The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory

by Benjamin Noys

Through a series of incisive readings of leading theoretical figures of affirmationism – Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, Antonio Negri and Alain Badiou – Benjamin Noys contests the tendency of recent theory to rely on affirmation, and especially an affirmative thinking of resistance. He reveals a profound current of negativity that allows theory to return to its political calling.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Theory

208 pages, Hardcover

First published September 13, 2010

Reviews

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

A spectre is haunting continental theory -- the spectre of the negative. Expelled by the light of an ascendant 'affirmationist consensus’ by thinkers of the left, the powers of the negative are everywhere in disarray. Such, at any rate, is the diagnosis offered by Benjamin Noys in this wonderfully thought provoking little study. Tracking the suppression of the negative across the works of five major philosophers - Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, Antonio Negri, and Alain Badiou - Noys carefully charts the ways in which each tarries with negative in order to better dispel it in the name of an ever more entrenched 'affirmationism’ in theory. Far, however, from being a minor linguistic kerfuffle ("positivity! negativity!"), the signal merit of Noys’ work is to handily demonstrate the consequences - both philosophical and political - that follow in the wake of such dismissals.

The basic issue is this: having done away with the negative, in what way can one conceptualise agency? That is, in what way can one intervene in the positive being of ‘what is’ in order to affect a change? Without a theorisation of the negative, do we not simply mire ourselves in the already-there, without affording us the possibility of (political) resistance? It’s these kinds of questions which guide Noys’ readings, for which negation does not ultimately function as an ‘ontological’ category, but a properly strategic one. In other words, not just any kind of negativity is at stake in Noys’ retrieval attempt, but a very specific one, bearing on the thought and the possibility of political/agental intervention. Hence, for instance, Noys’ attempt to avoid the double pitfalls of thinking of the negative either in terms of the wholly Other (think Levinas), or the dialectically opposed (as per Hegel).

Indeed it’s Noys’ charge that while these latter figures of the negative are in fact acknowledged and rightly avoided by the 'affirmationist bloc’, the price paid for swerving in the opposite direction of an unadulterated affirmationism is precisely that of disavowing the ’third way’ of ‘strategic negativity’ so necessary to thought of agency. Even more worrying for Noys however, are the political consequences that follow once such a move is made: in lieu of the labour of the negative, it’s ‘accelerationism' that becomes the political strategy of choice - not resistance to ‘what is’, but its radicalisation becomes the key to political action. Or, to put it in a maxim: the worse things get, the better the situation will be. Crystallised particularly in the work of Negri, Noys contends - rightly I think - that we simply need better strategies than this if the left is to act as any kind of bulwark against the forces of capital.

Part of the complication of reading The Persistence of the Negative however, is its... well, negative approach to the exactly what this negative strategy might look like. Given that most of the book proceeds by way of critique, there’s more here that specifies what the negative ‘isn’t’ than what exactly it ‘is’. Indeed it’s only in the conclusion that Noys really attempts to flesh out the strategic negativity he has in mind, one in fact developed and inspired by the work of Walter Benjamin as well as Guy Debord and the Situationist International. Although given a discussion of its own, I really do wish the book was as comprehensive in its ‘positive’ conception of the negative as it was with its critical uptake of the ‘affirmationists’. In any case though, by simply having properly posed the question of negativity afresh, The Persistence of the Negative is marvellous achievement, one that ought to become a touchstone for theory for a while to come.

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 4 out of 5]

An outstanding, complex, intricate and difficult book. Thankfully, Edinburgh University Press continues to publish these important, high theory monographs. Noys explores contemporary continental theory, with particular attention to Latour, Negri, Badiou, Derrida and Deleuze, and explores how theory can reconnect to political concerns and imperative.

A dense and pleasurable reading experience.

[Benjamin Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmmmmmmmmm

Interesting theoretical project in that it is realistic about the inadequacy of radical affirmationism as a revolutionary approach but I don’t agree with a lot of Noys’s readings, particularly deleuze. I think he is beating some of these concepts to death with a baton of formalism that necessarily shouldn’t be applied to them in the first place.

[Shulamith Farhi · Rating 5 out of 5]

An immanent critique of contemporary foreclosures of the negative, notable for coining the term 'accelerationism'. Noys advocates a "passage through real abstractions" which "leads to a kind of practical rupture of correlationism: a downgrading, or degrading, of creativity and the subject as the principle of politics or philosophy. In its place we have the subject as the agent of negativity." This is a striking claim -- correlationism, on this reading, is the metaphysics of capital itself.

A highlight is Noys' beautiful analysis of a western film (Valdez is Coming). The film portrays

"courage articulated in a time of reactionary restoration, a linkage between the myth of the western and the film’s own contemporary context of the articulation of racism and imperialism (especially the Vietnam War). Rather than the thesis of the irreducible contamination of the western by racism it détourné this form, and negates its racism."

This resonates with his broader ambition of rehabilitating a Hegelian-Marxism that can hold its own in the face of antihumanism. This tradition articulates the non-heroic virtue of "enduring in the impossible," and constructs a fidelity to universality "woven out of political memories which are not mere nostalgia, but also critique and re-formulation."

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Complicated to put into a single phrase but basically an excessively verbose and reference- heavy way of putting the idea that 1) how to separate radicalism from non-violence, 2) how to critique monism without an interjection of dualism, and 3) postmodernism leaves the door open for right wing radicals.