Between madness and depression

Thoughts on Jacques Ellul, Franco "Bifo" Berardi and the communist project

Our reality - a (semio)capitalist reality - is too technical, too fast for the individual to leave it safely on their own. At the two extremes, madness or depression awaits them. The liberal subject dies disconnected from the machine that feeds it.

Franco "Bifo" Berardi argues that depression occurs when the speed of communication, the main focus of semiocapitalism, is unbearable. The flow of information exceeds the capacity to continuously process it. Further - panic. Depressive collapse of the individual, secession, impotent sabotage in the manner of Bartleby. The soul on strike. A condition prevalent today more than ever.

On the other side is madness. Jacques Ellul wrote that it is the only method modern art has developed to escape technique:

A major section of modern art and poetry unconsciously guides us in the direction of madness; and, indeed, for the modern man there is no other way. Only madness is inaccessible to the machine. Every other ‘art’ form can be reduced to technique; note the utilitarian art of the Soviets. The artists of our time are the most impressive witnesses to the fact that a true aesthetics is an impossibility for men whose only alternatives are madness or pure technique; and this in spite of the existence of powers of artistic invention such as past civilizations have seldom seen.[1]

Technique is understood here as the totality of rationally developed methods present in every area of human life. We can speak of a ubiquitous form of technique only since the nineteenth century, when the bourgeoisie recognized the profitability of universal technicalization, made possible in part by the progress of the Industrial Revolution, which organized the world around machines. In the abstract dimension of human relations, technique has the same function as the machine in the sphere of production and work. Modern technique is characterized by the automation of technical choice, that is, by deciding to perform the most effective action after measurement and calculation. In such a system, man ceases to be an agent. He becomes the subject of an autonomous technique that aims to standardize every aspect of life. At the same time, technique is a common means of expression and a major factor in shaping personality. Secession of the individual is not an option because it risks losing its existential basis. The authoritarianism of technique leaves no room for rational action outside of it. This is why Ellul pointed to madness as the only possible way "out." Only an absolutely deterritorialized no-longer-subject is able to escape the trap of technique. But then he becomes incapable of existing in the same reality as others. Revolutionary potential does not lead to undermining the status quo. On the contrary, everything works as before, but dissociation doubly alienates the individual. It alienates from the only available, alienated subjectivity. Madness as an individual artistic expression thus has boundaries that run alongside those set by depression.

Human beings are thus at the intersection of two phenomena - technique consuming all relationships and the constant acceleration of information flow. In the face of technical hegemony and the overwhelming speed of semiocapitalism, are there still viable routes? Felix Guattari formulated this question even more precisely:

… how do we change mentalities, how do we reinvent social practices that would give back to humanity – if it ever had it – a sense of responsibility, not only for its own survival, but equally for the future of all life on the planet, for animal and vegetable species, likewise for incorporeal species such as music, the arts, cinema, the relation with time, love and compassion for others, the feeling of fusion at the heart of cosmos?[2]

Between madness, the wasted revolutionary potential of the schizophrenic, and depression, the abandonment of aspiration in the face of information overload, lies a field of possibility. Bifo calls it poetry. Poetry, communism, autonomy, soul - these are essentially terms for the same thing. Each of these terms implies a transformative process. The potential that Bifo writes about is the shared concatenation of different segments engaged in a common, heterogeneous becoming. It is the soul: the rhythm, the frequency shared by bodies, the language of interaction, the relationship with others. Communism is, in Bifo's terms, a process of collective therapy through poetry and friendship; through the abolition of the present state of things. “Together” is the key word to navigate the bewildering reality.

The process of autonomy should not be seen as Aufhebung, but as Therapy. In this sense, it is neither totalizing and nor it is intended to destroy and abolish the past.

In a letter to his master, Sigmund Freud, the young psychoanalyst Fliess asked when it is possible to consider a therapy to be over and the patient be told, 'you are ok'. Freud answered that the psychoanalysis has reached its goal when the person understands that therapy is an interminable process. Autonomy is also a process without end.[3]

The pursuit of autonomy does not take place in solitude. The notion of poetry presented by Bifo should be complemented by the notion of sympoiesis, the authorship of which can be attributed to Donna Haraway. Sympoiesis is "a simple word; it means 'making-with'"[4]. Haraway thus makes an expansion of autopoiesis by making a simple observation - nothing happens by itself. Everything occurs in the company of phenomena that influence each other. The extension of one's sense of subjectivity to other beings is consistent with Bifo's poetic vision. Depression is experienced alone, even if there are millions of people in the world going through the same thing. Madness makes contact impossible. The path to a post-capitalist future is through the boundaries of existing identities; through cooperation and coexistence with all that is chthonic. After Haraway:

Chthonic ones are beings of the earth, both ancient and up-to-the-minute. I imagine chthonic ones as replete with tentacles, feelers, digits, cords, whiptails, spider legs, and very unruly hair. Chthonic ones romp in multicritter humus but have no truck with sky-gazing Homo. Chthonic ones are monsters in the best sense; they demonstrate and perform the material meaningfulness of earth processes and critters. (…) Living-with and dying-with each other potently in the Chthulucene can be a fierce reply to the dictates of both Anthropos and Capital.[5]

Let us return to the definition of technique: the totality of rationally developed methods present in every field of human life. (Sym)poetry escapes its framework. Understood as a collective, creative activity (not only writing poems), it remains on the edge of organization and freedom. It is flexible.

There is no escape from technique. At least not as an individual and not without abandoning its existing form. One cannot go back to what was, for a simple reason - that reality exists only as a phantom affecting the material relations of the present. However, technique is not a static thing. It has evolved up to the present moment. The methods that make up its form and dictate the framework of what is possible have not always existed. The flow of information in a semiocapitalist form is only one way of arranging a fragmented reality that has grown on the foundations of modern technique. The subject created by liberalism is unable to take the step beyond relations based on production and exchange of goods on its own. It is unable to do so because it embodies them. This subject is not enough to cause a breakthrough within technique, not outside of it. This is where poetry comes into play. Coexistence. Communization. Striving to destroy fixed identities and collectively tread the thin line of madness without crossing it, populating the lines of deterritorialization in the current arrangement of powers. As we can read in Theory of Bloom by the Tiqqun collective,

Communism is not another way of distributing wealth, of organizing production, of managing society; communism is an ethical disposition. A disposition to let ourselves be affected, in the contact of beings, by what is common to us. A disposition to share what is common. Musil’s 'other state' comes closer to this than Krushchev’s USSR did. (…) No formal ethics is possible. There is only the interplay of forms-of-life among themselves, and the protocols of experimentation that guide them locally.[6]

Communism, as a real movement seeking to abolish the present state of things, can only come out on the other side of capitalism when sympoiesis replaces the technical relations of alienated individuals. No one can bear the speed alone. Acceleration requires being-with. Individual, liberal identity is something we should leave behind.

Works referenced

Berardi F., The Soul at Work: From alienation to autonomy, trans. F. Cadel i G. Mecchia, semiotexte Limited 2009.

Ellul J., The Technological Society, trans. J. Wilkinson, Vintage Books, New York 1964.

Guattari F., Chaosmosis. An ethico-aesthetic paradigm, trans. P. Bains i J. Pefanis, Indiana University Press, Indianapolis 1995.

Haraway D.J., Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the chthulucene, Duke University Press 2016.

Tiqqun, Theory of Bloom, trans. R. Hurley, LBC Books 2012.

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[1] J. Ellul, The Technological Society, trans. J. Wilkinson, Vintage Books, New York 1964.

[2] F. Guattari, Chaosmosis. An ethico-aesthetic paradigm, trans. P. Bains i J. Pefanis, Indiana University Press, Indianapolis 1995.

[3] F. Berardi, The Soul at Work: From alienation to autonomy, trans. F. Cadel i G. Mecchia, semiotexte Limited 2009.

[4] D.J. Haraway, Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the chthulucene, Duke University Press 2016.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Tiqqun, Theory of Bloom, trans. R. Hurley, LBC Books 2012.