Allen Article

7/27/2019 Allen Article

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Graduate Journal of Social ScienceJuly 2012, Vol. 9, Issue 2 2012 by Graduate Journal of Social Science. All Rights Reserved. ISSN: 1572-3763

PART I

They speak and hear,and are cast into the deep.

Dante, The Inferno.

Contradiction

Margaret Archer is a realist socialtheorist dedicated to reinvigorating aworking conception of human agen-

cy in the face of post-modernism and

other trends that she claims seek toimpoverish the concept of the hu-man in favour of a view of subjec-tivity that is entirely socialised anda human being that is merely a giftof society. This project takes placeover the course of several books in-cluding Realist Social Theory: TheMorphogenetic Approach (1995),

Melancholia and the Radical Particular: Against

Archers Realism

Thomas Allen

The successful refutation of post-modern conceptions of subjectivity does notautomatically give one the right to posit an acting subject. What is missingin any such positing is a value-judgement. How much is such a subjectivityworth? Why is such an attempt even being made? This paper argues that it isprecisely these questions which go unasked in Margaret Archers work, andas such her human being is hollow. This is not because it is purely linguistic,but because if conditions of generalised exchange are taken as a normativeground for subjectivity then it can only exist as a bourgeois capitalist. To positagency within these boundaries is to afrm them. To gain a different view ofsubjectivity one must forego the liberal need to rescue the soul of the humanand investigate the subject in its unfreedom and in its non-actuality. This posi-tion is, paradoxically, one which remains far more true to the idea of meaning-ful subjectivity than one which believes that the wrong life may be lived rightly.This paper begins by manifesting a contradiction in Archers work and goeson to read her development of human agency through the work of GeorgLukcs and Theodor W. Adorno. Following this I read Lars Von Triers (2011)lm Melancholia through Sigmund Freud and Adorno and claim that in times

of crisis a negative conception of subjectivity may allow for an experience ofemancipation precisely due to the tangential relation between the subject andthe social world. I conclude with a brief consideration of the ontology of capi-talist crisis and maintain that a melancholic and essentially negative structureis essential for understanding agency as it exists outside of demarcated socialroles.

Key words: Margaret Archer, Adorno, Von Trier, Futurity, Melancholia,Negativity


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110 GJSS Vol 9, Issue 2

Culture and Agency: The Place of

Culture in Social Theory (1996)and Being Human: The Problemof Agency (2000). The rst part of

this paper will focus primarily onthe latter of these works, as well asArchers more recent text MakingOur Way Through the World: HumanReexivity and Social Mobility(2007).

I mean to argue that there is an

inherent contradiction in Archerswork because, while she success-fully argues that a human subject

must exist, she does not provide anadequate criticism of the objectivecircumstances in which that subjectmoves. This results in her overes-timating the potential for subjectiveautonomy. To see this contradiction

one need only consider the clos-ing passages of Making Our Way

Through the World. Here Archer de-scribes a personal experience of a

recent holiday she spent in the com-pany of family and relative strangersin a Swiss Chteaux. The youngest

of these individuals are describedas opting out of a system of corpo-rate interest and free-competition:

These young professionals wererejecting the organisational contexts

in which they were occupationallyexpected to exercise their skills andwere crafting small, new outlets for

themselves in the social order....Weseemed to be celebrating not onlythe New Year, but also the freedomto pursue ones where one would -following the situational logic of op-portunity in order to give priority to

what one cares about most (Archer

2007, 325).This notion of opting out is con-

tentious, and it displays a prejudice

in Archers thinking that can be il-lustrated with a brief considerationof a more recent event. In the UK

last year, in the early hours of themorning of 19th October 2011,around eighty-three families weremade homeless in the violent evic-

tion of Dale Farm, a long standingTraveller site in Essex, southernEngland. Reports of police beatings

and the use of tasers were com-mon. Spokesmen for the residentsat the site explained their refusal to

leave before the eviction with thesimple statement that they had no-where else to go. 1 At that point, andin countless others, it became clearthat involvement in the social world

is not something which one mayopt in or out of. Or rather, to opt

out one must already be in somedegree opting in. As Theodor W.Adorno writes, The form of the totalsystem [society] requires everyoneto respect the law of exchange un-less he wants to be destroyed andregardless of whether prot is hismotive or not (Adorno 1970, 147). I

maintain, along with Mattias Benzar(2011), that many of the problemsthat pre-occupied Adorno in sociol-

ogy have yet to be solved, or rather,are insoluble. As such, I believe hiswork to be of the highest importance

when considering any social theory,especially one that claims to dealwith an authentic subjectivity.


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Allen: Melancholia and the Radical Particular 111

The afrmation of subjective free-

dom in Archers model sits comfort-ably alongside objective entrapment.The question then presents itself

as to how does a theory attempt-ing to describe agency complementexactly a situation of unfreedom? Iattempt to answer this by rst of allsketching the development of self-hood and agency as it appears in

Being Human, and counterposing

it to Adornos conception of reiedsubjectivity. I mean to argue thatif subjectivity is afrmed positively

within the social world then it is asubjectivity that must be reied, andas such, the afrmation of a positivefuturity is deeply conservative. Afterthis I will present a reading of thestructure of melancholia as present-ed in Lars Von Triers 2011 lm ofthe same name and attempt to point

towards a notion of subjective sin-gularity that emerges precisely from

a radical incommensurability withthe temporality of the status-quo.

Archers SubjectAs I stated above, my interest

is not in whether Archer success-fully counters the arguments ofpost-modern thinkers and man-

ages to give the self a necessaryconstitution, but how and why sucha subjectivity complements objec-tive conditions of unfreedom. As

such, I will not consider at lengththe rst sections of Being Humanthat are dedicated to a refutation ofMichel Foucault, Richard Rorty andJacques Derrida; rather, I will begin

at the end. Archers human being is

dened by its positive relation to thefuture and its integration into a socialtotality. This positive futurity is main-tained via the existence of subjec-tive concerns and commitments thateach individual seeks to actualise

within their own life-world (Archer2007, 97). Such a standpoint can beeasily questioned. To begin with onemay consider the following passage

from Adornos Minima Moralia:A mankind which no longer knowswant may begin to have an inkling

of the delusory, futile nature of allarrangements hitherto made inorder to escape want, which usedwealth to reproduce want on alarge scale...Being nothing else,without any further denition andfullment, might take the place ofprocess, act, satisfaction....(Ador-

no 2005, 157).

If this passage were making apositive claim about the future ofsubjectivity then it would be opento the criticism of gross utopianism.However, it is essentially negativein nature. What it succeeds in do-ing is connecting a positive relationto the future, a relation of process,

act, satisfaction, within the contextof historically specic relations ofproduction and prevailing conditions

of want amongst the human popula-tion. Neither of these things are es-sential components of human social

life, although they are historicallyprevalent.

One may consider Adornos state-


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ment that there is nothing under

the sun, which in being mediated...through the human intelligence...and thinking, is not socially medi-

ated (Adorno 2002, 15-16; Adornoin: Benzar. 2011, 47). One sees apresupposed ontological groundimprinted upon any social theory.Indeed, it is the task of a sociologi-cal interpretation to allow the sedi-mented history in social phenom-

enon to come to light (Adorno 2002,145). This is not to return to an ar-gument of socialisation but, rather, it

is to say that no theory escapes itsown historical context. It is with re-gard to the existence of this imprintthat I will consider the formation ofArchers subject.

In Being Human subjectivity isdeveloped through a series of stag-es which culminate in the social

actor who is possessed of both asocial and a personal identity. The

latter comes about through a se-ries of reections known as internalconversations by which a subjectconsiders their previous experiencein terms of their future plans and at-tempts to live their life accordingly.This reection revolves around a

collection of concerns which are

described as emotional states...notcommodities which can be costed...

(Archer 2000, 63). As we read in

Making Our Way Through the World:The goal of dening and order-ing our concerns, through whatis effectively a life-long internalconversation, is to arrive at a sat-isfying and sustainable modus vi-

vendi. Through prioritisationcon-

ducted by inner dialogue...Thesubject constitutes her identity as

the being-with this constellation of

concerns (Archer 2007, 97).

These concerns emerge througha subjects interaction with threestratied layers of the real: the natu-ral, the practical and the social. It isthe ability to reect on them in each

of these arenas that guaranteessome kind of autonomy for the sub-ject.

The natural order is the pri-mary stage of self-development.Here Archer makes use of MauriceMerleau-Pontys conception of anembodied practice, a conceptionof the subject as necessarily orien-tated and corporeal. As an infant asubject forms relations with her im-

manent exterior surroundings andrepeated interactions with them

lead to the emergence of the self asa relational property, whose realisa-tion comes about through the nec-essary relations between embodiedpractice and the non-discursive en-vironment (Archer 2000, 123). Thisenvironment remains non-discur-sive because the relation to it is con-

ducted on the level of sensual imme-diacy, not through the disembodiedCartesian cogito (Archer 2000, 128).

At this point the subject experiencesher inherent attunement to things

which is the nature of our being-in-the-world (Archer 2000, 132). Thisattunement would be impossiblewithout a minimal sense of memory.


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Allen: Melancholia and the Radical Particular 113The self is precisely this repository.

As such, Archers self emerges mo-nologically as a pure individual in itssurroundings. It is important to note

that it has been rightly suggestedthat this attitude over-individualisesthe self to the extent that the input ofcarers and minimal linguistic inu-ence is ignored. This is not to sug-gest a re-socialisation of the self,but rather to suggest that Archer

maintains a bias towards absoluteindividuality when one is not nec-essary for her argument (Luckett

2008, 303).Once the practical order has been

entered then a sense of personalidentity begins to be formed, and theinternal conversation comes intoplay. This, Archer maintains, is pres-ent in every normally functioning hu-man being and represents the major

PEP (Personal Emergent Property)that contributes to the irreduciblenature of the human being. The con-versation initially functions by medi-ating emotional commentary on thesubjects relations with the practical

order of reality. Archer insists thatemotions are primarily to be seenas anthropocentric commentarieson the situations in which we nd

ourselves... (Archer 2000, 207). Assuch the internal conversation ex-plains the continuation or cessation

of action according to the pleasureor lack of it that is expected to be re-ceived from different activities. Forexample, people decide to pursueor not pursue sports based on theiraptitude for or enjoyment of them,

and musicians dedicate themselves

from an early age to many hours ofpractice because they experiencethe activity as fullling, or expect

that it will yield such fullment in thefuture. Personal identity forms itself

around what activities are decidedto be the most protable for a sub-ject, and through this process thepractical order provides the ultimateontological ground for the formation

of social identity (Archer 2000, 213).This dialogue is described as adialectic between our human con-cerns and our emotional commen-taries on them (Archer 2000, 231).It is maintained that the potential foragency emerges through the factthat, in appropriating the world wehave taken responsibility for theseconcerns, and have made themour own (Archer 2000, 173). At this

stage, it is clear that social integra-tion is crucial to agency. Just as inJohn Elsters Adaptive PreferenceFormation, a theory which Archer

derides (Archer 2000, 63), the nor-mative ground for a healthy sub-jectivity is its ability to adapt to the

current social world.2 I would arguethat the existence of this normativeground is already an afrmation of

that status-quos rationality.Once a personal identity has been

adequately formed, one begins to

become aware of ones own socialobjectivity, and to be represented asan agent, or rather as one of a groupof agents who share a similar stockin cultural (and, presumably, real)capital. Agents may manifest their


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singularity as an actor by taking on

a pre-existing social role. Archer isinsistent that there is no contradic-tion involved in this process. Rather,

each actor, typied by some kind ofinvolvement in wage-labour, whilst

not free to choose their role, is freeto activate or personify it in a par-ticularistic way (Archer 2000, 284).

Archer insists that through the useof reexivity the actor is able to se-

cure a human status rather than amerely objective one (Archer 2000,288). The adult internal conversa-

tion grows as social roles are oc-cupied. It is through juggling thesesocial roles with personal ones thathuman agency again comes to thefore. The subject is effectively split

between social roles and concernswhich are animated by a personal

identity (Archer 2000, 293).

Archers argument for the posi-tive relation between personal and

social identity relies on the concep-tion that roles may be performed, asit were, in an unscripted way, that,although occupying a certain rolemeans being restricted, the sub-jects are their own script writers aseven the smallest print which spellsout formal obligations cannot tell us

how to greet our partners, breakfastthe children, let the dog out or ac-knowledge God (Archer 2000, 303)

As a result changes in roles and insocieties normative ground may oc-cur through a continuous streamof unscripted performances, whichalso over time can cumulatively al-ter role expectations (Archer 2000,

296) The human agent is ultimately

neither the gift of, nor the king, ofsociety but is involved in a continu-ous morphogenetic relationship with

it which changes both the normativestructure and the subjects dened

by it.

Archers ConservatismArcher acknowledges that her

work is largely commensurable with

phenomenology (Archer 2000, 127).She maintains that this is becauseboth schools of thought give pri-macy to action in the practical eld.However, they are also commensu-rable on another point; a pre-occu-pation with the irreducible freedomof the human being. Archer effec-tively adopts Jean Paul Sartres dic-tum that freedomis the being ofman (Sartre 2003, 441). However

much this may be true, the descrip-tions of freedom that Archer uses

all manifest themselves within thenormatively sanctioned realm andare minuscule in their reality suchas taking the dog for a walk, givingchildren breakfast etc. One may ar-gue that the prisoner in solitary con-nement maintains a similar degreeof freedom because they are free to

walk around their cell as and whenthey choose. I would argue that onemay say the same thing of Archers

conception of freedom as Adornosays of existentialism; that it is, tosome extent, allergic to objectiv-ity (Adorno 2000, 50) The logic ofno matter how small the small-print

(see above) is a logic whereby the


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Allen: Melancholia and the Radical Particular 115tighter objective circumstances be-

come, the more a subject manifestsits freedom.

The subjective ground of freedom

exists at the expense of a critique ofa subjects objective conditions and,ultimately, acts as an apologist forthem. This is apparent in the con-ception that the internal conversa-tion is a universal linguistic experi-ence. No consideration is given to

the fact that individuals may havedifferent linguistic abilities basedon background and cultural capi-tal. Pierre Bourdieus conception ofthe habitus, for example, describesa situation in which schemes ofperception, appreciation and actionenable them [social subjects] to per-form acts of practical knowledge,based on the identication of and

recognition of conditional, conven-

tional stimuli to which they are pre-disposed to react (Bourdieu 2000,

138). Thembi Kate Luckett main-tains that the dialectical relation be-tween thought and language is un-derestimated in Archers work: Themore abstract ones thoughts are,the more they depend on access torepertoire of discourses which en-ables higher order thinking (Luckett

2008, 139).There is in Archers thinking

something deeply conservative

which points towards the thoughtthat, regardless of a persons up-bringing, all they have to do is to goout in the world and prioritise theirconcerns appropriately, and theymay exist as a fullled agent. This

is present again in the conception of

taking responsibility for social con-cerns and models. As Judith Butler(1990) observed, on the back of

Franz Kafka, conceptions of subjec-tive autonomy are primarily useful ina courtroom situation (Butler 1990,157) and I would argue that a prej-udice towards legalistic schemasof freedom of choice heavily inu-ences Archers model of subjective

growth. One does not necessarilychoose to take responsibility for thesocial world; rather one may equally

well be forced to do so in order tosurvive. Money is required in orderto live and getting a job is gener-ally required to get money, and thiscomes with a series of normativelysanctioned social responsibilities.The primary movement, however,could just as equally be seen as one

of forced adaptation rather than avoluntary assumption of responsibil-ity. The citizens of a particular state

do not choose to be born under itslaws, although they are assumedto be responsible for not breakingthem.

This point can be elaboratedif one considers the term reica-tion. Literally meaning to make a

thing of something, it enters thelexicon of critical theory via GeorgLukcss (1975) History and Class

Consciousness, and draws on thea specic section in Capital Vol.1 inwhich Marx remarks that it is a pecu-liar characteristic of commodity pro-duction and exchange that relationsbetween men take on the character-


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istic of relationships between things

(Marx 1990, 164). Key to this ideais the conception of abstract labour.Stemming from the same chapter

of Marx, this refers to the process

through which the individual labourtime that goes into making a com-modity, be it an item of clothingor a pot of stew, is necessary ho-mogenised into an abstracted form

of value which then allows for the

exchange of otherwise incommen-surable items. The object producedemerges as both a use-value and an

exchangevalue, a dual structure ofmateriality and abstraction. Lukcswrites that this fragmentation of theobject of production necessarily ne-cessitates the fragmentation of thesubject...Neither objectively, nor inhis relation to his work does manappear as the authentic master of

this process. He nds it already pre-existing and self-sufcient....and he

has to conform to its laws whetherhe likes it or not (Lukcs 1975, 91).The subject that emerges from thisprocess encounters a situation inwhich the relations between manthat lie hidden in the immediatecommodity relations...have faded tothe point where they can be neither

recognised nor perceived (Lukcs1975: 93).

For Adorno, the entire socialworld itself exists as a reied set

of relations between individuals,one predicated entirely on the ex-istence of exchange relations andcommensurability. Adorno denesa reied consciousness as that be-

ing which has effectively adapted

itself to objects (Adorno 2005, 193).I would argue that Archers subjectrepresents almost a case in point of

subjective reication. The languageof accumulation and exchange per-meate her work. To quote anotherpassage regarding the formationof social identity: What new em-ployees have to do is to evaluatethe up-side against the down-side

and come with a positive balanceif they are going to nd a cause toinvest something of themselves

in that role (Archer 2000, 191. myemphasis). This is the reasoning ofnance capital, not the languageof an emancipated human subject.The abstraction between personaland social identity mimics almostexactly the abstraction between theindividual person and their socially

abstracted labour. According toArcher the further one goes in terms

of subjective reication, in terms of

an internalised division of labouramongst ones concerns, the closerone comes towards singularity. Thesuccessful subject is everyone whohas managed to achieve both per-sonal and social identity (Archer2000, 296) This is not to say that

Archers theory is not an accuratedescription of current human be-haviour, but that it mistakes histori-

cal contingency for a transcendentalhuman nature.

Rather than attempting to groundthe subject in the social, Adorno re-marks, quite simply, that the objec-tive nature of society only becomes


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Allen: Melancholia and the Radical Particular 117present when it hurts (Adorno

2002, 36). The normative groundof social integration must be shifted

on to the individual suffering for thisto come clear. Benzar notes thatto job seekers who must do what

they do not want to do, the coercionto adapt to the almighty exchangeprinciple and to sell themselves isimmediately evident (Benzar 2011,59). This thought cannot be inte-

grated into a system of positive fu-turity, in which an individual subjectlocates itself comfortably within the

social, because it locates the twoat a point where they are radicallyincommensurable. One could arguethat if Archers subject feels no pain,

does not understand the nauseatingexperience of selling themselves inorder to gain work, it is because theyhave successfully adapted them-

selves to a reied objectivity. ForAdorno, this road ends in Auschwitz

in which even in his formal freedom

the individual is as fungible and re-placeable as he will be under the liq-uidators boots (Adorno 2000, 362).

It is this dialectic between fungibilityand formal freedom which charac-terises many peoples experience ofthe social world. To afrm freedom

within it is to fail to see that this au-tonomy can only exist along lineswhich do not belong to the subject

and which can always be denied toit.

Finally, on a macro level, I wouldargue that Archers work forms aparallel with what Walter Benjaminidenties as a narrativising tendency

within discourse orientated towards

ideas of progress. In BenjaminsThesis on the Philosophy of History

one reads of the necessity for amessianic cessationof happening(Benjamin 2007, 263, my empha-sis) within the continuum of histori-cal progress; a continuum that nec-essarily passes over the individualsuffering of those who lie prostratebefore it (Benjamin 2007, 256). The

idea of a normatively sanctionedsubject moving towards the futuremanifests this same characteristic

on an individual level. Those sin-gular moments of suffering whichsociety passes over in a violent si-lence are re-appropriated into thatsubjects narrative as necessarypreconditions of the attainment of aprecarious social identity. In this waythey are retrospectively justied ac-

cording to the same logic which in-icts them. I would argue that the

wound in both the subject and the

social which occurs when the indi-vidual stands against their systemsof mutual appropriation must bekept open.

Archers work demonstrates thatpositing a positive subjective agen-cy within the currently existing so-

cial world must end with the objec-tive reication of that subject. This issimply because in order to survive

one must engage in some form ofcontinued process of exchange.Such a conclusion demands a re-

focusing on the ontological consti-tution of the subject as it exists inits unfreedom. Archer states that


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a primary sense of self-hood is a

condition of possibility for experi-ence. Likewise, she insists, via thequotation of Piatgets work on child

development, that it is only throughan awareness of the permanence ofthe object that the self can be found-ed (Archer 2000, 147). This bearsa striking resemblance to the follow-ing passage from Kants Critique ofPure Reason:

The original and necessary con-sciousness of oneself is at thesame time a consciousness of the

original and necessary synthesisof all appearances in accordancewith concepts...for the mind couldnot possibly think of the identity ofitself in the manifold of its repre-sentations...if it did not have be-fore its eyes the identity of its ac-tion which submits all synthesis of

apprehension (which is empirical)to a transcendental unity (Kant

1999, 231-232).

The subject predicates itselfupon the objectivity of its surround-ings, upon the schema of cause and

effect that it sees within the world,and the ability to infer permanentexistence upon a series of tempo-

ral encounters with the same ob-ject. This maintains itself throughoutthe subjects life time, as a neces-sary pre-condition of making ourway through the world. However,what follows from the Kantianthought is that object is itself medi-ated already through the subject inorder to achieve its objective sta-

tus. Categories of understanding

serve to reect back to the subjectonly what it is capable of knowingabout the object in the rst place.

What appears to be natural is al-ready domesticated by the subjectinto its own perceptual schema. ForAdorno this represents a mimesis ofthe capitalist exchange:

This tautology [between subjectand object] is nothing other than

the expression of captivity: asknowing subjects we are never

able to get outside of ourselves...The world in which we are cap-tive is in fact a self-made world:it is the world of exchange, ofcommodities, the world of reiedhuman relations that confrontus, presenting us with a faadeof objectivity...a second nature

(Adorno 2001, 137).

It is through this dialectic of domi-nation, subsumption and abstrac-tion that the world is experienced asreied.

On this model, there is no escap-ing the positive unfreedom of thesubject by further enmeshing it in thesocial. Rather, Adorno inherits fromHegel the conception of the inherent

negativity of the subject. One readsin The Phenomenology of Spiritthat the genuinely positiveexposi-tion of the beginning isalso, con-versely a negativeattitude towardsit (Hegel 1977, 13) Active thought

anchors itself via the negation ofwhat is. Within the original Hegeliandialectic this movement of negation


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Allen: Melancholia and the Radical Particular 119resolves itself into a positive resolu-

tion and the structure of determinatenegation is ultimately the restorationof the positive. However, to maintain

the conception of positive negationis to maintain the possibility of areconciliation between subject andobject; a reconciliation impossiblein the world of the reied social.Rather, the delity to be maintained

is to the inherently negative act. As

we read in Negative Dialectics: Theseriousness of unswerving nega-tion lies in its refusal to lend itself tosanctioning things as they are. To

negate a negation does not bringabout its reversal; rather it proves

that the negative was not nega-tive enough (Adorno 2000, 159-160). The original negative action isthat which maintains the space forthe new by existing against time,

against the narrative appropriationof the positive future.

In the following section I will at-tempt to ground a negative concep-tion of time and subjectivity within theexperience of melancholy; a state of

being-in-the-world which a focus onpositive futures necessarily renderspathological. By reading Von Trier

(2011) through Freud and Adorno, I

will aim to show how subject ob-ject relations can be unsettled in theevent of objective crisis, and how

this provides a negative framework

for conceiving of action in the worldand comportment towards objects,and, by extension, subjects, whichis not modelled around the principalof equivalency and exchange. I will

begin by considering the melanchol-

ic subjects relation to time.PART II

For only what does not t into thisworld is true.

Adorno, Aesthetic Theory

Melancholia and the Social

Melancholia is inherently anach-ronistic. By this I mean that, in itsmost literal sense, it is a condition

which acts against time. Freud de-scribes the condition in relation tomourning, a process that involvesa similar removal from world affairs,but is not treated as pathological be-cause we rely on it being overcome

within a period of time (Freud 2005,202). The latter occurs due to theidentiable loss of a loved object. Inmelancholy, however, the lost object

cannot be replaced and as such isinternalised into the unconsciousresulting in a paradoxically narcis-sistic incessant series of self-abase-ments (Freud 2005). Julia Kristevadiscusses the effect succinctly: It

is impossible to change partners orplans, for the object that has causedme pain is not only hated but alsoloved and thus identied with me

(Kristeva 2000, 47). In essence, theimpossibility of replacing the lost ob-ject makes it impossible for a per-son to get on with their life becausetheir very personhood is predicated

on loss.This status becomes more com-

plicated as Freud later concludesthat the normally functioning ego


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is founded on the loss of a beloved

object, and on the acceptance of asocially sanctioned number of re-placements. David L. Eng (2000)

has suggested that the melancholicstructure of subjectivity becomesa manifestation of the inability forpublic language to address unsanc-tioned objects, allowing clinical de-pression to take an overtly politicalmeaning (Eng 2000, 8). In this sense

it becomes an index for that whichmust be passed over in silence with-in the social world. As Butler (1997)

writes, the character of the ego ap-pears to be the sedimentation ofobjects loved and lost, the archae-ological remainder...of unresolvedgrief (Butler 1997, 133). Thesegriefs themselves catalogue hetero-normative prohibitions and genderdemarcations. It is this powerfully

anachronistic relation to the status-quo that connects Adornos nega-tivity with the melancholic structureof subjects. It is also at this pointthat Archer stands most obviouslyopposed to this conception of sub-jectivity. The narrative assumptionof social roles necessarily pushesthe subject into demarcations which

cannot allow for the restoration of

the lost object. The world activelypromises fullment and works at thesame time to deny it.

If one continues the discourse ofsecond-nature and reication thenwhat are missing from the socialworld are not only specic objectsof desire, but equally a meaning-ful objectivity as such. This double

bind manifests itself in Adornos

statement that thought awaits to bewakened one day by the memory ofwhat has been missed, and to be

transformed into teaching (Adorno2000, 81). This restoration wouldprovide the ultimate justication forsocial philosophy. Its mission is toshow objects in their truly alienated,deformed state as they would ap-pear in the messianic light (Adorno

2000, 247). The presentation of themessianic here is negative. It is

through the light of the a-historicalobjective, that objectivity that can-not be conceived within the worldof the falsely objective, that aspects

of the social world can be shownin their true state. Such discourserelies on the view point of the mel-ancholic; the one who refuses tomaintain themselves within a pro-

gressive narrative. It is thereforethrough the action of negation and

loss, those essential constituents ofthe subject, that the potential for aredeemed relation between subjectand object indexes itself.

It is within this ontological nexusof false and unrealised objectivitythat I will consider Lars Von Trierslm Melancholia. Released in the

autumn of 2011, by the Danish stu-dio Zentropa, a company startedand part-owned by Von Trier, it is

the Danish directors most recentwork. I will argue that the structureof melancholy appears here as hav-ing two faculties. The rst of these is

its anachronistic nature, the secondis an emphasis on particularity and


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Allen: Melancholia and the Radical Particular 121a potential for an experience of an

object which is paradoxically nega-tive. Kristeva writes that the artisticdrive avoids succumbing to melan-choly by investing a subjects drivesinto individual objects; by sexual-izing words, colours and sounds(Kristeva 2000, 60). This may ap-pear impotent whilst the world func-tions normally around the subject,

however I will argue that this struc-

ture, as it appears in Von Trier, con-tains a reection of a relationship toobjectivity not based around utility

and exchange.This emerges if one considers

the opening sequence of the lmin which, against the musical back-drop of Wagners prelude to Tristanund Isolde, one sees a series ofbrilliantly composed high resolution,slow moving photographs, in which

objects and people exist radiant intheir particularity. These images

include a bride attempting to walkaway from roots in which she is en-tangled, a horse falling in slow mo-tion against a sky spotted with starsand three gures; two women, whomwe later nd out to be the lms cen-tral characters, and a child, standingin a perfect composition against the

back drop of a large country home.Intercut between these is the imageof Earth being destroyed in a colli-sion with another, much larger, andclearly dead, planet. What I wouldnote about these images is that theyappear to be aesthetic before theyare narrative. They appear as meta-phor not documentary. One may be

tempted to see them as examples

of the aestheticising power of themelancholic consciousness, as dis-cussed above. However, I would ar-gue that equally what are presentedare particulars as particulars. Theyare not entirely removed from a uni-versal, such a thing would be impos-sible to comprehend, however they

are not subsumed by the subject.They exist outside of an exchange

relation. It is at this point that thenegative and the anachronistic as-pects of melancholia already con-

verge. It is the dialectic betweenthem, and its relation to the socialworld which I will argue manifests

an ontological ground for a negativesubjectivity.

Once the opening sequence isnished the viewer witnesses thebride, Justine, played by Kirsten

Dunst, delayed on the way to herwedding reception as the limou-

sine in which she is travelling withher new husband fails to negoti-ate a tight bend in a country road.Eventually the couple arrive two

hours late, and are greeted bythe frustrated gures of Clare,Justines older sister, played by

Charlotte Gainsbourg and her hus-

band, played by Kiefer Sutherland.Justine increases this frustration byimmediately going to say hello to

her favourite horse in the family sta-bles. As the scene progresses fromthis point it becomes clear that hersense of time is not commensurablewith the world in which she ndsherself. The wedding is running ac-


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cording to a strict timetable, one

that, as Claires husband remarks,was drawn up by the most expen-sive wedding planner on the planet.

In contradiction with this attempt tomanage her subjectivity, Justine fre-quently drops out of the appropriateforms of behaviour. The Archereansocial roles present themselves forher to play. She is a new bride, sheis a woman and is clearly from a

privileged background. As such, heragential status seemingly equips

her with everything necessary tobecome a successful actor. Whatis missing is a reied relation to the

future; a desire to realise her ownconcerns as they placed beforethrough a temporally bound seriesof commitments.

The assumption of such roles ap-pears to her as an essentially de-

meaning and boring act. Optionsavailable are meaningless. Upon

her arrival at the reception, she isasked to guess how many beansare in a jar and upon receiving acongratulatory speech from heremployer, during which she is pro-moted, is given the task to comeup with a tag-line for a new adver-tising image. Both these tasks she

fails to achieve, eventually tellingher boss that she despises him andhaving sex with the young man who

has been plucked from obscurity toencourage her to come up with theslogan. Throughout this sequence,

the constitution of social identity isshown to be an inherently violentact. Not only does Justine fail to

achieve her combination of the per-

sonal and the social identities thatwould enable her to function as anactive human, but she induces in

those around her the feeling thatthis very relation as it exists in them-selves may be something inessen-tial. Characters, with the exception

of her father, react with increasingdesperation and frustration towardsher behaviour. Her husband leaves,

presumably for good, and Claire tellsher how some times she hates morethan she can say. This is not the re-

action of a benevolent social worldnurturing personal identity; rather itmanifests the inherent violence ofsubjective constitution. This is notto suggest that Justine manages tosublimate gender in any meaning-ful way, however her negative rela-tion to it, along with the economic

structures in which she nds herselfplaced, allows disjunction between

these structures and a subjectivefreedom to come to light.

Melancholia and the NegativeIf the rst half of Von Triers lm

deals with the false objectivity of the

world of second nature, then thesecond introduces objectivity of a

new and absolute kind. The tauto-logical domination of the object bythe subject, the second nature of

subjective existence, is obliteratedby an object unable to be domes-ticated within the subjective frame-work. The half, entitled Claire,starts an indeterminate amount oftime after the wedding. The opening


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Allen: Melancholia and the Radical Particular 123scenes deal with the title characters

efforts to cope with the, now literally,debilitating depression of her sister.Several scenes depict her attempt-ing to help Justine with small tasks,

such as getting into a bath and eat-ing supper. The latter remains inca-pable of doing these things, scream-ing as she is walked to the bath tuband saying that food tastes likeashes. At other times she is seen

as marvelling other specic owersin the garden, and at the ight of abird passing above her. When this

happens, Claire looks on, seeming-ly happy but unable to participate.

In the previous section, I men-tioned that Archers subjective on-tology is explicitly Kantian, in thatshe predicates the subjects knowl-edge of itself on the knowledge ofits objective surroundings. This re-

sults in the subjective alienationexperienced as second nature, an

inability to know oneself and a per-sistent sense of entrapment. If thediscourse of melancholia allows oneto notice the particular of individualsuffering that is missed in the socialuniversal, it also contains intimationsof a state in which neither the objector the subject are committed to their

mutual bind. This is something thatmay approach subjective freedom:A freedom to step outside of the

object, a freedom which the identityclaim cuts short (Adorno 2000, 313)The identity claim, the fastening ofan object to its concept by a subjectthat in turn is fastened to the object,is something that reaches to the

core of positive subjectivity.

From the images that open thelm there is consistent emphasison an ability to experience pas-sively within Justines character,to achieve something approachinga relationship to an object whichdoes not amount to subsumption. In

Structure, Agency and the InternalConversation, Archer makes refer-ence to what she describes as the

possibility of a fracturing withina subjects internal conversation

which would result in an inabil-ity to prioritise ones concerns andmove through the world accord-ingly (Archer 2003, 298). Needlessto say, this is judged as an incom-plete subjectivity. However, whatVon Trier (2011) emphasises is thatit is precisely this inability to functionaccording to the standard normative

ground that maintains itself againstthat grounds failure in moments of

objective crisis.This ontology takes centre stage

as it emerges that a planet namedMelancholia has been hiding be-hind the sun and is approachingEarth. Claire begins to worry that itwill collide with them and her hus-band assures her that it will not.

From this point, the planet repre-sents precisely the social worldsinability to appropriate an absolute

object. Indeed, I would argue thatthis failed domestication is presentfrom the opening shots of the lm.Von Triers afnity and familiaritywith the work of Nietzsche has beennoted (Bainbridge 2008). This rela-


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tion between object and metaphor is

a pre-occupation in both their work.As one reads in the small essayOn Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral

Sense:Every concept originates through

our equating what is unequal....What then is truth? A mobile armyof metaphors. metonyms andanthropomorphisms: in short, asum of human relations which

have been enhanced, transposedand embellished...truths are illu-sions...metaphorswhich are wornout and without sensuous power(Nietzsche 1994, 47, my empha-sis).

The construction of discourse,of objectivity itself, predicates itselfon making the visceral familiar viathe use of metaphor and transla-

tion, in which objects are literallytransplanted into different areas of

discourse. As the lm progresses,this appropriation is made explicit inits failure. The opening shots, origi-nally taken as metaphor, becomeincreasingly prophetic as this failurebecomes more and more evident. Inthe most moving example Claireshusband presents her with a device

made by their son. It consists of astick of wood with an adjustable ringof metal that can be held up to the

planet and adjusted according toits size. The holder then waits forve minutes and places it over theplanet again to see whether or notit is approaching or receding away.Ultimately, all that can be known

about this object is its relative size.

Merleau-Ponty (2005) writes thatsense experience is that vital com-munication with the world which

makes it present as a familiar setting

of ourlife. It is to it that the perceivedobject and the perceiving subjectowe their thickness (Merleau-Ponty2005, 61, my emphasis). Whatemerges in Melancholiais a processby which an object appears that

cannot provide a foundational pointfor a life-world precisely because itis too much of an object. As such it

causes terror amongst those whosesubjectivity is contained within aschema of a positive futurity.

Justines relation to the planetis strikingly different to her sis-ters. Two scenes serve to illustratethis. The rst takes place at night.Justine goes walking in the grounds

of the house, and Claire follows herclandestinely. Melancholia is shin-ing brightly in the sky and after afew minutes the latter stumblesacross Justine who is lying nakedon a river bank staring back up atthe planet and bathing in its whitelight. The position here is clearlyvoyeuristic. What is witnessed isa mode of comportment towards

an object which manifests itself asa paradoxical stepping outside ofthe remits of subjective objectica-tion. Such a position is only possiblevia the fractured subjectivity of themelancholic and from a subjectiveperspective that is outside of socialtime. It is from this position that theapocalyptic object appears as both


17/22

Allen: Melancholia and the Radical Particular 125redemptive and destructive; as the

messianic perspective from whichthe false is shown in its falseness.

The second scene occurs close

to the end of lm when it is now ir-refutable that the Earth will soon bedestroyed. Claire nds her husband

dead in the stables, and tells Justinethat she wants to re-enact a famil-iar ritual and to sit out on the terracedrinking wine with her sister and her

young son. According to all of therequirements of rational behaviour,this plan is a good one. Claire has

the means and the money at herdisposal to actualise her plan, andthe act exists within a social rolethat she is comfortable in playing.After a few moments of strained

silence Justine tells her sister thatthis is one of the most stupid ideasthat she has ever heard and pro-

ceeds to walk out into the groundsof the house where she meets her

nephew and tells him that they willmake a magic cave to escape theapocalypse. What is revealed in theconvergence of the objective lackof a future with the attempt to main-tain a degree of behaviour within thesocial world is that those normativebehaviours are themselves guaran-

teed by a false objectivity.The lm ends with a negative im-

age of redemption as the planet im-pacts and the three characters aresitting in a makeshift house formedfrom dead branches. History endswith an event which is precisely a-historical and the object that is neverappropriated into schema of the fu-

ture converges with the conscious-

ness unable to participate in it. Thesocietal roles, the sedimentations of

social history are obliterated alongwith the very subjectivities that they

render necessary. For Justine, themelancholic always outside of time,the last moment is immortal. The

social world that throughout hasbeen predicated on a violent appro-priation of subjectivity and time dies

because the lost object that foundsthe ego in its melancholy state re-turns in all of its objectivity. Justines

relation represents a model for acomportment outside of exchange,a relation that can only exist as es-sentially negative.

Conclusion: CrisisAs the preceding discussion has

investigated, the condition of melan-

cholia acts against time in two ways.It refuses the necessary incorpora-tion of the subject into the schemaof the worlds temporality, and it fo-cuses on the particularity inherent inthat worlds crass universals. In bothof these ways it is experienced as adeviation from the normal mode ofexistence. It represents a prolongedexistential crisis, the process which,

for early phenomenology, revealsthe world as world (Heidegger.1978, 139). It is the visceral experi-ence of being out of joint with onessurroundings, an interruption in theKantian self-narrative.

The experience of nancial crisiscan be described in a similar way. Itis the point at which discourses of


18/22


progress and inevitable subjective

actualisation fall away. To view thisposition as ontologically secondaryto the normal ow of life in the so-cial world, is to appropriate the cri-sis into a discourse of the future inwhich the basic ontological groundof pre-crisis states will inevitably re-emerge. One could argue that theapperception of capital mimics thatof its subjects. Every drive towards

economic growth necessitates theenforcing, and tightening, of ac-ceptable social roles and the sub-jects / objects which occupy them.The conception of a constellationof concerns is rendered meaning-less in the face of social objectiv-ity attempting to recover from sucha crisis. The situation which led toone elderly man shooting himselfoutside of the Greek parliament is

a tting example of what remains ofsubjective freedom when objectivecircumstances allow no avenue for

its realisation.3It is situations like this when one

realises the essentially conservativenature of a focus on positive subjec-tivity. This is a focus that must takethe currently existing world of socialrelations as its normative ground.

As such, throughout her workArcher refers to the epistemic fal-lacy as the mistaken belief that the

world is how we imagine it, and not

as it is in reality (Archer 2003, 207).However, whilst the world in whichthe nave person moves may be op-posed to their own conceptions ofit, this does mean that it is, in itself,

something right and true. One who

afrms the idea of wishful thinkingserves only to justify the punishmentof those mad enough to believe that

the world could be different, and tosympathise with those who benetfrom such punishment. It is no coin-cidence that Don Quixote receiveshis most sadistic humiliation at the

hands of the nobility.Benjamin once described the

state as possessing a monopoly onviolence (Benjamin 2004, 239). A di-rect consequence of this is an equalmonopoly on time. This monopoly istwo-fold and involves both demar-cating the social roles available andthe subjective conditions of thosewho occupy them, and in dictating

the narratives with which any cri-sis within those roles is explained.

Actions orientated towards eco-

nomic recovery focus themselvesequally on xing the ontological gapexperienced in times of nancial cri-

sis and on re=establishing a univer-sal narrative between both subjectsand objects; a narrative that doesnot belong to either of them. In theUK one saw this process workingexplicitly in the discursive domesti-cation of the London Riots of 2011.

The reaction of the media and po-litical mainstream served to eithercondemn what took place or to pro-vide a liberal framework of justica-tion for the actions.4 Actions whichinterrupt the expected temporalityof capital accumulation must be re-appropriated into its structure, boththrough a narrative and a legal pro-


19/22

Allen: Melancholia and the Radical Particular 127cess of punishment based on the

grounds of individual responsibility.However, before any retroactive jus-tication takes place, I would argue

that acts that necessitate this reac-tion are essentially melancholic innature. They represent a negationof the expected behaviour of actorswho occupy a minimal social role,

not by a slow burning change in asocietys normative ground, but by a

violent rupture in its time-frame. It isat these historical moments that theappropriative elements of the state

come into full view.It is also at these moments

when the potential for somethingnew emerges. In early March 2012Cambridge University invited ex-head of the IMF, Dominique StraussKahn, to speak at their studentunion on the subject of economic re-

covery. Outside approximately twohundred protestors gathered dem-onstrating against the speakers

on-going involvement in allegationsof sexual assault. As the eveningproceeded, women began to comeforward from the crowd and sharestories of surviving rape. Individualsemerged from the crowd, told their

stories and returned to tears of

solidarity from complete strang-ers. One independent blogger de-scribed the atmosphere as such:

We sustain one another, we createa vocabulary for our experiences, a

discourse where we get to tell ourown stories, and no one else can tellus what they mean.5 These expe-riences exist outside of the time of

narrative appropriation; they main-

tain a melancholic negation and sin-gularity achieved through, as muchas is possible, the refusal of the so-cial worlds sedimented discourses.It is this phenomenon of steppingoutside, via the paradoxical act ofnegation, of prevailing time framesthat presents an intimation of some-thing approaching the ground for apositive subject. To afrm this posi-

tivity outside of these demarcationsis to afrm the conditions that makesuch a stepping outside necessary.

A piece from the string of universi-ty occupations in California declareditself to be a Communique from anAbsent Future (After the Fall 2009).This is wrong. The future is not ab-sent, but it is estranged. This is not atime stream from which anyone mayopt out, precisely because it exists

tangentially to the subject. But it isone that one may act against. In thewords of another recent publication:

A revolutionary time form, a timeaway from time as we know it,

cannot be understood in anythingother than negative terms...It isnot exhaustion and industry, butneither is it free time and leisure

in the current ways in which those

are understood...Time must beinterrupted by us. Not Eden, notHeaven. NOW (Escalate, 63).

Time, as a reied quantity, can-not be taken as a dening aspectof a meaningful autonomy becauseit is a time that can always be cutshort; a freedom in chains. Rather,


20/22


the subject, if it is to mean anything

at all, must stick fast to its own po-tential for negativity. At a time whenstatements regarding the universal

reication of life impress one withtheir empirical veriability rather

than their rhetoric, such an aggres-sive delity could hardly be more

vital.

Endnotes1

See Alexandra Topping (2011). http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/19/dale-farm-eviction-police-taser.

2 See John Elster (1985) Sour Grapes:Studies in the Subversion of Rational-

ity.

3 See Helena Smith (2012). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/04/greek-man-shoots-himself-debts.

4 For an example of an article whichmanages to do both, see Mary Riddell(2011). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8630533/Riots-the-underclass-lashes-out.html.

5 See Elly (2012). http://www.gender-agenda.org.uk/discuss/931/breaking-silence-breaching-the-peace/.

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