Tags
Affect, edward casey, Husserl, Imagination, John Sallis, Metaphysics, Ontology, Phenomenology, Sartre
A thought just arose that I think needs addressing. If all is imaginary, how can we account for the excess? How can we account for change? Difference? Plenitude? The experience of the beyond?
For Sartre, Husserl, and the phenomenological legacy, there is a problem. If it is the case that the image (and the imagination) is impoverished (it gives nothing, teaches nothing) then imagination is necessarily limited. It is finite. The only way there can be depth to the world is through perception’s encounter with an infinite given. This is what Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and more recently Edward Casey all suggest: there is a depth to the world, to objects of consciousness, but only in perception. This depth is due to the vastness of the perceived objects. Imagination, by contrast, is simply a self-entertaining operation. And as such, a limited operation in that imagining is purely self-referential.
In contradistinction to this view, John Sallis wants to truly take us ‘to the things themselves’. He criticizes Husserl et al for their subordination of the imagination (even though thinkers like Sartre might escape this criticism from within a certain reading… something for another discussion). Ultimately, according to Sallis, phenomenology, like the classical schemas, subordinates the imagination, and thus the ‘sensible’, under the intelligible/rational (and he uses ‘sensible’ in the Romantic sense). So, in response to this, what Sallis proposes is that we return to ‘nature’. More specifically, we must return to the ‘elemental’ – namely the earth and the sky. In a sort of Nietzschean inversion of the classical schema, Sallis claims that only by affirming the earth and the sensible can we truly understand the ‘force of imagination’, as the elemental draws us into it, declaring its beauty, its truth, and its infinite mystery and depth (there’s also a large Heideggarian influence here: veiling/unveiling of truth). So, with a sort of pre-Socratic Romanticism, Sallis hopes that a turn to the untouched and unspoiled elemental will allow for the force of imagination to be unleashed.
While I appreciate Sallis’ tendency to give primacy to the imagination, my primary disagreement is with the idea of nature altogether. If, as I’ve suggested before, all is imaginary, then the idea of the unspoiled, untouched elemental is itself a fiction. All is imaginary. And as such all is artificial. There is no such thing as ‘nature’ (at least not in the technical, philosophical sense). However, there seems to be a problem: if Sallis derives excess from the depth of the elemental, how can I account for it according to the imaginary? Simply stated, excess derives from the indefinite and indeterminate possibilities of a relational ontology. That is, excess is the very product of the contingency of the relation of forces within any given system. This affective interplay of forces is therefore the motor that drives the imaginary. Affect is thus the first point of contact between any set of structural entities. ‘In itself’ it is not ‘known’. It is only ever known after it has been incorporated into the imagination. But it is experienced. It has effect (by nature). It serves as the ‘material’ out of which the imagination is able to create, as the latter is jolted by its continual encounter with it. Then projecting forward the imagination continually rearranges the affective landscape, which thus introduces an entire new set of indefinite and indeterminate possibilities. One implication of this is that any given state of affairs, or any given structural relation, is contingent – it could be otherwise, or could have been otherwise, and is continually becoming otherwise… and even paradoxically is simultaneously both what it is and what it is not, depending on the vantage from which it is assessed. It also implies that novelty (in the Deleuzian sense) is ubiquitous. However, this universal novelty is never experienced as such. It is only ever ‘known’ post facto – and thus only ever speculative.
This formulation seems to skirt the problem of the transcendent (and its product: anxiety) that I mentioned in the previous post, while also giving an account of the excess of Life from within a thoroughly immanent transcendental theory of imagination.
Some problems remain however: if there is no distinction between real and imaginary, how can I explain the apparent split between affect and the imagination? is this not just another dualism? can affect be thought of as imaginary? if so, in what way(s)? and if this is the case, how can I defend myself against the charge of anthropocentrism? is affective experience ‘felt’? if so, is this feeling then merely a moment of the ‘transcendental unity of [imagination]’? if not, what does it mean to experience affect? is experience an appropriate designation?
These are just some of the problems that I see arising, and that at the moment I can’t fully address. I think I have some germinating ideas, but I’ll have to work some of them out before trying to put them into a coherent piece just yet…
One of the ways to possibly resolve the apparent separation between affect and imagination is to show how they are really just two different modes of the same process. That is, affect and imagination are different only in degree, with imagination being a sort of folded back complex operation of affectivity. I think this would require me to develop both a variegating inflationary account of affectivity and a deflationary account of cognition; a sort of panpsychist enfolding in which structural entities (i.e. any given relational thing, system, or set of systems) continually make connections with others, thereby creating augmented moments (or ‘forms’) of relative stability and complexity (with the hope being that human consciousness, reflective/meta/linguistic consciousness, would come to be seen as that continually arising moment of becoming that is defined by the transcendental imagination).
Sub Specie Aeterni 
Troy said:
All this talk about contingency sounds a lot like Meillassoux! Seriously though, I’m looking forward to see how you relate affectivity and the imaginary without opposing them. This seems like the principle task of any post-phenomenology: ditch the Kantian baggage without hand-waving, i.e. by acknowledging its central importance.
Austin said:
yeah, meillassoux did pop up in my head when discussing contingency, but honestly sartre and deleuze were talking about this shit well before him :)
Troy said:
No doubt (hence my earlier post on Sartre and Meillassoux). But contingency as an absolute metaphysical principle? Possibly not.
david cl driedger said:
I really appreciate your recent trajectory I have started my own reading in phenomenology so I look forward to future posts. I am currently reading Husserl’s Crisis. Perhaps he addresses this directly later in this book or in other works but so far he speaks of the infinite encounter through ‘mental processes’ how is that different than imagination?
Austin said:
from the bit i have read of husserl, i have to admit i have a (more recently increasing) fondness for his approach. he really does value the imagination. but, like sartre and merleau-ponty after him, he devalues the imagination in favor of perception. so there is an infinite encounter with objects of consciousness, but only through perception. for in perception we encounter the infinite depth of the given (the material world – ‘the things themselves’). thus the appearing things don’t have any hidden ‘in itself’ behind them to which the appearance attests, but there is still an infinite depth to any given object of consciousness as the latter perceives it only in limited glimpses. an image by contrast is limited as being an intended object of the transcendental ego (sartre reject the transcendental ego but retains the general idea). that is, an image for phenomenology is a projected absent-presence that has no infinite depth because it is fully given by the intending consciousness. thus, the image never gives anything, never teaches anything that the intending consciousness did not place there. the result of all this is that the imagination has only a secondary status in relation to perception and/or conception. but husserls thought did develop in this regard. so in some of his writings he seems to hint that perhaps imagination does have a bigger role but for the most part, the above explanation seems to sum his ideas up on this matter.