Organs without Bodies by Zizek Slavoj

Author:Zizek, Slavoj [Slavoj Žižek]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136320965
Publisher: Taylor & Francis

The properly dialectical solution of the dilemma of “Is it really there, in the source, or did we only read it into the source?” is thus that it is there, but we can only perceive and state this retroactively, from today’s perspective and this retroactive causality, exerted by the effect itself upon its causes, is the minimal sine qua non of freedom. Is it not that, without this freedom, the effects would, in a way, not only preexist in their causes but also directly preexist their causes? That is to say, without the excess/gap between cause and effect, the effect would preexist its cause in the sense that it would already be given in advance of its cause, regulating the deployment of the causal link as its hidden telos—teleology is the truth of linear mechanical causality (as Hegel put it). Going even a step further, one should paradoxically claim that this assertion of the excess of the effect over its cause, of the possibility of freedom, is the fundamental assertion of Deleuze’s materialism. That is to say, the point is not just that there is an immaterial excess over the material reality of multiple bodies but that this excess is immanent to the level of the bodies themselves. If we subtract this immaterial excess, we do not get “pure reductionist materialism” but instead get a covert idealism. No wonder that Descartes, the first to formulate the tenets of modern scientific materialism, was also the first to formulate the basic modern idealist principle of subjectivity: “There is a fully constituted material reality of bodies and nothing else” is effectively an idealist position.

It is interesting to note how the debate on “supervenient causality” in brain sciences echoes the Deleuzian theme of quasi cause. Was it not already Deleuze himself who linked the Sense-Event to the system-theory notion of emergent qualities? Is not the Sense-Event something that emerges out of the complex network of corporeal causes?4 Of course, the following is the key question here: is the status of consciousness purely epiphenomenal from the causal standpoint or does it display a causality of its own? It would be interesting to confront Deleuze with these naive questions: is the level of Sense-Event just a sterile effect, a theater of shadows? Does it somehow affect the level of the corporeal network of causes or can this latter level be described without regard for the flow of Sense?

When we say that consciousness supervenes or, more strongly, that it emerges, does this mean that its own specific causal power can also affect the “lower” levels out of which it emerged? Or, to quote Hasker, the notion of “downward” causal influence means that “the behavior of ‘lower’ levels— that is, of the components of which the ‘higher-level’ structure consists—is different than it would otherwise be, because of the influence of the new property that emerges in consequence of the higher-level organisation.”5 Let us say that I perform certain physical gestures (raising my hand, etc.) as the result of my decision to greet a friend.

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