Abstract
This paper explores the possibility for a means of bringing about novelty which does not rely on kairological philosophies based on an event. In contrast to both common sense and contemporary philosophical understandings of the term where for novelty to arise there must be some break in the repetition of the structure, this paper argues that it is possible for novelty to come about through small-scale experimentation. This is done by relying on the philosophical notion of ‘economy’ in order to understand how we think about the world. In this regard, our thinking about the world depends upon acknowledging certain possibilities at the expense of others. History can then be seen as the distribution of emphasis which allows for these past possibilities and the future potentiality they may hold. Novelty, defined here as a rereading of history, is precisely the disruption of these possibilities and a challenge to the memory of the system. The conclusion to this paper argues that experimentation is an important means by which we can bring novelty into the world.
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets) As long as I misunderstand things, my claim to un-knowing is an empty one. (Georges Bataille)
Introduction
The history of philosophy has contained countless attempts at explaining or prescribing means to bring about novel phenomena, from social-economic systems to understanding evolutionary processes. 1 Novelty, it seems, is a major concern of philosophical thought. In social systems the concern to challenge power has typically been seen to arise from the event of a revolt or revolution. As Roland Boer (2013) in a recent article in Theory, Culture & Society has illustrated, the time of the event or Kairos can be seen as the common foundation of Marxist philosophers such as Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Žižek, Frederic Jameson, Ernest Bloch, and Alain Badiou. All these philosophers, according to Boer, share a common concern to show the importance of the time of the event for the possibility of thinking radical change. Yet, the notion of Kairos carries with it a biblical and conservative heritage (Boer, 2013: 121–8). Against this heritage, Boer proposes the idea of akairos, of the untimely and out of place.
In this article I aim to provide an alternative to the reliance on an event expounded by kairological thinkers and everyday understandings of novelty alike. In a previous article (Human and Cilliers, 2013), I proposed that one could look at our thinking about complex systems in this world as existing within a particular type of economy. This article was aimed at laying the foundation for conceptualizing how we can understand a complex world and make use of models of complex systems which are simultaneously open and closed. One of the conclusions to this article was that the notion of an ‘economy’ helps us to come to an understanding of novelty which does not depend upon the notion of an event. Instead, ‘a consequence of the term “economy” is that it allows us to realize the wealth of potentialities any model may contain… [Therefore] we needn’t wait for an event to reveal some other possibility for existence nor for some interaction with a radical “other”’ (Human and Cilliers, 2013: 40).
Here, I aim to flesh out this understanding of novelty. I begin by providing a brief overview of the work of Alain Badiou (2001, 2005, 2007a, 2008) as an example of current kairological attempts to theorize how novel ways of life are brought into this world through an event. I will conclude this overview with two concerns related to the notion of an event.
Instead of such event-based philosophies, this paper proposes slow and modest experimentation on a local scale as a means to bring about novel forms of existence. 2 I question the possibilities for thinking about change in a way that sits perhaps closer to an akairological approach to the uncertainty of novelty and the inevitable risks it involves than to the biblical certainty of kairological politics. My aim here is to acknowledge the excess of time and place due to the limits we hold in understanding the complexity of the present. This excess is a resource which could be taken advantage of as a means for finding novel ways of being. This is a modest proposal that does not seek to replace the important contributions to critical thinking provided by philosophers such as Alain Badiou but rather aims to supplement them.
I will lay the ground for this alternative view of novelty by first providing a summary of what I mean by the notion of an ‘economy’. Following this I will discuss what the notion of economy holds for how we think about the possibilities and potentialities any system may hold for novelty. The final part of this discussion considers what we mean by the notion of novelty and what the benefits to this definition could be. Here I propose that ‘experimentation’ holds potential for realizing novel ways of life. The conclusion to this paper briefly discusses the ethical dimensions of an experiment and a reflection on the work of Badiou as it relates to the work done here.
Evental Novelty
As Boer (2013) has argued, for Marxist philosophy, the idea of novelty has been tied to the idea of an event which breaks the repetition of the everyday. Novelty then is only possible by a radical and sudden rupture from the repetition of the same at the right time and the right place (Boer, 2013: 117). This ‘modernistic’ understanding of novelty agrees with radical imaginaries of the term in social life, represented by a populace marching in the streets, a moment of revolution signified by the barricade. 3 In many ways, the relation between a sudden rupture and novel phenomena agrees with broader popular understandings of novelty – novelty is often equated with surprise. It is often thought that novelty appears from an ‘outside’, such as in the popular business mantra ‘to think outside the box’.
This concern for a radical and sudden break is reflected in the work of Alain Badiou (2001, 2005, 2007a, 2007b, 2008; see also Feltham, 2008; Hallward, 2003), 4 who has sought to make the notion of an event central to thinking about novelty (Badiou, 2007a: 178; see also Bassett, 2008: 4). Here I will briefly reflect on Badiou’s model as it provides insight into the kairological politics Boer reflects on.
In brief, Badiou’s model (2007a: 93–5) argues that the state structures the repetition of daily life (Johnston, 2007: 2). The state’s influence is excessive to such a degree that it is difficult to find where it begins and ends. It is important to note that the idea of the ‘state’ holds a certain polysemy (Bassett, 2008: 3–4). The term refers to both the state as a political entity and as a particular condition. The state ‘is what discerns, names, classifies, and orders’ (Hallward, 2003: 96). It does not signify any state in particular, only the concept of a meta-structuring process of an existing socio-historical structure (p. 96). This is why Badiou often refers to the ‘state of a situation’ (Badiou, 2007a: 95). It structures the experience of the world to such an extent that the only means we have for realizing an alternative order is the experience of an event (see also Bassett, 2008; Gillespie, 2008; Hallward, 2003). An event is the radical break with the structure of the situation necessary to break the hold of the state. It arises at an evental site and as a located point it forces those who experience it into a binary decision of yes/no, for or against (Badiou, 2007a: 175, 2007b: 41; Hallward, 2008: 107; Riera, 2008: 2331). Evental sites are in the situation, but they belong to it as something uncertain (Hallward, 2003: 120). 5 In Badiou’s thesis (2001: 42, 2007a: 327; see also Critchley, 2000: 22) novelty arises due to the fact that those who experience the event at evental sites, in his terms ‘subjects’, are given access to what he labels the truth or the generic (Badiou, 2001: 42). The truth revealed by the event disrupts the count of the state, it disrupts the order on which the state rests its knowledge (Badiou, 2007a: 328). But it is not simply that an event reveals the truth. Rather, an event only occurs when it is recognized as such by those who experience it (p. 207). There is circularity between an event and a subject in that an event is only possible when it is recognized by the subjects it inspires (see Critchley, 2000: 22). This is the kairological in Badiou; in biblical fashion, ‘one must keep watch, for one knows not the day or hour’ (Boer, 2013: 121) of the event.
The event is necessary as it breaks the hold of the state of the situation over the subjects who find themselves within it. The event, it is important to note for our purposes here, is not based upon previous experiences (Basset, 2008: 9). If the structure of the situation is simply repetition, if part of the effect of structuring is to maintain a predictability based upon the knowledge of the state, the event is unique (Johnston, 2007: 2). In Being and Event (2007a) Badiou maintains a stark contrast between the situation and the event, which is somewhat tempered in its sequel, Logics of Worlds (2009; see also Bassett, 2008; Johnston, 2007; Riera, 2008). In Logics of Worlds Badiou makes a distinction between a modification, a fact, a weak singularity and an event as possible forms of change in a situation (Badiou, 2003a: 132, 2009; see also Hallward, 2008: 106). However, even in this more nuanced typology of change, an event is still the only source of true novelty (Hallward, 2008: 106). It is the uniqueness of the event in relation to structure that implies that it can be the only source of genuine novelty. As Hallward argues (2003: 114–15), ‘it is its evental origin that ensures that true innovation is indeed a kind of creation ex nihilo, a chance to begin again from scratch, to interrupt the order of continuity and inevitability’. It is the radical break of the event which forces subjects to reorder the world in order to account for the experience of the event and to invent new ways to accommodate this accounting (Badiou, 2001: 41–2, 2007a: 192; see also Johnston, 2007). This is because the event is ‘like a point of the real [point de reel] that puts language into a deadlock’ (Badiou, 2003b: 46, emphasis in original). Novelty then cannot agree with any existing definition of the state.
Hence the dependence upon the notion of truth; Badiou requires a means of postulating an outside to the structure of the state. The ‘truth’ or ‘generic’ grants him this possibility (Badiou, 2001: 42; see also Critchley, 2000: 23). There is no process of interpretation; the truth reveals itself in the event and the realization of a truth implies a radical break with the state (Badiou, 2001: 41–2; Hallward, 2003: xxiv). Rather than interpretation, Badiou argues that what is discovered in the event must be realized. True novelty is the realization of a truth revealed by an event. The event, then, as Critchley (2000: 23) notes, ‘is an idea of order, it is something that we impose on the world, the grid through which and in terms of which we see it’. It is an either/or logic. Either you have awoken to the truth and are fighting for its realization or you are still caught in the logic of the state (Badiou, 2005: 248–9). There is no objective means of proving the occurrence of an event because proof and objectivity can only be recognized in a situation as approved by the knowledge of the state (Badiou, 2007a: 192). It is an act of faith or ‘fidelity’ to realize the truth revealed by an event (p. 232). However, this does not imply a universal or total revolution. This complies with a certain ‘vulgar Marxism’ (p. 176). Rather, ‘change is always the product of a certain situation’ (p. 176).
Despite his critique of ‘vulgar Marxism’, Simon Critchley (2000: 26, 2008: 1928; see also Surin, 2005) has noted that Badiou’s philosophy still tends to romanticize the event and appears nostalgic for ‘heroic, grand’ politics. This may lead, as Bassett (2008: 14) notes, to the passivity of a waiting game. My concern with making the event central to the appearance of novelty is made via a series of interlinked critiques largely centred on the consequences of making opaque certain features of structure, like memory (see below).
The notion of event assumes a radical break with that which preceded it. 6 In the case of Badiou at least, the event can only reveal something radically new and unrelated to prior experiences. Despite the nuances of Logics of Worlds (2009), true change still only originates in an event (Hallward, 2008: 106). Therefore, Badiou depends upon the notion of truth or the generic, otherwise all the event would present us with is radical uncertainty and thereby remain unrealized. However, I question the logic. We can only recognize the event, like the other, by means of prior experiences with such phenomena. 7 Something radically new would not be understandable to us; we must have traces of past experiences which allow us to deal with the events we face. Arguing that radical action originates due to the kairological awakening of an event denies the experiences and patient labour many invest in resisting that which is reprehensible in the world and the particular timings they take advantage of to challenge this state of affairs (Bassett, 2008: 9–10). My position of course denies the possibility of some Platonist universal or truth in the style of Badiou (see Bosteels, 2008: 155) which would reveal itself in the event.
Therefore, if universals do not exist, and assuming a radical break or event were possible, we would be forced to resort to the previous order as we have no means of dealing with or facing this radically uncertain future. This is why the event is always held in high regard – it is the ‘grid through which and in terms of which’ we come to see the world (Critchley, 2000: 23). The event becomes the gold standard for action, the general equivalent to measuring future actions because it is the only benchmark which exists in the post-event situation. In a certain sense, then, evental novelty is dependent upon the event; it maintains a conservatism to the event which restricts the possibilities presented for dealing with changing circumstances. Indeed, an effect of a politics built upon the event can be to blind one to progressive possibilities in the present (Critchley, 2000: 27). Equally, the strict distinction Badiou draws between the state and its other, society for instance, does not acknowledge the productive nature of power in the manner Foucault described (see Hallward, 2003: 279). This oversight ‘evades, rather than illuminates, engagement with the actual power relations that structure situations in dominance’ (Hallward, 2008: 117; see also Bassett, 2008). This productive dimension of power is what provides the guide to conduct in uncertain times. In the case of an event, then, either the event itself (whatever that may look like) or the previous order would be resorted to as a means of dealing with the everyday (see below).
In the rest of this paper I attempt to chart a way forward to understand how novel ways of being can come about which do not depend upon this radical rupture with the present situation. In some ways my analysis draws close to Badiou in that we both agree on the uncertainty of novelty (although in different ways) and the need for constant work for novelty to be realized. However, the argument below attempts to move away from the kairological implications of Badiou’s thesis.
The Economy of Complexity
In contrast to the dependence upon the event for novelty, I will now aim to illustrate how we can conceive of processes towards realizing novelty which do not depend upon the event yet which equally escape the conservatism of simple reform. I will do this through trying to harness some of the possibilities recent work in thinking about complex systems has granted us in the form of ‘general’ or ‘critical’ complexity (Allen, 2000, 2001; Cilliers, 1998, 2000, 2005b; Human et al., forthcoming; Morin, 1992, 2007, 2008; Preiser et al., 2013). In contrast to more restricted approaches to complexity, critical complexity does not aim to reduce complex problems to some essential description. Against this demand to reduce, this approach is not interested in finding in the complexity of the world a set of universal algorithms, truths or facts which could explain all life on earth. Rather, this approach aims to develop a strategy for dealing with complex issues precisely because they are non-reducible, precisely because we cannot find the single explanation for everything compressed into a single model. Note, this does not mean that we need to do away with models and science – this in a certain sense is all we have – only that we need to rethink the relationships between these models, the world and what we imagine to be ethical behaviour in this world. Critical complexity harbours many different possibilities through which we can understand how novelty arises. The approach I will adopt here takes advantage of the notion of economy 8 as it is borrowed from a tradition of philosophy beginning with Hegel and read through Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida (Human and Cilliers, 2013).
When we approach a complex system such as a ‘political’ or ‘economic’ one, the sets of terms, concepts and relationships which constitute our thinking about these systems can be seen to constitute an ‘economy’ of terms. In other words, when faced with a particular system, viewed through a model, a certain economy of thought or terms is used in our analysis of the world. This economy consists of the relationships between the concepts, terms and rationality which constitute any model, theory or engagement with the world. In contrast to ‘reductionist’ approaches to science or what Edgar Morin (2007: 10) has labelled ‘restricted complexity’, which seek to reduce the system they face to a single model, I argue for a ‘general economy’ when we approach complexity (Human and Cilliers, 2013).
A reductionist approach to complexity makes the following assumptions. First, these approaches assume that a system can be neatly distinguished from its environment (Allen, 2000: 80). This means that reductionist positions assume that the boundary or border of any system is discrete and not ‘open’ or porous. Second, the reductionist position assumes that a system can be reduced to its constituent parts (Morin, 2007: 5). It is not interested in the relationships between the parts nor, as can be inferred above, with the relationship between the system and its environment. This contextual dimension includes the possibility of reducing history to a single timeline of events (Dekker et al., 2011: 943). Finally, the reductionist position believes that, where taken into consideration, the relationships between parts can be reduced to laws (Allen, 2000: 80; Morin, 2007: 5). Therefore, reductionist proponents believe it is possible to describe a system comprehensively. The comprehensiveness of the reduction is made possible by the resort to ‘certain’ foundations such as facts, laws or truths. Under a reductionist approach we need not take into consideration that which we exclude from our model, as the system, according to this approach, is closed and reducible.
Georges Bataille (1991: 37; Stoekl, 2007: 35) critiqued this reductionist and utilitarian approach to the world by arguing that what we exclude always returns in the form of an ‘accursed share’. By excluding facets of our existence, and neglecting parts of our energy expenditure, the utilitarian logic of the petit bourgeoisie of the 19th century blinded us to forces which had previously played the role of the sacred or sacrificial in earlier times (Bataille, 1985: 124–5; see also Stoekl, 2007: 22). This accursed share reveals itself in current human society in the form of war or eroticism, and is generally labelled as pathology of some or other kind (Bataille, 1985: 116, 1991: 25). The release of force or ‘energy’ – which the accursed share is – is the product of what Bataille (1991: 40) termed the ‘general economy’, manifesting itself as the unknown or unknowable (see Bataille, 1986b). As we can only operate from a restricted economy (we must necessarily exclude parts of our world to think about the world – to try to include and think everything is to think nothing), general economies of thought aim to take into consideration the effects of the general economy whilst acknowledging the limits to our understanding (Bennington, 1995: 47–8).
Following Bataille and complexity thinkers such as Edgar Morin (1992, 2007, 2008) and Paul Cilliers (1998), I argue that when we are faced with complexity, our thinking about these systems is always subject to a certain set of errors. First, complex systems are open to their environment (Chu et al., 2003: 28; Cilliers, 2005a: 610; Morin, 2007: 19, 2008: 10). This means that any delineation made between the system and its environment is always the product of a particular rationality and the model which it creates (Cilliers, 2000: 27–8). This includes the interrelations in the history of both the system and the environment (Dekker et al., 2011: 943). Second, complexity partly arises from the fact that it is simultaneously the parts as well as the relationships between the parts which constitute the system (Allen, 2000: 79). Because of the openness of the system and the irreducibility of such context-dependent relationships we can never reduce these systems to sets of laws, or facts, which will describe these systems universally and eternally. The implication of this is that our economies of these systems are always provisional and incomplete as they exclude certain aspects of that system from the model we produce in order to understand that system (Cilliers, 2005b: 258). In other words, if we argue that we can never comprehensively reduce a complex system to some essential laws because of its context-dependent sets of relationships and, to create models, we must exclude certain aspects of the system from our model, so that this model makes sense to us, it is then impossible to determine what influence that which we exclude from our models has on the system. This is because we cannot know complex systems or their environments in their complexity (pp. 258–9). If we could understand these systems in their complexity we would not require models. Exclusion is then a necessary product of an economy in order to ensure coherence and hence meaning. 9
The general economy of Bataille (1985, 1991) takes this interplay between the restricted economies we have to work with and the context in which these economies are established into consideration (Derrida, 1978: 272–3). In other words, the general economy grants that when we approach a complex system we are forced to develop a model of that system which, in order to be reasonable and coherent, has to be restricted. However, this does not imply that it is comprehensive. A model is as much constituted by what we exclude, and still bears influence on it, as what we include. Therefore, when we speak of a general economy we are in fact working with a restricted economy which is open to or attempts to acknowledge the effects of the general economy (Plotnitsky, 2001: 21–2).
The advantage to the notion of economy, above that of ideas such as ‘frames’, is that it allows us to begin considering the wealth of interactions between the elements ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of our economy. An initial way to do this is by making a distinction between difference and heterogeneity. Following Ernesto Laclau (2005: 140), we can argue that differences are the discriminations we can make from the perspective of our model or the economy of thought we adopt (Human and Cilliers, 2013: 30). In this regard, differences are the amount of variance allowed by the frame we are using. Heterogeneity, on the other hand, will be that which appears as noise or strangeness from the perspective we have adopted. 10 Heterogeneous objects may not make sense from the perspective adopted, but they may still carry weight on our frames of reference. Heterogeneity can be made sensible by an analysis which draws on other frames of reference. This analysis will depend upon a chain of frameworks, operating at different scales, through which a comparison can eventually emerge (Human and Cilliers, 2013: 30). However, this process itself depends upon shifting sets of differences and producing other forms of heterogeneity. We can never have an entirely inclusive economy of thought. For a simplified example, the difference between a dictionary and a novel occurs within the framework we understand as books. However, the difference between a novel and a tree requires that one shift frames of reference considerably in order to make these differences understandable; one of these frames may be structured around the notion of paper (see Human and Cilliers, 2013: 30). The shifting distinctions between difference and heterogeneity then allow us to acknowledge the play (Cilliers, 1998: 44–5; Human and Cilliers, 2013: 35) inherent in our thinking about the world.
Novelty
The idea of a general economy or general complexity holds implications for how we think about the possibilities complex systems hold for novelty. In a general economy view of a complex system there is a wealth of non-linear interactions reacting at different rates to different inputs from their relationships with each other and the environment (Cilliers, 1998: 4). Therefore any model we construct of a complex system will allow for a certain set of possibilities and potentialities at the cost of others. 11 In other words, general complexity acknowledges that we are always forced to work with a restricted economy (Morin, 2007: 10). This means that we can only acknowledge certain possibilities and we can only expect so much from the system we are trying to understand. These possibilities are defined by the range of differences found inside our economy. Therefore, whatever history we draw of such a system will only be the history of a single part of that system, excluding the complex interactions it may have had with an environment and, as I indicated above, excluding complex interactions internal to the system itself. This does not mean that we cannot draw a history but rather that the history we draw will privilege certain events over others. The drawing of a history is the distribution of emphasis on different events or aspects of the system and its environment. This distribution of emphasis provides certainty to those inhabiting the present (Derrida, 1997 [1974]: 85) as well as grants which possibilities we hold open for the future (Scott, 2004).
Novelty, by definition, must be unpredicted – it must not fall within the horizon of possibilities one was working with. When we are faced with novelty, we are forced to reread our history – we are forced to acknowledge the excess which we inevitably excluded from our reading of how we got to where we are, yet which clearly bore some weight on the events leading up to the present. In other words, novelty demands an examination of history so that we can explain how it arose; we need to make sense of this unpredicted phenomenon by examining the latencies in history we overlooked. In fact this is how I would define novelty: novelty is that which forces a rereading of the history of the system, a reading which is different from the one currently held and projected into the future. This is because a novel discovery disturbs us by the fact that it was not anticipated by the given history of that system but rather requires that one look at what was not thought of – the unknown, or unseen, discarded as the inconsequential excess of that system. This is not to deny the history of a system – systems are nothing but products of their history. Yet, what that history is and how it implicates the future of the system is made over in the face of novelty. Rereading the history of the system, being presented with a new horizon of possibilities, grants the system and its observer a new range of possibilities, a certain youthfulness which had up until then remained hidden, underworked as latencies.
Simultaneously, we need to add another dimension to the acknowledgement of novelty. When novelty appears we are forced to not only reread the history of the system but also its future. The certainty of the ‘yet to come’, the certainty of what will happen tomorrow or the next day, is shattered. A novel discovery opens up a set of potentialities not yet realized within any field. Novelty provides us with alternatives we cannot be geared to deal with. We cannot escape being disturbed by novelty. Our economies demand a rationality. In order for models to be of any use to us, we must constrain and exclude (Cilliers, 2005b: 264). This is why novelty will always disturb us; there is no alternative to form or reason from which we can operate (Derrida, 1978: 48). 12
However, rereading the history of a complex system to understand novelty is not a simple matter. A complex system is a system in which all the elements which constitute that system are not evenly distributed. A system must have hierarchies and redundancy (Cilliers, 2001: 142; see also Allen’s (2001) discussion of ‘excess diversity’). In other words, if the system did not internally prioritize certain aspects of its existence over others, it would not be able to survive as it would not be able to act. Acting demands some form of privileging of resources whilst making other options redundant. In the lifetime of a system, it would repeatedly make similar choices as the environment within which it exists illustrates a fair amount of stability. Hence, the system would be able to learn. In connectionist models of complexity this is known as the ‘use principle’ or ‘Hebbs rule’ (see Cilliers, 1998: 17). For example, in the case of the brain the connection strength between two neurons increases proportionately to how often it is used. In cases where connections are not active the connections decay. ‘In this way, a network will develop internal structure, based only on the local information available at each neuron’ (p. 17).
As a complex system is constituted by its relationships, for these relationships to make any sense, to have structure, implies that the system must have a history which privileged certain sets of relationships above others. What is prioritized and what is excluded depends upon the history of the local interactions a system maintains with its environment. Therefore, in order to be a system at all, it cannot have a tabula rasa. The system embodies its history (Cilliers, 2006: 108). This robustness means that we cannot easily rewrite the history of a system. Bringing about novelty implies resistance to the memory of the system. Novelty is resistance to that which is constitutive of the system. Attempting to bring about novelty too quickly would result in the memory inherent within the system being the failsafe. The danger of the event lurks in this fact. When faced with the infinite possibilities opened up by the event, the robustness of the system is the easiest path to follow.
Realizing novelty takes time because rereading a past is not a simple matter. This is especially true for systems which are in dire need of replacement. The long, embodied, locally constituted history of many systems implies that the struggle against them cannot be an instantaneous one. It demands that we patiently engage with these systems to bring about change. It demands ‘a certain slowness’ (Cilliers, 2006). If we simply act against a system we are left to the mercy of the existing use principles. Conservatism is the failsafe in uncertain times because it assures us of the possibilities we recognize. To make room for heterogeneity implies patience, a constant dismantling and the unease associated with uncertainty.
The Potential of Experimentation
Without the consciousness-awakening experience of an event, without kairological politics, we need another means for pursuing novelty. One way I see for the constant dismantling necessary to allow for novelty is through experimentation. 13 If heterogeneity is that which is excluded from the model we are working under it means that any action we take towards realizing novelty is by definition uncertain and thereby needs to be provisional. Experimentation is a form of praxis that allows for actions in the present which need not be based on certain knowledge or the determination of an event (see Human, 2013). Novelty, as that which forces a rereading of the past, implies intention. To resist the conservatism of memory we need a form of praxis which can act in the present, on a small scale, and hence be allowed to ‘fail’ without the large-scale consequences of evental or ‘great’ politics (Critchley, 2000). Experimentation, I argue, is one possible avenue for this.
Briefly, an experiment can be defined as a procedure which allows one to intrude into the general economy by means of working with or playing with available resources, be they material or epistemological. In other words, an experiment allows us to manipulate the sets of differences inside our economies of thought to the point at which the heterogeneous challenges the coherency of our thought. Experimentation reveals ‘lines of flight’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 161), potentialities which open up alternative modes of existence. Experimentation, it is important to note, does not imply fanciful or hedonistic ‘lifestyle choices’ (Bignall, 2007: 210). It is rather a disciplined and committed practice as it entails the work and discomfort of moving against memory. As Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 160) note, experimentation entails close self-examination in order to problematize our own relations with current discourses (Bignall, 2007: 210).
Experimentation is a double-handed movement of at the same time pushing away from what we have whilst increasing the stock of available resources (and of course forsaking another possible stock of resources). Experimentation, in other words, is a result of working with a general economy. We can only work with the general economy, as Bataille reminds us, by taking note of its effects on our restricted economies (Plotnitsky, 2001: 21–2). The unknown can only be described from the position of the known (see Bataille, 1986b: 81). We can obviously say nothing about the unknown, except that an unknown exists, yet we establish a relationship with it when we experiment.
The uncertainty of our knowledge of a complex world is then a resource we should embrace as we seek different modes of existence. The conservative position demands that we retain a model of the future which is built on the possibilities of the present. In contrast, to develop more progressive positions we must acknowledge the radically uncertain nature of our knowledge of the world. It is this uncertainty, and the modesty (Cilliers, 2005b: 256) implied by it, that opens up potentialities which may lead to ways of life different, perhaps even better, than the one we currently labour under. Experimentation reveals the wealth of possibilities which remain unrealized in the present necessary for the realization of novelty. Examples of these approaches can be seen in a recent documentary and academic research by Joana Conill, Manuell Castells and Alex Ruiz (2011), which explores the response of Catalonians to the 2008 economic collapse. This film looks at the various small-scale projects in which people have attempted to develop alternative ways of living and relating to each other, such as through markets based on bartering, alternative economies of food and independent education systems. These projects are realized by means of using existing resources rather than by relying on grand-scale projects or events. They are made possible by the imagination and risk of using available stocks of resources in ways which open up heterogeneous modes of existence. These attempts at novel ways of living in the world reflect the potentialities which are unrealized under the current hegemony. Experimentation offers us an alternative mode of action to that of evental praxis through which to bring about novelty. All of these projects came about through small-scale attempts at changing present conditions and thereby revealed an alternative history of the present, ‘lines of flight’ which allow for a different set of possibilities in the future. Yet by acting slowly to change the conditions of the present, all these projects were open to the possibility of ‘tinkering’ (Mol et al., 2010; Pols, 2012), to the possibility of adapting to the uncertainty of working against memory.
Conclusion
In this article I have attempted to outline an approach towards realizing novel forms of life which do not depend upon on an event. I did this by first giving a description of kairological or event-based philosophies. The example provided was that of the work of Alain Badiou. Whilst there are moments of agreement between Badiou’s philosophy and the work done here, largely seen in our shared understanding of the situated nature of novelty, the need for constant work for its realization and novelty’s enigmatic nature as understood by current economies of thought, it is the biblical or kairological tenets of his work which are of concern. The kairological, laden with biblical and conservative connotations (Boer, 2013: 117), appears as unviable for the realization of novelty. Memory, essential for the existence of any system, resists such sudden rupture. Indeed, the constitutive nature of memory seems to be acknowledged by Badiou’s (2007a: 232) use of the term ‘fidelity’ as an article of faith to challenge this memory. However, from a general complexity perspective, the certainty of fidelity is impossible. Instead, uncertainty and the creativity necessary to deal with it are essential for the experimental approach I propose and thereby avoid the conservatism inherently possible in any evental thinking. Equally, although my use of the term ‘system’ may at times appear to come close to Badiou’s ‘state’, our use of the term ‘excessive’ is of different orders. For Badiou, the state is excessive in that it is total (Hallward, 2003: 96–7). Under a general economy excessiveness implies ‘play’ – it implies that the world constantly slips from categorization (Derrida, 1978: 278). This is a point Badiou (2007a: 28) no doubt agrees with in relation to ontology. However, under a general economy this slippage occurs as much ‘inside’ or within the confines of the state as elsewhere. Indeed, this is why experimentation is possible – the play of our economies means that some potentialities always remain unrealized, for good or bad.
The possibility of experimental novelty is not a call for reform. Reform is constituted by the possibilities the system currently acknowledges. Reform implies evolution of current possibilities. However, the notion of ‘revolution’ implies the set of markers deployed by kairological thinkers such as Badiou. It assumes a neat distinction between the state and some other, and it assumes the moment of an event, of a ‘jumping beyond’ (Derrida, 1981 [1972]: 41–2) and the possibility of some radical outside to which actors can appeal. If we acknowledge that there is always an excess ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ any understanding of the world, we need another mode of action which takes advantage of this excess. Rather than the ‘re-’, of reform or revolution, we should look towards some kind of progressive position, a position which moves away from an assumed totality in the present. Experimentation perhaps provides us with the uncertainty necessary for such a progressive position.
The description of an experiment I have provided here is only a brief introduction. Elsewhere this concept has been fleshed out in greater detail (see Human, 2013). However, it is important to note that an experiment implies a set of normative prerogatives for how we think about our actions which may lead to novel forms of life. Our rationality, built on the possibilities of the present, cannot be geared to deal with heterogeneity. Therefore, modes of everyday existence which allow for the introduction of heterogeneity into life need to be acknowledged and taken seriously. Humour (Bataille, 1986b), art and fiction become key to an experimental process. These are not simply about the enrichment of life but equally can be looked to for strategies for dealing with excess (Cilliers, 2005b: 264). Equally, it must be acknowledged that any experiment is open to failure, open to the possibility of death and destruction. But the experiment demands a rethinking of our attitude towards failure as the excess of any experimental process always opens up, and closes off, alternative modes of existence. Experimentation then is an enterprise which demands a constant engagement with ethics – which potentialities we pursue and which we discard determines the future we will inhabit.
There is no time or place for experimentation – the very idea moves against kairological politics. It calls instead for a move away from the right time and place to acknowledging the excess of time and place and thereby the constancy of the endeavour. I am attempting then to develop a form of praxis which can be enacted in the present, slowly and modestly. This position does not deny the urgency of the present predicament we face. We should act now. But how we act and how we articulate the reasons for action will determine whether we get caught in another round of struggle or perhaps move towards a more progressive position.