...Still going on...

International audienceHow is it that we are still going on? Is it because we have not yet totally run out of desire? But what kind of desire has the possibility to drive us, and how is it produced or dried up by capitalism? How can we believe in and handle desire? And as scholars, how does desire affect us as individuals or as a group? Our discussion contrasts Bernard Stiegler's (assisted by Gilbert Simondon) answers to Gilles Deleuze's (assisted by Félix Guattari). For Bernard Stiegler, capitalism cuts the traditional circuits of desire (family, relatives, relationships, circumstances, place), and debases desire into mere drives. Desires, grounded in libido, are replaced by consumerist stimulus/response synapses; objects are purchased as the human ‘will' is degraded. Consumerism and its twin, marketing, sell goods, images and success, by destroying desire. The consumerist society rushes towards its auto-destruction, as capitalism becomes an entropic system. Stiegler's concept of desire comes from Freud: trauma, lack and sublimation are crucial. Capitalism, it is asserted, standardizes subjectivities into the ‘to-be-consumed', whereas desire must desire the singular. To address desire in its totality, as inspired by Marcel Mauss, we would need to reject ‘cosmopolitanism' (the ‘big idea' without concrete facticity), ‘particularism' (mere self-interest), and explore ‘inter-nation' (relatedness of physical, psychological, and social circumstance). ‘Inter-nation', in effect, has been reinterpreted as ‘habitus' by Bourdieu. Inter-nation encompasses the ideas, beliefs and goals that make working-together possible. Developing a ‘technics' of human justice and flourishing, as inspired by Simondon, is a strategy of ‘inter-nation' wherein material existence, individual action and social-historical goals are honored. Stiegler's social thought is an attempt at neo-Inter-nation. Contrastingly, Deleuze does not see the destruction of desire or of aliveness (or of élan vital, however reinterpreted) as the issue. Deleuze opposes his conception of desire to that of Freud. Desire is full; it lacks nothing. It is not limited by consumerism but rather grows through encounters, grafting, and arrangements with the heterogeneous. No new ‘technics' but organs hijacked towards new possibilities are to be called for. To ‘keep going' is to create new concepts via the flow of bodies and their ideations. Individuations, trans-individuations and the making of organs, are the only possible source of motility. We will ‘keep going' in this paper by exploring these two opposing positions