Aesthetic Nature. Against Biology

THE YEARBOOKOF COMPARATIVE

LITERATURE

PROTOCOLS FOR A NEW NATURE

VOLUME58 2012

published by THE DEPARTMENT OF CoMPAllATlVE UTERATURE INDIANA UNlVERSITY

andTHE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

in collaboration with THE AMERICAN COMPAllATIVE LITERATURE AsSocIATION

andTHE NATIONAL CoUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF ENGLISH

III ~E S8

~search

on the ations nodes

ewith should e third ed the will be

lted by journal ight co

DULI

iRTZgt

EN-

ELER

2500 ltOUldbe dngron

tshould Canada jemail

land

ouse acrylic mp ist

IROTOCOLS FOR A NEW NATURE co-edited by Eyal Peretz and Paul North

1 Introouction PaulNorth

GENEALOGIES Aristotle and the 7 Masculinization ofPhusis

Emmanuela Bianchi

On a Parish Death Notice 35 Justin E H Smith

Thankless Trouble57 Ethical Contemplation of Nature

Peter Fenves

Speculative Evolution 71 Darwin Freud and the Whale

Davide Tarizzo

Mal-functioning95 Timothy Morton

II THE YEARBOOK OF CoMPARATIVE LITERATURE VOLUME 58

The Yearbook ofComparative Literature is dedicated to the publication of theoreticatly informed research in literaty studies with a comparative intercultural or interdisciplinaty emphasis We invite articles on the comparative study of me arts film studies with connections to literature international literary relations literary pedagogy and ehe meory and practice of translation as weH as on ehe study of gentes and modes ehernes and motifs periods and movements Manuscripts (generally of twenty to thirty-fivemiddotdouble-spaced pages) should be submitted in accordance with ehe euerem MLA Style Manual incIuding documentation and a list ofworles cited The authors name should not appear with the title or on headers and documentation references tO the author should be in ehe third person Please encIose two copies of the essay along with return postage If the submission is accepted me author will be asked to provide an electronic version (eg a szligash drive or atrachment) Submissions will be prompdyacknowledged and the review process normally takes approximately four tO six months Unless otherwise designated materials published in me Yearbook ofComparative Literature are copyrighted by me Departmeot ofComparative Literature ofIadiana University Submission of materials to ehis journal entails the authors agreement should the materials be accepted for publication co assign the copyright to me aforementioned department

SpeclalEpbases Theoty and historyoumlfComparative Literature The teaching ofComparative Literature around the world Intercultural aesthetic relations Comparativestudy of the arts Film studies with a focus on literature Theory and practice of translation Comprehensive reviews of research Comparative reviews ofEnglish translations of literary texts SpeciaHzed bibliographies

General Editor EYAL PERETZ

Managing Editor BENGARCEAU

Editorial Board ULlUCH BuR PETER BONDANELLA CATHY CARUTH MICHEL CHAOULl

JOAN COPJEC EUGENE EOYANG SHOSHANA FELMAN DAvID M HERTz

INGEBORG HoESTEREY BILL JOHNSTON SUMIE JONES EILEEN JULIEN

OSCAR KENSHUR KENNETH GROS LOUIS HERB MARKS KAIuA OELER

FRAN901S RAFFOUL ALESSIA RrCCIARDI EMILY SUN JOSEPH VOGL

ULRlCH WEISSTEIN AND ALEx WOLOCH

Founcled by WERNER P FRIEDERlCH

Annual Subscription Rates $5000 (institutions) $3000 (individuals) Back issues $2500 Contributions (articIes book reviews and notices) permissions requesrs and related correspondence should be sent to ehe Editor Yearbook ofComparative Literature Ballantine Hall 923 Indiana Universiry Bloomington Indiana 47405-6601 (email yearbookindianaedu) Subscriptions renewals back issue orders and correspondence regarding production and distribution should be referred to University ofToronto Press--JournaIs Division 5201 Dufferin Street Toronto Ontario Canada M3H 5T8 (tel 4166677810 fax 4166677881 fax [Toll Free in North Americal 18002219985 email journalSutpressutorontoca) Payrnent can be made by check or by credit card (Visa Master Card or American Express) Checks should be made out [0 University ofToronto Press Note orderslpayrnents fur back issues prior to volume 4546 should be referred to ehe Yearbook European and African Sales through Librairie Droz S A 11 rue Massot 1211 Geneva 12 Switzerland This journal is a member of the Conference ofEditors ofLearned Journals (CELJ) Tbe Yearbook ofComparative Literature volume 58 Copyright 2014 Department ofComparative Literature Indiana Universiry Bloomingron Indiana

ISSN US 0084-3695 E-ISSN 1947-2978 AnnaG1azovas poem Laws originally appeared in Relocatiom published in 2013 by Zephyr Press The cover image is a detail frem a mixed media artwork by Friese Undine entided Sleepwalking Mouse (2013) The fuH image can be seen on p viii The interstitial images throughout this volume are all acrylic on canvas works also by Friese Undine (2006) Raccoonand Dog on p 70 Monkey and Dog on p 114 Dogand Pig on p 184 Pig and Sheep on p 240 All images used by permission of the artist Thephotograph on page 133 is by Esso Alvarez Ir is used Irere by permission ofthe artist

IV

PROTOCOLS 116 Starting Out from Novalis

Jean-Christophe Bailly translated by Ben Garceau

122 On Nature Renaud Barbaras translated by Ben Garceau

131 The Borrowed Voice ofAnimals Sergio Chejfec translated by Ashley Hope Pbez

139 Voices Carried on the Billows of the Wind

Craig Eppin

143 Laws Anna Glazova translated by Anna Khasin

145 Covert (Ir Is a Suhny Midwinter Afternoon)

Jorie Graham

148 A Note on Fauvemanns Nachlass

Paul Grimstad

151 Subnature Writing Jason Groves

155 The Soul ofCarbon Dioxide Goumlke Guumlnel

159 Another Nature ABrief Note on the New York Subway

Goumlkre Guumlnel

163 Life-Force or the Genius ofRhodes Alexandervon Humboldt translated by LetfWeatherby

169 Insect Trails Across My Field Notes Naveedti Khan

174 Nth Nature Paul Kockelman

176 The Ground The Ground The Ground or Why Archeology Is So Hard

Paul Kockelman

185 Two Protocols for Nature A Note on Hegel and Schelling

David Farrell Krell

188 Second Nature In the Age of Biobanks

Thomas Lemke

193 Aesthetic Nature Against Biology

Christoph Menke

196 Nature Deficiency Nature Hunger MarkPayne

198 Sient Running Notes for the Remake

Karen Pinkus

202 Shame on You 3 Scandals on which to BuHd or Bai

AvitalRoneli

205 Twemy-Two Theses on Nature Steven Shaviro

211 Nature Like aPerson Is Not One-Sided Robert Smithson in Search of the Pitturshyesque in England Wales and Central Park

JoySleeman

218 EcologyandEgology Husser and Rilke ort theNawral Wqrld

Rochelfe Tobias

223 Frolll Musjc~Qg to Start Natural Signs anampthc Limit()f tbeHuman Gary Tanilinson

228 Naturein the Antbrqp~ne A R~ectionon a Photograph

Thomvan Dooren

235 lheMathemlt~ati()nmiddotofNature Gafileobull I-luss~l~andelbrot

Jqshua Wi)ner

241 Notes on the ContributQrs

fY

lttle

n)

tetishy

oks

IC JOO

outshy

es in

Gur

AESTHETlCNATiUKE AGAlNST BIOiOGY

ChristopIcMenke

~co~ding tOMich~ ~oucaults definitiOn ofmod~r~ty itsthr~hol~ IS bl0logy the thmking of life or of na~ure as hVltlg ThlS blologt-M

threshold of moderniiy is at the same time politica1-the thrcihshyold to a new form of power While in his later History 0SexualityFoucault identifies this new form with thebiopolitical regime of llormaHzatioohe had shown in his earlier Disciplineand Punish that already the regime of disciplinary power was founded on a new concept of the human body of its nature The regime of discipline can only unfolditstransformativepowerif the mechanical body thehnage ofwruch had fot so long haUntedthaumlseWho dreamt ofdisciplinary perfection is replaced hy thenaturalhody thebearer of forces and the seat of duration (Foumlucault Discipline antJ PUnish)1he decisive determination ofthis neW ohject the tiving bodyt is establiSbed hy Leibniz imageof the monad Theffionad livesbecause itschanges ate acshytions which result not from an external impetusor push butfrom an inshyternal principle the ~nads active force The action of the internal prinshyciple which brings abaut the change or the passing from one perceptiori to another may be called appetition that leads to new perceptions (Leibniz Monadology) The monad has appetites it has forces it is self-acting without being self-conscious the monad Can act in a state of stupor Ufe is selfshyacting that is not bonnd toself-consciousness or self-knowledge orrather to live means to move to change ones states (by makingnew perc~ptions) or to

ltC

194 THE YEARszligOOK OF COMPARATlVE LITERATURE VOL 58

follow ones appetites without being guided by a concept or a rule lhe life of the natural body can only become the point of reference for

power-be it the normalizing power of biopolitics or the individualizing power of the discipline-if its process as the unfolding of its internal prinshyciple has a teleological or functional structure lhis is how biology in critishycizing the principles of Newtonian physics at the end of the 18th century began to re-conceptualize the traditional teleological account of the living in terms of functional relations Blumenbach thus wrote that we find in the livshying body a drive (or a tendency or a conatus however one may wish to call it) [ ] that seems to be among the first causes of all generation nutrition and reproduction and wh ich I will here to prevent all misinterpretation and to distinguish it from the other forces of nature call the drive to formation (nisus flrmativus) Qohann Friedrich Blumenbach Uumlber den Bildungstrieb [1780]) lhe biological drive or force conceives of the internal principal of the living movement as its purpose or as the possibility of its actuality the internal principle is the drive or force that serves the reproduction of this form of life in each particular instance and specimen Biologically conceived then to live means to realize those purposes that constitute the form or the species of the organism

lhere is a second different understanding of the new moderndeg image of the natural body as the bearer of forces (Foucault) lhis is the aesthetic understanding the idea of aesthetic nature Aesthetics is a theory (and practice) of nature as living But it understands life as not teleological (or even anti- teleological) as not functional (or even dysfunctional) In a postshyhumous fragment Nietzsche described the aesthetic contemplation of the world as the adoration of the genius and he described the genius-which is nothing else than the aesthetic nature ofeverybody-in a disparaging co mshyparison lhe genius is like a blind sea crab that continuously probes in all directions and occasionally catches something he probes however not in order to catch but because his limbs must cavort about [weil seine Glieder

sich tummeln muumlssen] lhe aesthetic movements and alterations of the living body are the expression of an inner principle a force but they do not fulfill a function lhey are not performed in order to realize a purpose but unfold without a direction or purpose lhe aesthetic nature of the living is play

Biology understands the going-on of the organism its processuality and temporality as governed by dialectics the logic of the general and the parshyticular Each particu1ar move is the instantiation-the realization and the reinterpretation-of its general form In contrast aesthetic life as play is a sequence ofexpressions of the same force as inner principle without a general form sameness without generality In life as play a force engenders an exshypression and goes beyond this expression By repeating itself a force expresses itself transcends this expression replacing it with (or transforming it into)

AESTHETIC NATURE

a new expression which is then again transcended As the same force opershyates expression is replaced by new expression Aesthetic life is the endless generation and dissolution of expressions anendless turning of expression into expression In its play theaesthetic forcecreates a newexprcisiooby

withdrawingfrom its previous expression It turns against its own expression transcending it into another The expression is therefore as antistrophic as the force if the force isat once source and superabundance the ground and the groundlessness of its expression the expression of the force is at once its concealment the expression of an aesthetic force is expression as though The play [Spie~ of force is a spectade [Schauspie~

Thus an inner struggle needs to be demarcated within Foucaults rather comfortable identHication of modernity with biology The threshold of moshydernity is the thinking and practice of Hfe and the modern thinking and practice of life are marked by a fundamental opposition The threshold of modernity is the struggle between biology and aesthetics the struggle beshytween biology and aesthetics over life By claiming that bioloumlgy and aesshythetics-biological and aesthetic life--are the same theideologies ofbioaesshythetics which have accompanied modernity from its beginnings attempt to decide this strife in favor of biology They want to biologize human nature to reduce the human toan organism which is defined Le determined by its goals and functions In contrast aestheticlife or aesthetic natureas the play of force renders the human free by nature freedom is natural anltinature is free or there is no freedom Aesthetics fights biology-thebiologizatiotl of life which is the presupposition of discipline and normalization alik~preshyeisely by refosing to define the humanas (merdy purely) sodal or ctdtural or histoiical On this one point aesthetics concurs with biology about thenashyture of the human about the humanbeing as a natural being But a~tks for aesthetics is a theory and a practice understands andunfolc4 the nature of the human as the force oumllexpression andmiddot the transcendlng oE ~pressions as the force of n~gativity and thus of freedom

The struggle (between biology and aesthetics) over life is thus a struggle for freedom Whether life or nature is biologicalor aesthetic decides the posshysibility of freedom Only ifwe limit our biological definition and oppose an aesthetic one can freedom be thought (and thus exist) The biologica1acshycount of nature grounds the practice of non-freedom theaestheticaccount of nature grounds the counter-practice offreedom

Goethe-Universitaumlt Frankfurtam Milin