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ABSTRACT
In this paper, I analyse Derridas notion of ipsocracy, elaborated in Rogues, and
explore its implications concerning the methodology and presuppositions of political
theory as ontology of power. I argue that the ipsocentric character of hermeneutics of
power is one of the most preeminent expressions of metaphysics of presence in their
political expression: ontologies of power betray the complicity between the ontological
and the theologico-political beyond the sole motif of State sovereignty, and beyond the
definition of determined political figures of power. I contend that this complicity is
persistent in contemporary critical theories of democracy, relying as they do on ipseic
representations of the demos, or ipsocratic concepts such as the kratos () of demo-
T. C. Mercier Political Ontology and the Problem of Force Derrida Today
cracy. Before political figures of sovereignty, ipseity designates the prevalence of the self-
same (power-to-be-self), and signifies the tentative sovereignty of self-presence under
the forms of sovereign kratos, political power, and until an ontology of force.
I trace expressions of this ipsocentric drive from Machiavellis The Prince, to Foucault's
economy of power-knowledge, to Lefort and Balibars re-appraisal of Machiavellian
thought (through an analysis of what they have styled the Machiavellian moment or
the Machiavelli Theorem, also found in Marchart and Abensour). This leads me to
draw out a certain mythology of political realism suggesting an ipso-ontological
representation of justice and reality.
In order to subvert these economies of power, I turn to parasitic figures such as the
Greek Metis () and the Machiavellian fox; these deconstructive figures of ruse
complicate the ipsocratic reading of power-relationality by indicating the autoimmune
co-implication of force and weakness; they suggest the self-differential and self-
deconstructive character of force, prior to its onto-theological enunciation under the
form of power or sovereignty. By retracing the usages of the notion of force in
Derridas writings, I analyse this force without power (Rogues) as the pre-performative
force of the event, and explore the implications of this unconditional othering with
regard to the traditional conceptuality and methodology of political theory.
Let me say two things before I start. First, Ive greatly reduced the scope of my
presentation since the abstract proposal. Ive chosen to focus on the problem
of force in relation to power. I will try to justify this term problem in a
moment. Secondly, I would like to start by explaining briefly why Ive chosen this
topic. These are personal reasons, but I hope theyll be somewhat relatable.
Ive done all my studies in departments of Political Science and International
Relations (IR), in Paris and London in these departments, there tends to be
an unshakable faith in the epistemology and methodology of social sciences.
The interpretative models privileged by these epistemologies usually give a
central role to the notion of power and its underlying conceptual architecture.
Power is, volens nolens, the central concept, and appears in many forms or
declinations depending on where one situates oneself on the political and/or
theoretical spectrum of International Relations Theory declinations such as:
military power, sovereign power, economic power, structural power, symbolic
power, ideological power, and more recent variations: soft power, hard power,
smart power, biopower, coloniality of power, etc.
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1
I have analysed these notions in my essay Resisting Legitimacy: Weber, Derrida, and the
Fallibility of Sovereign Power published in Global Discourse, 2016.
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T. C. Mercier Political Ontology and the Problem of Force Derrida Today
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concentrated or diffused form, does not exist (The Subject and Power).
There is no thing (res, rei) called power although Foucault also claims in the
same text that we may analyse the type of reality [my emphasis: res, realis,
realitas] with which we are dealing as power. The question is that of the
articulation between the thing and theory when it comes to power:
Do we need a theory of power? Since a theory assumes a prior
objectification, it cannot be asserted as a basis for analytical work. But this
analytical work cannot proceed without an ongoing conceptualization. And
this conceptualization implies critical thought a constant checking.2
The irony is that, for the author of Les Mots et les choses, keeping the word power
was not explicitly an issue, as long as one could imprint a new inflection or a
new curve onto the conceptuality and methodology attached to it. However, the
question of the thing, la chose power, remains as a problem. Indeed,
Foucaults ontology of the present or ontology of actuality intends to
provide an analytics of power through an analysis of problematisations (see
notably History of Sexuality, vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure) and this without making
power an ontological concept. This raises the following question or, one could
say, the archi-problem (Foucault speaks of an archaeology of
problematizations): what is the intrinsic power, the (performative) force of
Foucaults own critical gesture its power-critique or pouvoir-critiquer, be it in
the form of a genealogy or archaeology? What does propel its dunamis and
dynasty? What is the force in/of problematising practices and discourses of
power?
2
Michel Foucault, The Subject and Power, trans. Leslie Sawyer, Critical Inquiry 8, no. 4
(1982), 778.
3
History of Sexuality, vol. 1: One remains attached to a certain image of power-law, of power-
sovereignty, which was traced out by the theoreticians of right and the monarchic institution. It
is this image that we must break free of, that is, of the theoretical privilege of law and
sovereignty, if we wish to analyze power within the concrete and historical framework of its
operation. We must construct an analytics of power that no longer takes law as a model and a
code.
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T. C. Mercier Political Ontology and the Problem of Force Derrida Today
4
On this self-deconstructive dimension of Foucaults conceptualisation of power, see my essay
Violence and Resistance Beyond Plemos: Foucault and Derrida Between Power and
Unpower.
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or dunamis: power provides deconstruction with the appel required for its
propulsion. Deconstruction departs from power; it separates itself from power, but as
such it requires power, within/without. This is the reason why deconstruction is
interminable: there is no deconstructive potency, no puissance of deconstruction
without power. Sobering thought; but it must be thought consequentially,
before and beyond all ontological reductions of power, politics or force that
is, before any theoretical model that would claim to simply designate what
power is, with the force of a present indicative, by delimiting and
distinguishing between notions such as power, force, potency, violence,
resistance, etc.
What does such a precaution imply for any political inquiry presenting itself as
an ontology? What does the thinking of power or force do to ontology be it
(why not?) under the form of an ontology of force, an onto-dynamology?
Lets see.
As I said, I had to reduce the scope of this presentation. Ive decided to focus on
Machiavelli. However, I want to make it clear that I am not speaking as an
expert on Machiavelli not at all. What interests me today is a certain
contemporary reading of Machiavelli, styled radical. Many authors on the Left
have felt the need to return to Machiavelli in order to address contemporary
political questions or problems: lets mention Antonio Negri, Roberto Esposito,
Oliver Marchart, Miguel Abensour, tienne Balibar or Filippo Del Lucchese.
The list could go on.
There are of course many differences among these authors; today I will merely
emphasise one common feature in their readings: they see in Machiavellis
oeuvre the basis for what they conceive as a political ontology, a new
ontology. The expression appears in Lefort, Le travail de loeuvre Machiavel. But I
will also mention expressions such as: a non-metaphysical ontology a
realist ontology a political ontology of power an ontology of
potentiality an ontology of being as event a conflictual ontology
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contract those which posited the transcendence of Sovereign Power and Law
as a negative limit, as an antagonist or repressive mediator between forces or
potencies perceived as chaotic and which must be stabilised, as from above or
from outside:
For Spinoza, forces are inseparable from a spontaneity and productivity that
make possible their development without mediation or their composition. They
are elements of socialization in themselves. Spinoza immediately thinks in
terms of multitudes and not individuals. His entire philosophy is a
philosophy of potentia against potestas. It takes its place in an anti-legalist
tradition that includes Machiavelli and leads to Marx. It is a conception of
ontological constitution or of a physical and dynamic composition that
conflicts with the legal contract. In Spinoza, the ontological perspective of an
immediate production conflicts with any call to a Should-Be, a mediation or
a finality.
I am now leaving Deleuze. This is not a paper on Deleuze. But I am not leaving
these concepts behind as they appear notably, and almost without
modifications, in Espositos own reading of Machiavelli.
In Espositos interpretation, the postulation of ontological immanence is praised
for challenging the traditional primacy or supremacy of theoreticity (here, under
the form of political theory), which posits itself as external to the field of forces
and to the conflict at stake by presupposing its own transcendental position. The
current return (and, indeed, Espositos) to Machiavellian politics would be
justified by the fact that Machiavelli provided a vision of politics as strictly
historical, supposed to challenge the philosophical assumption of a transcendence
in/of theoreticity (through political theory) and politicality (through the
paradigm of sovereignty). According to Esposito, Machiavellis pure
historicism would constitute a realism in its most radical form (cf. Living
Thought). By speaking of politics as a differential of potentialities or potencies,
potenze rather than power, potere Machiavelli would, first, challenge the
opposition between theoria and praxis, and the traditional transcendent
position of theory over praxis. His ontology of immanence would result in
putting conflictual praxis first, as the continuous origin or source of theoria. It
would instantiate a purely empirical-historical-practical account of politics.
Secondly, Machiavelli would offer a representation of politics escaping the
actualisation and stabilisation of potentialities (dunameis) into institutions (for
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T. C. Mercier Political Ontology and the Problem of Force Derrida Today
instance: under the form of a centralised law and sovereignty), thus challenging
the sovereignty of the State-form such as theorised by Hobbes and other
theorists of the social contract (although Hegel is oddly placed in the genealogy
of contractualists) or under the form of capital (in the manner of orthodox
Marxism).
This dynamic ontology would set Machiavelli apart from the whole tradition of
political philosophy as theory of (State or Sovereign) power, which is named by
Esposito the ontology of actuality. Machiavelli would thus constitute an
exception, one which makes him difficult to assimilate by Western philosophical
tradition except, of course, if we count other thinkers who are also perceived
as exceptions, such as Spinoza, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Foucault, sometimes
Marx, Bataille, Merleau-Ponty, Blanchot, Deleuze, Nancy, etc.
Similarly, Negri (see In Praise of the Common) speaks of the Machiavelli-Spinoza-
Marx line in which one could also include Nietzsche perhaps, as opposed to
what he calls the Hobbes-Rousseau-Hegel line. Therefore, Machiavelli, the
exception-Machiavelli, would belong to a line, a genealogy (thats also
Negris word), a dynasty of exceptions, in which Negri later includes Foucault.
In this perspective, Machiavelli would be part of a tradition of exceptions, so to
speak unless it be an exceptional tradition? but at this stage, of course, I have
no idea what the term exception might signify or designate.
(Be it said in passing, Foucault himself should be considered as an exception
within this series of exceptions, because he viewed Machiavelli as a theorist of
power and sovereignty, and usually associated him with Hobbes. And, another
example of exception, but this one coming from the other side: Hegel whom
Esposito and Negri consider to be representative of the juridicist tradition of
the State-form the same Hegel, then, loved Machiavelli with passion.)
Of course, my intention is not to settle these genealogical questions or problems.
These preliminary remarks aim to point to a certain ethos in reading here in
reading and re-reading Machiavelli , and particularly to what I would call a
genealogical drive, an urge or a pulsion. For that matter, lets just note for now
that there is a certain irony in the fact that the exception-Machiavelli is
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T. C. Mercier Political Ontology and the Problem of Force Derrida Today
Now I am going to ask you to pretend that the title of this presentation is not
the pretentious title that I initially chose, the one that you can find in the
conference booklet. Lets imagine that my real title is:
Post res perditas: the Latin phrase means after the things (res, rei) were/are lost.
It is usually translated as after the disaster, after the catastrophe and, I
would be tempted to say: aprs le dluge.
Machiavelli scribbled these words in 1512 on the cover of a copy of his own
manuscript: A Discourse on Remodeling the Government of Florence.
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This inscription has been interpreted diversely across centuries. The general
acceptation is that it refers, specifically, to the political situation in Florence: the
loss of the Republic, the military defeats so that Machiavelli is writing after
something or some things (res, rei) worthy was/were lost, and the implicit
question would be: can we get it/them back? And, if something can be saved,
preserved, conserved, or found again, what should we do now? Can we bring
the res publica back?
What is to be done?
This relates to the practical dimension of Machiavellis writings. This is
Machiavellis starting point and with him, the incipit of so-called modern
political theory. In a sense, since Machiavelli, modern politics have always-
already been looking backwards, from the start, and they have always-already
come too late. Late before they even began. They are mourning, and they must
repair. For this is where we start: not in media res, but rather post-res a post, a
written postscript, which could be articulated and disarticulated ad libitum in
relation to all the other posts: postmodernity, post-structuralism, post-
foundationalism, post-postmodernism, post-colonialism, post-Marxism, post-
anarchism, post-humanism, post-capitalism, post-materialism, post-political,
post-war, post-9/11, post-communism, post-apocalyptic, post-traumatic, post-
production, post-doctorate, post-mortem, etc.
Post res perditas: theres also the sense that something was lost for Machiavelli
himself. Something personal. First, as you certainly know, he lost his job and
probably a few self-delusions on the nature of power, of politics. Because, surely,
what has been lost is also the old world, old conceptions of what politics are
made of all the conventions, the ideals, the imaginary I would be tempted
to say the ideological representations or reflections (ideologische Vorstellungen,
Reflexionen, to use, anachronistically, Marx and Engelss words), all that which
used to underlie the practice of politics, such as traditionally described and
reflected in the Mirrors for Princes.
These things are lost: Post res perditas.
Now what can we do? What should we do?
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So, after things (res, rei) were lost post res perditas Machiavelli turns to
another thing (cosa), another reality: a reality of the thing itself. The
effective or effectual truth of the thing (cosa) is substituted for another reality of
the thing, for an old thing which was lost when the old reality itself was lost
post res perditas.
As usual with so-called realisms or new realisms, what we have here is a
swap: a thing for a thing, cosa-pro-cosa or causa-pro-causa, a reality substituted for
another reality, a transaction between realities, between realisms, supposedly in
the name of some super- or hyper-realism. This new realism is what Esposito
calls Machiavellis radical realism. It involves a resolutely partial or partisan
gaze, an intervention into the concrete, the politics of the present, of the
actuality of the present, the living present (Esposito) in which the theorist
takes part, first and foremost, as a practician a practician with his or her own
forces and interests, concretely engaged in what must be understood as a field
of forces.
In Chapter 3 of The Prince, Machiavelli depicts the multiplicity of forces in
conflict in the terms of natural science, as a differential of potencies (potenza,
potenze), intensities, of more or less potent (potente, potenti) physical forces (forze)
opposing or attracting, repelling or absorbing each other, in a quasi-
gravitational description akin to what Foucault described as a microphysics of
power (Discipline and Punish). In this tableau, the body of States, of governments,
of the people, are described as natural or animal bodies, corporeal, healthy or
sick, lifeful or sickly, because they are expressions of life itself: life-forces or life-
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potencies. We would thus have a pluralist and conflictual ontology of forces and
potentialities, directly opposed to the juridicism expressed by the hegemonic
tradition of political theory. According to Espositos dichotomic representation,
the theorisation of power and law (particularly under the form of sovereignty)
would already constitute an actualisation, a realisation and stabilisation of life-
potencies or potentialities. And through this process of theorisation as
actualisation (and vice-versa), potentialities would be supposedly lost as
potentialities. In contradistinction, Machiavellis radical realism is said to
preserve the potentialities of virtualities as such; it would thus constitute an
antidote against another, lesser realism (realisation as actualisation, interpreted by
Esposito as an idealism a metaphysics).
The ontologisation of potency, dunamis, force of potentiality as such would
oppose the ontology of actuality, energeia or entelechy (understood, in the
classical, proto-Aristotelian sense, as an actualisation of dunamis), which is said to
problematically limit the potentiality of the possibility itself potentiality as
such by inscribing it within a teleology. The absolute immanence of forces,
of conflictual life-forces, would be the infinite source or origin of all political
powers or sovereignties.
According to Esposito, this focus on immanence implies the ontological
connection between origin, life, and change, which could be traced in
Machiavellis articulation between fortune (Fortuna), virtuous force (virt), and
the Occasion that is, a violent or forceful grasping of the infinite becoming
of action (Esposito) which Machiavelli described in the terms of a rape: the
rape of a woman (The Prince: Chapter 25):
Fortune is a woman, and if you want to keep her under it is necessary to beat
her and force her down.
perch la fortuna donna, et necessario, volendola tenere sotto, batterla et urtarla.
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practical terms even though, in all rigour, the distinction between theoria and
praxis should not survive the forcefulness of this injunction.
Force violates in advance the authority of the ontological question. And in this
violation, this violating force, the violence of a force violante, a violance, so to say,
the question of ontology (be it an ontology of force) finds itself exceeded and
interrupted by another force.
An uncanny force, before and beyond ontology.
I will try to show why and how in two moments, which I divided in a rather
artificial, maybe forceful, manner. The first argument is roughly epistemic; it
concerns the interrelation between praxis and theory, and more generally the
articulation between empiricism and ontology with regard to force. The
second argument is prescriptive or, more precisely, has to do with an intrinsic
prescriptivity seemingly consubstantial with force itself.
1. The first issue, then, concerns the traditional philosophical question of
nominalism. It is an argument made by Derrida in a reading of Foucault on
the subject of power (see Beyond the Power Principle, presented in 1985, and
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5
Cristina Ion, Vivre et crire la politique chez Machiavel : le paradigme du ritratto, Archives de
Philosophie 2005/3 (Tome 68), pp. 525-44.
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interpretative models which will retrospectively enforce its legitimacy as power (this
argument is made by Derrida in Force of Law, notably). The risk is to
conflate force and success which would mean that the ontological
validation of a force depends on its own performative power, that is, on the
forceful enactment or a performative success susceptible to consolidate its own
tautological validity for instance through the enforcement of beliefs and
legitimacy.
What does Machiavelli have to say about this uncanny performative power
inseparable from force itself? The question concerns the articulation of beliefs
and force: what does it mean to believe in force? Why and how should we be
made to believe in power and, for instance, in the legitimacy of the Prince? Can
one force someone to believe? And how may we ask these questions in the
context of a realistic ontology of force? The perverse law of this performative
force attached to beliefs may take the shape of a power to make believe, a
successful power to make believe through force, a power to make-know or to
make-knowledge, as Derrida writes in The Beast and the Sovereign. This power
would suppose a faire-savoir or faire-croire, that is to say, the power to perform
and transform what one calls reality be it the reality of a political realism
which would take beliefs, legitimacy, ideology or symbolicity (and their
potential force) seriously. In the chapter 6 of The Prince, Machiavelli claims that
the political leader, the religious leader, the prophet, must make sure not only
that people believe, but also that they keep their faith, their beliefs. Believe it or
not, Machiavelli is here writing about Moses. And he says that, in order to make
sure that people keep faith, it is imperative that the prophet (I quote) make
people believe through the use of force (this is actually a quote please
believe me). The people must be forced to believe, through the use of brute force.
Here, then, Machiavelli makes the massive claim that belief and faith may
indeed be fostered through the use of physical, armed violence but this
statement immediately questions the nature of faith and that of force itself.
Certainly, it is hard to believe that Machiavelli is not being somewhat ironic
here, but I can only believe that he is, and nothing I could say would be in
measure to prove what I believe to be his irony. Machiavelli is, after all,
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T. C. Mercier Political Ontology and the Problem of Force Derrida Today
Again, what we have here is a political thought attached to the effect (effetto)
factuality, efficacy, effectivity but now it clearly involves a projection into a
future beyond the present, a promise which signifies a gap between the fact
(fatto) and the effect (effetto). This prophetic-eschatological structure is due to the
fact that force must write itself beyond presence, thus propelling itself towards its
own law to come, its legislation or legitimacy, its future legibility or legend
(to speak like Max Weber), by attempting to produce the law of its future
readings and interpretations: this justification to come would constitute its self-
legitimation as ipseic power. As a result, force cannot present itself as such because
it always-already writes itself in order to present itself, that is, to become
presentable, readable and legible beyond the pure or brute fact of force; the
fact of force thus presupposes the force of its differentiality and iterability
which are the conditions for its legibility, interpretability or intelligibility that
is, also, its representativity, fictionality and spectrality. This archi-logic or archi-
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In the blazon: only animals. No traces of Man and his laws; only Force. The
Lion and the Fox are in cage. The human-half of the Prince does not show
itself, at least not within the blazon: it looks like Man shows himself masked, like
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the Fox, hiding himself through the making of his own mascot, the political
emblem par excellence, here in a French Grande cole. Our emblem and our
problem: only force, and force only, the same or another. End of parenthesis.)
Problem of force, then. Or, rather, problem of forces: the Lions and the Foxs.
Two forces, or more than two at least two forces in one. But two forces
which do not exactly proceed at the same level; they do not simply face each
other, not in a face-to-face, not in a symmetric duo, duel, confrontation, conflict
or opposition. Force itself, as one, pertains to the beasts (and to the man who
acts as a beast) but force is immediately divided within itself. Ruse is a
force which is not exactly force itself. Force is thus proper as improper, already
divided in its concept. Force is multiple, forces, plural before the One, before
the origin of force and before its own concept. It is differential and
asymmetric before or beyond pluralism. What we have here is not simply a
conjunction or binary such as Espositos insistent reading of Machiavellis figure
of the Centaur would suggest. Bestial force differs from itself not only through
the (affected) bestiality of man, but also through the differantiality of force(s)
within bestiality itself. This differantiality exceeds the chimeric or hybrid
composition of an assemblage or aggregate such as the Centaur.
Whats essential for our subject, here, is that the multiplicity and differentiality
of forces is prior to the ontology or phenomenality of force itself, also because it
is a differentiality internal to the onto-phenomenality of the thing itself, reality,
res rei, or, in other words: another post res perditas.
As a matter of fact, fatto, the figure of the Fox holds together a chain of motifs
running all through The Prince, and which makes it a treaty on fraud (fraude) and
appearing (parere). This direction, which would seem to, at least, complicate
Machiavellis statements on the effectual truth of the thing, suggests a
deceiving phenomenality indissociable from power and force a dissociation,
or dissociative experience, affecting the link between the thing itself and its
phenomenal appearances. Ruse allows a twisting of force that is, of the thing
itself, and this even if one is bent to understand the real thing as pure
immanence, for instance in the form of a conflictual ontology of forces or
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potencies. The force of this performative foxing, so to say, must precede the
purely empirical phenomenality which accounts for the reality, for the presence of
forces or potencies which challenges the possibility to establish a political
ontology of conflict based on an ontology of forces or on a phenomenology of
violence (for instance, in the sense that Balibar gives to this expression).
Certainly, this originary foxing is a ruse not a subjective ruse, of course,
but a ruse of structure (this is a quote by Derrida, from Negotiations,
although here Derrida is speaking about Nietzsche, not about Machiavelli...).
This structural ruse points to a pervertibility threatening the logic of force from
within, and signifying the differential intercontamination of force and law rather
than their opposition or their logical subordination. For analogous reasons, the
figure of the Fox also suggests a force of weakness or the weakness of force
for instance, that of the poor Lion, tricked by the Fox.
But the fact is that Derrida kept using the language of force until the very end,
until the ultimate interruption using expressions such as performative
force, force of law, force of the event, weak force, force without
power, force without force, etc.
In the thought of the uncanny im-possible, the problem of force returns: the
ultimate paradox is that when Derrida speaks about the improperness of force,
he has no other choice than using the language of force (I quote Derrida from
Nietzsche & the Machine):
The logic of force bows to a law stronger [plus forte] than that of force. The
logic of force reveals within its logic a law that is stronger [plus forte] than this
very logic.
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Derrida thus strives to think the actuality of the im-possible event, which exists in
actuality, but before and beyond its ontologisation actualising, here and now,
the spectral haunting of the im-possible, beyond potentiality and beyond
virtuality. Here, one would have to trace Derridas continuous discussion of
Aristotelian categories of dunamis/energeia something that I am doing, with
comparison to Agambens postulation of a pure potentiality, in a forthcoming
paper. To put it briefly, the notion of this self-interruption demands that we
think together force and energy, potency and power, potentiality and
actualisation. They are indissociable in their heterogeneity. This radical
heterogeneity is precisely what prevents from producing an ontology of force (or
dunamis), in the same manner that an ontology of the act will always be
reductive. But this heterogeneity is also what gives force its dunamis it is the
force of force, which immediately entails that this force is essentially otherly, de-
powering and somewhat weak. Nonetheless, the force of the event remains, in
spite of its weakness, and perhaps paradoxically, irresistible. As such, force
supposes resistance, but not (only) in the (Foucauldian) sense of a conflictuality
of forces although this might always happen but because force resists itself as
another force: it resists its own actualisation, in an (an-)economy which is itself
differantial and generative before and beyond ontology.
This also explains why a theory of force cannot find its grounding in an
ontology of life: because this spectral haunting or self-interruption implies to
think im-possibility before pure potency and before the act itself, it signifies
not only an indissociability of force and weakness, but also a heterogeneous
complicity between life and death, before and beyond ontological
reconstruction it would beckon a force before force, the drive of the drive,
pulsivity itself: that is, my own interruption.
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