SOLAR CATASTROPHE
LYOTARD, FREUD, AND THE DEATH-DRIVE
Ray Brassier
J ean-Franc;ois Lyotard's "Can Thought
sense of the word as a "mis-turning"
or
Go On Without a Body'?"--the opening
"over-turning" (kata-strophe). The death of
chapter from his I 99 I collection The lnhu
'
mon -is a brilliantly incisive example of a
the terrestrial horizon relative to which
now apparently defunct genre: the philo
philosophical thought orients itself. Or as
the sun is a catastrophe because it overturns
sophical essay. However, my aim here is nei
Lyotard himself puts it: "Everything's dead
ther to provide a reading nor an exegesis of
already if this infinite reserve from which
this remarkable piece of philosophical writ
I philosophy I now draws energy to defer an
ing. Lyotard's question, "can thought go on
swers, if in short thought as quest, dies out
without a body?" here serves as the pretext
with the sun.'" El'en'thing is de({({ ({{re({d\'.
for dealing with another question, one that I
The catastrophe 1)(1.1 ({{re{fdy h({fJl}('ned. So
think is perhaps more fundamental, although
lar death is catastrophic because it vitiates
it only warrants a passing mention by
philosophical temporality, thought's cOllsti
Lyotard. This other question is: can thought
tutive horizonal relation to the future. Far
go on without a horizon? The use of the word
from lying in wait in for us in the far distant
"horizon" here i s intended to b ear a
future, on the other side of the terrestrial ho
quasi-transcendental charge. For European
rizon, the solar catastrophe needs to be
philosophy up to and including Nietz
grasped as the aboriginal trauma driving the
sche-I say "including" because I fear
history of terrestrial life and terrestrial phi
Nietzsche ultimately remains a Christian
'
thinker -the name for the horizon was
from stellar death. Terrestrial history occurs
losophy as an elaborately circuitous detour
"God." Then, in the wake of the collapse of
between the simultaneous strophes of a
this first horizon. for a central strain in Euro
death which is at once earlier than the birth
pean philosophy since Nietzsche, whose
of the first unicellular organism and later
than the extinction of the last multi-cellular
most significant representatives include fig
ures as diverse as Husser!, Heidegger and
animal. Paraphrasing a remark Freud makes
Deleuze, the name for the horizon becomes
in Beyond the P{easlIre Prillciplc. we could
"Earth." My aim here is to show that this
say this: "In the last resort, what has len it�
horizon too needs to be wiped away.
mark on the development of I philosophy I
Thus, the link between Lyotard's ques
must be the history of the earth we live on
tion, "can thought go on without a body?"
and of its relation to the sun.'" This mark, this
and my question "can thought go on without
trace imprinted upon thought by its relation
a horizon?" is provided by an intermediary
question: "what happens to thought when
the earth dies'?" Significantly, this is the
to the s u n , is t h e trace of t h e s o l a r
catastrophe. which b o t h precedes and
follows, initiates and terminates, t he
question with which Lyotard's essay begins.
possibility of philosophizable death.
Roughly 4.5 billion years from now, Lyotard
Thus, part of my aim here is to effect a
reminds us, the SLln will explode, destroying
philosophical radicalization of the Freudian
the earth and all earthly life. Thought's ter
"death-drive" by remodeling it in terms of
restrial horizon will be wiped away. This is
Lyotard's "solar catastrophe." The result is
the solar catastrophe, in the original Greek
an interesting but still philosophically famil-
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
WINTER 2003
421
iar trope wherein solar death figures as the
me begin by reiterating the casc HE sets out
condition of possibility and impossibility for
in the first half of the essay.
the earth (rather than just consciousness or
HE
metaphysics) as ultimate horizon of philoso
phy. But this immediately gives rise to an
other question (the fourth and final one I in
tend to broach here): even if philosophy
cannot go beyond the thought of solar catas
trophe as condition of (im-)possibility for its
HE, the materialist, insists on the insepa
rability between thought and its material
substrate the better to argue for the necessity
of separating thought from its rootedness in
organic life in general, and the human organ
relation to the earth and for its ties to the hu
ism in particular. Why? Because 4.5 billions
man organism, does this mean that all
years from now the sun will explode, de
thought is hound to the earth and tied to the
stroying the earth and all earthly life. And,
interests of the human organism? This ques
HE argues, the death of the sun poses a chal
tion gives rise to my other aim, which is to
lenge to philosophy which differs in kind
suggest that even if philosophy remains con
from that of any other death. Unlike the
stitutively earth-bound and species specific,
model of death that, at least since Hegel, has
thought ("({n free itself from the horizon of
been the motor of philosophical speculation,
the earth and the interests of the human or
ganism. It can do so by adopting a non-philo
s o p h i c a l p o s tu r e - a n d h e r e I m e a n
I
"non-philosophical" i n thc Laruellean sense
-in which it becomes possible to discover
t h e identity-(oj)-dea th"
T h i s i d e n
tity-(ofl-death opens up a non-horiwnal di
mension for thought: that of the universal.
Contra Nietzsche, thought can and must
abandon the earth, the better to gai n access to
the universal. And t hought effectuates the
universal when it becomes capable of intelli
gibly uttering that which has always been the
the death of the sun does not constitute a
limit for thought, a limit that thought can
overstep, recuperate, sublate. Thought is
perfectly capable of transcending the limits
it has posited for itself. But the death of the
sun is not a limit of or for thought. It doesn't
belong to thought and cannot be appropri
ated by it. Moreover, this is adamantly not
because it functions as some quasi-mystical
apex of ine1Table transcendence. On the con
t rary, it is a perfectly immanent, entirely ba
nal empirical fact. What thought cannot cir
cumvent is the blunt empirical fact that
philosophical absurdity par excellence: " I
"after the sun's death there will be no
/
thought left to know its death took place" .
a m death."
Or as HE puts it:
But without further ado, lct me briefly re
capitulate the philosophical structure of
Lyotard's essay. It is divided into two halves
and takes the form of an exchange between
two anonymous philosophical protagonists,
simply entitled HE and SHE. I will have
more to say ahout the significance of this
gender distinction later. Suffice it to say for
now that HE, who may or may not be
With the disappearance of earth, thought
will have stopped-leaving that disappear
ance absolutely unthought 01". It's the hori
zon itself that will be abolished and, with
its disappearance, I the phenomenologist's I
transcendence in immanence as well. I r, as
a limit, death really is what escapes and is
deferred and as a result what thought has to
Lyotard's mouthpiece, adopts the stance of a
deal with, right from the beginning-this
certain philosophical materialism, whereas
death is still only the lire orour minds. But
SHE, who once again may or may not repre
the death of the sun is a death or mind, be
sent Lyotard's own views, espouses a dis
cause it is the death of death as the life or
tinctly phenomenological perspective. Let
t he mind. K
P HILOSOPHY TODAY
422
Nevertheless, HE continues, there is one
Now, clearly, even from a strictly materi
way of rendering this death conceivable, of
alist perspective, some of these claims arc
turning this death of the death which is the
philosophically suspect. The notion that ter
life of thought into a death like any other: by
separating the future of thought from the fate
of the human body:
restrial
history
is
the
history
of
com plexificat ion smacks dangerously of
some sort of absurd evolutionary eschatol
ogy. Evolution is not drivcn by an intrinsic
Thought without a body is the prerequisite
tendency to complcxification. And the as
for thinking or the death of all bodies, solar
sumption that all AI embraces i'unctionalism
or terrestrial, and of the death of thoughts
that arc inseparable from those bodies. But
"without a body" in this exact sense: with
out the complex living terrestrial organism
known as the human body. Not without
hardware, obviously.�
(substrate independence) and endorses the
computational paradigm betrays an igno
rance of connectionism, where the soft
ware/hardware distinction is at least seri
ously compromised,
if n o t w h o l l y
undermined. Nevertheless, I am not going to
take issue with these claims here since they
arc largely irrelcvant to my concerns. Instead
Moreover, HE claims, the process of separat
I will now move onto the second part o/"
ing thought from the human body, which is
L y o t a r d 's e s s a y a n d d e l i n e a t e t he
to say the process of providing human soft
phenomenological rejoinder with which
ware with a hardware that would function in
Lyotard's feminine alter-ego, SHE, counters
dependently of the conditions of life on
the foregoing materialist diatribe.
earth, and of ensuring thc survival of mor
phological complexity by shifting its mate
SHE
rial substrate, has been underway for billions
of years: it is simply the history of the earth.
SHE challenges the claim that it is even
The dream of what John Haugeland called
possible in principle to separate thought
"Good Old Fashioned A I," which is to say
from the body by abstracting a set of digi·
the attempt to achieve a precise digital codi
tally codifiable cognitive algorithms from
fication of cognitive complexity in a way
their material substrate. Thought and the
that doesn't supervene on the details of bio
body, SHE argues, are entwined in a relation
logical hardware, is merely the latest mani
of analogical co-dependence, rather than ex
festation of a generalized technological pro
trinsicaly conjoined in a r elation of
cess already underway with amoeba. Thus,
hylomorphic duality. Each is analogous to
the history of technology overlaps with the
the other in relation to their respective per
history of life on earth understood as
ceptual or symbolic environment. And that
originary unity of teclIne and physus. There
relationship itself is analogical rather than
is no "natural" realm subsisting in contradis
digital. Or as SHE puts it: " Real 'analogy' re
tinction to the domain of technological arti
quires a thinking or representing machine to
fice because matter�whether organic or in
be in its datajust as the eye is in the visual
'
field or writing is in language." " Thought is
constitutively experienced as embodied, just
organic�already possesses its own intrinsic
propensity to self-organization. Technology
is the name for the process striving to find a
means of ensuring that the negentropic
as embodiment is constitutively lived as
thought.
complexification underway on earth these
Moreover, if embodiment as condition for
last few billion years will not be annihilated
thought implies the inseparability of thought
by the imminent entropic tidal wave of solar
and body, then that very inseparability is it
extinction.
self anchored in a primordial separation in-
SOLAR CATASTROPHE
423
scribed in human corporeality as such: the
Instead, I will proceed by summanzmg
separation of gender. Thus, SHE concludes:
the two contrasting philosophical theses laid
Thought
is inseparable
fro m
the
p h e n o m e n olo g i c a l b o dy: a l t h o u g h
gendered body i s separated from thought
out by HE and SHE alternately:
For HE, solar death as "irreparably exclu
sive disjunction between death and thought"
is the death of the death which is the life of
and launches thought. I'm t e mpted to see
thought. For thought to survive this death, it
in this difference a challcngc to thought
must separate itsel I' from the human body.
that's comparable to the solar catastrophe.
For SHE, however, it is the irremediable
But such is not the case since this differ
disjunction of gendered embodiment that
ence causes thought-held as it is in re
gives birth to the death which is the life of
serve in the secrecy of bodies and thoughts.
thought. Unless the thought striving to pre
It annihilates only the One.
I I
man body manages to rctain an imprint of
For SHE then, it would seem that sexual
difference indexes a fissuring of metaphysi
cal unity even more p r im o r dial than
Heideggerean Un/erschied or Derridean
dif/l//w/ce. What SHE calls "the irremedia
ble differend of gender" becomes the ulti
mate I.tr-grund of ontological difference and
the
o rl g l n a r y
wellspring
serve itself by separating itself from the hu
of
the
this primordial separation, it will not be
thought at all. In other words, it will merely
be the ghost of thought, a dead thought, and
living thought-by which S HE means
p h e n o m e n o l o g i c a l s ubje c t i v i ty-wi I I
effectively have perished.
The peculiar challenge of Lyotard's essay
lies in the way he seems to present us with
these two incompatible sets of claims, the
phenomenological Lifeworld. But for SHE,
materialist thesis and the phenomenological
though sexual separation seems to pose a
thesis, without attempting to reconcile them
challenge to philosophy at least as radical as
or providing clues as to which of them he es
that of solar death, the key difference is that
while the latter threatens to annihilate
pouses. How are we to respond to them? Yet
there is in fact a clue of sorts as to how
thought, the former engenders it.
Lyotard views the relation between HE and
Now, onee again, there are some obvious
objections to this line of argument. The
phenomenological insistence on the insepa
rability of thought and body dubiously as
sumes that our embodied subjective experi
ence of thought provides the best paradigm
SHE in the introduction to The Inhuman (en
titled "About the Human"). There, as the fol
lowing remark from this introduction re
veals, Lyotard makes it clear that h e
considers i t necessary t o distinguish
between two inhumans:
for defining what thought is. Against this ex
The inhumanity of the system which is cur
travagant phenomenological holism, whose
rently being consolidated under the name
excessive emphasis on the role of embodi
of development (among others) must not
ment in sentience simply mirrors classical
be confused with the infinitely secret one
AI's equally unwarranted disdain for em
of which the soul is hostage. To believe, as
bodied cognition, one would want to insist
that there is a difference bet ween what
thought is and what it is like to think for or
ganisms endowed with certain specific sen
sory and cognitive modalities. But, as be
fore, this is not my concern here and I will
not pursue these objections further.
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
424
happened to me [a reference to Lyotard's
"libidinal materialist" phase[, that the first
can take over from the second, give it ex
pression, is a mistake.12
Thus, throughout the book, Lyotard
strives to distinguish between a "good" inhu-
man, an improper propriety that defines the
rosis is driven to rcpeat the moment of
singularity of the human as an anomaly or
trauma so that his psyche can muster the anx
caesura in the ontological order (Levinas is
iety required to achieve a successful ca th exis
the secret influence here), and a "bad" inhu
(BeseIZlIllg: invcstment, occupation) or
man, which erases the anomalous speciricity
hinding or the excess of excitation concomi
of the human and reduces it to an inert mate
tant with the traumatic breaching of the or
rial, a neutral ontological "stuff' (e.g., the
ganism's psychic defcnses. Thus, the COI11-
Human Genome Project, etc.). So it would
pulsion to repeat consists in an attempt on
seem that in "Can Thought Go On Without A
the part of the unconscious to relive the trau
Body?" Lyotard is implicitly pitting the
matic incident in a condition of anxious an
in-human singularity of sexuation against
ticipation that goes some way to buffering
the
the traumatic shock-unlike the impotent
anti-human
genericity
of
thc
technoscientific neuter.
terror that disabled the organism in the face
I do not believe this opposition is tenable.
or this violently unexpected trauma. This un
However, rather than trying to resolve or
conscious drive to eff ect an anxious
synthesize or supplement it philosophically,
re-experiencing of trauma is the organism's
I want to radicalize the Lyotardian model of
attempt to staunch the excessive inrIux of
solar catastrophe via the Freudian notion or
excitations brought about by a massive
the death-drive so as to render it capable or
psychic wound.
overturning both the birth and the death
The compulsion to re-experience trauma
which are the life of thought. Then this cata
follows from the fact that the "originary"
strophic exacerbation of the death-drive can
traumatic experience was only ever regis
be universalized non-philosophicaII y in the
tered in the unconscious. I t was never con
form of a non-human subject-(of)-death that
sciously "lived." Strictly speaking, there is
neutralizes the distinction between the good
no "originary experience" of trauma because
and the bad inhuman.
trauma marks the point of an obliteration of
consciousness. Trauma occurs as an uncon
The Death-Drive
In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud's
scious wound which continues to resonate in
the psychic economy as an unresolved dis
turbance; an un-dampened excess of excita
initial concern consists in trying to account
tion. It is because it indexes an influx or exci
for the compUlsion to repeat indexed by the
t ation vastly in excess of the binding
phenomenon of traumatic neurosis, where
capacities exercised by what Freud calls "the
the sufferer compulsively relives the trau
perception-consciousness system" that
matic incident in his dreams. I f the function
trauma leaves behind this permanent imprint
of dreams is primarily that or wish-fulfill
in the unconscious. Moreover, it is this un
ment, in accordance with the pleasure princi
conscious trace that demands to be renegoti
ple, which strives to maximize plea
ated and that gives rise to compulsive repeti
sure-where pleasure is defined as a
tion, rather than the traumatic "experience"
diminuition of excitation-and to minimize
itself, because strictly speaking the trauma
unpleasure-where unpleasllre is defined as
an increase in excitation- then traumatic
was never experienced as such. It never orig
inally registered in t he perception-con
neurosis pauses a problem for psychoanaly
sciousness system because for freud con
sis because it resists explanation in terms of
the pleasure principle: why is the patient
sciousness always arises instcad of a
"
memory trace. This is why trauma is con sti
compulsively drivcn to relive a shatteringly
tUlively unconscious: it only exists as a trace.
unpleasurable experience? Freud's answer is
And this lraumatic trace persists as a perma
that the patient suffering from traumatic neu-
nent and indelible imprint in the Llncon-
SOLAR CATASTROPHE
425
scious because it testifies to something
at the cost of a primordial death of part of the
unmanageable for the filtering apparatus of
primitive organism itself: it is this death that
the perception-consciousness system: a
gives rise to the protective shield filtering out
hemorrhaging of the psyche.
the potentially lethal influxes of external en
Freud then proposes a remarkable specu
ergy. Individuated organic life is won at the
lative hypothesis linking the origins of this
cost of this aboriginal death whereby the or
filtcring apparatus to the genesis of organic
individuation. A primitive organic vesicle
(i.e., a small bladder, cell, bubble, or hollow
structure) becomes capable of filtering the
continuous and potentially dangerous tor
rent of external stimuli by sacrificing part of
itself in order to erect a protective shield
against cxcessive influxes of excitation,
thereby effecting a definitive separation
between organic interiority and inorganic
cxtcriority:
ganism first becomes capable of separating
itselffrom the inorganic outside. This death,
which gives birth to organic individuation,
thereby conditions the possibility of organic
phylogenesis as well as of sexual reproduc
tion. Thus, not only does this death precede
the organism, it is the precondition for the or
ganism's ability to reproduce and die. If, for
Freud, the death-drive qua compulsion to re
peat is the originary, primordial motive force
driving organic life back to its originary in
[The vesicle [ acquires the shield in this
organic condition, this is because the motor
way: its outermost surface ceases to have
of repetition-the repeating instance-is
the structure proper to living malter, be
comes to some degree inorganic and
thellecrorth functions as a special envelope
or membrane resistant to stimuli. In conse
quence, the energies of the external world
arc able to pass into the next underlying
layers, which have remained living, with
onl y a fragment of their original intensity..
.. By its death the outer layer has saved all
the deeper ones from a similar fate-un
less, that is to say, stimuli reach it which arc
so strong that they break through the pro
tective shicld. Protection against stimuli is
this trace of the aboriginal trauma of organic
individuation. The death-drive, the drive to
return to the inorganic, is t he repetition of the
death that gave birth to the organism-a
death that cannot be satisfactorily repeated,
not only because the organism that bears its
trace was never there to experience it, but be
cause that trace indexes an exorbitant death,
one that even in dying, the organism cannot
successfully repeat. Thus, the trace of ab
original death harbors an impossible ele
Immel for organic life: it is the trace of a
trauma that demands to be integrated into the
psychic economy of the organism, but which
an almost more important function for the
cannot because it indexes the originary trau
living organism than reception of stimuli. .
matic scission between organic and inor
. . In highly developed organisms the re
ganic. The organism cannot live the death
ceptive COrlicallayers of the former vesicle
that gives rise to the difference between life
has long been withdrawn into the depths of
and eleath. The death-drive is the trace of this
the interior of the body, though portions of
scission: a scission that will never be
it have been len behind on the surface im
mediately beneath the shield against
stimuli. 11
Two features of Freud's hypothesis are
particularly worthy of note.
successfully bound (cathected, invested)
because it remains the unbindable excess
that makes binding possible.
Moreover, since this death that gives birth
to organic phylogenesis precedes and condi
tions the birth that allows for reproduction
First, that the separation between organic
and the organic ditlerence between life and
interiority and anorganic exteriority is won
death, death is older than sex. In other words,
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
426
it is necessary to insist, contra Freud if need
matic trace of the inorganic, a symptomatic
be, that death as traumatic scission between
manifestation of the death-drive. Thus, if
the organic and the inorganic precedes and
thought is not constitutively animated by its
conditions sexuation and sexual reproduc
tion. The repetition of death drives the repro
gendered embodiment, there is no good rea
son to suppose it stands to lose something es
duction of sex. And as we shall see, this un
sential by striving to dissociate itself from
dermines the phenomenological thesis
the body. From a philosophical point of
which claims that thc sexual dilTerence
v i ew, the question is r a t h er w h e ther
proper to gendered bodies is somehow more
thought'S motivating disturbance will sur
originary than the irreparable disjunction
vive the separation from the organic body
between thought and solar death.
and the reunion with the inorganic, so that
The second noteworthy feature of the
thought as quest carries on unimpeded,
Freudian hypothesis is that the cerebral cor
which is what HE maintains; or whether the
tex and central nervous systems in higher an
return to the inorganic brought about by
imals, which are sophisticated versions of
thought's separation rrom the organic body
the primitive vesicle's receptive cortical
will be its death, so that, as SHE argues,
layer, are parts of the filtering apparatus
thought will be reduced to a mere digital
which has been sacrificed to the inorganic. In
ghost of' its phenomenological life.
other words, they are dead things. Brains and
But note that both HE and SHE continue
nervous systems are the internalized dead
to think in terms or the lil'c and death or
things necessary for the functioning of a par
thought relative to a body, organic in one
ticularly complex variety ofliving thing. Not
case, inorganic in the other. Thus, both sti II
in the sense of being, as Freud puts it, "baked
presuppose that the solar catastrophe merely
though," completely permeable to the influx
entails reconfiguring the horizon, rather than
of stimulae and hence undiffertiated-for in
abandoning horizonality altogether. HE be
higher animals, the receptive layer itself is
lieves it is simply a matter of reinscribing the
already highly differentiated. But dead in the
death-drive in an inorganic body-as though
sense of being organic simplificationss, sub
thought's quest could carry on by inddi
tractions from torrential inorganic complex
nitely postponing its encounter with death.
ity: even the highly differentiated connective
Accordingly, HE suggests, perhaps on
functions within the mnemic system operate
quasi-Deleuzean grounds, that thought can
by subtracting from a degree of differentia
embrace a new, inorganic life by overcoming
tion in excess of the organism's adaptively
specified neuorphysiological conduits. The
horizon in ravor or a cosmic one. Similarly,
organic death, by abandoning the terrestrial
point is that the organic is merely a tempo
SHE hints, on phenomenological grounds
rary simplification of the inorganic. Conse
this time, that thought can continue to live
quently, if thought is secreted by dead
ofT sexual difference by re-inscribing it in
things-the cerebral cortex and nervous sys
the context of inorganic embodiment (there
tem-then there would seem to be a case for
is a whole strain of' cyberfeminist discourse
insisting that thought itself is constitutively
enthusiastically endorsing this particular
d e ad a n d t h a t , c o n t r a r y t o t h e
phenomenological thesis, philosophical
possibility). Ultimately then, both HE and
SHE believe thought as quest can survive by
questioning, or what Lyotard calls thought
orienting itselr t oward a new horizon,
as interminable quest, is not originally en
thereby perpetuating the life or the death
gendered by sexual difference. Rather-and
which drives thought.
this is a familiar but nonetheless sound ob
Nevertheless, from my point of view nei
servation-philosophical thought is a psy
ther possibility is satisfactory. What iL in
chic disturbance brought about by the trau-
stead or switching horizons and staving oil
SOLAR CATASTROPHE
427
death, thought could annihilate every hori
ceivable. Although the materialist is less re
zon by eflectuating the death that drives it? It
f r a c tory
is with this goal in mind that I now propose
phenomenologist, all HE can suggest is a
on
this
issue
than
the
to remodel the death-drive in terms of
change of embodiment, a shift from a carbon
Lyotard's solar catastrophe.
to a silicone-based substrate. This is only to
postpone the day of reckoning, because
IT: The Subjcct-(of)-Death
sooner or later thought will have to reckon
want to suggest that the traumatic
asymptopic death of the cosmos roughly one
scission that divides organic life from inor
ganic death has its transcendental analogue
in the irreparable disjunction between
thought and solar death. Bear in mind that
what is repeated in the death-drive is some
thing that never happened: a non-event (hat
cannot be registered within the percep
tion-consciousness system. Thus, organic
Ii rc merely recapitulates the non-occurrence
of aboriginal inorganic death. Similarly, ter
restrial philosophy as quest is fuelled by the
non-occurrence of solar death as impossible
possibility. Solar death is catastrophic be
cause the collapse of the terrestrial horizon is
unenvisageable lor embodied thought-un
less that thought can switch from organic to
i n o r g a n i c ( s i l i c o n e b a s e d) e m b o d i
ment-and it is because it is unenvisageable
that solar catastrophe overturns the relation
between thought and its terrestrial horizon.
Thus, for embodied terrestrial thought solar
death is not an event but a trauma, something
that does not take place within thought's ter
restrial horizon but persists as an uncon
scious trace disturbing embodied philosoph
ical consciousness. Reeall the earlier
pronouncement made by Lyotard's HE: "Ev
erything's dead already if this infinite re
serve from which you now draw energy to
dder answers, if in short thought as quest,
dies out with the sun." Everything is dead al
with the collapse of the ultimate horizon: the
trillion, trillion, trillion (10'7") years from
now, when matter itself will cease t o
exist-along with the possibility o f any kind
of embodiment.
Because disembodied thought is philo
sophieally unimaginable, HE, Lyotard's ma
terialist, limits the scope of the catastrophe
by turning the collapse of the terrestrial hori
zon into an occasion for a change of horizon.
The infinite horizonal reserve fuelling philo
sophieal questioning is merely expanded
from the terrestrial to the cosmic scale. The
cosmos is now the locus of the irreparable
disjunction between death and thought. But
if thought is already dead this expansion of
horizon is ultimately to no avail: of what usc
is the perpetuation of thought's embodied
life if what is perpetuated is philosophy's
constitutive inability to resolve, i.e., bind,
the traumatic disjunction between thought
and death? Since the death of the COSIllOS is
just as much of an irrecusableji:i/aul71 for phi
losophy as the death of the sun, every
horizonal reserve upon which embodied
thought draws to fuel its quest is necessarily
finite. Why then should thought continue in
vesting in an account whose dwindling re
serves are cireumscribed by the temporary
parameters of embodiment? Why keep play
ing for time? A change of body is just a way
ready, not only because the solar catastrophe
of postponing thought's inevitable encoun
vitiates the earth's horizonal status as infi
ter with the death that drives it. And a change
nite, supposedly inexhaustible reservoir of
of horizon is just a means of occluding the
noetic possibility, but also because thought
transcendental nature of the trauma that fu
as quest is driven by death, and strives to be
els thought.
come equal to the death whose trace it bears
It is because we are dealing with a tran
by disembodying itself. Yet absolute diselll
scendental catastrophe that Lyotard's ques
bodiment remains philosophically II1con-
tion needs to be specified. It should be: can
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
428
philosophical thought go on without a body?
ject-(on-death is the immanent identity of
I believe it cannot and can only continue to
the death of the death that is the I ife of
osci I late-perhaps i ndefini tely-between
thought. Moreovcr, this subject-(ot}dcath
two possibilities: the claim that there is a ho
unilateralises sexual difference as well as the
rizon of all horizons, if not the earth then
diJTercnce between organic and inorganic.
some other candidate, and the claim that we
can keep changing horizons indefinitely.
Thus, I want to conclude by very briefly de
lineating the minimal requirements for a
thought without horizon. In other words,
show that it is possible for thought to effect a
successful binding of transcendental trauma
in a way that consummates, rather than obvi
ates, the death-drive. As I said earlier, this
kind of thinking will be non-philosophical in
the Laruellean sense.
The non-philosophical alternative to phi
losophy's horizonal sublimation of the
death-drive consists in effecting a radically
immanent desublimation of death. This de
sublimation has three moments: unidentifi
cation, unilateralisation, and excarnation.
Thought achieves a binding of transcen
dental catastrophe by becoming death-not
through fusion or synthesis, but by con
Thus, t h e n o n - h u m an subject of the
death-drive is neither HE nor SHE but IT: the
transcendental clone. The cloned sub
ject-(on-death is established through a form
of transcendental parthogenesis which
yields IT as universal non-human subject of
the unconscious-the unconscious subject
with which I am identical in the last instance.
And IT neutralizes the difference between
the good and bad inhuman, i.e., between the
singularity of in-human sexuation and the
genericity of the anti-human neuter. More
over, desublimation means that death is al
ready in effect: my subjeetivation as IT puts
death into effect as thought. Thus, since I am
IT, the subject as universal unconscious
organon, then I am the subject-(oO-death.
Thought is not labor of the negative but
organon of death. As organon, IT, the sub
structing a subject that effectuates the exclu
ject-(of)-dcath, inhabits the non-thetic uni
sive disjunction between thought and death
verse of the autistic unconscious: IT is deaf,
as unidentification (identity without synthe
dumb and blind. This is the e.l:caJ"//(/tioll of
sis) of death and thought. This sub-
thought.
ENDNOTES
I.
2.
1can-Fran<;ois Lyotard, The lnhul/wll, trans. G.
"mcaning." "'sense," "intelligibility,"
Bennington and R. BOWlby (Stanford: Stanford
truth. The inability to distinguish between truth
University Press, 1991).
and meaning is characteristic of rei igious thinking
His enthusiasm for evaluation, his mania for dis
but never
in general. Which is why phenolllcnology re
crimination, his incapacity for indillerenee bear
mains constitutively theological.
witness to this. There is a sense in which active ni
3.
The'IIl/ILUIlUIl, 19 9 1 , p. 9.
hilism remains a peculiarly inverted libidinal ex
4.
Sigmund Freud. "Beyond thc Plcasurc Principle,"
acerbation of passivc nihilism. More fundamen
in The Pengllin Frelld Lihrary Vol. II:
tally, NieL-:sche's gravest mistake lies in his
Me/up.I'."cilO/ogr
uncritical acceptance of the Christian subterfugc
which insists that "God" mllst be a synonym for
(Harll1ondsworth,
Oil
Middlcsex:
Penguin, 1991), p. 310.
5.
Neithcr
"anti-philosophical"
nor
"post-philo-
"truth." In fact, the Christian God has always becn
sophical," Larucllc's "non-philosophy" is a novel
a synonym for "redemption," which is to say:
theoretical practice that proposcs to use philoso-
SOLAR CATASTROPHE
429
phy in a way which is irrcducible to the structures,
7.
The InhulIlan, 1991, p. 9.
methods and goals of philosophy. The aim is to
8.
Ibid., p. 10.
process philosophical theses in such a way as to
cf'f'cct their transcendental universalisation. For a
full account of what this non-philosophical meth
odology
involves,
Laruellc's
6.
cf.
Philosophic
in particular
el
Fran\;ois
9.
Ibid., p. 14.
10.
Ibid., p. 17.
11. Ibid., p. 23.
12. Ibid., p. 2.
13. Cr. Freud, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," p.
Non-Phi/osophie
296, and 'The "Mystic Writing-Pad," in The Pen
(Liege: Mardaga, 1(89) and his Principe.l· de /a
guin Freud Librar\, Vol. II: Oil Metap.lych%
NOIl-Phi/osophic (Paris: P.U.F., 19(6).
(Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1(91), p.
This bracketing of the "of"' is intended to effect a
suspension both of the objective and subjective
430.
14.
Freud, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," p. 299.
senses of the genitive: this is what Laruelle calls a
"non-thctic identity," or an identity without unity.
Middlesex University, London N 17 8H R, United Kingdom
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
430
gy