Apart From Philosophy:    A Part of a Conversation with Andrew Benjamin

Stuart Barnett: I was wondering if you could give us a sense of what it's like to engage in deconstructive philosophy in England, a country we tend to associate with people like Russell and Austin. Even in the phrase "continental philosophy" we use the channel to cordon England off from the philosophy of France and Germany. We are indeed aware of people like Geoffrey Bennington, Christopher Norris, Simon Critchley, yourself, and others we could name. (And then there is the category of those who have come here, like Robert Bernasconi and David Wood--which could perhaps be used to confirm the hypothesis I'm suggesting.) Yet somehow we are left with the impression of deconstruction being out of place in England. I suppose the relatively recent affair in Cambridge over Derrida lends weight to this impression. Is the deconstructive philosophy we see coming out of England an indication of a transformation in English philosophy or is it something that remains "beyond the fringe"?
Andrew Benjamin: What first strikes me about this particular question is that it's not a question I would pose to myself in the English context. Not that I don't see a relation between the people you've mentioned and deconstruction. I never thought of defining it in that way. It's very interesting that you view it in that way. That's the first thing that I note. But in thinking about it, it is clear that Derrida has had a profound impact on a generation of philosophers in the English or British context. The difficulty with the role of deconstruction within the British scene is that it's viewed as suspiciously by the establishment as it is by the so-called anti-establishment. The establishment of the right and the establishment of the left are both equally suspicious of this form of philosophical activity. Even journals such as Radical Philosophy are just as dismissive of French philosophy--say, Lyotard and Derrida--as the analytic journals. Thus one is squeezed by the two prongs of the establishment. Now I say that as an Australian living in Britain. I'm sure the British themselves don't see it that way. They see it in ways that have to do with the role which a conception of national identity--even though it's not announced as such--assumes within the philosophical. There is difficulty in defining this particular space, which you've called deconstructive philosophy. Clearly from your position outside it certainly seems to be at work. I don't--or the people you've referred to: Geoff Bennington, Simon Critchley, Christopher Norris and others--see it in that particular way at all. As I said it's interesting to me that you do. Now having said thatto take it a stage furtherone of the great problems to which this gives rise is that there is very little dialog for those philosophers working in that tradition. Because neither of the two prongs of the establishment wish to address those concerns. Therefore there is a greater relationship between what we are doing and people in France and between what we are doing and people in America than there is within the British context itself. What deconstruction has done is force upon those of us who are interested in it is an internationalization of intellectual activity. Not simply because one wants to talk to people. But because of the fact that what one is working against--though it's always unannounced--are residual national forms of philosophy. The philosophy of the left and the philosophy of the right in Britain are residual national forms of philosophy. And what makes deconstruction--and everything that comes in its wake--so interesting is its necessary internationalization, consequently one doesn't talk about French philosophy versus German philosophy. And yet that is the way the British view deconstructionas French philosophy. One can keep opening up your question to begin to diagnose the sorts of dilemmas and problems at work within the British philosophical scene.
Barnett: Could one say that within the English context it remains a ghetto?
Benjamin: It's not so much that it's a ghetto. There is indeed a marginalization of this mode of philosophical activity. But it's marginalized through a nationalist discourse, a discourse of the nation that is not recognized as such. And so there is this residual move back to Britishness on both the left and right. Though they don't realize that's what they're doing. They drive it out by labeling it as French, or labeling it as something else. And then they have nothing to do with it because it's other. What that means also is--again, in the British context--that it's very difficult to do original philosophical work that has its basis in deconstruction or the European orientation. Because both ends of the traditionthe two prongs of that traditionremain uninterested in that. They remain interested in their own traditions. That's one of the very interesting problems as a consequence. In the case of all of these people you've referred to, all of us see ourselves as far more internationally oriented, and find a reception and audience for what we do all over the place, rather than in Britain. All these people are rather isolated. Precisely for the reasons I've already addressed.
Barnett: So what you're saying is that to frame the question in terms of a transformation of English philosophy is beside the point.
Benjamin: I believe it is. There hasn't really been a transformation of English philosophy by the incorporation of deconstruction. If anything, there's been a residual hardening of attitudes on both sides against whatever is meant by deconstruction. One only has to look at the dismissive articles from both sides of the fence as it were to begin to see the dilemma. I think one needs to say that that reinforces the power of deconstruction and everything that's come afterwards. I would insist on this "everything that comes afterwards" because Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe, myself--a whole lot of people--would see deconstruction as the point of departure but would not want to see themselves as acting out what Derrida has given one to act out. That said, I think it is very difficult to find a reception for this sort of work.
Barnett: So the point would be that we no longer ask "what is X national philosophy?"
Benjamin: Yes. The antagonism comes from those philosophers who move with Derrida, from Derrida, being viewed as extra-territorial in a certain sense. But the power of deconstruction is that it--to use Deleuze's term--does deterritorialize. It shows up the attacks on it to be attacks about territory, attacks about where philosophy is done, to become the affirmation of types of traditions that are usually linked to national questions. It attests to the power of this work that it demands such a strong response.
Barnett: Kind of the Baader-Meinhof idea, where you get the state to expose its repressive nature?
Benjamin: No, I don't think it's intentional. That's an interesting question. No, I don't think this philosophy is the philosophical equivalent of terrorism. I can imagine a philosophy that would be. What it has done is solidify the nature of the attack. So that it's no longer possible to distinguish between the left-wing and the right-wing establishment in terms of the way they denounce what they call French philosophy. That linkage of nation and philosophy is what comes out of the establishment(s). Therefore our first move to defuse that is to turn it back on them: can't you see what you're doing is reiterating a nationalistic discourse of the right or a nationalistic discourse of the left?
Barnett: The whole point then would be to dismantle the very question of how English it is?
Benjamin: By showing them it is very English. And then saying: is this really what we want from philosophy? For it to be a resurgent voice of the nation that one characterizes as French or German or continental or whatever? So when you say that you are left with the impression that deconstruction is out of place in England, it is precisely out of place, but it is far more emphatically out of place than the standard ways of understanding that would yield.
Barnett: And that's precisely how it is at home.
Benjamin: Quite. That's why I said it has to use Deleuze's term. It deterritorializes . . . .
Barnett: place itself, before it can even be out of place.
Benjamin: But that brings the resurgent advocacy of place.
Barnett: What strikes me about your work is the incredible range in terms of the subjects you have taken up--I indicate such figures as Peter Eisenman and Anselm Kiefer to suggest the scope of your work. You do not just talk about art as such; you provide close analyses of works of art. At the same time, you have given us in The Plural Event a theory for this very same activity. There you seem concerned with deliberating upon the gift of the tradition, with the notions of singularity and the newnot as that which stands beyond all relation but that which is a reworking of the gift of history. To connect these two moments together: does philosophy require art? Is art that which presents the irreducibility of singularity?
Benjamin: I would like to address that quite specifically in that what interests me always is not the relationship between philosophy and architecture or philosophy or painting, but whether or not it's possible to write philosophically about painting or architecture in a way that allows painting and architecture to be concerned with themselves. Historians of art write histories of art; sociologists of art--like Bourdieu--write sociologies of art, etc. What interests me is writing philosophically about these topics. Indeed, what interests me philosophically is the way in which these activities engage with the nature of the activity itself--as part of that activity. So there's always this double movement going on. The virtue of doing that is that it then becomes possible to develop a critical stance in relation to painting and to architecture. Because what has been talked about always is the repetition of a generic possibility. In other words, every time a painter paints, he or she is repeating the genre of painting. Even when one divides that further between landscape painting, figurative painting, abstract painting--whatever you wish. It's still a repetition of the genre. And therefore the evaluative question is: what's the nature of the repetition? Viewing it in this way allows one to begin to make claims about paintings. But it's always going to be a claim about the specificity of particular works. This painting here is operating in this particular way.
You asked about Anselm Kiefer. What is interesting about Anselm Kiefer's work is that he uses the genre of landscape in order to open up the genre in a very important way. In using it and opening it up, he allows for a different form of repetition. With that repetition he allows the inscription of history into the place of geography such that on the actual terrain--the literal field of landscape--history is taking place. And his work allows for this in ways that I think have not been done before. In my recent work I've tried to talk about this opening in terms of what I've fancifully called "the logic of the apart/a part." This opening occurs to the extent that something is a part of the genre to the extent that it's apart from the genre. The "of" and the "from"--the two little prepositions--carry the distinction. But it means that it obviates the need to pose apocalyptic questions like "the end of painting," or "the end of art" by allowing the opening of this space in which the question of the nature of the repetition becomes the exacting question. Now, this general idea, the abstract idea--the apart a part--can be used in my opinion to talk about architecture as well. Because, as a lot of architects would argue, architecture must remain architecture. But it doesn't follow from that that every determination of the domestic house, the hospital, the university, etc., has to be repeated in the same way. Once again, with every new building, the question is: what's the nature of the repetition? Given that it is a repetition, which is true by definition, what's the nature of the repetition? That opening becomes, if you like, a site of evaluation. It's also the site of critique. And it rids one of a nihilism of destruction and a conservatism that believes that everything just goes on. There's an opening. I think I would argue that philosophy allows for that perception because it's a perception that comes out of a certain kind of engagement with the notion of critique that derives from Kant in a very twisted and adapted way. And then there's the consequent insistence on both the specificity and materiality. We're talking about this type of architecture and this is the instance of itnow what do we say? Instead of seeing universal claims or abstract claims that are concretized we go to the specific always. And that becomes the site of philosophical activity because that's the site of the repetition. Now, in my own work I have been fascinated by what it means to be philosophical about various topics. And I would make a great case for art and architecture as in some sense demanding these days a response from philosophy. That in some sense philosophy transforms itself in the activity of trying to answer the question. In other words, this is where I would share the orientation of the work of Lyotard, for whom, in some sense, art demands of philosophy more than philosophy can give. There's something excitingin an intellectual sense, though also challenging in an intellectual senseabout having to give more than you're able to give. That, for my mind, is an important creative tension in which innovation and experimentation within the writing and activity of philosophy emerges.
Barnett: When you take up works you seem to address something that is beckoned for within the work. There is an immersion and an attempt to come to grips with the work itself, a thinking through and with the work, which is unique for philosophy. It is responding philosophically to the work as opposed to applying a philosophy to the work, which in turn brings forth the (plural) singularity of the work. At the same time, what's interesting is that you in a sense caution us about thinking about these things as without relation, as utterly and absolutely new. That sets higher stakes for philosophy, because philosophy must confront--and perhaps more importantly, be confronted by--these very particular works.
Benjamin: For me--I'm very reluctant to use the word--it's an ethics of interpretation, namely, that you must allow the work to do what it wants. You must have absolute respect for the integrity of the work as a point of departure. But then I'd want to make a lot--as I have done in my recent writingsof the word "work." And take the word "work" as verbal. I've written a lot recently about the work of the work, or the work's work. And that becomes an ontological claim. The work does not simply have integrity in that one respects that integrity as a point of departure. What becomes interesting is the way in which a work works in its attempt to realize itself. So I would talk a lot about an object as being workful. And I've begun to try and draw a distinction that I'm only partially happy with--between meaning and signification. Where meaning is what one can say about a work independently of the way in which its materiality or its material presence intrudes. As such a painting or a building would be reduced to visual sign. Its specificity and its materiality refused. I'd want to contrast this to signfication. Signification is linked to the workful nature of the work, in other words, to the way in which it realizes itself in terms of its material presence. Now, I believe this is a way of talking as much about poetry and the way in which language is the material presence of a poem, the way language works both on the page in terms of a poesy almost as well as the material presence of language and talk about the signification of an object, which addresses its workful nature. Now it doesn't follow from that that the way it works concludes or resolves or finishes or completes. There are different ways in which work takes place. But by insisting on the workful nature, it brings together an ontology of process whereby one sees a building or painting as realizing itself or effectuating itself, bringing itself about, and therefore not as fixed, over. And then one links that to what I said before about integrityin every sense of the term integrity: the ethico-moral sense and also the sense that it's an integral object. Because it has integrity doesn't mean it's over. It's always already completing itself. And signification is concerned with how it works to complete itself. And also I'd want to link it to the logic of the apart a part and begin to build up a larger version of talking about objects. But then link that to specific art works to show what it would mean to talk about this rather general claim in regard to specific worksnot just specific painters. I published a book recently called Object Painting, which was an attempt to develop a theory of the object. For me this is important because what it does is that it allows for the centrality of ontology--namely, that what we're talking about is the being proper to an object as actually giving you the site of interpretation once one privileges what I call signification.
Barnett: Let's digress into architecture, since it seems such a large focus of your concerns. I'd be curious to hear how you position yourself in relation to it. In Hegel, for instance, architecture gets placed in the logic of this temporal framework of the unfolding of spirit. It's more laden with content and thus the material world--and hence the social world. The movement of spirit tends towards a liberation from content. So the language of poetry would then seem to be the artistic ideal. I'd be curious to hear how you position yourself in relation to the philosophical position of architecture and to the role architecture has played philosophy.
Benjamin: This is something I've thought about but from two completely different perspectives. Hegel, as you're succinctly outlining, gives this privileged place to architecture, as does Gadamer in Truth and Method--but for very different reasons. Architecture ends up having a privileged place amongst all the arts but for completely non-Hegelian reasons. What interests me about this is a question that leads us back to what we were just talking aboutare they actually talking about architecture? On one level clearly they are. There are a number of philosophers who ostensibly talk about architecture. They're actually not talking about architecture. And yet they're concerned with the way in which architecture fits into a larger philosophical position, or the way in which that position is given within the architectural. As in the case of the temple with Heidegger. Or the house of the peasants at the end of "Building Dwelling Thinking." He says at one point that "dwelling takes place here" with all the pathos attached to it. But he doesn't address the architecture of the house; he doesn't address the structure of the domestic and the way it operates in the house. At no stage does he address the specificity of the architectural. The philosophical problem with this is: what's the word "architecture" naming or identifying when they use it? It seems to me there are two things one says there. Architecture names a series of divergent practices to begin with; and architecture names a site of generic repetitions. There's domestic architecture, architecture of museums, etc. All of these have generic repetition, but all of these are in some sense different. We can group them all as architecture, but it becomes utterly misleading to talk about architecture as though it had a universality that allowed one to talk about it in and of itself. My response is a philosophical response: they're misusing the term because they think it is a singular practice. It's not a singular practice but a series of practices that are conflictual. And so philosophy--the German tradition--has in some sense misused the term in the same way in which Hegel thinks that philosophy is just one thing even though there are divergent moments of it, and that there is such a thing as Philosophy--as I've tried to argue in The Plural Event. There aren't all these divergent practices all of which bear the name of Philosophy; it's all part of the whole. Architecture would function in a similar way. I would say that the same essentializing move vis-à-vis architecture also misstates the reality of architecture. Interestingly enough, it precludes architecture from having part of that which marks it out, namely, its distinction from building. And what characterizes that distinction is that architecture can have a critical relationship to generic repetition. Architecture is building that allows criticality. And once that criticality vanishes, architecture becomes building again. This is the logic of the apart a part once more: architecture emerges at its most emphatic precisely in its recognition that a particular building is apart from, while also being a part of, a particlar generic possibility. A museum working within this opening transforms what we understand a museum to be. There's a transformative element within it and that's where architecture emergeswithin that possible, critical opening of the apart/a part in which it ceases to be mere building. And that's why architecture is so challenging, much like philosophy. These are utterly conservative disciplines; they conserve. Precisely because they conserve they allow also for this rupture in which something is given again, but for the first time. And that's the logic of the apart/a part. I would resist the way philosophers have framed architecturefor philosophical reasons. Which then allows me to pose again the question--within philosophy--of architecture.
Barnett: So the problem is that architecture is always thought in terms of the idea of architecture. And philosophy presents itself as the comprehension, the realization of the idea of architecture on a higher level. Whereas what you're suggesting is that to resist that one should look at a particular instance of a building, which then works against both the idea of Architecture and philosophy as this necessary and inevitable comprehension of it.
Benjamin: That's what I've tried to argue in the section on Hegel in The Plural Event--and I will always continue arguing. The problem is of the Eigentümlich, of that which is idiosyncratic. This term keeps cropping upparticularly in the shorter Logic--and it bedevils him. He cannot literally tolerate the idea of that which has particularity or is idiosyncratic. In the beginning of Hegel's Differenz essay he says that the particular always brings with it that which it cannot disavow, namely, its relation to the universal. It's that particular point that I define as my point of departure from Hegel--not that I want pure particularity and idiosyncrasy. We can also use the word chance here. You can say that what Hegel doesn't do is give chance a chance. Because chance is always a form of necessity. If we looked hard, we'd realize that it was never just chance. Thus what I'm interested in with the logic of the apart a part is that opening in which chance can occur. But it's never pure chance in the sense of there being no relation. There's always a relation because of generic repetition. What I'm allowing for is an opening that allows chance to work because then the particular comes to define probably even retrospectively its relation to that genre that it is repeating. But in repeating the genre, it can transform the nature of the genre. So there's this liberating, transforming effect. That's why I see Hegel as being the key philosopher to argue against in regards to the question of particularity or the idiosyncratic.
Barnett: What is it that draws you to architecture? Is there a unique challenge posed by architecture as opposed to, say, painting?
Benjamin: There are two ways of answering this. On a personal level, I am extremely interested in the aesthetics of buildings. In addition, I'm also particularly taken by the intelligence and creativity of the designers where I teach at Columbia University. I do think that the sort of things going on there are just a challenge to thinking. There's a generation of designers now who are very philosophically literate. There's a real research program that is going on. On a personal level, they're all the things that interest me. On another level, I'm interested in the most conservative practices because they conserve traditions. But I would also add that, because I'm not an apocalyptic thinkerquite the oppositethe logic of the apart a part brings with it a fragility. Architecture always runs the risk of being reduced to building. And there's no way of denying that possibility. It will always be made. And that's why it's incumbent upon philosophers and intellectuals to keep on insisting on the divergent nature of particular buildings, paintings, or urban structures or whatever it is. In fact, it delimits the role of intellectuals and philosophers to keep on insisting on the difference and knowing that the move of sameness will always be made. The task, therefore, is to keep arguing for and demonstrating the irreducibility of a certain object to a tradition, knowing full well that what the tradition will always try and do is to reduce the object down to or back to the nature of the tradition itself in order to allow the tradition to have a repetition of the same. Because that's what a tradition is. I do think that the role of engaged intellectuals and philosophers is to keep insisting upon this and to keep arguing for it. In this way we keep opening up that critical space.
Barnett: It seems that architecture, unlike other fields, has to keep history constantly in mind in a literal sense because one has to keep the larger fabric in mind. What is around the building? What is the site like? What is space within which is being intervened? Buildings are very rarely thought of in complete isolation, whereas a painting we think of as floating in a museum. Yet the museum itself we're often much more conscious of as existing in history. Is that part of the attraction for you?
Benjamin: Yes, but I would twist that slightly by saying that even if the architect forgets, the building remembers. Any building in some sense remembers, by staging its own relation to the history of architecture. In order to talk about that, we'd need to talk about specificity. A building, if you like, encloses a world within it. It's also enclosed within and makes part of an urban fabric. But it also encloses, hence we can talk about the space it encloses and the space in which it is enclosed. All of this involves a notion of memory that is a reference to the tradition or the history of architecture in the same way that any paintingby virtue of being a paintingalready stages its relation to the history of painting. Now, it could be a completely trivial relationship. That possibility is always there. And that's why we can't escape generic repetition. And that's why repetition is always the site of intervention. In my view, the key question is how do you intervene within repetition. What's the nature of that intervention given that it itself will be a form of repetition?
Barnett: Is philosophy itself a further repetition or a disclosure of the repetition?
Benjamin: If one constitutes philosophy as a tradition (that has its dominant traditions, minor traditions, etc.), then any new work that we will call philosophy--in virtue of our calling it philosophy--stages some type of relation to the tradition of philosophy. It's always already historical in the particular sense of taking over the burden of tradition. And then the question is how does it take it over? What interested me in The Plural Event is the claim by Descartes, in the beginning of the Meditations, that we can destroy everything that came before us and build philosophy anew from the foundations. It's a desire to be found in a lot of philosophers, a desire to get rid of everything and start again. And what's interesting here is why that's wrong; why it's false; and why it brings with it a necessary violencethat can be real as well as figural. This notion of destruction and starting again is an attempt to stop the work of repetition. What I tried to argue in The Plural Event is that it is precisely Descartes's inability to do that that should be cautionary for both the politics and philosophy of destruction. To hold to a metaphysics of destruction won't work. But one must think how one would stage another understanding of difference. Or other possibilities of doing things given that a metaphysics of destruction won't work. It's a version of modernity and modernism that says we can destroy and start again.
Barnett: That strikes me as a good summation of analytic philosophy, particularly its ordinary language variant with its appeal to logical common sense . . .
Benjamin: As though that didn't have a tradition.
Barnett: Exactly.
Benjamin: Common sense has a history. Common sense philosophy has always been there. So the naiveté and the hubris of analytic philosophy is breath-taking, absolutely breath-taking.
Barnett: Your current project--which you announced as an extension of The Plural Event--is a study of the politics of judgment. You indicated in The Plural Event that the relation between judgment and the event would be central to this project. In The Plural Event judgment is presented as a repetition that seals off the event and encloses it within its own supposedly self-contained singularity. Could you outline how judgment could be brought into accord with what elsewhere you have discussed as affirmation?
Benjamin: I have used the word affirmation in a number of my writings and I've always worried about using it. Affirmation is linked, I would want to argue, precisely to identify the way in which a work affirmed its distance from the dominance of repetition. It becomes an opening. A work becomes affirm-ative within that sense.
    The question of judgment has to do with the impossibility of finality. For ontological reasons a word does not have a direct referent but, rather, a word names those things which seek to be named by that word. Philosophy would be a good example. Philosophy is a series of divergent practices without an essence. What makes them philosophy is the nature of the relationship they have to their history. Philosophy is constituted by a diverse and conflictual relation to the history of philosophywhich is itself diverse and conflictual. There are both dominant traditions and marginal traditions. Judgment emerges precisely because of the failure of Hegelianism or of the failure of essentialism to yield a single referent. It emerges because of the necessity to make a decision, the necessity to say this works in this way, this is philosophy, knowing that that claim, no matter how emphatic, is always marked by the impossibility of its being complete. Judgment, if you like, is linked to a certain form of humility. Now, judgment equally can be linked to the political in that the subject of rights brings with it that sort of conflictual problem. Namely, you can't insist upon sameness; you can't insist upon a synthetic unity within the social fabric. One has to become reconciled to the impossibility of reconciliation. So you become reconciled to irreconcilability, which doesn't mean then that Bosnia or Beirut become the paradigms. Quite the opposite. The resolution, if there is one, to the situation of Yugoslavia is precisely the recognition of the impossibility of reconciliation--and yet being reconciled to that. Instead of trying to master space by saying that we will have synthetic unity within it, you argue for the opposite. The only way of living together is being reconciled to the state of irreconcilability and that then becomes what is named by the nation, named by the people, named by philosophy. What I have called diasporaization of the nation state recognizes that the state already contains the other within it and that the other is as much integral to the constitution of the state as the state itself. We get rid of the idea of a people or a race as marked by blood. And the same will be trueand I say this as a Jew in relation to Israelof Israel, which will only function when it recognizes that the other is already there. And the other views it as the other. What is necessary is what I call an ontology that yields a differential plurality that insists upon irreconcilability, that insists upon what Heidegger would call polemos, conflictwhich becomes not a state of war but what happens when you overcome the notion of the essence, when you get rid of the idea of a resolute people, when you get rid of the idea of any essentializing form. Judgment emerges again precisely because it's needed; it's needed because there is no unity, or there isn't a synthetic unity that would just be repeated ad infinitum. If the same thing keeps happening, why would you need judgmentexcept to check that it's happening? Judgment emerges because you have an irreconcilable conflict. That's why I think Jean-Luc Nancy is right when he says that you can't think social being other than in relation to ontology.
    Now, the reality is that traditions demand reducibility. What is happening in Bosnia is that the traditions of nationalism and the traditions of religious nationalism are demanding reducibility. They're demanding that certain geographic areas have a synthetic unity in terms of the people who live there. Now you can keep insisting upon ethnic cleansing, but in the end ethnic cleansing fails or is only possible through horrendous forms of violence. The antidote to violence is in some sense allowing for and affirming the impossibility of reducibility. And then saying that's the point of departurenow what do we do? That's why judgment becomes necessary. How do you predict what happens when you affirm irreducibility? Because you're severing the relationship to a tradition of reducibility and yet you're opening up other ways in which people can be Muslim, Bosnians, Serbs, or whatever. One's not saying that you have to give up everything and just call yourself the next citizen of the world or something naive like this. You can guard your traditions and what's important to you, but you can't totalize this piece of space and say only here will we allow people like me. It's how you then do that that becomes the operation of judgment in a concrete, political sense.