Culture of the `Inter'
Notions ma and basho
(Gepubliceerd in: Sensus communis in Multi- and
Intercultural perspective. On the Possibility of Common Judgements in
Arts and Politics. Heinz Kimmerle & Henk Oosterling (eds.),
Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, pp.
Heinz Kimmerle, Zoetermeer
/ Henk Oosterling, Rotterdam
The contributions of this
volume are the revised versions of lectures on a conference on `Sensus
communis in multi and intercultural perspective. On the
possibility of common judgments in arts and politics' in November 1997.
This conference had been organized by the Dutch Flemish
Association of Intercultural Philosophy
in cooperation with the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus
University Rotterdam. The Trustfund
Erasmus University Rotterdam had given a subsidy to make the
conference possible. The organizers of the conference and the editors
of this volume are thankful that the Trustfund and the Faculty of
Philosophy have also subsidized the editing of the revized conference
In his Introduction Heinz
Kimmerle from the Foundation for Intercultural
Philosophy and Art at Zoetermeer points out that the
presuppostion of a sensus communis, as it is made
by Kant to prove the transcendental validity of aesthetic judgments,
has also a political dimension and can be used in today's inter and
multicultural philosophical debates. However, the transcendental
validity of aesthetic judgements which is asserted by Kant and which
means that they have to be accepted generally and necessarily by all
reasonable beings, is no longer defendable under the conditions of
present thought. That is why the reach of their validity has to be
proved in inter and multicultural dialogues.
To start with, the exact
meaning and the special relatedness of sensus communis
to aesthetic judgments in the Kantian argumentation is pointed out by Antoon
Van den Braembussche from Erasmus
University Rotterdam. He shows that also from this starting
point fruitful intercultural comparison and exchange are possible. In
his contribution he elaborates a comparison with traditional Indian
On the same strictly
Kantian grounds Gerrit Steunebrink from the Catholic
University Nijmegen argues that aesthetics as a whole and by
implication sensus communis has a pragmatic
dimension. In Kant's way of thought the beautiful and the pleasure
which is generated by it, serve the human subject to come to an
attitude which is favourable for religion and for morality. Together
with religion and morality the judgment of the beautiful plays an
important role in history, especially in the process of modernization,
and also in social and political life. Steunebrink analyzes processes
of modernization in India and, more extensively, in Turkey in order to
show the intercultural relevance of this interpretation of sensus
communis. In this respect, his
presentation is related to the contribution of Yasin Ceylan from
In the practice of
intercultural philosophical work, as it is documented in the following
contributions of this volume, sensus communis in
aesthetic judgments turns out to have a historical and also a social
and political dimension. In some presenations it is applied to a wider
range of human behaviour which can be thought of as an aesthetization
of human life as a whole. This proves to be philosophically interesting
and relevant. Thus the extended argument, that sensus communis
has to be presupposed for the validity not only of aesthetic, but also
of historical, political, and religious judgments, opens up a field of
intercultural philosophical discourse, in which this notion appears to
be highly productive.
from the Technical University of Kyoto makes clear
that the `Art Way' of thinking in traditional Japanese philosophy is
not only relevant in respect of artistic phenomena in a narrow sense of
the word, but covers many dimensions of human life and has general
ontological implications. In the Japanese puppet theatre of the late
Middle Ages, art is real and not real in a way which comes close to
modern and postmodern ontological conceptions in the West.
As an elaboration of this
contribution, Henk Oosterling from Erasmus
University Rotterdam shows that the sensus
communis of Kant, if it is interpreted no longer as
universally valid in the sense of transcendentalism, can open up a view
on commonalities between contemporary French philosophies of difference
and basic notions of Japanese thought, e.g. ma and basho.
The common ground on which these different ways of thought can meet, is
called the `inter'. W also encounter this `inter' in the mediatization
of life in the modern/postmodern world and in the local/global
perspective of intercultural philosophy.
from the University of Ghana at Legon/Accra focuses
on the meaning of sensus commonis for African
political and moral thought. He departs from the thought of his own
people, the Akan, and he defends a universal validity of the basic
values of relatedness of human beings to the community.
This point of view is
strongly supported by Frank Uyanne from Awka in
Nigeria, who is presently working on a PhD thesis at Erasmus
University Rotterdam. Uyanne shows that from an Igbo
perspective sensus communis has to be assumed as
being active in aesthetic judgments, and also in everyday thinking and
in politics. It has a relative validity which refers to a specific
community, and as sensus communis humanus a
universal meaning for all human beings.
After a critical
evaluation of Kant's claim of transcendental validity of sensus
communis from the point of view of a social scientist, Wim
van Binsbergen from the African Studies Centre
Leiden and Erasmus University Rotterdam
describes a ritual festival of the Nkoya, a people living in Western
Zambia, and its dramatical changes during the last three decades. He
concludes that it is necessary to consider local particularities and
global commonalities in order to understand what has been happening
from the Technical University of the Middle East at
Ankara applies the notion of sensus communis to the
global dialogue between different religions and worldviews which is
started in the 20th century and has to be reflected on from the
perspective of the various participants, and certainly also of Islam.
He explores the problem that Islam as a universal religion at the same
time is looking for a dialogue with all other religious and
philosophical convictions. In this paradoxical situation, dialogues as
peaceful means of communication have to be accentuated.
The necessity of
dialogues, with special attention for the situation in Turkey,
especially relevant for the Dutch and german societies, is also
stressed in the above mentioned presentation of Steunebrink.
Recent Western issues
concerning aesthetic and political aspects of sensus communis
are presented by Tom Dommisse from the University of Amsterdam,
Sybrandt van Keulen from the same University, and Cornée
Jacobs from the Willem de Kooning Academy at Rotterdam.
examines Lyotard's and Nancy's explanation of the actual meaning of
Kant's argumentation on sensus communis, and their
thinking of community in general. He underlines their conception of the
fragile structure of the common that is `not just at hand'.
Keulen focuses on Rorty's choice for liberalism and democracy
in the Western style. This includes a certain type of `ethnocentrism',
which becomes bearable through the fact that it is based on language
and on the conception of a `poetic community'.
Jacobs discusses questions of the community of friends and,
before all, of lovers, which is highly fragile and even impossible. The
writings of Duras and Blanchot are her main references. She asks (and
answers in the negative), whether the literary community of the two
authors, on the basis of their convictions, provides a model for the
possibility or impossibility of human community in general.
Thus a broad inter and
multicultural panorama is sketched. The possibility of common
judgments is investigated in
the fields of arts and politics, and also in those of history,
religions and worldviews.
If no longer interpreted in the sense of transcendentalism, Kant's
presupposition of a sensus communis for the
validity of aesthetic judgments and in a pragmatic view its relevance
for ethical and political life gives rise to reflections on
what is common or even
universal and what ist particular in the fornamed fields. So
we hope that it turns out to be fruitful and greatly inspiring for
intercultural philosophical work.
Kant's universalistic claims concerning aesthetic judgments and
political-historical teleology are no longer philosophically
defendable. The rejection 62 of the metaphysically overcharged
presuppositions of transcendentality is situated against the background
of an increasing mediatization of socio-economic and socio-political
processes and cultural exchanges that penetrate all dimensions of
society. In order to formulate the conceptual presuppositions of a
sensus communis tailored to this world, and to legitimate the
presupposed coherence of this communis, Kants philosophical project has
to be transformed from a twofold perspective: from an affective
perspective sensus and from a dynamic global-local
perspective communis. Partly, I aim at cutting the Kantian
regulative back to micrological proportions: not only more corporeal
and materialistic, but also, due to an increasing globalization, more
intercultural. The question at stake is: can we still make sense of a
sensus communis on a sens'able' scale against a local-global
or to use a neologism of Paul Virilio: against a `glocal'
perspective? For a deconstructive exploration I refer to the conceptual
frameworks of a group of mainly French philosophers: Michel Foucault,
Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and
Félix Guattari. I will refer to their ambiguous attitude
towards the `Seinsdenken' of Martin Heidegger in order to make a
transition to Japanese philosophy possible. Over a periode of thirty
years they have criticized Kant's transcendental apperception as well
as Husserl's phenomenological intentionality by focusing on the body:
on its libidinal intensities (Lyotard, Deleuze/Guattari),
power-relations (Foucault) and affects (Lyotard, Deleuze/Guattari) that
form a paradoxical `foundation' as an operating force or
différance (Derrida). From this corporeal perspective a
sensus communis can be actualized by unearthening its `immaterial
materialist' (Lyotard) constituents. In this deconstruction crucial
notions as difference, the Other and the in-between come to the fore.
These thinkers of differences have a common interest and fascination
with Japanese culture: partly due to the semiotic and ceremonial
character of Japanse culture, partly due to the `lifestyling' dimension
of zenbuddhist practices in which the Cartesian body-mind problem is
countered. I connect their `materialistic' interpretation of sensus
communis to Kitaro Nishida's `basho' or `logic of place' and to the
notion of `ma' as a dynamic spatiotemporal interval used in
architecture and martial art philosophy. The corporeal and yet
immaterial quality of these phenomena enable me to compare them with
different configurations within philosophies of differences, such as
Derrida's `différance', Lyotard's `passibility' and
Deleuze/Guattari's `plan of immannence'. From this intercultural
exploration I will return to the glocal perspective in order tot
reformulate sensus communis in terms of a literally `inter'activity
within the tensional domains of the virtual-actual and the
global-local. As a result of this twofold reformulation an
intercultural `site' of differences and differends as a being (of the)
in-between will come to the fore that can be aknowledged as an
intercultural, post-Kantian Inter-esse. The core activity of
interculturality appears to be cultivating the inter.
1. Cartesianism and mediatization: body, mind and medium
One of the main topics of the philosophical debate within philosophy
and the humanities concerns the relationship between mind and body.
Although the Cartesian dualism has been heavily criticized in postwar
period, this dualism still implicitely overdetermines critical cultural
debates, for exemple on the specific role and influence of digitalized
communication-circuits like Internet and the hypertextual World Wide
Web and the quality of this interactivity. For instance within the new
media art, an Australian performance artist Stelarc, who in the early
seventies was hanging on hooks from the ceilings of Japanese museums
like a fakir, is now into transforming his body by means of
computerized devices. As the American Extropians and scientists Hans
Moravic and Frank Tipler, he perceives the body as solely a material
container of consciousness, as an intermediary that one day can be cast
away after being uploaded into another `medium'.1 According to
euphorical interpretations of new media recently this utopian
or distopian - idea has been rebaptized as a function of Information
Communication Technology: the Internet and World Wide Web are redefined
as virtual communities.2 What fascinates me in all those technological
speculations, is the philosophical character of this `inter' and its
relations with Kant's sensus communis.One of the pioneering thinkers in
the field of mediaresearch, MarshallMcLuhan, has criticized most
inventively the Cartesian dualism. To him media - especially massmedia
and the new media - are extensions of our body: our limbs, eyes, ears,
hands and finally our nervous-system are expanded and objectified in a
diversity of media. As a result of the integrative forces of
television, McLuhan argues, it became possible to remember the organic
unity of the senses, that was fragmented or dismembered by earlier
mediatizations. Mankind can be enlightened in a material sense and
reunited in a new community of human beings: The Global Village. Kant's
sensus communis gets a late modern expression in McLuhan's televisional
paradigm. But in spite of his slogan "the medium is the message"
McLuhan remains a modernist utopian who keeps focusing on the central
role of human consciousness and subjectivity.
2. Sense and communis: sensibility and the Great Narrative
Of course, Kant too denies the `cogito' or transcendental apperception
to be a substance in a Cartesian sense. As a coherent activity that
accompanies the act of judgment he conceives consciousness or mind as a
time continuum. And the body as matter is also expanded spatiality.
Philosophically Kant has a preference for time to space. Subjectivity
is experienced within and as a lineair-progressive accumulation of
learning processes. Nevertheless Kant aknowledges that the affects form
a bodily awareness of the Ding-an-sich and once certain
affects are cleansed from their heterogeneous origin as such
connect fellow human beings. He accepts two `non-pathological' affects
as constituents of different `senses' communes: in his Critique of
Practical Reason this is the individual affect of `respect' and in
Critique of Judgment the collective affect of `enthusiasm'. Sensus
communis presupposes the transformation of pathological affects on a
transcendental level - as concepts of Understanding or ideas of Reason
in order to reintegrate those into the autonomous sphere of rational
subjectivity. Precisely these notions are deconstructed by
Jean-François Lyotard. He criticizes Kant's `transcendental
illusion': in the final instance the Grand Narrative of emancipation
can no longer be legitimized because the collective experience that
`grounded' it, has fallen apart. But although sensus communis as a
regulative Idea looses its realization, it `somewhere' persists: `It's
a question of a community which is unintelligent still. (...) This
sensus and this communis appear to be ungraspable at their exposition.
It is the concept's other'.3 The subject becomes a `displaced' person.
Sensus communis is no longer tracable by systematically analysing
judgments within the coherence and continuity of consciousness.
Lyotard, referring to the Kantian `enthusiasm' from the Critique of
Judgment, finally conceptualizes `sensus' on corporeal level. Although
`it has to be said clearly: the sensus doesn't give rise to an
experiencing, in the Kantian sense'4 After the delegitimization of the
Grand Narratives of Kant, Hegel and Marx consensus can no longer be
attained because this violates the heterogenity of the different
language games postmodern individuals are involved in. Lyotard
`grounds' sensus communis in an affective receptiveness and a tensional
space-time, embedded in language wherein mind and matter coincide: `Our
"intentions" are tensions (...) exerted by genres upon the addressors
and addressees of phrases, upon their referents, and upon their
senses'5. In The Postmodern Condition (1979) this receptiveness is
still called `sensibility'. The crucial feature of the postmodern
condition is a dissensus that cultivates this sensibility for
differences and `our capacity to endure the incommensurable'6. Art
practices and (new) media trigger experiences that nurture this
postmodern sensibility. In 1985 Lyotard co-curates the exhibition Les
Immateriaux in Centre Pompidou in Paris. The creative and affirmative
aspects of postmodern technologies are subtly explored in a
post-avantgarde setting. Works of (post) avantgarde artists are
installed in a hi-tech environment, framed in a labyrinth of sixty
sites or 'zones'. Cruising these hardly defined sites equipped with
headphones visitors are affected by irreducable differential 66
tensions and non-identifiable `singularities'. They `sense' the
differences or differends between artistic and technological media and
between a diversity of disciplines. They are as it were exposed to
immaterial and material forces: of `maternité' (origin of
the message), `matériau' (medium of support), `matrice'
(inscribing code), `matière' (referent) and
`matériel' (destination of the message). The determining
features of what later in The Inhuman. Reflections on Time (1988) will
be qualified as an `immaterial materialism'7 are prefigured and
performed in Les Immateriaux. But because sensibility must always be
embodied and effectuated within material practices, as an operative
force it is also material: `The matter I'm talking about is
"immaterial", unobjectable, because it can only "take place" or find
its occasion at the price of suspending the active powers of the mind.'
Experiencing the event as such the quod demands `a
mindless state of mind' 8.
3. Passibility: quasi-transcendental sensibility
Sensibility turns out to be more than a psychological category. It is
attributed constitutive powers for subjectivation and as such regains a
quasi-transcendental, immaterial quality. Stressing this
quasi-transcendental quality,9 Lyotard coins sensibility in The
Differend (1983) following Levinas as
`passibilité'. One can say that it is the result of a
deconstruction of the sentiment of the Sublime. Passibility must not,
therefore, be confused with passivity: `passivity is opposed to
activity, but not passibility. Even further, this active/passive
opposition presupposes passibility ...'10. To my opinion Lyotard
revalues Kant's effort to transform the moral `non-pathological' affect
`respect' (Achtung) as a postmodern condition of possibility. In
passibility Lyotard configurates the three Kantian critical projects:
epistemology, ethics and aesthetics. In passibility the differends and
interactions between the former `faculties' of understanding, reason
and imagination or knowing, acting and feeling are taking (a) place.
The (a) might be an indication for a different sensus communis. As a
result knowing gets a `pathic' quality. The tension between being
affected and knowing becomes selfreflective. Referring to Schelling
Lyotard qualifies this informed sensation as `tautegorical': `a term by
which I designate the remarkable fact that pleasure and displeasure are
at once both a "state" of the soul and the "information" collected by
the soul relative to its state'11. The cognitive aspect of the First
Critique is connected to the Third Critique. In being affected one
knows and feels: `for thought, to be informed of its state is to feel
this state to be affected' and `pure reflection is first and
foremost the ability of thought to be immediately informed of its state
by this state and without other means of measure than feeling
itself'12. Obviously Lyotard uses the notion `passibility' as a
double-edged knife to dissect the Kantian autonomous subjectivity while
preserving a pathic, affective foundation from which subjectivation
still can arise. As for the `communis', due to Lyotard's critique of
the Grand Narratives, as an emancipatory project this no longer
presupposes universality. At most it results from a retrospective
projection that becomes a transcendental illusion once an unlegitimized
and uncritical bridging of the descriptive to the prescriptive takes
place. Sensus communis is neither a regulative idea nor a distant
political goal. The communis has `sunken' into matter, i.e. the body.
Lyotard now conceives sensus as a go-between: `A go-between in the
process of coming and going, transmitting no message. Being the
message. A pure movement which compares, which afterwards we put under
house arrest in a seat called sensus. (...) The sensus must be
protected from anthropologization. It is a capacity of the mind'.13
But, I would add, a mind that matters. This go-between is a movement
that animates a `subject' that is beyond the categories of
humanism - both mind and body: it is `la pensée-corps', a
thinking body or bodily thinking or `body/thought'14. And `this sensus
isn't indeed situated in that space and time which the concept uses to
know objects, in the space-time of knowledge...'15. Sensus, to state it
paradoxically, `precedes' temporality and spatiality in a Kantian
sense, explored in the `Transcendental Aesthetics' of the First
Critique. It `situates' the uncritical presuppositions of the act of
understanding: its receptiveness and spontaneity. As an event `it
happens' (il arrive). And as such it is `non-chronically' taking (a)
place. In Heidegger and `the Jews' (1988) Lyotard explains that the
moment of the event of the phrase is consciously only known afterwards,
in retrospect. But this `Result' is already `a diachronizing (...) of
what occurs in a nondiachronic' or `non-chronic time'16. The
intentional subject is always toolate for the event. As with `subject',
indications as `before' and `between' are no longer adequate. The
retrospective act of splitting, one can say, constituted both,
philosophical dualisms and (pseudo)scientific dichotomies like
consciousness/unconscious, wrapped in a Great Narrative. I will come
back to this act of splitting in my elaboration of Derrida's
différance and the Japanese notion of kire.
4. Event beyond time and space
To understand the specificity of the Lyotardian turn we have to realise
that it is no longer consciousness but language that is crucial.
Subjectivity and language cannot be separated. This also applies to his
own medium: écriture or philosophical writing and thinking.
Lyotard directs our attention to words as matter that we cannot think.
Words are `present' before thought can express itself. They are `the
"un-will", the "non-sense" of thought, its mass'17. By using oxymorons,
paradoxes, double binds, dilemma's, antinomies and performative
contradictions, Lyotard's readers are sensitized to the `experience' of
thinking. In this manner affectivity is integrated in a phraseology.
This implies a passibility as an ever moving and moved pathos that is
integrated in phrasing: every phrase has a `quasi-phrase', a
`phrase-matière' or a `phrase-affect'18. Matter and mind
interact in this `phrase-affect', wherein ontology and epistemology are
So in `rephrasing' Kant's Third Critique the experience of
the Sublime and sensus communis Lyotard thematizes an
aporetical configuration on an epistemological level, that further is
transformed into an embodied sensibility on an ontological level.
Methodologically Lyotard has gradually shifted his attention from an
extra-phraseological Kantian differend phrasing opposed to
the unspeakable, the in-fans as an affirmative inhuman dimension
via an inter-phraseological differend the
unsolvable conflict between phrases and between genres to an
intra-phraseological differend: a between within the phrase between the
meaning in relation to one of the other phrase-instances (adressor,
adressee, referent, sense) and the phrase as someting that happens.
From an intra-phrase-ological point of view, passibility is the tension
between feeling oneself incapable to phrase the overwhelming power of a
moral appeal by the other that resists our understanding on the one
hand, and the pleasure of finding new words, phrases and idioms to
communicate this experience on the other hand. Sublimity has become an
`eventuality': a border experience of the now and here of phrasing:
what the phrase says and that it is saying is separated by a differend.
I conceive this as a Heideggerian turn in Lyotard's development. The
all-encompassing necessity of the Ereignis however is changed into a
less stringent `Arrive-t-il?' and `Y-a-t-il?': Does it happen and does
it take (a) place? Can we say that the sublime quality of the phrase is
a paradoxical being of the for mentioned go-between: a literal
`inter-esse' of its quid and its quod as an `experience' with an
aporetical quality? Like the Kantian sublime sentiment it is a quality
of an experienced relation with an unidentifiable `Thing', as Lyotard
sometimes characterizes matter, that `exists' beyond our comprehension
and as such `is unintelligent still', as he stated in `Sensus
Hence, sensus communis is not a rational relationship between subjects
intersubjectivity but a differing and
differentiating operation that cannot be fixed, because it works `in
between' subjectivations. Its immaterial expressions are comparable
with timbre and nuance, i.e. medium specific intensities within music
and visual arts: `nuance and timbre are what differ and defer...'19.
But matter is not a sender, nor is the mind an adressee. Those
intensities are what matters as long as we do not mind.
5. Différance: space-time interval
`Differ and defer' suggests at least an affinity with another thinker
of differences: Jacques Derrida. He also focuses on language and
writing: on grammatology. Deconstructing subjectivity and rational
experience, Derrida too emphasizes the aporetical dimension of Reason,
expressed by Kant in the antinomies. In Aporias (1993) this
constitutive aporia is qualified by Derrida as an experiential factum
that is met by a receptive counterpart: by `non-passive endurance'20.
Derrida's notion of aporia parallels Lyotard's deconstruction of Kant's
sensus communis. Aporia `had to be a matter of the nonpassage, or
rather of the experience of the nonpassage, the experience of what
happens (se passe) and is fascinating (passionne) in this nonpassage,
paralysing us in the separation in a way that is not necessarily
negative ...'21. Derrida relates this experience to the methodological
notion he has developed in the sixties, when he qualifies this aporia
as `a différance in being-with-itself of the present'22. In
De la grammatologie (1968) Derrida introduces the notion of
`supplementarity'. He subscribes Rousseau's statement that everything
starts with the `intermédiaire' as `uncomprehensable to
reason': `The intermediary is milieu and mediation, the middle term
between total absence and the absolute plenitude of presence'.23
Foucault will assign `intermediary' in Discipline and Punish (1975) to
the corporeal forces, i.e. the body, that are disciplined and
normalized.24 More Lyotardian overtones are heard: his `go-between'
resonates in Derrida's circumscription of différance as a
quasi-transcendental operative force: the present participle `ance'
expressing the operative quality `undecided between the active and the
passive'. It is an active disharmony, always in motion, of different
forces and the differences of forces that Nietzsche opposes to the
whole system of the metaphysical grammar. Western philosophy has tried
to neutralize this differential tension: it has with an act
of splitting, as Lyotard states prefigured `Reality' as
consisting of oppositions and dichotomies, articulated in terms of
antinomies or contradictions: `For the middle voice, a certain
nontransitivity, may be what philosophy, at its outsets, distributed
into an active and a passive voice, thereby constituting itself by
means of this repression'. Dichotomies and dualities as passion-action,
subject-object or the categories as agent and patient are inadequate to
describe this operation. Différance `is' an operation that
differs and defers, temporizes and spatializes. As with sensus,
différance is `neither simply active nor simply passive,
anouncing or rather recalling something like the middle voice'25. Like
Lyotard, Derrida too criticizes Heidegger, but he returns to his
writings time and again, because Heidegger conceptualized an in-between
as a supplementary tension in Sein und Zeit (1927): `In-Sein' related
to Dasein as the being of the `Zwischen'. Heidegger explicitely warns
his readers not to make the mistake in understanding this once again as
`the result of the convenientia of two beings that are given'.26 He
also connects the pathos or affectivity in his words: mood or
attunement (Stimmung) as an `Existenziale' with this
in-between: Mood enables Dasein to be moved or affected. The
Heideggerian `in-between', in other words, constitutes the pathos. But
the still metaphysical overtones of the differential tension between
the ontic and the ontological, between the Existentielle and
Existenziale and between the authentic and the inauthentic nihilates
the ontological `primacy' of the medium that thinkers of differences
are aiming at. 27
5. The middle and the inbetween
Both, Lyotard and Derrrida, favour language and writing in the
deconstruction of Kantian categories. In order to more sharply focus on
the ontological perspective I would like to introduce the writings of
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Notions analogous to
`différance' and `differend', `middle voice' and
`go-between' are now articulated from an extra-linguistic perspective.
Again Heidegger is referred to. In Difference and Repetition (1968)
Deleuze already stated: `This difference is not between in the ordinary
sense of the word, it is the Fold, Zwiefalt. It is constitutive of
Being and of the manner of which Being constitutes being, in the double
movement of "clearing" and "veiling". Being truly differentiator of
difference whence the expression "ontological difference"'28.
According to Deleuze Heidegger eventually does not `effectuate the
conversion after which univocal Being belongs only to difference and in
this sense revolves around being'29. The `differenciator of difference'
doubtlessly refers to Derrida's La différance, written in
the same year as Difference and Repetition. But instead of situating
this operation against the background of a philosophy of language,
Deleuze and Guattari develop a philosophy of forces. In the
introduction `Rhizome' to Mille Plateaux (1980) they characterizes it
as the middle: `The middle (milieu) is by no means an average; on the
contrary, it is where things pick up speed. Between (entre) things does
not designate a localizable relation going from one thing to the other
and back again, but a perpendicular direction, a transversal movement
that sweeps one and the other away ...'30 The middle or inter is not a
passage or passing through. It is `mi-lieu' as an `entre'. This inter
`exists' `before' any position, although we can only describe it
`afterwards'. Once more the quotationmarks indicate that in order to
circumscribe this in-between, a discursive explanation focused on
presence, representation and linear time grossly fails. Frequently
Deleuze calls this inter also a 'becoming'. Varying on the Heideggerian
theme of presence and absence and resonating Derrida's
deconstructive enterprise his in-between furthermore is
conceptualized as an ever present now/here but `at
the same time' absent no/where tensional field.
Deleuze and Guattari develop a cluster of philosophical perspectives
wherein terms like `rhizome', `sensation as a block of percepts and
affects' and `plane of immanence of consistence' are used to connotate
this inter. For instance a rhizome is made out of plateaus, and a
plateau `is always in the middle, not at the beginning or the end'. If,
in ontological terms, the inter `exists' `before' the articulated
antipodes of an opposition as it were: crosses (out) the
opposition and tenses the differend it still presupposes
something `invisible' and `un(re)presentable'. To my opinion the notion
of `plane of immanence' indicates an `immaterial' tensional field that
synthesizes (de)territorializing processes, characteristic for
subjectivation. With this notion Deleuze and Guattari try to
circumscribe the philosophical project through history regarding the
coherence of our identity: `Beginning with Descartes, and then with
Kant and Husserl, the cogito makes it possible to treat the plane of
immanence as a field of consciousness'.31 In this way Kant's
transcendental field and the `inter' are connected. In 1995 Deleuze
writes a very densed text titled `L'immanence: une vie...'. In a
nutshell he connects the crucial notions of his philosophical
enterprise and comes to the conclusion that `the transcendental field
is defined by a plane of immanence, and the plane of immanence by a
life'. A life, not life in general. A singularity, but in its
uniqueness absolute: singular universal. The resonance of the
philosophical treatment by Lyotard and Derrida cannot be neglected:
`immanent life that carries the events and the singularities that can
only actualize themselves in subject and objects. This indefinite life
itself does not have moments, how close they might be to each other,
they only have inter-times (entre-temps), inter-moments (entre-moments)
(...) The singularities or constitutive events of a life coexist with
the accidents of the corresponding life, but they do not group nor are
divided in the same fashion. They communicate with each other
completely different than individuals do'32. How do they `communicate'?
Is Deleuze's sensation as informative as Lyotard's tautegorical
passibility? And is the movement of the `inter - a Derridean mouvance33
- as a regulative fiction a double-crossing: the traversing
ànd crossing out of the metaphysical dualities? Lyotard
explicitely subscribes both Derrida's grammatology and Deleuze's notion
of difference as repetition and even opts for an `ontology of
differing/deferring'34, which implies that, on an ontological level,
negativity has been replaced by difference and affirmation. As in
Deleuze's philosophy of immanence', Nietzschean nihilism is
aknowledged, endured and finally disregarded.
6. Thinking differences and Zen
This `post-nihilism' resonates in discussions on Nietzschean nihilism
in Japan. Keiji Nishitani is one of the main participants in this
debate.35 But in his writings one will search in vain for the ideas of
neo-Nietzschean thinkers of difference. The indecidable differend
Lyotard still refers to in his analysis of Western culture is solved in
Japanese philosophy, given its Shintoist presuppositions and the
importance of the Confucian notion of harmony (wa) in Japanese culture:
`In short, the "opposition", in traditional Japanese thought, is
already integrated in a system of cooperation and harmony, as a result
of the shinto-buddhistic syncretism'36. Japanese thought is focused on
synthetic, operative, corporeal forces of an `aesthetic' awareness that
accompanies this attitude towards life. To my opinion Foucault's
`aesthetics of existence' also points in this direction. The last
paragraph of Nishitani's book on nihilism deals with this problem,
though still in terms of atheism. He critically poses the question
whether an existential position of `remaining firmly grounded in one's
actual socio-historical situation, or more fundamentally, in actual
"time" and "space" (...) really engage actual being to the full?'37 In
order to elucidate this problem Nishitani as Masao Abe points towards
`the locus of Buddhist "emptiness"'. The affirmation of nothingness
into an affirmative fullness as an ethico-aesthetic perspective
underlying the writings of thinkers of differences, is phrased by Abe
as follows: `So I think that "everything is empty" may be more
adequately rendered in this way: "everything is just as it is" (...)
Everything is different from everything else. And yet while everything
and everyone retained their uniqueness and particularity they are free
from conflict because they have no self-nature'.38 Lyotard has always
been fascinated by the affirmative way of thinking and acting in the
different expressions of Zen arts. From his early semiotic analyses of
the Japanese Noh-theater in Des dispositifs pulsionnels (1973) to the
remarks on a mindless state of mind (mu shin), referring to
Dôgen's Shobôgenzô - especially the Zenki
- in The Inhuman and his remarks on the Japanese concepts of people
(minzoku) and nation (kokumin) in relation to the subject (shutai) in
Japanese texts during the Second World War in Postmodern Fabels
(1993)39 he envisages an affirmative elaboration of appearance. In the
texts of Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze and their predecessors Barthes
L'empire des signes (1970) and Bataille
`La "tasse de thé" de "Zen" et l'être
aimé' in Sur Nietzsche (1945) uncountable
references to zen-texts, Japanese culture and art practices are
available. These vary from casual remarks to more systematic
elaborations.40 Philosophical topics as indifferentism, immediacy,
immanence and affirmation can be revalued against this Japanese
background. In tune with Zen radicalism, Lyotard not only took a stand
against the Grand Narrative of speculative thought, transcendental
illusion and conclusive presentation in Hegel's systematic philosophy,
he also rejects negativity as the driving force of life. Negativity
cannot be the core of a philosophy of differences and the in-between,
nor can this specific awareness be communicated by means of logical
arguments: `Le Zen tout entier mène la guerre contre la
prévarication du sens. On sait que le bouddhisme
déjoue la voie fatale de toute assertion (ou de toute
négation) en recommandant de n'être jamais pris
dans les quatre propositions suivantes: cela est A - cela n'est pas A -
c'est à la fois A et non-A - ce n'est ni A ni non-A.'41 The
Cartesian duality of body and mind is completely neglected in the
analyses of Japanese philosophers like Keiji Nishitani, Masao Abe and
Kitaro Nishida. Japanese zen-buddhism aknowledges, in spite of the
primacy of appearances, an experiential truth one can grasp in a
radical affirmation of appearances, wherein the intentional subject and
his will dissolves. The empty mind or no-mind (mu shin) Lyotard refers
to, is one articulation, the many references of all these French
philosophers another. The aesthetic rituality involved in this
experiential practice testifies of an actuality, thinkers of
differences aim at in their deconstruction of western metaphysics. But
when empty is full, as Hegel would formulate it in a speculative
proposition (Satz), what does this mean in terms of time and space and
how does it still envisage a sensus communis?
7. Ma: `the way to sense the moment of movement'
Not only in Noh theatre and puppet theatre, in tea ceremony (cha no yu)
and arranging flowers (ikebana), but also in martial arts (budo)
known as `the Way (dô) of the Warrior (bu)'
the `thinking body', as Lyotard has qualified it, has its
ways. The France based Zen master and master of martial arts Taisen
Deshimura begins Zen and the martial arts (1977) with a chapter
entitled `Ici et maintenant' reminding us of Deleuze's short text: `You
and I are different. If one wants to find the solution to his own life,
one starts out of an impasse. Here and now, how to create your life?'42
The chapter ends as follows: `In the martial arts there is no time to
wait. (...) One has to live in an instant. It is exactly there that de
decision of life and death falls.'43 In this `actuality' matter
instantanuously does mind. In budo philosophy the notion of the center
is crucial. One has to keep though not to defend
one's center, both physical and mental. The energy (ki) that traverses
body and mind is centered in the abdomen (hara or tanden). To explain
this in a tactical sense Michael Random, a French master in martial
arts, refers to the notion of ma: `In a word, ma is perceived behind
everything as an undefinable musical chord, a sense of the precise
interval eliciting the fullest and finest resonance'.44 Ma ai
technically means the correct distance between two opponents. Correct
again in a Confucian sense: in harmony (ai). Unlike Kant's position
towards the beautiful, however, this harmony is sensed non-rationally.
Ma implies an ontology of the present as pre-sent. No fighter can
bridge the distance between him and his opponent without abandoning his
defense first. Losing the centre, breaking the middle means being
defeated, while taking the center of the opponent by energizing one's
own body and mind technically (ki ken tai itchi) means victory.45 The
distance between two opponents can relatively be shorter (chika maai)
or longer (to maai), but depending upon speed, skill and mental state
of the opponent and the physical environment, this distance always has
to be harmonious. When Westerners think and talk about space, `they
mean the distance between objects. In the West, we are taught to
perceive and react to the arrangements of objects and to think of space
as "empty"'46. In ma space and time are both involved: ma is a dynamic
space-time interval wherein activity and passivity, agens and patiens
are one and the same, yet different. As long as maai is maintained,
apparently nothing happens. But perhaps this is the deferring tension
that Lyotard in a reception-aesthetic sense refers to when he, as Burke
did, thematizes the disturbing aspect of the sublime: `does it happen?'
`Apparently': precisely in this `actuality' - at that very `moment'
within this specific distance - everything is completely and totally
connected in its difference. There is no anticipation in this total
presence. Ma penetrates all arts - from preparing, serving and drinking
tea to doing business, from folding paper (origami) to martial arts,
from painting and cinema to architecture. Architects like Arata Isozaki
aknowledge that this space-time interval is their primary medium. In
1979 the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris had an exhibition on ma.
The exhibition, initiated by Isozaki, consisted of nine spatial, visual
and sculptural installations in which different dimensions of ma were
brought into experience. The qualifications of ma in the catalogue are
most clarifying: `Ma is the place in which a life is lived'; `Ma
organizes the process of movement from one place to another. The
breathing and movement of people divide the space in which people
live'; `Ma is maintained by absolute darkness'; `Ma is the sign of the
ephemeral'; `Ma is the alignment of signs. Ma is an empty place where
all kinds of phenomena appear, pass and disappear...'. And finally, the
most lucid description, seen in the light of my presentation: `Ma is
the way to sense the moment of movement'47. Factually, one can say, the
visitor of the exhibition is himself installed by ma. Etymologically ma
is rooted in Shinto religion. It has a ritual background. According to
the Japanese, nature embodies a multitude of gods (kami). Their
presence can be invoked by performing strictlyprescribed acts and
sentences in enclosed sites wherein gods can `descend'. This sacred
space-time is marked by poles, gates or knotted ropes. Of course these
ritual spatio-temporal sites are not solely confined to Japanese
religious culture. But the specific Japanese characteristic is found in
how the `descent' of gods is enacted in order to `install' a
relationship between nature, men and gods. As with the creation of God,
the process of descending itself, is not a temporal activity in a
particular space, but it is the time/space-continuum itself dat adheres
these events. So ma is neither Descartes' mathematical notion of
extension, nor Kant's transcendental time-space. Ma is a
spatio-temporal interval in which a dynamic in-between is
systematically prior, though retrospectively simultaneous to the
installed entities. The sacred time-space is not seen as an `empty'
container of things, but as a continuum animated by spiritual power
(ki): empty is full. Ryosuke hashi ends Ekstase und Gelassenheit (1975)
referring to both Dôgen and Heidegger and their respective
`Orte' places, or more adequate: sites - of truth with the
following question: `Can we nowadays really experience these sites
(Orte) and be in the abyss `between' both? What kind of `site' is this
`in-between' (Zwischen)?'48 Is ma a candidate for this `inter'? In his
book of 1994 on beauty in Japanses culture he compares the notion of ma
as the in-between with the notion of kire. Kire's specific feature is
the activity of cutting within a continuum. According to Ohashi all
Japanese arts are characterized by this rupture, which is always
performed within a ritualized - or nowadays: in an aesthetisized -
time-space: the way Noh-actors position their feet, the arrangement of
flowers in ikebana, the position and spatial rhythm in the stone
gardens, including the walls that surround them, even the laughter of
the Zen monk that bursts out, every aspect of traditional Japanese art
and culture offers kire as the rupture. Speaking about the low wall
that closes the Ryoanji-stone garden off from the natural world, Ohashi
remarks: The wall's `decisive function does not aim at creating a
perspectival effect for the garden, but to seperate the natural world
outside and the aesthetically shaped inside. It constitutes the
"in-between" (ma) of the two worlds. It is also the "in-between" of
"life and death" (shoji). The wall, that in a spatial sense is just
peripheric, gets in a structural sense a central meaning for the
stonegarden, even better: it constitutes the real centre"49. Outside is
inside. Extrapolating this remark, one is tempted to say that kire and
ma share structural similarities. In kire like in the cutting
of a sword the dynamics of creation of reality in
dichotomies, dualities, opposition or less strict: of
differences is stressed. Does kire have similar qualities as
Deshimaru's instantaneousness or Nishitani's actuality? Is it
comparable to Derrida's `différance' and Lyotard's `act of
splitting' as an operation within the sensus communis? In ma the
creative tension that holds the differences together is put forward. Is
ma instructive to understand Deleuze's `plane of immanence'? In all
these configurations rational, discursive reality is a function of
non-rational sensus communis. In ma, in other words, communis is both
sensed and embedded, while in kire the operative, deffering and
differentiating forces that `work' `within' this continuum are
stressed. The `reality' of this sensus is problematic as long as we
disconnect it from the body and interpret it solely from the
transcendental perspective of reason.
8. Basho as the logic of place: body and sensus communis
In order to further elaborate the dimensions of ma and kire from an
experiential, quasi-transcendental perspective I will extend them and
connect them with the ideas of two influental Japanese philosophers:
Tetsuro Watsuji en Kitaro Nishida. To my opinion, Lyotard's
immaterialist materialism finds a Japanese pendant in Nishida's
philosophy of place. Lyotard's `thinking body' is a specific subject in
Japanese philosophy. `Subject' can be translated in two ways: shukan
(subject-seeing) en shutai (subject-body), the first meaning being more
psychological, the latter more corporeal. Lyotard without any doubt
will recognize himself in the latter, given his for mentioned remarks
in The Inhuman. Watsuji focuses on a unity of mind and body (shinjin
ichinyo), though not in a Hegelian sense. In Japanese the word for
`person' is ningen. The first character (nin) means `man', the second
(gen) space or in-between (aida)50. Ningen does not refer to a
substantial core of an actual person (hito) - cogito - but to a dynamic
sphere wherein people are interconnected. Reflecting upon Watsuji's
philosophy, Yasuo Yuasa states that Western philosophy is founded on
the primacy of time as the inner sense of the subject. Watsuji came to
that conclusion after having studied Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, from
which he adopted and rephrased the notion of Dasein. I agree that it is
much more complicated, but the primacy of time within Western thought
cannot be refuted. In evaluating Watsuji's critique on the Western
mind-body problem, we must avoid, however, the Cartesian ambush: the
Japanese emphasis on spatiality and corporality is not in opposition
with temporality and mind: `Does this mean then that the physiological
functions of the body are the most essential determinant of being
human? No'.51 The materialism that follows from the negation of
consciousness as a determining factor is too typical a Western
enterprise. `Watsuji's concept of betweenness, the subjective
interconnection of meanings, must be grasped as a carnal
interconnection. Moreover, this interconnection must not be thought of
as either a psychological or physical relatedness, nor even their
conjunction'.52 We also must be keen on the Hegelian ambush: we are not
searching for a higher rational synthesis of mind and body. These
relations `between' both rather have a supplementary than a dialectical
quality. For a further clarification Watsuji introduces a new notion:
basho. `To exist in betweenness (aida gara) is to exist within the
life-space. Furthermore, to exist in a spatial basho means nothing
other than to exist as a human-being by virtue of one's body; I exist
in my body, occupying the spatial basho of here and now...'.53 We must
neglect the Cartesian suggestion of the `in'. But what then does
Watsuji mean by basho? Watsuji refers to Kitaro Nishida for a more
philosophical meaning. It has a common meaning as a physical place, but
`basho (der Ort-Gedanke, HO) is developed by Nishida as a countermove
to the Cartesian dualism'54. Nishida in a typical Japanese turn of
phrase, circumscribes it as the realtion between the one who knows,
that what is known and the act of knowing. He also refers to Plato's
chora, reason enough for Elberfeld to relate it to Heidegger and
Derrida. To Nishida the Self is not the unity of consciousnous, but
rather the `autonomy' of the field of consciousness. 55 Basho as `the
logic of place' or `spatial logic'56 also has an experiential
dimension. It is connected with the notion of `pure experience' (junsui
keiken): a synthesis of phenomenological (Heideggerian) en zen notions,
in which thinking is considered to be an active part of a corporeal
`experience' or `Erlebnis'.57 The `body' is the key notion. On an
epistemological level Nishida's critique culminates in a redefinition
of the relation between the general rule or law and particular cases.
As Lyotard did in criticizing Kant, Nishida reformulates Kant's
or better: German idealism's position towards both
the determining and the reflective judgment. Lyotard's countering of
the `transcendental illusion' with the tension of different differends
gets an experiential, affirmative pendant in Nishida's thought of pure
experience: this is conceptualized as an empty `site' (Ort) inbetween
the general and the particular. Emptiness again is the crucial notion:
the in-between is `a true designation or mu, an `emptiness' that is
neither particular nor general. Thinking mu has its own spatial logic
(basho). `The characteristic of the logic of "place" with Nishida is
that for him, even if "difference" is understood as "opposition", she
never gives in to "negation". For him, even when "the one" and "the
many" oppose each other they do not negate each other'. 58 For Nishida
the axiological implication is an `acting intuition' in which the
existence of others is presupposed. He explicitely refers to
Heidegger's ontic `mood' or `attunement' (Stimmung) and ontological
`disposition' (Befindlichkeit). As in Heidegger's `Gelassenheit'
activity and passivity are both involved and the ambiguity of absence
and presence also resonates. `Acting intuition' moreover is an
expression of the ambiguity of the body as a subject and an object.59
Foucault's critical analysis in The Order of Things of `Man' as an
empirico-transcendental doublet and the reformulation by Derrida of
this aporetical tension on an experiential level as a non-passive
endurance and by Lyotard on a quasi-transcendental level as passibility
to my opinion can be compared with Nishida's notion of `acting
intuition'. When we extend Hitoshi Oshima's remark on the similarities
between Nishida's logic of place and de Saussure's notion of
difference60 and take notice of the influence of Saussurean
structuralism in the writings of former post-structuralists like
Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard and Deleuze, then a similarity between them
and Nishida is not too far fetched a hypothesis.
9. Ma and Western public space
With basho I pretend to have made an intercultural clarification of
Lyotard's `thinking body' and the connotated notions Derrida and
Deleuze/Guattari employ. Basho circumscribes a sensus communis on an
affective, `localized' tensional field. But Kant's sensus communis also
implies a universalism with cosmopolitic implications. Of course, it is
possible to transform, as Nishida did, the I-you relation based basho
it into a `universal' ethics. However, I prefer to explore a
`universal' perspective from a more empirical point of view. Although I
am aware that from now on I will be talking about the production of
sensus communis and not of the quasi-transcendental `foundation' of it,
my focus is to `locate' the inter on a global scale. Western
theoreticians have indeed used the concept ma in a critical sense to
redefine public space. Within a postmodern frame of mind it is not hard
to aknowledge Isozaki's idea of a building or even a city as a
dynamical space-time machine, that produces intersubjectivity and
given Foucault's thesis on the `panoptic dispositive'
exemplified by the Benthamian prison even as a micropolitical
sensus communis. In The Hidden Dimension (1966) Edward T. Hall, a
contemporary of McLuhan, refers to ma in order to elaborate the idea of
sensory connectedness: how do on a subconscious level perceptions
communicate a public experience? He uses ma to criticize the Western
opposition between private and public, produced within a conception of
space as `empty': `The meaning of this becomes clear only when it is
contrasted with the Japanese, who are trained to give meaning to spaces
to perceive the shape and arrangements of spaces; for this they have a
word: ma'.61 Instead of mathematical perspectivism that has structured
our western gaze since the Renaissance, Japanese art focuses on
multi-perspectivism: `In contrast to the single point perspective of
Renaissance and Baroque painters, the Japanese garden is designed to be
enjoyed from many points of view'.62 Christine Buci-Glucksmann in
rephrazing this Baroque gaze in terms of the postmodern condition also
speaks about the films of Yasujiro Ozu in terms of ma: `While the
instability the Japanese mu-jo (not-stable) is the
pure flow of time, the interval between things, ma, is at the same time
emptiness and "the in-between"'63. The most daring `application' of ma
as the quasi-transcendental of global space, however, comes to the fore
in The Skin of Culture (1998), a book published by the present-day
director of the McLuhan-Institute, Derrick De Kerckhove. Inspired by
McLuhan's vision of the Global Village and exploring the influence and
creative possibilities of digitalized worldwide communication, he
applies ma to the dynamic network-structure of the Internet and other
kinds of computerized communication-systems, in short: to cyberspace.
De Kerckhove sketches the growing awareness of Westerners that public
space outside our skins is no longer empty, but exponentially filled
with networks of different qualities. He understands ma as `a
continuous flow, alive with interactions and ruled by a precise sense
of timing and pacing'64. People are now connected, i.e. logged in or on
line as a result of the operative forces of a `psychotechnological ma'.
But conforming McLuhans thoughts on medial extension, according to De
Kerckhove our minds will externalize themselves as this
`psychotechnological ma, a world of electronic intervals in constant
activity and reverberations'. De Kerckhove goes as far as to proclaim
that `ma is the quintessence of a certain aspect of the global human
civilisation'65. Japanese designers have understood the creativity that
is enclosed in this concept more than their Western colleagues. Ma
becomes an interface between mind and technology. I am not going to
discuss De Kerckhove's uncritical presuppositions here his
cartesianism and Hegelian notion of progress, notwithstanding his
explicit refusal of the myth of progress. Neither will I discuss his
technological reductionism of the sensus communis. De Kerckhove's
suggestion that we can manipulate and reproduce ma is of course
non-sens. The most we can say is that we are installed by what we
retrospectively can explain as a time-space interval that is
technically produced. What Kant rightly noticed in relation to the
sensus communis also counts for the `inter' of the Internet: this
cannot be managed that is: mapped, extrapolated and
calculated. It cannot exhaustively be understood by referring to
globalization and rule guided hard and software.
10. The `inter' of glocalization: global/local, virtual/actual
Nevertheless it is worth while to elaborate De Kerckhove's intuition. I
just mention his line of thought in order to connect it to Virilio's
notion of the `glocal'. Unlike the project of cosmopolitic
universalization, globalization no longer concern the implementation of
general principles to particular situations. The tension between the
universal and the singular is not the same as that between the general
and the particular and perhaps Nishida's `pure experience' is the
immediate perception of the `inter', we nowadays can perceive in the
cyber generation that is familiar with computers. The point I want to
make is directed to the tension between the global and the local and
between the virtual and the actual. Philosophically `reality' takes
place within this tensional fields. As a result of an increasing
knowledge on the specificity of the other, the modern orientation is
characterized by integration and normalization of the once exotic
Other. Seen in a historical context: in a colonial or imperial world,
the Other is still the exotic Other whose material existence asks for
being subjected to an universal force of Enlightenment in order to
realize unused potentialities. Paradoxically the Other escapes, because
his singularity dissolves immediately by first glance and touch.
Postmodern strategies however are haunted by the absolute negativity of
an Other who can never be integrated.66 This `sublime' Other resists
every information and formation: this Other(ness) is by definition
formless, `in-forme'.67 In a globalized world Otherness in this sublime
articulation is no longer applicable. The relation towards the Other no
longer tolerates a hierarchical negativity. Due to the acceleration and
intensivation of systems of information, transportation and
communication, the Other is actualized every moment, be it as a
wellstructured tourist attraction, our Turkish neighbours or refugees
requesting for political asylum. Even more, the Other has become
self-reflective. As Stranger he has become an integral part of our
identity, as Julia Kristeva proclaims.68 The gobal/local tension no
longer has an utopian quality. The good place (eu-topia) lies no longer
beyond the horizon. But neither is it mere fiction (ou-topia). Locally
utopia still can take (a) place: not as an universal projection, but as
a collective trajectory orientated on the global. `We' are only by
ourselves through the others. Not dialectically but differentially: we
do not have to be the Other to become ourselves, and neither have we to
become the Other to be ourselves. We share this world living in the
in-betweenness of the global and the local. We sense our `we-ness'
enduring and (in)forming this tension. The same goes for time. As with
space we no longer know in what time we are living after `the end of
history'. In our daily experience mediamatic feedback goes that fast
is even instantanuous that every individual lives
in past, present and future at the same time. Both `actuality' and
`real time' are notions that came into existence through the
accelerated mediatization of events. Actuality in a radical historical
sense is an `in actu' of events that have to be informed in medial
reflections to become a collective experience. Massmedia
radio, cinema news, television and World Wide Web transform
local events into global networks. These events, however, are connected
in such a complex way that they loose their meaning on an experiential
and corporeal level. The layered complexity of reality does not allow
an unambiguous meaning. Every new attempt to unravel this complexity
generates a more complex meaning. Like we are strangers to ourselves,
our present is actual/virtual. Linear progression is out of date. So is
the Aristotelian dualism of potentiality and reality, articulated in an
Aristotelian-thomistic-hegelian tradition. In this tradition the
present is the realization of potentialities which were hidden in
history. But like `autonomy' the notion of `progression' can still be
experienced on a local scale and in limited contexts. However, this
self-reflective experience can not be totalized as an encompassing
worldhistory. Because past and future are no longer connected by the
symmetry of origin and end, this is yet another reason why the present
can no longer be reflected upon in an unambiguous way. After the
deconstruction of Worldhistory by massmedia and transformation of
public space by the new media into networks of local histories, the
present has to take (a) place time and again. Are all these critical
notions as `unzeitgemäß' or `untimely' or these
phrases as `time is "out of joint"' articulated to (in)form the present
as a supplementary tension between the actual and the virtual? The
point of intersection of actual realities is the event. Retrospectively
an event can be conceptualized as a degree zero of reality. As such the
event is not an actual reality: it is a virtual reality. It is no
longer a potentiality, laying in wait to be realized. Virtualities are
produced together with actualities. Y2K as a virtual reality is a very
real actuality. That is why `virtual reality' is more then a
simulation, an idea, a dream, a vision, an intuition. Given the
supplementarity of absence and presence it is not mere appearance. As
with the global and the local `reality' is the tensional difference
between the actual and the virtual. The inter `is' a
quasi-transcendental that must be postulated in order to sense common
ground for a post-historical world. 11. Ontology of the `inter':
inter-esse as sensus communis Mind/body, subject/object,
active/passive, message/medium, global/local and virtual/actual are
rephrased as tensional differences. To my opinion only a radical
analysis of the `inter' will throw some light on our actual `condition
humaine'. The prefix `post' or `trans' to `human' is just a matter of
definition. The question remains as to the `what' of this in-between.
Does the inbetween travers the opposition between presence and absence
and does this imply a collective aesthetic practice that articulates
and endures the tension of the in-between? Does it `help' to be
informed by other cultures like the Japanese that developed aesthetic
practices in which the medium is radically affirmed as a result of
which the ego is made transparant? Or is the question `What is the
"inter"?' badly formulated? Then the `inter' is not, it operates. But
how it operates is to a great extent dependent upon the individuals
that are sensibilized to its movements. Sensus communis is not a
potentiality to be realized in the twofold Hegelian sense of the word:
it is an actuality to be virtualized. According to Sloterdijk, we live
in the age of the in-between. But did we not always live in the
in-between? Is the in-between, precisely because of our shared ability
to reflect upon our material conditions, is this mediumlike existence,
is this `mediocrity' perhaps our condition humaine? And is, instead of
negating `mediocrity' as modernity legitimized by the Grand Narrative
of emancipation and Bildung, a radicalization of mediocrity the path we
have to take nowadays? Against the background of the recent
digitalization I prefer to understand `inter'activity as an operative
cluster of tensional fields as a `foundation' for the affective and
reflective human relations. What we use to qualify as `soul' (anima),
`mind' (spiritus), `cogito', `selfconsciousness' or `intersubjectivity'
to me are totalizations of these tensional fields. The human mind/body
tension appears as such as the modus operandi as foundation
and operation of the in-between. Interactivity is activity of
the `inter'. It cannot be represented as such and is therefore the most
recent articulation of Kant's transcendental apperception as the
`footage' of inter-esse and sensus communis. Interactivity is, in
Kantian terms, a condition of possibility in itself uninformed and
formless: informe. The growing awareness that individual life, after
the downfall of the meta-narratives, more than ever is in need of a
shared project, is accompanied by a growing sense for aestheticization.
After Kant's transcendental project of the sensus communis many
aesthetic projects have entered the stage, varying from the late 19th
century Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk and Baudelairian dandyism via Bauhaus
and Surrealism up to postmodern lifestyling. Foucault's `aesthetics of
existence' is as local and `virtual communities' a global expression of
this awareness. In political perspective the core of multiculturalism
and fundamentalism is still a modern expression of Kant's sensus
communis.69 Perhaps for a more up to date articulation of a sensibility
of the `inter' it is more instructive to look at art-practices.
Indirectly the imaginative and synthesizing powers of art reaffirm the
project of the in-between that Kant in spite of all critique
inaugurated in his Critique of Judgment. The burning question into what
this plea for a radicalized interactivity will culminate, cannot be
answered yet. But one thing we can be sure of: for thinking to have a
future we can no longer turn our back to the body as Descartes did and
cyber euphorics nowadays do. Nishida's reflections on body/mind and the
applications of ma can be very instructive to rethink sensus communis
in local/global terms.
Interculturality: towards a culture of the inter?
My last reflection concerns the importance of the `in-between' for the
intercultural endeavour. How do we understand the `inter' of
intercultural? Of course `intercultural' differs from `multicultural'.
The latter expresses the idea that different cultures can exist more or
less autonomously within one unity, i.e. the state or the nation.
Multiculturality nowadays is defined as a multitude of identities,
assembled within a political identity: multitude in unity. The
finalizing unity synthesizes the incompatible on higher level. But this
unity, always sufficient in itself, will accept other identities only
in case of deficiency. In other words, multiculturality is an
ideological notion of a desintegrating unity. `Intercultural' operates
on another level. It is not a political category in the strict sense of
the word. Rather than focussing on an illusionary political unity
`intercultural' is a qualification of an intermediate zone. In contrast
with `multiculturality' it cannot perform an integrating function as
for instance art-practices can do. In this sense, a subject can never
`be' intercultural, since this someone would posit himself between two
identities. Ohashi's question on the abyss between two sites can not
lead to a new identity or subject. In a more positive sense, an
intercultural `experience' is not an experience that surpasses
cultures, but one that dissolves their metaphysical foundations and
installs its `sense' within a local/global tension. To put it in
Deleuzean terms: One can only `become' intercultural. If one is not
prepared to put the thought of a final identity aside, if one still
feels the urge to decide between two fundamental positions, then
intercultural means being split, perhaps even in a pathological sense.
Contextually this split can be resolved in a cultural identity - but
only temporarily, never permanently. On the long run `inter' expresses
a continuous coming and going. `Intercultural' seems therefore
intrinsically connected with the experience of differences. Enduring
`impasses' as Deshimaru indicated or as I
would prefer to call it - `aporia' on a local level can sometimes
result in a disoriented and disorientated experience. It is difficult
to interpret this notion from a psychological point of view. Perhaps it
requires another kind of `psycholo-gy', as the subject no longer acts
as a final point of reference. Philosophically it is more clear.
Answering the question `What is intercultural philosophy?' in an
identifying context is a contradictio in terminis. It is not the
character of a certain philosophy that comes into question, but it is
the character of a certain activity that presses forward. A more
adequate question would be: `How can one philosophize (in) an
intercultural sense?' Or if one needs a strict definition: `What "is"
the sense of intercultural philosophizing?' The provisional answer
probably is to reside conceptually in a mediate area that cannot be
totalized. Thinking against the perspective of an everchanging no man's
land, of a empty `nowhere' that for a thinking body at the same time is
a full `now-here'.
1 Stelarc and Moravic extend the thought experiment Lyotard performs in
The Inhuman, speculating on a post-solar time and the possibility of
though without a body, in an affirmative sense. See: J.-F. Lyotard, The
Inhuman. Reflections on Time. Oxford 1991, p. 8-23.
2 B. Woolley: Virtual Worlds. A Journey in Hyoe and Hyperreality.
3 Lyotard: `Sensus communis', in: A. Benjamin (ed), Judging Lyotard..
London 1992, p. 1
4 Idem, p. 3.
5 Lyotard: The Differend. Phrases in Dispute. Manchester 1988,
6 Lyotard: The Postmodern Condition.: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester
1984, p. xxv.
7 The Inhuman, loc. cit. (note 1), p. 45.
8 Idem, p. 140.
9 This quasi-transcendentality is also found in Derrida's
différance. The uncritical investment of transcendentality
in the notion of the subject is scorned by Foucault in The Order of
Things (1966): `Man' is labelled as `an empirico-transcendental
doublet' (322), unaware of its aporetical grounding.
10 The Inhuman, loc. cit. (note 1), p. 116.
11 Lyotard: Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime. Stanford 1994, p.
12 Idem, p. 11.
13 Judging Lyotard, loc. cit. (note 3), p. 9.
14 Lyotard: Postmodern Fabels. Minneapolis/London 1997, p. 248.
15 Judging Lyotard, loc. cit. (note 3), p. 2.
16 Lyotard: Heidegger and `the jews', Minneapolis 1990, p. 16.
17 The Inhuman, loc. cit. (note 1), p. 143.
18 Lyotard: The Differend, loc. cit. (note 5), `Kant 1', p. 62.
19 The Inhuman, loc. cit. (note 1), p. 140.
20 J. Derrida: Aporias. Stanford 1993, p. 16.
21 Idem, p. 12.
22 Idem, p. 17.
23 Derrida: De la grammatologie, Paris 1967, p. 226.
24 M. Foucault: Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. New
York 1977, p. 11.
25 Derrida: Margins of Philosophy. Chicago 1982, p. 9.
26 M. Heidegger: Sein und Zeit. Tübingen 1927, p. 132.
27 For an actual interpretation of Heidegger's `Zwischen' it is more
useful to read Peter Sloterdijk, who qualified postmodern individuals
as `Zwischen-menschen', beings of the in-between. See P. Sloterdijk:
Eurotaoismus. Zur Kritik der politischen Kinetik. Frankfurt a/M 1989,
28 G. Deleuze: Difference and Repetition. London/New York 1994, p. 65.
29 Idem, p. 66.
30 G. Deleuze/F. Guattari: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. A thousand
Minneapolis/London 1987, p. 25.
31 Deleuze/Guattari: What is Philosophy? London/New York 1994, p. 46.
32 Deleuze: `L'immanence: une vie ...', in: Philosophie, 47, Paris
1995, p. 3-7.
33 Derrida: Margins, loc. cit. (note 25)., p. 9.
34 Lyotard: The Inhuman, loc. cit. (note 1), p. 147.
35 K. Nishitani: The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism. New York 1990.
36 H. Oshima: Le développement d'une pensée
mythique..Pour comprendre la pensée japonaise. Paris 1994,
37 Nishitani, op. cit. (note 35), p. 190.
38 M. Abe: Zen and Western Thought. Honolulu 1985, p. 233; see also
Nishitani: The Self-
Overcoming of Nihilism. New York 1990, p. 180; T. Deshimaru: Zen and
Paris 1977, p. 31/145.
39 Lyotard: Postmodern Fabels., loc. cit. (note 14), p. 103-104.
40 I cannot go into details here. For a more detailed exploration: H.
Oosterling: `Scheinheiligkeit oder Heiligkeit der Schein.
Subjektkritische Beschäftigungen mit Japan', in: Das
Multiversum der Kulturen. Ed. Heinz Kimmerle. Amsterdam/Atlanta 1996,
41 Roland Barthes: L'Empire des signes. Genève 1970, p. 75.
42 Deshimaru, op. cit. (note 38), p. 31.
43 Idem, p. 34
44 Michael Random, Japon. La stratégie de l'invisible. Paris
1985, pp. 150/5.
45 See: H. Oosterling/L. Vitalis: Kendo, techniek, taktiek en
didaktiek. Rotterdam 1985, p.131 ff.
46 E. T. Hall: The Hidden Dimension. New York 1966, p. 153.
47 See: `Ma: Japanese Time-Space', in: The Japanese Architect:
International Edition of
Shinkenchiku, nr. 262, Febr. 1979, p. 69-80.
48 R. Ohashi: Ekstase und Gelassenheit. Zu Schelling und Heidegger.
München 1975, p. 178.
49 Ohashi: Kire. Das `Schöne' in Japan.
Philosophisch-ästhetische Reflexionen zu Geschichte und
Moderne. Köln 1994, p. 75.
50 The pronunciation of the Japanese kanji or character differs
depending upon whether it is used seperately or in connection with
other kanji. Aida (gara) is the same character as (nin)gen.
51 Y. Yuasa: The Body. Towards an Eastern Mind-Body theory. New York
1987, p. 46.
52 Idem, p. 47.
53 Idem, p. 39.
54 R. Elberfeld, Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945). Das Verstehen der
Kulturen. Moderne japanische Philosophie und die Frage nach der
Interkulturalität. Amsterdam/Atlanta 1999, p. 105.
55 Idem, p. 107-109.
56 Nishida is probably one of the first Japanese philosophers who
succeeded in connecting
traditional Japanese concepts with Western philosophical ideas -
ranging from Kant, Fichte and Hegel up to the neo-Kantianism of Rickert
- but as Piovesane states in Recent Japanese Philosophical Thought
1862-1996. A Survey (1997) `this system, though including the method of
western philosophy, is still thoroughly oriental in its theme and
57 In Japanese two words are used for `experience': keiken and taiken,
respectively `Erfahrung' and `Erlebnis'. Of course, the second meaning
is more appropriate within this context. See Yuasa, op. cit. (note 51),
58 Oshima, op. cit. (note 36), p. 103.
59 Yuasa, op.cit. (note 51), p. 50.
60 He points out that Nishida's magnum opus Zen no kenkyu (Study of the
Good, 1911) was published in a period when western philosophy was
passing through a series of radical changes: Einstein's theory of
relativity, James's pragmatism, Bergson's vitalism, de Saussu-re's
general linguistics, to mention just a few.
61 Hall, op. cit. (note 46), p. 153.
62 Idem, p. 154.
63 Ch. Buci-Glucksmann: Der kartographische Blick der Kunst. Berlin
1997, p. 166. We could enhance this perspective by referring to Luce
Irigaray, when she speaks about `the economy of the interval' and to
Kristeva's notion of the semiotic.
64 D. de Kerckhove: `The Skin of Culture', in: Investigating the new
electronic reality. Ed. Ch. Dewdney. London 1998, p. 165.
65 Idem, p. 167.
66 We can think of the writings of Blanchot, Levinas.
67 I refer to the 1997 exhibition in Centre Pompidou, curated by
Rosalind Kraus, titeld `L'Informe' in which the aesthetics of Georges
Bataille are used to redefine avant-garde art(practices). See Y.-A.
Bois/R. E. Kraus: Formless. A User's Guide. New York 1997.
68 J. Kristeva: Etrangers à nous-mêmes.Paris 1988.
69 S. Zizek, `Multiculturalism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational
Capitalism', in: New Left Review, Sept./Oct. 1997.