their laws? The moderncritique will show you that you are hostage toyourselves and that the spiritual world is yourown human – too human construction. You thenthink that you can do everything and develop yoursocieties as you see fit? The modern critiquewill show you that the iron laws of society andeconomics are much more inflexible than those ofyou ancestors (Latour 2000, p. 38)

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…and so on, in a devilish round that is able to turncrazy any outsider who would sincerely try tounderstand what it is to be “a modern”.

Now those concerns are not addressed to those whoparticipate in such events as “drug users gettingtheir own voice”. But they are addressed to theprobable readers of this new journal. Indeed the veryevent of the emergence of a new subjectivity is not,as such, part of the endless polemical bickering thatmakes up the positional stance of modern categories,but this bickering may well be what will be producedin reference to such events.

Not always. I learned from Maria Puig de laBellacasa’s account (2004) the importance of the eventwhen US feminists had to learn from their Afro-American sisters how dangerously partial was theirconception of “women”. The production of an Afro-American diverging subjective stance shattered thepossibility of a simple “we”, and the practicalconsequences of this event are still in a process ofdifficult, hesitant and demanding unfolding - see alsothe French feminists’ dilemma when facing theproduction of subjectivity demonstrated by the new(young and politically wise) Muslim veiled women. Thisunfolding is hesitant and demanding indeed, becauseits stake is to keep learning from the consequences ofany definition. In contrast, the theoreticalaffirmation of the constructed character of any answerto the question “what is a woman?”, against theessentialist belief in a “woman identity”, has nothinghesitant about it. What follows is rather an“essentialist hunting”, that is an inexhaustiblesource for academic publications and the production ofever more critical stances (is not “feminism” itselfessentialist? and so on). Worse, it entails a“tolerant” attitude when third world ecofeminist

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fighters, such as Vandana Shiva, appear not to possessthe code – we (who know and could criticize her as anessentialist) have to be indulgent. Here we are rightinto the modern territory, with the territorial,“great divide” refrain – they believe, we know -, aterritory that only extended with what has nameditself “post-modernity” but should rather be called“hyper-modernity”, since the post-moderns know thatthe moderns believed.

To me, a relevant question would rather be: canwe separate Vandana’s force, what produces her as ableto struggle, from those seemingly “essentialist”grounds? And the challenge would be learning todisconnect this question from a stance of toleranceand to give it the power to make "us" hesitate aboutour own conditions of thought. I want to sharepossibilities to engage with this challenge bystarting with Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus,in particular with the demand of a possible “line offlight” escaping the modern territory.

Fabricating a line of flight

The “us” I am addressing does not correspond to awell-defined identity. It is an empirical “us” that,at least includes me, and may include those who havetasted the rather intoxicating power of the criticalstance. Modern critiques are not featuring in my textas “enemies”, however. They correspond to an abstractpsychosocial type the embodiments of which “we” meeteverywhere, both in our (often academic) worlds, andin our heads – in my head at least. And I will not cutmy head in the name of a “pure” outside that woulddemand disavowal and recantation. I will not attemptsome kind of artificial reterritorialisation that

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would hopefully “save” me from what is part of my own(constructed) identity.

This is why it is crucial to note that a “line offlight”, in Deleuze and Guattari’s meaning of theterm, does not entail denouncing the territory but“betraying” it: bringing into disclosure an ingredientthat both belongs to the territory and connects withan outside against which this territory protectsitself. Such an outside is not an “absolute” one thatwould transcend the territory and allow defining itthrough what it refuses or protects itself against.Furthermore, the outside of the territory and thedefinition of this outside as “dangerous” wereproduced together with the territorial refrain(ritournelle), shaping both the inside and what is keptoutside. Correlatively, there is no “line of flight”that could act as a voie royale, there is no flight onceand for all, a model others would only have to follow.Each time what you need is not a model but a refrain,as children in the dark, who hum under their breath inorder to dare and walk. And finally what you connectwith is not that which had to be kept outside. The“empirical” event of connection comes first, not theterms that are connected. “One opens the circle not onthe side where the old forces of chaos press againstit but in another region, one created by the circleitself. As though the circle tended on its own to openonto a future, as a function of the working forces itshelters” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, p. 311).

I will thus try and betray, not denounce but tryand make perceptible the “working forces” the modernterritory shelters. This is why I will proceed in sucha way that I deliberately expose myself to objections.Some of these objections will be quite justified, ofcourse, but I would demand to the readers to payattention to eventual others, which may well make

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perceptible the betrayal of academic territorialrules. Those objections could well be “territorialcries”, even if these cries present themselves assomething to which I should have to answer, or else…

“Or else” – this is not an empty threat, baringthe way to freedom. Here caution – caution, not wisdomis indeed required (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, p..150),because the point is not to blindly escape andconfront chaos, but to fabricate and experiment. WhatDeleuze and Guattari call a force is not something wecan define “as such”, but only through themodifications it produces when captured, when takeninto an assemblage. Even the force defined byNewtonian physics in terms of equivalency with itseffect, needs the assemblage we take for granted whenwe tell about the motion of a “mass”. If I fell down ahigh level window (an experience physicists oftenpropose to those who, they feel, do not sufficientlyrespect the objectivity of their laws: “admit that ourlaws about falling bodies are not constructions, orelse try and jump…), my motion would be a witness forthe physicists’ force as would be that of a stone, ora cat. But when I feel the force of theobjection/threat “or else…”, what I am feeling is thepower of a capture that would imply considering normalthat I defend myself against the objection, and that Ido it by criticizing my critiques. In other words,what I feel is that I am indeed fabricated asbelonging to the modern territory. To tell about aforce, or to feel it, to be affected by it, alwaysmeans that an assemblage has been produced, orfabricated – a matter of art, or artificiality, nevera testimony of wild authenticity.

The very word fabrication I choose to use is partof the line of flight I attempt to fabricate andfollow. Indeed, betraying the forces of the modern

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critiques – that is both activating (makingperceptible) them, and failing to satisfy them - isbound to result in the endpoint on which all critiquesconverge. If you are not interested in answeringobjections, then your position is arbitrary, it is asheer (subjective?) fabrication. It is “your”fabrication, and not something that has the power tomake us take it seriously. This convergence ischaracterized by Bruno Latour as “iconoclast” –critique would be the hammer that will legitimatelydestroy what cannot defend itself against theaccusation of being “only a fabrication”. It can alsobe connected with the definition of truth as thatwhich demands the overcoming of particularattachments: truth as what hurts, its hurtingcharacter being the very sign that identifies truth,and relates it to what it demands and that wenaturally resist.

Activating this convergence - a refrain for whichcould be “if our demands were to be bypassed,everything would be allowed”, a very Dostoïevskianrefrain indeed – makes it crucial to emphasize thatthe fabrication of a line of flight is demanding too,but in another way. It demands resisting the mottosorganized around flight as an imperative or an aim initself, and, more generally it demands not to proceedin the name of anything that would transcend theactual process of fabrication, including the necessityor will to escape. Connection with outside “forces”has begun, must have begun, before one knows about it,in order for the production of this knowledge tobelong to the very process. This, however, does notmean that a line of flight’s fabrication excludesdemanding critical attention. It rather refers thedemand to a process of immanent critique, which Iwould call “discrimination” – what Deleuze celebrated

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when he compared Spinoza’s ethics to an ethology, atreatise about good and bad encounters: not about whatwould be good or bad in se, but about learning how whatwe encounter affects us, how it empowers, or separatesus from, our capacity to act (that is also to thinkand feel). Forces then are a matter of “criticalethology”. No force is good or bad. It is theassemblage that occurs when one encounters a force andis affected by it, which demands experimentation anddiscrimination, because capturing a force, beingmodified by a force, “forced” to think, and feel, andexperience, is never without danger: 'black holes,closures, paralysis of the finger and auditoryhallucinations, Schumann’s madness, cosmic force gonebad, a note that pursues you, a sound that transfixesyou' (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 350).

Fabricating connections

If subjectivity is to escape the critical clutchesthat signal the modern territory, immanent critiquemust present itself as an ingredient of theassemblage, not as critically examining/dismemberingthe assemblage itself. Referring for instance toWilliam James’ remark, that in case of fright, it ishard to decide if it was caused by somethingfrightening, or if that something was perceived asfrightening because of our fright, the point is not toaddress this indecision, but to inhabit the undecidedsituation, and to learn what it may demand. Stillfollowing Deleuze (Deleuze, 2003) we may speak hereabout a change bearing on dramatisation. What comesfirst is the “fact”, for instance “a frighteningsituation”, and the question may indeed be, but needsnot be, assigning responsibility for the fright. It

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may also be “what does this situation demand?”, “whichkind of attention, concern and care [1] are required?”– relational, discriminating questions that implybeing situated by the situation.

In one of his last texts, William Jamesdramatised what I have described as “the encounterwith a force” as a jump which demands trust but offersno warrant, a lack of warrant that may explain theintellectualist censorship insisting on the necessarydisconnection between our “subjective” attachments andthe question of what is entitled to play a legitimaterole in our (modern) world.

We can and we may, as it were, jump with bothfeet off the ground into or towards a world ofwhich we trust the other parts to meet our jump –and only so can the making of a perfected worldof pluralistic pattern ever take place. Onlythrough our precursive trust in it can it comeinto being. There is no inconstancy anywhere inthis, and no ‘vicious circle’ unless a circle ofpoles holding themselves upright by leaning onone another, or a circle of dancers revolving byholding each other’s hands, be ‘vicious’. Thefaith circle is so congruous with human naturethat the only explanation of the veto thatintellectualists pass upon it must be sought inthe offensive character to them of the faiths ofcertain concrete persons. (James, 1911, pp. 230-231) Contravening the intellectualist veto does not

mean denying what may motivate the fright or offence,deciding against those who are frightened or offendedby what eventually comes into existence. William Jameswas a pragmatist, and he knew that what is offensivemay designate something else that an offence against amoral or political silencing consensus: some

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encounters, some subjectivity producing connections,may be “bad” or dangerous indeed. Examples of the kindof danger that may well be associated with “productionof subjectivity” have accumulated since James. In theUS the case of Nazism served to tame pragmatism and topragmatically justify the claim that we need remain onthe settled ground of consensual reason and matter offacts arguments. However other, non modern traditionsmay be understood as having inhabited the question of“good” and “bad” in another way, transforming theeventual danger into a pragmatic concern. They knowthat the encounter with what I called “forces”, whatWilliam James calls “other parts”, needs care. Theymay be devouring ones indeed, or rather will bedevouring ones one does not know how to foster andnourish them, once they have been called up, once theyhave entered an assemblage. If we adopt theirstandpoint, modern recklessness, neglecting the art ofassemblages that foster and nourish and the urge forrightful vetoes, may well appear as the two sides ofthe same coin.

How to foster and nourish are never generalquestions, but relational situated ones. It is what Iwish to emphasize, with the proposition of“discrimination”, a capacity which is a matter oflearning. When a critical “re-prioritization ofsubjectivity” is concerned, this discrimination maydemand that we abstain from celebrating subjectivityproducing events as justified by their disruptivepower, breaking consensual, repressive status quo.Learning means connection with such events. We learnwhen we indeed connect and are put to the test by theconnection. What is this connection demanding from us?For instance is it demanding betrayal, makingperceptible the possibility of a jump we can and maydo? Or is it demanding surrender – surrendering our

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own attachments in the name of a demand that wouldthen transcend them?

The choice to speak about “discrimination” andnot “reflexivity” is part of my argument. The capacityto discriminate is transversal – we attribute itwithout hesitation to animals, we know it can beinborn as well as learned, and also that thedifferences discrimination makes have an indeterminaterelation with both reasons, or motivations, andcauses. The point is not that they would be withoutreasons, or without causes, but that, as soon as wedeal with reasons and causes, we are in a knowledgeproblem, and the “fact” - the coming into existence ofa situation that needs leaning how to pay attentionand produce discrimination - loses its importance.What becomes important instead is the more generalquestion about “such kind” of fact, what they allow usto claim, how they allow us to dispel illusion andassign responsibility. Reflexivity is vulnerable tosuch a capture, in terms of knowledge: it can easilymean paying attention to defects and biases to beavoided, and for instance to the way our owndiscrimination patterns and habits negatively affectthe knowledge we produce. Such a concern may be quiteimportant and relevant but it is not a line of escapefrom modern territory. The modern territory has ratherfor one of its refrains the generalization of thisconcern, then becoming a duty, the duty to overcomethe “subjective” attachments that situate us.

It may well be “reflexivity” is not onlyvulnerable to capture but results from the moderncapture of the art of discrimination. In the quotedtext, William James emphasized the importance oftrust, not blind trust, but “precursive” that is alsospeculative, trust; the trust in the possibility thatsomething may come and make connection. This kind of

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trust demands that we accept “re-prioritizing” thequestion of the “coming into existence” against thesettled ensemble of determinations that play againsteach others in the reflexive scene. This, at least,was the way I have tried (Stengers 2000, 2006) toaddress the challenge of what may be the primordialsituation heralding the triumph of objective,disinterested truth against subjective opinion, thesituation when experimental scientists conclude that“Nature has spoken!”, in order to “reclaim” it againstsuch a play.

The claim that Nature would be able to speak,that is entitle scientists to speak in Her name, hasbeen the object of a lot of critical attention, fromKant till present-day debunking analysis. Some yearsago a “war” has even been waged, featuring two rivalsets of determination, one organized around Nature asdetermining the difference between science and anyother practice, the other organized around humanpractices as being the only effective determinant forwhat scientists attribute to Nature. Objectivity andreflexivity have been mobilized in a very Latourianexchange of mutual denunciations.

I would easily agree that the so-called objectivescience lacks reflexivity, and endorse all critiquesagainst the “detached”, neutral, “viewing fromnowhere”, disembodied, knowing subjects featured byscientific propaganda. However returning to the scenewhere experimenters rejoice, “Nature has spoken!” Iwant to emphasize a Jamesian “coming into existence”,that cannot be reduced to general determinations.

My rather simple starting point is that thenotion of “human practice” is unable to intervene butin a final disparaging conclusion, “you see, it isonly humans busying themselves”. The problem with thisnotion is that it cannot be separated from its claim

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to offer a polemical counter-proposition against otherdeterminations. In contrast suppressing the adjective“human”, it becomes possible to wonder about thespecificity of experimental practices among otherpractices which also cannot be characterized as “humanonly”. The question I asked is then aboutpractitioners, about what situates them, what “forces”them to think and feel and hesitate in a way thatmarks them as belonging to this practice, experimentalscience.

What I proposed (Stengers 2000) is that the“Nature has spoken!” claim is not primordiallyheralding a message of authority. It is rather aJamesian cry, commenting the achievement of thespecial kind of Jamesian jump which gives its meaningto the experimenters’ practice. Something has “met”the scientists’ “jump”, a connection has beenproduced, facts have been produced, which are giftedwith the quite unusual power to reliably impose theway they should be interpreted. What forcesexperimenters to think and feel and hesitate wouldthen be the eventuality of a very strange achievement,which has nothing to do with objectivity as generallyopposed to subjectivity. It is rather an event – thecoming into existence of something that has got thepower to produce agreement among competent colleagues,that is among those who do not only know how to paythe kind of attention, how learn the necessary art ofdiscrimination, which the experimental situationdemands, but who also share the same passionate quest,assigning value only to what has got the power toenforce their agreement.

So considered the experimental practice ofcritique and discrimination between what would be“only an interpretation” and what will becharacterized as “objective”, has nothing general, or

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“disembodied” about it. It is rather the enactment ofa peculiar subjectivity produced through, and demandedby, the becoming part of the very specific socialfabric of experimental science, a fabric whichpresupposes and proclaims a specific version of the“precursive” Jamesian trust: it may happen that thedemand is met for facts enforcing agreement.

My proposition is not meant to justify “Science”,but it may hopefully open the possibility ofconnections with those scientists who struggle againstthe undue authority of the objectivity argument butwould not accept becoming the hostage of a debunking,ironist view that would demand that they (reflexively)accept that any scientific achievement is a “humanconstruction” only (see Rose, 1996). If thispossibility of connection is trusted, new forms ofresistance could come into existence against thetypical arrogance and blindness of the “this is notscientific” claim we meet each time scientific expertsjudge a concrete situation as if their criteria anddemands were generally applicable norms. The questionof this arrogant subjectivity (the so-called“scientific ethos”) would become a connecting one,together with the question of those who accept andpropagate the grand refrain demanding objectivity asif it was a general norm. But such a connection wouldnecessitate a new demanding discrimination, bearing onthe arguments that refute objectivity, or refuse it inthe name of some other grand refrain (pick yourchoice). Whatever the grand refrain, it entails afrontal opposition that stabilizes the idea that thereis indeed a “grand” choice to be made, and the demandwould be that the stage be actively deprived of anysuch “grandeur”.

We get thus connected with another question:since its very Galilean beginning, we cannot deal with

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scientific experimental achievements without alsodealing with their “milieu”, a milieu which madepossible that this kind of achievement be turned intoa general norm – objectivity - as related to a generaltheory of knowledge (Stengers 2006). In other words,what we call a scientist cannot be disentangled from,or abstracted from, what we may name the “ecological”question, the question of the milieu that accepted andpropagated such grandiose generalization.

A question of milieu

Referring to an ecological question means referring toa question of encounters and connections, theconnection between what has come into existence andthe many differences it can make, that is also withthe many other existences for which it can make adifference. A milieu has nothing to do with what would(objectively) determine the subject (in spite of“subjective” illusions of freedom). If productions ofsubjectivity cannot be disentangled from their milieu,ecology proposes that we do not think in terms ofdetermination but in terms of entangling speculativequestions. This at least is the way I have learned toaddress scientists, speculating about what they couldbe able to become in a different milieu, withdifferent interlocutors than the State and theindustry, and not reasoning in terms of deductive,knowledge claims (since…. then…).

But the question of the milieu is also addressedto the “academic milieu”, that is also to the milieu Ibelong to, when writing this text. In order to try tomake perceptible an aspect of this milieu, not as anexplanation but as a (speculative) challenge, I willquote the cry of the neo-pagan witch Starhawk: 'The

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smoke of the burned witches still hangs in ournostrils' (Starhawk 1982, p. 219). Starhawk’s cry is achallenge for those living in a milieu where criticaland reflexive social theory may easily lead tocelebrate debunking or deconstructing as anachievement in itself. A milieu that might thus sharethe modern pride that we are now able to interpretwitch hunting, as well as accusations of sorcery, as amatter of social, or linguistic, or cultural, orpolitical, construction or beliefs. What this prideleaves aside however is how this analysis will help usto address the burned witches themselves. Are theyalso to be reduced to a social construction? Wouldthey not be destroyed a second time, this time bythose who would describe them as victims, certainly,but also as the product of the same milieu thatproduced their hunters? Encountering Starhawk’schallenge makes me ask this question, and it is inorder to continue and expand on this challenge that Iquote her, a witch, as a co-thinker, as a nowdemanding part of my milieu.

The efficacy of Starhawk’s cry resides in thesmall shock it may produce, which may be theverification of the challenge’s relevance – what wouldhappen, what would be the response of the academicmilieu to the ones who would dare and propose somecontinuity between the ultimate triumph of the witchhunters, that we have lost the active memory of thelast great eradication which happened on Europeansoil, that is the memory that something was indeederadicated, and critical (de)constructionist theory?We have become used to Michel Foucault’s “shocking”ways of questioning our modern pride in matters suchas psychiatry or penal practices. But the shock nowmay well be addressed even to academic followers ofFoucault, those who have turned his production of

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destabilizing, and even frightening, demands forlucidity, into a “we know better” industry. What I amattempting however is not the “I know better” counter-move of assimilating social theory and witch hunting.I attempt to slow down and question the way we areourselves constructed, with the modern refrain “theybelieved/we know” – and the possibility of “putting atdistance”, which this refrain entails.

If a milieu must be described in terms ofencounters, nourishing ones, challenging ones, toxicones, Starhawk’s challenge may possibly cause somereaders to speculatively activate their memory andimagination regarding encounters when they learned thecodes of our academic milieu: maybe some derisiveremarks, knowing smiles, offhand judgments, often madeabout somebody else, but that have nevertheless gotthe inconspicuous power to pervade and infect ourthinking life, to shape the way we frame and addressour questions. Those of you who just stopped and thinkhave just felt the smoke, and have learned about theway it affects us.

To think subjectivity “by the milieu” is not amatter of theory. Indeed I could have chosen totheoretically deal with the Deleuze and Guattariconcepts of assemblage, or of collective versus massproductions of subjectivity, but then I would haverisked siding with “know better” theorists, producingmessages that advertise my professional territory andprotect me from small smiles, from judgments about mylack of what critical academics in US often call“sophistication’. I prefer to continue and relay,together with, and with the help of, contemporarywitches, the (unsophisticated) cry of those who ask“what did happen to us?”, knowing that philosophicalconcepts may help us only as they empower what isfirst experienced as a stammer affecting the “adult

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know-better thinking”, when we become as children inthe dark who need a refrain in order to dare and walk.

Resisting serious, adult thinking

If, as a philosopher, I am differentiating so heavilybetween theory and philosophical concepts, it is notbecause I would defend the highbrow privileges of myfield, but because I became a philosopher when Idiscovered and experienced the power of philosophicalconcepts to “force” thinking and feeling, and thencame to realize that this very power had been hunteddown and eliminated, as some kind of witchery, inthose countries like UK, where philosophy has become amodel for serious, adult, thinking. I became aphilosopher through discovering not only Deleuze, butalso this forgotten English philosopher, Alfred NorthWhitehead, who was a mathematician, but became, injust a few adventurous years, the most formidableproducer of speculative concepts in the twentiethcentury.

It may well be that the stammer-producingexperience that turned Whitehead into a philosopherechoes when he recalls how the industrialization ofEngland proceeded: when “the workmen were conceived asmere hands, drawn from the pool of labour” and when,“to God’s question, men gave the answer of Cain – ‘AmI my brother’s keeper?’” (Whitehead 1925, p. 203).Even if, at his time, the evils of the earlyindustrial system had become, as Whitehead wrote, a“common place of knowledge”, the point he himselfwanted to insist upon was that those who gave Cain’sanswer, were not only greedy industrialists, but alsohonourable, even kind-hearted men, devoted to progress– the best men of that time. They probably were those

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people Whitehead would meet in Cambridge as hiscolleagues. It may well be that it is at the hightable of his college, that is, in the very sanctum ofhis academic milieu, that he experienced the kind ofstammering perplexity we probably all experienced, thefeeling that any “clever” discussion would only feedwhat one is dealing with. Whatever the experience, therefrain for Whitehead became: “What are our modes ofabstraction doing to us? What are they blinding usagainst?”

For Whitehead, abstractions as such were neverthe enemy: We cannot think without abstractions, thoseare what causes us to think, lure our feelings andaffects. But our duty is to take care of ourabstractions, never to bow down in front of what theyare doing to us – especially when they demand that weheroically accept the sacrifices they entail, theinsuperable dilemmas and contradictions into whichthey trap us.

What Whitehead confronted are the manyconflicting versions of the modern refrain convergingon the point that we have come to adulthood and haveto know and bear, the absence of what we needed aschildren – we are those who face the hard truth,whatever this truth. With this “great divide” refraincomes the duty to be tolerant with those who stillneed protection against those hard truths, but also anincapacity to relate with them – they cannot challengeus, only produce the guilty feeling that we have tobecome still more adult, still more detached from whatwe need, including maybe the need to interfere withtheir own process of getting out of childhood.

For Whitehead modern categories were toxic,poisoning our thinking, producing the feeling that wedeal with ultimate questions while those questions areour fabrication. He betrayed the modern territory not

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because he denounced those categories - a very easy,quite modern, feature – but because he dared topropose that we were not prisoners of thosecategories. Whitehead’s impressive conceptualapparatus has nothing theoretical about it, and iseasy prey for academic derision and rejection – as itindeed was. It is a sheer fabrication, a deliberateconstruction, which cannot make sense without thecoming into existence of the assemblage it calls for,when the reader enters an experimental and experienceddiscrimination process, reclaiming (a word I receivedas a gift from witches and other activists) what wassacrificed in the name of the so modern, heroic,adult, “we no longer can”. Whitehead’s experimentationwith concepts thus entails the trust that this heroicmodern refrain may indeed be betrayed (something Iverified when teaching Whitehead) and that categorealabstractions are something we may fabricate in orderfor them to fabricate us (Latour’s refrain about thefunctioning of fetishes). This is the same trust thatI need in order to ask now what it would mean forcritical theorists to actively remember that themanner in which something is theoreticallycharacterized is part of the milieu of that something,and may empower or poison it.

Let us come back for instance to Starhawk and theneo-pagan witches, who experiment with empowermentrituals, calling for Goddesses and spirits andcultivating “magic”? Shall we be part of a milieu that“knows better”, or defines itself as those who “nolonger can” connect with such practices - maybeappreciating the witches’ role in the altermondialistmovement but keeping at best silent about what theyclaim as a vital part of this role? Shall we be just“tolerant”, maybe theorizing the “return ofspirituality” as a contemporary phenomenon? In both

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cases the choice is to be part of a milieu thatrefuses them the power to have us thinking andfeeling, a milieu that claims it has no need or usefor what they propose.

The alternative is not conversion. It mightrather be to accept that they may make us think andfeel and wonder about what sustains us, and maybe alsoabout what leads us to think we do not needsustenance. The witches’ challenge is not a matter ofbelief. What they challenge is the dangerousabstraction that can lead our questions about theproduction of subjectivity back to the modernterritory: the abstraction that reduces thisproduction to some kind of a “pure” event we canseparate from what it requires and affirms.

To take another example, it is certainly easierto theorize the new veil in terms of colonization,resistance against an oppressive assimilation, racismand all that. But we maybe have to also listen tothose girls who affirm that they want to please God.And we need to cultivate discrimination, payingattention to the way we are ourselves affected by thisencounter with God intruding into our post-colonial,anti-imperialist analysis. As we also needdiscrimination with the witches’ Goddess. When DonnaHaraway famously wrote that she would rather be acyborg than a Goddess, she was probably a witness of“bad encounters”, and she was telling about thedangers of the assemblage. But she was certainly notcautious enough, or affected enough as she did nottake the time and the needed care to anticipate andthwart the enthusiast adhesion of her academic milieu,a milieu she authorized to snigger and promote aheroic adhesion to the cyborg as an (academic) weaponagainst those who still believe in… (pick yourchoice).

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Efficacy and craft

When “forced” to think and feel by witches, I feltbound to experiment with new words. One of them is“efficacy” – or rather the French “efficace”. InFrench this word avoids the tolerant conditionedreaction “if it helps them…”, because it is no longerused, and remains mainly associated with thetheological mystery of the efficacy of sacraments. Aswe know sacramental efficacy has been a dividing pointin Protestant-Catholic debates. For Protestants,Catholics believe that sacraments work as by “magic”,while they themselves affirm that sacraments areunable to confer grace apart from the response thatfaith participants give to the sacramental words. Butthis very modern division concerning “what isresponsible for what?", is what we overcome withouteven thinking when we feel the force of words we heartold to us, which produce an answer that is not“ours”, but that rather testifies for a transformationof who we are, a transformation which will mayberequire caution and discrimination. Words and theorieshave efficacy.

Taking seriously (not thinking seriously, as anadult) the power of words, and gestures, and theories,may be related to the craft that witches call “magic”.And, as they say, to use the word “magic”, with theincluded testing shock this word produces, is part ofthe craft. They know very well that magic is not amatter of supernatural power, that the efficacy, orforce, of words cannot be separated from theartificiality of assemblages, especially from therituals the empowering virtues of which theyexperiment. But artificiality is not opposed to

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anything else, it is the needed equipment for theJamesian jump they dare, the efficacy of which wasdismembered into natural and supernaturaldeterminations. And this artificiality requires thewitches learn how to discriminate, to “taste” theeffect (tasting a potion), and that they respect andhonour the tools they fabricate in order for thosetools to induce what will fabricate them.

In contrast with this pragmatic approach, theproblem with theorists is that they very often referto what they do as “constructions”, but lack thecraft, which a construction requires.

I will never forget reading the interview of ayoung neo-Nazi East German who explained his owntrajectory in terms of the loss of social authority,the humiliation of a jobless father and other generalpsychosocial determinants. He produced himself as anillustration of psychosocial theories, thus claimingthe kind of weakness, being acted by the situation andmilieu, those theories suppose. Also, I will neverforget a cartoon published in a French newspaper atthe time of the “révolte des banlieues”, in autumn2005, showing a hooded youth wearing a T-shirtpersonalized with the sentence “Je suis un problème desociété” and throwing a stone wrapped in a paper withthe word “message”. The cartoon was right: Even angertoday is interpreted as hiding a message asking forlove, understanding, or recognition.

When dealing with the efficacy of some theories,as they pervade the milieu, would it not beinteresting to speak about sorcery, or maleficent (notmalevolent – the point is the effect, not theintention) magic? - the worse being then that thosewho produce those theories think they are at theservice of truth and defend weak young people against

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unjust accusations, accusations that should in truthbe turned against “society”.

Certainly, one will object that the theorists areright to emphasize the responsibility of social orderagainst those who criminalize the youths! Yes indeed,but even if a theory is right, its efficacy may bemaleficent, especially if its producers all theircraft in their polemical critique against otherpositions, and forget that so-doing they take thosewhom this polemic is about as “hostages” in theconflict, a conflict which typically organizes aroundthe question “what is responsible for what?”. If Ilove Whitehead it is precisely because of the efficacyof his seemingly arcane concepts, as I experimentedwith them, in breaking the powerful spell which thisquestion of responsibility cast on modern categories,taking as hostage our very experience. The example ofthe conceptual propositions he crafted in order tolure us back to the wide variety of what we know, feeland experience, may be of interest here because oftheir speculative character, adding dimensions to thesituations, not playing one determining dimensionagainst others. This is not a ready-made answer but anexample dramatizing the question of the efficacy oftheory. Theories are always efficacious as such, theyalways add to the situation, even when they only aimat diagnosing it. The problem with diagnosis is thatit easily leads to forget about the repercussions ofwhat they add. Dramatizing the question of efficacymeans that the theorizing craft needs creative (notreflexive) accountability, that dares and speculate onwhat may come into existence because of thetheoretical intervention, and that eventually daresand create the lure for new possibilities that add tothe interest of a situation and transform the way itis addressed.

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More generally, I would claim that diagnosingalienation, or hopefully identifying as hiddenresistance or subversive counter-power strategies whatthe concerned persons do not characterize as such arepoor, but also dangerous crafts. They have for theirfirst efficacy to designate the analyst as thespokesperson for people cast in roles that pre-existthem - a spokesperson who has not been produced andempowered by an effective, transformative connection[2], but entitled by a theory - a spokesperson whoeventually may be manipulated by those who understandthe theory she obeys, and see the advantage of playingher game, but risk also, so-doing, to become infectedby their own role-playing….

We are here dealing with politics of knowledge.Indeed, my question is intimately associated with thequestion of the differential productions ofsubjectivity – relating those who theorize, and thosewho are theorized. To dare and accept characterizingour theories in terms of “efficacy” or “magic”, andnot in terms of (valid) knowledge, would mean refusingthat the theorist knows better and, more concretely,abstaining to theorize if an encounter has not beenproduced which connects the theorist with whatempowers those about whom she theorizes, that is whichempowers them to have her learning and speculating. Wemay not pick and choose, select aspects that matterfor us and neglect the remainder with a tolerant,softly contemptuous “if it may help them…” Even ifimplicit, this judgement may well have repercussionsfor which the theorist is accountable.

To give an example, it was a crucial turn inBruno Latour’s thinking, when he accepted that thescientists’ anger that exploded during the so-calledscience wars could certainly be theoreticallyexplained away, but should rather be listened to. If

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they felt insulted by the relativist interpretationdeeming sciences were (purely human) practices as anyother, the question could arise: are we not insultingall practitioners with the kind of questions which weaddress them, and which imply the claim that we knowhow to define a practice? Were the practitioners whopolitely accepted our descriptions polite only becausethey felt incompetent, because they felt that wescientists knew better and were legitimately debunkingtheir illusions? From that point onwards, Latour’stheorizing is no longer just diagnosing modernity, butactively, and always more daringly, betraying it (seefor instance Latour 2004).

To Latour’s question, I would now add LeighStar's so crucial question « cui bono? » - thequestion of a true cautious, discriminating witch(Leigh Star 1991). Who in our modern milieu wouldprofit practitioners accepting an objective,demystifying interpretations of their practices? Whoprofits the kind of vulnerability that defining suchinterpretations as normal and legitimate, both exploitand induce?

Vulnerability

In La Vierge et le neutrino, I proposed as a refrain whichbetrays modernity, that all practices, includingscientific ones may be thought of as “surviving”(Stengers 2006, p. 150. We would have to address thosethat exist now, not as having passed the test ofmodernity, the coming into adulthood, but as havinggot a reprieve, this raising the question of the pricewhich was paid for this reprieve.

This refrain has nothing to do with a historicaldescription – there was never a negotiation about this

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price. Its efficacy is meant to be speculative,retelling the refrain about a milieu pervaded with thesmoke of the destroyed witches, a milieu which couldbe compared to a “cemetery of destroyed practices”.What difference does it make to address contemporarypractices knowing that if they still exist it may bebecause they were enrolled and mobilized by those whoblessed so many destructions? And knowing that the waythey claim legitimacy and eventually bless thosedestructions may well be related to getting thepossibility of surviving? The point is not to excusemodern practitioners, but rather to wonder. What wouldbe the consequences if those who, quite rightly,criticize such claims, did not identify them as anexpression of power, but took them as miserable lies,that allowed modern practices’ survival andprosperity, but most probably also acted as a toxic,transforming, as witches would say, “power within”into “power over”? Would it not empower new crafts,the efficacy of which would not to denounce, but to“clinically” exhibit the action and effects of theintoxication? And would not new, interestingconnections be possible with those, among modernpractitioners, who struggle against the role assignedto their practice?

The question may, for instance, be asked todayabout the scientific experimental practices. Under theguise of the (capitalist) “knowledge economy”, what ishappening is no longer only the intoxication, but thedestruction of the social fabric which empowersresearchers to think and feel, imagine and object.Soon those practices will indeed confirm the criticaldiagnosis, that there was never anything special aboutthem, that they were reducible to power interests. Howto connect with those scientists who complain abouttheir increasing subjection?

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We may well be tempted to snigger and remark thatscientists well deserve their coming enslavement tothe capitalist law of flexibility and separation fromthe product of their work. They may have believed thatit was possible to side with powers that silence,blessing the silencing operations in the name ofrationality and objectivity. Now they have to bow downand accept destruction as everyone else. They are notworth being defended, or even pitied. However, if wefollow Deleuze and Guattari’s proposal to deal withcapitalism as a capture apparatus, we may also slowdown and hesitate. The question around an event ofcapture is always the question of what the captureprocess depended upon and exploited. Is not our “welldeserved” reaction aligning us with those who finallyactualize the ever-present possibility of thosepractices’ destruction? Are we not contributing to thevulnerability exploited by the capture process?

In La Sorcellerie capitaliste, Philippe Pignarre and Iclaimed that talking about capitalism as sorcery wasnot just a metaphor designating what Marx alreadydescribed: capitalism as the master illusionist. Wewere also pointing to capitalism as able to profitfrom any opportunity, to turn any lack of imagination,care or attention into its advantage, in brief as amaster in surprising its opponents, undermining theirpositions and producing their disarray and impotence.And the temptation to demand that something must beworth being defended produced a lot of suchopportunities.

If capitalism needs, depends on, and propagatesvulnerability to its “attacks”, it cannot but welcomethe famous Marxist thesis that it is paving the waytowards socialism because of its very process ofdestruction of “traditional” forms of life (this isnot worth being defended). And it must also welcome

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the revolutionary version of the modern refrain of the“great divide”: one way or another, the struggleagainst capitalism would be considered as the finalone – an apocalyptic battle between light and darkness– in a landscape brutally purified from the shacklesof the past. Indeed it means that those who strugglehave to keep their eyes fixed on the ultimate stake,that they close their ears against the cries anddespair of those whose culture, practices andattachments were destroyed. And that they must give anunprecedented importance to “theory” as the neededguide, as the indispensable compass against alltemptations and deviations. From Marx definition ofthe proletariat as having nothing but its chains tolose, to Negri’s definition of the multitude, theorythen appears as a “theatre of concepts”, identifyingthe pure conceptual instance that is entitled to raisea worthy standard in a confrontation that is also thebegetting of a finally reconciled humanity. Such atheatre does not however offer what non moderntraditions, which know about sorcery, know how tocultivate: arts of protection against capture.

I would never pretend that what I would call thepiety of modern critique, as it again and againdesignated what was not worth being defended, andconstructed the concept of those (today it would beillegal migrants) who may be considered as thespokespersons of humanity, are responsible forcapitalist ongoing destruction. This would lead to athesis about an intrinsic relation between capitalismand modernity, while I follow Deleuze and Guattaridefining capitalism as an abstract machine – as weknow what happened in modern Europe is only a first,and other capitalistic models now proliferate in otherregions of the world. But I would claim that such apiety contributed to our own, specific kind of

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vulnerability, to what Capitalism, devoid of any kindof piety, captured, exploited and still exploits.

Reclaiming

In his Three Ecologies, Felix Guattari (2000) emphasizedthe connection between the three processes ofdevastation, which affect mental, collective and earthecologies. What I have tried to make perceptible is avery limited point in this context: the simple factthat we are affected, and that we need to discriminatein our own ecologies, both mental and collective, howwe are affected. The point is not to feel guilty(another modern specialty), or to protest againstunjustified suspicions – nobody would be more happythan I, if what I described was to be welcomed with asmall, gentle, smile: “poor old French philosopher,she is trying to crash into doors we have alreadyopened; we know all that, and the point of this newjournal is precisely to learn together how to inhabitagain what has been devastated”. But what I fear isthat, if this is not the case, some readers may feelshocked by the fact that I speak about “us”, as if wewere important, at a time when so many urgentquestions are demanding our attention and efforts.

I understand quite well that when they are calledbecause of a fire, fire-fighters hurry without slowingdown and wondering about their own role and subjectivestance. But the point is that nobody really calls us.We are rather, as readers of this journal, or writingin it, part of those few who inherit a tradition inwhich ideas and words do matter, which gives ideas andwords some power to contribute changing, one small wayor another, situations. This is one of our commonattachments, what is common between me and any reader

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who is still reading me at this stage of my text, andnot to explicitly recognize and cultivate thissubjective stance may well be compared withexperimental scientists failing to explicitly presentthemselves in the terms of the possibility ofachievement that has them thinking and imaginingtogether, using instead general, neutral themes like“objectivity”. This is why I claim that we have totake care of our own mental and collective ecologies,not as an egotistic move (singing like Nero, while theworld is burning) but because it is what we dependupon. And this means reclaiming an ecology that givesthe situations we confront the power to have usthinking feeling, imagining, and not theorizing aboutthem. In this I am a Marxist – the point is to “changethe world, not to understand it”, but I add that thisimplies giving to the world the power to change us, to“force” our thinking.

What I propose could be named “reclaiming” thetradition which forces us to think and write, andread, and reclaiming always begins with an empiricalstarting point, with a situation we have to claim,against all those generalities that demand that weeliminate it away as if it was only a contingent point- in this case, the empirical fact that we are readersof such journals as Subjectivity. Reclaiming, as the neo-pagan witches and other US activists forced me tofeel, is a very concrete and political business.Starhawk tells about her own experience, when she waspart of a group of activists who were mobilized tohelp Native Americans fighting for their rights. Anold woman asked: “You are nice people, you who comeand help us, but where are you coming from?” Whichmeant for Starhawk: “We can tell you who we are, andwhat we defend, but who are you, and how can weconnect?” What Starhawk understood was that the answer

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could not be in terms of generalities, presentingherself as an anonymous, self-sacrificing, righter ofwrongs, but required being able to tell about her ownattachments, in order to meet in dignity. Sheunderstood the political importance of “reclaiming”what made her able to fight, in order to share withothers who also fight, for different reasons. And sheunderstood that reasons that present themselves asanonymous, may always be trapped in presentingthemselves as universal, and then easily becomemurderous – we all know that.

Reclaiming is an adventure, both empirical andpragmatic, because it does not first mean taking backwhat was confiscated, rather learning what it takes toinhabit again what was devastated. Reclaiming indeedassociates irreducibly “to heal”, “to reappropriate”,“to learn/teach again”, “to struggle”, to “become ableto restore life where it was poisoned”, and it demandslearning how to do it for each zone of devastation,each zone of the earth, of our collective practicesand of our experience. In order to reclaim, we, asinterested in “subjectivity”, may need to discriminateand empirically feel how the smoke of the burnedwitches still hangs in our own nostrils, and not ingeneral, in order to create the possibility to resistthe infection. And to resist not reflexively, butcreatively, that is also technically —“it is, shouldbe, a question of technique, exclusively a question oftechnique” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, 342). Whitehead’sadventure was empowered by technical problems ofconceptual articulation, and the witches’ rituals andcrafts entail the “technical” problem of creating whatdoes not command the event of becoming able toreclaim, but does foster and sustain it.

It could well be a beginning to accept as a(quite non modern) refrain that we, who trust that

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ideas and words do matter, do trust in the magic ofwords and ideas. But then comes the hard technicalquestion of learning how to fabricate anddiscriminate. We need techniques that do enable tomake the Jamesian jump towards forces we wereseparated from, and do also foster and sustaindiscrimination and care, because no such event, nosuch production of subjectivity, is good in se.

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Endnotes1 Maria Puig de la Bellacasa activated my attentionabout the importance of creating a distinction betweenconcern and care. To define a situation as a « matterof concern » is an important point of Bruno Latour’sthesis, and communicates with the political fightagainst those who judge a situation starting fromsettled « matters of fact ». As for the question ofcare, it stems from the feminist tradition and isrelated with the creation of sustainable relationswith others and ourselves (Puig de la Bellacasa,2008a). As this text will show, I have still a lot tolearn about care, about how to relate with those whoread me… But I wish to express all my gratitude toMaria Puig and Dimitris Papadopoulos for their carefulcomments, which helped me to care just a bit more.They are not responsible however for the excesses andabuses, which my concern for the situation is notsufficient to excuse.2 Maria Puig de la Bellacasa has beautifullydistinguished between standpoint theories ascommunicating with general epistemological claims andas connecting those who theorize with concretestruggles, the theorizer then presenting herself asindebted to the struggle that forced and enabled herto craft the words that tell about the new emergingstandpoint (Puig de la Bellacasa 2008b).

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Dewey, J. (1927) The Public and its Problems. New York: Holt.Guattari, F. (2000). The three Ecologies. London: Athlone.James, W. (1996). Some Problems in Philosophy. Reprint of

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Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern. Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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Stengers, I. (2000). The Invention of Modern Science.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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