N. O. Brown

FROM POLITICS TO METAPOLITICST

My 6rst response to the inyitation of this honorable companyand to the wishes of Frederick William Atherton"a topic related to ethical or social criticism',was that it would be a pleasure to present my kind ofradicalism iu this enyironment

- -Since then I have been wondering about radicalismand wondering about myselfThese are times of great uncertainty and doubt as well asanguish.

Starting out in the ThirtiesWl-ren to be yourg was to be a MarxistI ask myselfWhat has happened since then?What have I leamed in my bizarre psychedelic trips

I mean my books?What news is there that might be useful to the citizens

the young citizenswho are starting out now?

You have a right to ask how much, or how little.

So much has changedperhaps the message is instabilitypermanent instability in the mindcouesponding to the permanent revolution in things, FreiTick William Atherton lecture, Flarvard University, Marchzo, tg67

But iu this Heraclitean fux, or fire,there is for me also a Heracliteao Logosthe Logos, the word is O:re, or oneness

unityuni6cationthe unification of the human race.

Intelleetualsr for me the word still spells a voeation _intellecruals who have been mrsted with the word, the Logos,are called to work for unity.If, as Blake said the Fall is into Divisionthe yocation of the intellectual is to oyercome the consequences

instability to be accepted as an etemal truthlike Heraditean fux

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of the Fa1l.

the analogy between social and psychicsociety and soulbody and body politic.

I don't know abour the proletadar, butthe intellectual, as such, has no fatherland

-or, to use anothet metaphor,there is a heavenly city.

Logos seeks uniflcation; and the fact it faces is DivisionAlienation, in the old Marxist vocabularythe rents, the splits, in the newer Freudian vocabulanthe schismsthe schizophrenia.Now

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if I may mahe a Crect Leap For.r,rard _alienation is schizophreniathe outcome of the collision between Marx and Freud is their

the perception of the analogy between the two unification

Those Iower classes, lower depths, are the depths of depthpsychology

an underworld repressed by the bourgeois egoa cauldron of energy and violence with the lid onan anoDymous mass, or social id

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If you take the psychoanalytical idea of projection seriouslythe proletadat (if and when \4,e pe:ceive one) is us projected

a collective proiectiona collective dream, or nighnrrare(the dream is in the language(and the language is acted upon(saying makes it so)

If you take the psychoanalytical idea oI projection seriouslythe ego constructs itself by projecting the otherthe ego constructs itself by drawing an imaginaty line

between inside and outsidean imaginary boundary-lineAnd this imaginary boundary-line is the reality-principleThe reality-principle is the distinction berween inner world and

extemal rcalityand it is a false distinction.

"The false reality-principle"This is to take psychoanalysis more seriously tlran dre psycho-

analysts dooi to pass beyond psychoanalysisBeyond the reality-principle is poetry

taking metaphors seriously(metaphors and analogies)that way madness lies.

Irr the mythology of Marxism, the reyolution is from below:

The disintegration of the boundary-line betwee[ inner and outerself and orher

is the disintegtation of the egothe &sintegration of the ego of the ego-psychologistsin Ma*ist terms, the disintegration of the bourgeois ego

of bourgeois individualismor, alienafion ovetcome

- -The split between inside and outside is the primal splitis the origin of alienation.

Already in Marxismthe intellectual was to go to the massesbourgeois individualism, the separate self, was tobe drowned in rlre p.olelarian orern

Ma*ist thought substitutes for the reality of individuals theBur classes, as external realities, mutually

",.,J"r1lt?r""I,ilT::;it ctl really takes place in one body.

eiiher

Man. who, lil,e Freud. is a genius r,rbo surpasses his ownlimitations, or:ce said:

"The head of this emancipation is philosophy, irs heart rheHe-means ego and id. of course proleraiia,, if ro., l';1"'o'iut'at the word, must also be genital,At any rate, it all tales place in one bodyone body that has beel mysteriously dismembered

and needs to be rememberedto koit again these broken limbs into one body.It must be sorne kind of enbrace

overcoming alienation.f,merson used to s:y, There is only.one ManAfter Emerson, what happened, on the American continent, to

this inruition)

To perceive that it all really takes place in one bodyjs to transva]Lle the old political uategoriesto pass from politics to metapolitics

or poehy,The proletariat is dead

but the proletariat is uslong live the prcletadat.

There is an inner Bastille to be capturedto release the prisoners

or rather, the inner ard the outer Bastille is the same Bastilleor mther, the distinction befieen inner and outer is the Bastille

the false reality-principlethe government of the reality-principle,

to be overthrownAnd the revolution is a visionary break-through

or Poetryor madness.

Revolution really is madaesspolitical revolutions

The French Revolution, the Russian RevolutionTen Days that Shook the WorldThe Great Cultural Revolution

All the pathology of the twentieth centurythe madness of the millennia breaking out,

as Nietzsche prophesied -

The problem really is madoessThere is a point where Marat and de Sade are one,

Wlrat to do with madnessThe political solution to the problem of rnadness is

divide and conquersegregation anal repression(lite in asylums)perpetual con{lict

l0

the political revoludon is a temporary break_clown followed bythe reinstirution of repression

a cycle of explosion and repressionactivity and passiviry

in eternal reoccurencePerperuel confict is rhe rule o[ polirics

the reality_priociplethe world as we know it

fs there any altemative)

A metapolitical solution to the problem of madnesswould see politics as madnessand madness as the solution to politics.Brea}ing down the boundaries is bteakingunificadon Iies be)ond rhe rellity-principiethe communion is Dionysian.Madr, ess is eyen the solurion to the prcblem of madness

it is sanity that needs to be saved(I don,t mean, save your sanity)it was the greahess of Freud to see throrrgh, to bore tlr.ough, the-

wcll sepirating s.rnity and insnoiryit is all a problen of communicationthe poet says, Madness is oDeness lostBut oneness regained is nadness also.Can we liberate inste.td o[ reoressCcn r,re find a way of being peonanenlly unsrable _ _Emerson says: "Whenever man comes, there comes revolution,,

It is the idea of pemanent revoludon there is drat great flame

But pelmanent revolution cannot be political revolutionpermanent political revolution is fratricide, or suicicle,it is the situation we are in now

the situation we ate trying to escape from

To save the revolution it must be given a metapoliticalmeaning

as madness, or poetryunintemrpted poetry:surrealism, to stamp out reality.

Madness and Civilizationa very serious question

Ilere I differ from one of your sagesB. F. Skinner, Waldln Two (zou ): "Nothing

comes from general frothing at the mouth"I have done some frothing in my time

Madness is an etemal truthlnd some shaking or quaking

is testimony to the need for liberationto the uncomfortableness of culture

It is possible that the futuE is a contented humanitywithout neutotics like me

but I don't think soI don't think the future is behavioral engineering

getting rid of unhappiness, maladjustrnent, madness

A{y utopia isan environment that lvorks so wellthat we c.rn run wild in iranarchy in an envircnment that works

tlle environment works, does all the worka fully autom..rtic cnvironmentall public utilitiesor communicarion-networks

(the engineering contribution to unilication; uniEcation is alsoa matter ol engineering)

NIy teache$ in utopian enginee ng are John Cage andBuclminster Fuller

l)Lrt wasn't there a divinely absurd anticipation in Marx, or

down the reality-principle

l3

Engels, saying that the government of persons will Le replacedby the adrainistration of thiuos _ _

The environment can do all the workSerious drought, thought as r,vork, in pr1isuit ol Wirklichkeit,

Wirklichkeit, thc Gennan word for reality, ,,r" ti"ll",i-'

"'"-

The realityTrinciple is about overprinciple

political divisions, boundariesbut, at a deeper level, the reality-principlethe boundary betq,een Self and Otherthe logic which divideswhich most people thinli is reason itself, or

mtionalityIlationality and the realiry-principle are obstacles to unification

llut fortunately thero is a disturbance in the house of reasonllyer since the age of reason something like a collective break-

down has been taking placea destruction of reasona destruction in which intellect rnust immere

ln order that the disittegration of the ego may be the birth ofsome kind of collective consciousness

ln order that the logic of division may give way to thelogos of union

'l'hc logos of union whose name is, or one of whose names is,ever since the time of Hegel,

dialectics.

\\/c are still Hegel's contemporadeseven in America, as Emerson knewliving in the last days, the end of historythe age of revolution and apocalypse

And therefore in drat No Man's Land between reason analmadness which is dialectics

Reason a d, Relolutioa is really Reason and Madnessl)iulectics is the rcvolt against rationalismrlrc discovery that self-contradiction is the essence of realitytfic op..1.* to the absurdl)iirlectics is intellect seeking union with energy

in Marx, phiiosophy see}ing union with the proletariatin Freud, ego seeling union with id

Thought as work can be buriccl in machines and computersrhe wotk.lefr to be d^ne is ro Lrrry thoughrr qrrire ajub-lo put thought urdergrounJ

as (ommunication nenvork, sewnge 5ystem. power iinesSo that wr'lduc.s can con.e rbovc eroundTechnological ration.rlity .rn be pur to .l"epso that something else can awaken in the human mindsomething li}e the god Dionysussomething which cannot be programned

The ordering of the physical environment will releaseunparallelled quantities and forms of human disorderThe future, if there is one, is machines and madness

What men ot gods are these? What maidens lothlWhat mad pursuit) What stNggle to escape)

The stmggle should not be, i. no lorrge; really, tlie struggleIor existence.

P:, y"ll"jlt"" is not only a matter of engineering.l\4.rrshrll Mcl-r,han is talicn by some to mean rhrt rechnolos). isbringing us into a global vilJaqeBuckminster Fuller is raken by some ro mcan rl)rl rcchnolosy isDrmgrng us a glol,al network of public scrvitesBut there is some obsuuctionThere is some obstacle impetling the free flow of unifrcation

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In dialectics nothing is stable, movement is alla logic of passionMandelstam in Russia in rgzr(Mar:delstam, not Leniflj a poet not apolitician): "A new heroic era hasopened in the life of the word. The worclis fesh and bread. It shares the fate ofbread and flesh: su$e ng.,,

:ud so did Freud;lrt Ieast the Freud whom the Psychoanalytical Associations

worshipSystems, Marxist, Freudian, can be, as they say, flexibleIlut flaribility is not enough

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Mind, or qririt, or life, must learn how to dieit must go under

nll these systems have imrnortal longings on themthat is why they are deadbom deadrcpresenting {rom the hour of their birth the dead hand oI

the past'T'he flexibility is wriggling to avoid deathrvhat they mean by rarionality is, don't die

be consistent - -

'llrc rule o{ die-in-order-to-lived.iese Stirb' und Waile

is uot fexibility but metamorphosisis noi political but poetical,

'lhe real acrion in Lore's Body(you cao tell by the creaking)

is to flnd an alternative to systematic Iorml)ialectics, in flight from the systematic, frnds refuge in

aphoristic fonnAphorism: the word smells of literary self-consciousnessrLc reality is bro]

that is \rhat the Unconscious is all aboutBut it cannot be put into systematic, reified, permanent formSystematic reified permanent form creates ,r,

"iir" lvho por."..(Platonic academn occult order, ,oliri"rl no.,r, 'h"

t""'"'the repository of the secrer)

Mass-mysticism is poetryan open sccret _ _

"The truth is in the whole,,But the whole is in any part, not in the system _

infinity in a grainand in an instantthe whole is here or nowhere

Aphorism is instant dialecticthe instantaneous flip instead of the elaborate systemOnly so do we have a form of intellect that is so easy

Nietzsche says"He does not negate any more"

At any rate intellectuals should watch their language'.[ he critical judgement

which separates the sheep from the goatsWe and They

r r:itical judgement is party or sect-fomationis scissior of the one bodyanil projection of part of ourelves

lrrtellect as protestor great refusal(Hawthorne-Melville's No in Thunder)gets us nowhere

irr this mess, rcctitude or righteoumcss is unobtainableand will not save us.

What kinil of language might be helpful?Instead of morality, metaphor

to {elly us acrossthe language which unifies

The language of healing, or making whole, is notpsychoanalysis, but poetry.|(,{rtry is the visionary form, or explosion

which overthrows the reality-principleand transforms dre vvorld, iust the way it is,

without changing a thingthe transformation is the unifrcation.

I lrcse are the fragmentaly moments which briug sorrething newinto the world

li,,rgrnentary mornents: there isn't anything we can count on oraccumulate.

l"iclry is the solveut which dissolvesthe vigorous stereotypes of political ideology

that any child could do itor, only a child can do it

Arrd so perishablethat it cannot be hoardcd by any elite

or storcd in any ilstihrtionA form oI dialectics, therefore, uneguivocclly on tbe

"ide offreedom or madness.

And tnally(using Hegel again as my landmark)

The Hegelian dialecdc is the simuitaneous total affirmation ofthis world and its total negation

Both the right-wing Hegelians and the left_wing H"g"lioi. *"Both the Marxian change the world and the Ni"tzs.hea;n

iteverything always the same

The hard thing here is the Nietzschean aftrmation _ _

l8 i9

the numb automatism of political reflexesthe somnambulist grardty of literal believers

These are the obsauctions to be dissolvedto be loosened up _ _

Poetry is the transforming spirir of play

Begin todayno place needs the

that Bastille of litemlism

metapho cal play

transforming spirit of play morethan the llniversity

especially that Bastille inside the Basrille in ra,hich IThe great revolutionary inteuectual

"u"l;: :':",r"Jl#ll^"r".who reduced all that solemn nonsense to ,,or."r.r.Jo'""leading us in the path to which Wittgenstein directed usfrom disguised nonsense to patent nonsensea tr.anftiln that is accomplished not by linguisticanalysis but by poetry,

The primal Logos is rhe poeric Logosand lhe fogos of uniEcation is poetryThe intellecrual, to r,1hom was entrusred the rvorcJ, wcs giventhe power to unify the world this waylhere a1g also enginee*, to whom is given the power to unifythe world in anorher way.Tbere are also politicians.It is the tale of Shem and Shaun

who turn into Shem, Ham, and Japhethor Tom, Dick, aad Harry.