CONSTITUTING COMMUNITY: HEIDEGGER, MIMESIS AND CRITICAL .
EUROPEAN CONSORTIUM FOR POLITICAL RESEARCHJoint Sessions, Nicosia, Cyprus25-30 April 2006A paper prepared for Workshop 7: ‘The Future of Political Community’CONSTITUTING COMMUNITY: HEIDEGGER, MIMESISAND CRITICAL BELONGINGDr. Louiza OdysseosDepartment of Politics and International StudiesSchool of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)University of LondonThornhaugh Street, London WC1H OXGTel.: 44 (0)20 7898 4747 Fax: 44 (0)20 7898 4559E-mail: louiza.odysseos@soas.ac.ukAbstract:In his commentary on Martin Heidegger’s ‘politics’, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe notedthat there is a continuous but unanswerable question of identification in Heidegger’sthought. At the same time, Lacoue-Labarthe asks: why would the problem of mimesis,of identification, indeed, of ‘community’, not be considered the essential question ofthe political as such? In this paper, I propose a consideration of the question ofcommunity and mimesis. I suggest that Heidegger’s radically hermeneutic andheteronomous analysis of existence (Daseinanalytik) enables us to give a criticalrereading of his cryptic, contentious and troubling mutterings on ‘community’ and‘people’ in the infamous paragraph 74 of Being and Time. My purpose is not solelyexegetical with respect to Heidegger’s argument, however. This rereading is primarilya retrieval of a productive understanding of how community comes to be constitutedthrough the practice of ‘critical mimesis’ from Heidegger’s thought, as developed byauthors such as Peg Birmingham. Critical mimesis or identification, I argue, points toa type of relationship towards the community’s past (‘the tradition’) that renderscommunal constitution by its members into a type of ‘critical belonging’. Criticalbelonging involves critique, displacement and resistance towards the tradition. It maywell be this attitude of ‘disavowal’ towards certain of the tradition’s historicalpossibilities which helps constitute the communal, and the political, as such. This is aperspective of a critical and questioning mode of identification, I argue, which isextremely valuable for considering the future of political community today. It canhelp us move beyond conventional understandings of community deriving from anessence (be this nation, language, religion, etc.), as well as aid us in examiningempirical questions about the expansion or broadening of community which are at theforefront of policymaking agendas in many Western polities.DRAFT – PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION
IntroductionInternational Relations and Political Theory have long engaged with thequestion of community in a variety of ways, such as questioning the conflation of thecommunity to the state; rethinking oppression and social exclusion and their relationto civil conflict; conceptualising the ‘we’ outside of essentialist and, therefore,exclusionary determinations such as those of religion, ethnicity, nation etc.;investigating the assumptions of liberal democracy about community and diversity, aswell as examining the ways in which modern assumptions about the subject of politicsand society entail the reduction of coexistence, and community, to the mere copresence of pre-constituted, ‘pre-social’ selves. 1 These wide-ranging reflections,however, pursue the question of community within a dichotomy: either there is anessence by which community is constituted (usually referred to as ‘thick’ conceptionsof community) or community is composed of pre-formed individuals and thus littlemore than procedural copresence (denoted as ‘thin’ understandings of community).2This paper interprets the desire to think the future of community, and especially ofpolitical community, as a call to move beyond the parameters of this dichotomy – ifnot to transcend it, then to chart a path through it which attempts to reconcile itsextremes. Prominent amongst its chief preoccupations is a concern with otherness,understood both as the particularity/otherness of the self and also the concrete other,threatened by the homologies of essence and copresence. To navigate this dichotomyit turns to Martin Heidegger, who some scholars might regard an unlikely source, andasks whether his early thought has anything to contribute to such a consideration ofthe future of political community.The impetus for turning to Heidegger comes from a set of comments made bythe French philosopher Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe who remarked, when discussingHeidegger’s ‘politics’, that there is a continuous but unanswerable question ofidentification, and its relation to community, in Heidegger’s thought. Indeed, LacoueLabarthe asked, why would the problem of mimesis and identification, the problem of1See, amongst others, Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community, trans. Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus,Michael Holland and Simona Sawhney (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991); AndrewLinklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the Post-WestphalianEra (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998); Louiza Odysseos, The Subject of Coexistence: Otherness, Ethicsand Community in International Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming2006); Chris Brown, International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (London: HarvesterWheatsheaf, 1992); Miami Theory Collective (ed.), Community at Loose Ends (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 1991); Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home andAbroad (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994).2
‘community,’ not be considered the essential question of the political as such?3 In thispaper, I propose a consideration of precisely the question of community and mimesis,both as it operates within Heidegger’s Being and Time,4 and also as it continues toaffect discussions on the future of political community today. I use the context of thedebate on Heidegger’s politics in order to return to Heidegger’s assumeddetermination of community according to a nationalist essence. I suggest thatHeidegger’s radically hermeneutic5 and heteronomous6 analysis of existence(Daseinanalytik) enables us to revisit Heidegger’s contentious, troubling and crypticmutterings on ‘community’ and ‘people’ in the infamous paragraph 74 of Being andTime and reread these critically and productively. Contra the assumptions of thedebate on the ‘Heidegger affair,’ I read his discussion of the self’s (Heidegger’s termis Dasein or There-being7) relation to the historical tradition as enabling theemergence of a political selfhood which has a distinct questioning relationship to itshistorical tradition and which thus avoids positing communal constitution accordingto an essence (such as religion, nation, ethnos, language, etc.).Such a rereading is primarily a retrieval from Heidegger’s thought of aproductive understanding of how community comes to be constituted through thepractice of an agonistic sort of identification, which Peg Birmingham calls ‘criticalmimesis.’ Critical mimesis or identification, I argue, points to a type of relationshiptowards the community’s past (‘the tradition’) that renders the very constitution ofcommunity by its members into a type of ‘critical belonging’. Critical belonginginvolves critique, displacement and resistance towards the historical tradition: indeed,it may be this attitude of ‘disavowal’ towards certain of the tradition’s historicalpossibilities that helps constitute the communal, and the political, as such.2See, Walzer, Thick and Thin.Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Transcendence Ends in Politics,” in Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe,Typography (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 286; see also, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe,Heidegger, Art and Politics: The Fiction of the Political, trans. Chris Turner (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990)4Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford:Blackwell, 1962), hereafter cited in text as BT with the pages of this English translation, unlessotherwise noted.5See Louiza Odysseos, “Radical Phenomenology, Ontology and International Political Theory,”Alternatives 27, no.3 (July/September 2002): 373-405.6In the sense of the primacy of relation and the self’s constitution by otherness, see Odysseos, TheSubject of Coexistence, chapter 1. Not to be associated with the meaning of heteronomy intended byRichard Wolin as the ‘abandonment’ of the self to ‘the despotic rule of nameless, higher powers’ and asubsequent relinquishment of responsibility, see Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being: the PoliticalThought of Martin Heidegger (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 150, or associated with‘paternalism’ as suggested by Jonathan Salem-Wiseman, “Heidegger’s Dasein and the LiberalConception of the Self,” Political Theory 31, no. 4 (August 2003), 550.33
My purpose is not solely exegetical with respect to Heidegger’s argument,however. This is a perspective of a critical and questioning mode of identification, Ipropose, which is extremely valuable for theorising political community today.Specifically, it facilitates a conception of community constitution which lies betweenthe two extremes of, on the one hand, mechanistic, additive and compositionalthinking exemplified by contractarian accounts of how pre-social individuals come toconstitute community, and on the other hand, of conventional communitarianunderstandings of community deriving from an essence (be this nation, language,religion, etc.). It can, moreover, be essential for thinking beyond the reduction ofcommunity to the nation-state and tackling more empirical concerns surrounding theexpansion or broadening of community with which we are currently faced. 8The paper proceeds by, first, outlining the main concerns raised aboutHeidegger’s politics, as specifically relating to the issue of community. Out of thisdiscussion it, second, proposes an account of community constitution though a criticalprocess of mimesis and identification. This apparently paradoxical kind ofidentification leads to what the paper calls ‘critical belonging,’ delineating arelationship to the community that is marked not by acquiescence but, rather, bydisavowal. The final part concludes by reflecting on the implications of this retrievalon the theorisation of political community and on the continuing debate aboutHeidegger’s politics.Heidegger’s politics and the thought of communityThe suggestion that one might think together Martin Heidegger’s thought andthe future of political community might be met with surprise, at best, and recoilinghorror, at worst. This is because such a proposal necessarily takes place within a stillraging debate fuelled by increased acknowledgement within the fields of philosophyand politics of his deplorable engagement with National Socialism, which is nowfamiliarly captured by the term ‘Heidegger’s politics.’ This debate has taken placeboth at the level of historiography as well as political philosophy, with the result of7See William J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1963), 44-46.8For other accounts along this vein, see, for instance David Campbell, National Deconstruction:Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998);Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community; and, Daniele Archibugi, David Held and Martin4
calling into question whether it is, in fact, still possible to put Heidegger’s thought topolitical use; and, even if it is possible, whether it is desirable to use his thoughtpolitically. In other words, is not any political thought of community derived from, orassociated with, the thought of Martin Heidegger immediately tainted by hiscommitment to National Socialism in the 1930s, when he assumed the rectorship ofthe University of Freiburg in 1933, and his subsequent failure to apologise for, oreven discuss, this involvement in the post-war years?9 Heidegger’s many critics mightaccept that his thought assists in the deconstructive enterprise of political and socialphilosophy, questioning its reliance on modern subjectivity; they might easilyacknowledge that it can call liberal-proceduralist accounts of community constitutioninto question by ‘unworking’ the sovereign, pre-social and individualist subject onwhich they rely. But they are likely to also regard that his politics, if not his thought,compromises these deconstructive insights by determining community according to anationalist essence, resulting in the valorisation of the communal historical tradition.In this section I examine the debate on Heidegger’s politics,10 which has had aserious impact on our ability to usefully utilise Heidegger’s Daseinanalytik for apolitical thought of community. In particular I examine a prominent objection which(re)reads Being and Time in light of Heidegger’s involvement with the Nazis,deeming it to be at best politically vague, and thus open to conservativeKöhler (eds), Re-imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge:Polity and Blackwell Publishers, 1998).9See, most prominently, Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life trans. Allen Blunden (NewYork: Basic Books, 1993) and Victor Farias, Heidegger and Nazism, trans. Paul Burrell and Gabriel R.Ricci (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987). Also see Heidegger’s address during hisrectorship Martin Heidegger, “The Self-Assertion of the German University,” trans. Karsten Harries,Review of Metaphysics 38 (1985): 470-480.10See Miguel de Beistegui, Heidegger and the Political: Dystopias (London: Routledge, 1997); PierreBourdieu, The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger, trans. Peter Collier (Oxford: Polity Press,1991); John D. Caputo, “Heidegger’s Kampf,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 14, no. 2 -15,no.1 (1991): 61-83; Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. GeoffreyBennington and Rachel Bowlby (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989); Johannes Fritsche,Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger’s Being and Time (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1999); Jürgen Habermas, “Work and Weltanschauung: The Heidegger Controversyfrom a German Perspective,” trans. John McCumber, Critical Inquiry 15 (1989): 431-456; SamuelIjsseling, “Heidegger and Politics,” in Arleen B. Dallery, Charles E. Scott, and P. Holley Roberts(eds.), Ethics and Danger: Essays on Heidegger and Continental Thought (Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1992); Dominique Janicaud, The Shadow of That Thought: Heidegger and theQuestion of Politics, trans. Michael Gendre (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996);Emmanuel Levinas, “Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism,” trans. Sean Hand, Critical Inquiry17, no. 1 (1990): 63-71; Tom Rockmore and Joseph Margolis (eds.), The Heidegger Case: OnPhilosophy and Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992); Hans Sluga, Heidegger’sCrisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993);Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger (New York:Columbia University Press, 1990); and Richard Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy: A CriticalReader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).5
revolutionism, and at worst as determining community along ‘nationalistic’ and‘racist’ lines, and thus wholly inappropriate for a progressive and critical thought ofcommunity.A Nazi thought? Mapping the debate on Heidegger’s politicsThe major objection to using Heidegger’s existential analysis11 for politicalthought asks whether the possibility for articulating a political account of communityis impaired both by the apparent determination of authentic ‘Being-with’ according to‘a people’ within the analysis of Being and Time and also by the politicalinterpretation of the overall project of fundamental ontology given to it byHeidegger’s own subsequent engagement with National Socialism.Let us briefly consider what Heidegger means by ‘Being-with’ (Mitsein). ForHeidegger, human being ‘is essentially Being-with’ – Being-with is an existentialattribute of human existence (Dasein, or There-Being). By this Heidegger means thatthe term ‘with’ cannot be seenas designating a relationship that can be noted once there are more than two terms.Rather we have to think of Mit-sein, of Being-with, or more exactly of the very Beingof with, of withness. There can be two terms that can encounter one another only iffirst there is withness. That is, only if first there is a primordial structure ofcommonness, of a with relationship, can a specific type of relationship be instituted. 12To say that Dasein is Being-with has little to do with the actual presence of one ormultiple others, because ‘with’ is not about spatial proximity: it is not merely adescription that ‘I am not present-at-hand alone, and that Others of my kind occur’,nor that ‘I am currently with others’ (BT, 156). ‘Being-with is an existentialcharacteristic of Dasein even when factically no Other is present-at-hand orperceived’ (BT, 156). Even when no Others are present, Dasein is Being-with. Beingalone is possible only for an entity who has Being-with as its Being (BT, 157).‘Withness,’ Heidegger suggests, is the existential commonness that makes all actual11Daseinanalytik, or the analysis of There-being. Also invoked in this term is the distinction betweenexistential and existentielle analysis, see (BT, 31-35, as well as ¶ 9-10).12N. Georgopoulos, The Structures of Existence: A Reading of Heidegger’s Being and Time(University Park: The Dialogue Press of Man and World, 1994), 91.6
interactions with, and experiences of, others possible. This ‘sharing’ of the world is a‘prior capacity,’ which Dasein possesses; it is the capacity to-be-with (mit-sein) thatmakes any consideration of, and relationship with, others possible. Coexistence, aswell as community, and their multifaceted dimensions rest on this existential structureof Being-with. As Michael Gelven notes ‘[t]o say that Being-with (or to-be-with) is ana priori existential of Dasein means that one cannot be a self unless it is within one’spossibilities to relate in a unique way to other Daseins. Hence, to be Dasein at allmeans to-be-with.’13 Human being is ‘with’ to such an extent, Heidegger’s analysissuggests, that the legacy of the philosophy of the subject whereby human being isunderstood as an individual, as an ‘I,’ can no longer be sustained. Not only is humanbeing not an individual but the appropriate answer to the question ‘who is Dasein?’ isnot the ‘I’ but the ‘they’ (das Man, see BT, ¶27).14 The ‘they,’ or the ‘one’ as it alsosometimes referred to, is part of Dasein’s constitution. Dasein belongs to others ‘whoproximally and for the most part “are there” in everyday Being-with-one-another’(BT, 164). ‘The “they,” .which we all are, though not as the sum, prescribes the kindof Being of everydayness,’ notes Heidegger (BT, 164).What does it mean to suggest that the answer to the question of ‘who’ is the‘they’ signify, however? From the perspective of everydayness, human existence isheteronomously constituted and manifested not as the ‘I’ assumed by accounts ofmodern subjectivity, but as ‘anyone’. The ‘they,’ it can be argued, rescinds anypriority of the self and affirms the primacy of sociality and relationality:[w]e live in the midst of others with their beliefs and values, fears and conflictsalready so deeply embedded in us that the initial experience of reflection is the shock13Michael Gelven, A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time (New York: Harper and Row,1970), 67-68.14The ‘they’ is the somewhat unfortunate and misleading translation of Heidegger’s term ‘das Man’and it should not lead one to one assume that Dasein is distinct from the ‘they’ on the basis of thistranslation.7
of discovering how utterly the voice of the other comes pouring forth whenever I, thesovereign individual, speak, feel, think, or act.15This brief discussion of Being-with allows us to presently return to the charget
Heidegger s politics. Heidegger s politics and the thought of community The suggestion that one might think together Martin Heidegger s thought and the future of political community might be met with surprise, at best, and recoiling horror, at worst. This is because such a proposal necessarily takes place within a still-
Chapter Two: Martin Heidegger and the Ontological Politics of Disablement 45 Introduction 45 Being and Time and the Early Heidegger 48 The “Letter on Humanism” 60 “The Question Concerning Technology” 64 Science and ‘the mathematical’ 68 Heidegger and the Body 71 Embodied Times and Spaces since Heidegger 73
0. Heidegger and Aristotle Martin Heidegger and his postmodernist' followers describe past, Western phi-losophy as the tradition'. Heidegger's project was to rethink the origins of this tradition and to destroy' its conceptual scheme (Heidegger 1962, 41 49), so as to uncover phenomenologically what of our elemental way of being has been
18 Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, 93-118, 144-177. 19 Ibid., 178ff. 20 Martin Heidegger, Being and 1ime, 67. 21 Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking, 22 "The Thing" in Martin Heidegger, "The Origin
Heidegger on Ontotheology : Technology and the Politics of Education, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 78 ff., esp. p. 84. CAPUTO suggests yet another meaning of the “turn” in Heidegger, namely the turn as revolution, Heidegger as radical. Demythologizing Heidegger, Bloomington, Indiana University
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Martin Heidegger: A Political Life; and Hans Sluga’s . Heidegger’s Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany. 3 . In chapter 3 (the longest chapter of the thesis) the focus is on Heidegger's concern regarding the status and interrelationships of the sciences, the university, and the community.
HB Martin Heidegger, Elisabeth Blochmann, Briefwechsel . study holds that the question of Heidegger’s politics has produced so much dis-cussion quite simply because there remains something still very much at issue for us in the “Heidegger case.” At issue, and unresolved—and not just for aca- .
The anatomy and physiology Topic text is clearly and concisely written, and is presented in easily digestible units of information to help facilitate learning. SE GIDE: PIMAL’S 3D HMA AATOM AD PHSIOLOG Page 10 of 31. SLIDE USER GUIDE: PRIMALS 3D HUMAN ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY Page 11 of 31 MOVIE SLIDE – DIAGRAM SLIDE – ILLUSTRATION SLIDE – PHOTOGRAPH SLIDE – STATIC 3D IMAGE The View .
