Against Representation

An "Enculage" of Stirner

Stirner is a thinker whose work is often either dismissed or misrepresented as his vulgar critique is often wholly incompatible with the systematic truth seeking of the theorist. This incompatibility arises from a fundamental disregard for representation, the principle that phenomena can be spoken of through the use of common concepts that generalize said phenomena. The theorist, more specifically the philosopher, is the one that constructs/manipulates representation in order to produce unified representations of the wider world (this is cemented into philosophical practice by Plato, however it remains the grounding point of philosophy even beyond his influence). This systematic metaphysics, though it has been challenged over the past two centuries, has not ceased its purpose as the grounding point behind thought more generally. We still ask the question what is this thing (as opposed to the far more contentious question of which one)? What concept can we apply to ground phenomena into an understandable assemblage of words and concepts that produce what we call meaning? Meaning, or essence, both in its existence and in its lack is thus something produced rather than something immanent to the direct experience of the form (it is in this sense that we can say that “the question of meaning” that the existentialists speak of is ill founded). Stirner challenges representation via the introduction of various anti-representational forms that rather than seeking to be a representation of affects refers to one’s own direct experience of said affects. It is in this sense that he constructs an anti-metaphysics, as rather than constructing a philosophical system he presents a series of concepts that deny any metaphysical grounding of experience. The key concept that grounds this anti-metaphysics is uniqueness. The unique or uniqueness is different to the unique one (der einzige). The unique one is what is left of individuality when all of its attributes are torn down. It is still singular, individuated, however it is but an empty signifier that refers to however the individual constitutes itself, this constitution (creative nothingness) wholly independent from the concept itself (Stirner here departs from Fichte’s simple subjective idealism to something resembling Bataille’s base materialism). The unique one, as a word or concept, is pure simulacra in the sense that it is purely form, a representation that refuses to reduce its “essence” by naming it, designating it as a represented form. Instead it refers back to the direct experience of one’s own individuality. Stirner writes:

“Stirner names the unique and says at the same time that “Names don’t name it.” He utters a name when he names the unique, and adds that the unique is only a name. So he thinks something other than what he says, just as, for example, when someone calls you Ludwig, he isn’t thinking of a generic Ludwig, but of you, for whom he has no word.”¹

Ludwig is a name (as is the unique), yet when one thinks with the concept one refers not to the concept or name but to the particular singularity which is itself indescribable. Yet the concept still seeks to talk of itself as itself, instead of referring back to singularity. Uniqueness then is then a particular immanence that is referred to with the naming of “unique”. This uniqueness is then both particular and purely immanent, offering an account of singularity considered both as multiplicity and particularity. The unique one is the notion that the individual is itself unique (it cannot be named or reduced). This is not a prioritization of the individual, the individual does not have a creative and unique “nature”, instead it is the byproduct of Stirner’s ontology. Stirner’s practical philosophy and politics may lie with the unique one (egoism, insurrection)², however his ontology lies in the far more radical concept of uniqueness more generally.

Uniqueness is the immanent reversal of the Kantian noumena, done in a far more radical manner than Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism. This is due to Stirner’s “nominalism” which denies Deleuze’s planar ontology within his use of Bergson and Spinoza. Instead it has no particular form at the basis of ontology, creating an immanence that is immanent to itself not in any formal, abstract way but rather an immanence prior to form. Stirner in a sense does the same movement Deleuze does to Hegel with difference³, except in this case to Deleuze with immanence itself. Immanence to Stirner is not at the level of the abstract, where we can discern a planar element of form between singularities, but instead at the level of affect and singularity itself. The forms these singularities take to each other may be rhizomatic or planar, however it holds no base form of organization. It instead holds a fundamental being-together which grounds both its own particular self-immanence and immanence to other singularities (to Stirner this is the Hegelian account of property). Kant’s noumena, or the thing-in-itself, is worded much the same way that Stirner words his account of the unique. Noumena is indescribable by language, unable to be represented or comprehended by Human systems of representation⁴. Stirner in fact follows the same movement Kant makes here, as he offers an account of what is indescribable via the deferral to our own immanent notions of uniqueness. However Stirner has a different account than Kant of what is outside of “the human”. The human to Stirner is not a readily defined subject that has a Cartesian structure of mind and representation, by which we can label certain aspects of human thought and considerations as noumena (divinity, the platonic ideal, etc). As such Stirner does not consider what is outside representation through what is beyond our subjective perspective, instead he considers the outside of representation as pure subjectivity derived through the immanent particularity of the unique. What is truly “nuemana” is what is purely immanent, what is accessed through the deferral of language and systems of representation (i.e. affect, connotation, singularity, intensity, etc). Stirner thus engages in a similar movement to what Deleuze does with his transcendental empiricism, however rather than these singularities possessing a becoming-virtual where they are flattened out into a readily accessible space (the plane of immanence), they instead remain particular yet unatomized. This is the “inhuman” to Stirner, that which lies outside its categorization as such. By placing his praxis within the “inhuman,” Stirner is engaging in a radical iconoclasm which resists all categorizations or placings of idols as a definition of cause. My cause is not the human or humane cause, my cause is my cause.

But is this cause, being my own, not a simple egotism which artificially asserts the cause of the individual over all others. How is this individualism not but a new sacred cause based upon yet another abstract category? What Stirner means by ‘individual” remedies this concern. Of course the individual is the unique one, it cannot be named without reducing its own “essence”. However what is the individual’s essence, or any object’s essence for that matter? It is all well and good to engage in an iconoclasm of form, however if said iconoclasm retains an account of essence that is fixed and based on preconceived forms (the role of a given object, its set of capacities, etc) it loses any potential liberatory end. In this manner Deleuze’s account of Spinoza is very useful (what can the body do?). The body has no role it should be assigned to or designated with, instead the body must explore its own set of capacities. Yet on this question Stirner here is far more radical than Spinoza, instead of asking what the body can do in the sense of physical capacities (which itself can result in ablest conclusions as can be seen in the Theologico-Political Treatise⁵) he asks what can cause do, what can one’s essence do? It is in this sense that Stirner engages in an iconoclasm of essence, as he rejects any fixed idol stating the cause one must take. This is egoism, the rejection of all transcendent grounding of one’s cause, one’s cause “based on nothing”. Stirner here does not create a hierarchy of causes in this sense, instead opposing the sacred in all its forms.

What then is Stirner’s account of essence? It is clearly what he grapples with in the unique, as the unique always refers to an essence that itself has no inherent abstract form. Essence is instead immanent and without any grounding point, the signifier referencing our own experience of the object's essence. In this sense Stirner does not work with the Platonic idea where there can be an idea-in-itself, concepts are always grounded in some concrete singularity. This concreteness can be phenomenological or abstract, both in Stirner collapse in on each other (both become part of an affective existential milieu). In this sense we cannot speak of concepts in Stirner, as the abstract transcendental realm in which concepts reside are but dreams in our heads. All there is is the experience of concepts, the experience of its use in thought and comprehension. Thus as a writer, as a philosopher, he will use concepts that both refuse definition and refer back to our own immanent experience of what the concept designates (in this sense he somewhat anticipates Laruelle). Stirner thus attempts to think through singularity, not the concept, seeing in all concepts what he calls a creative nothingness. The creative nothing is Stirner’s ontology and his answer to the question of essence. Whereas egoism has removed all axiomatics of essence, it relies on a freedom to assign essence how one pleases. This capacity to become is the direct consequence of this creative nothing. The creative nothing is what is both before and always here, it is the ground zero of all essence. This zero point is not a metaphysical entity (it is necessarily metaphysical yet not conceptual, conceptual here designating platonic forms), as Deleuze’s planes are, as it does not assume any matter of form. The plane of immanence gives an ultra-spinozist account of substance as immanence, where each singularity can relate without stratification. Stirner instead assumes no plane of interaction between singularities, instead acting at the standpoint of singularities themselves (Deleuze does the same with the virtual singularity prior to the plane in Pure Immanence⁶). It is the very being that defines a subjectivity, its ground of capacities (it is in this sense a being-as-itself). The creative nothing is that before to essence, the ability to assign essence to any given object including the unique one. Stirner mentions the creative nothing twice in The Unique and its Property, once at the beginning and once at the end of the text:

“If God, if humanity, as you affirm, have enough content in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I feel that I would lack it even less, and that I would have no complaint to make about my “emptiness.” I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself create everything as creator.”

“I am owner of my power, and I am so when I know myself as unique. In the unique the owner himself returns into his creative nothing, from which he is born. Every higher essence over me, be it God, be it the human being, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness, and only pales before the sun of this awareness. If I base my affair on myself, the unique, then it stands on the transient, the mortal creator, who consumes himself, and I may say: I have based my affair on nothing.”

Stirner here, despite rarely talking of it throughout the text (far more emphasis is placed on the unique one), establishes the creative nothing as ontology through egoism as a “return” (it is based on this that Novatore can go “toward” the creative nothing). The creative nothing is the base out of which subjectivity constitutes everything, giving everything its “essence”. It is out of egoism that these essences are no longer fixed, allowing the free utilization of all capacities to constitute and connote one’s own existential milieu. It is in this sense that egoism constitutes a smooth space, as it is never stratified or striated by the idol. The egoist does not assert the smooth space as smooth, as an egoist always has the category of the affair, the cause, etc. Egoism is not a matter of spaces or metaphysics but a matter of strategy (this strategy has no inherent goal or enemy, however it is always within the realm of strategy and pragmatics). It is emphasized by Stirner that the creative nothing is not a literal nothing as in the lack of being, disproving the Lacanian interpretation offered by Newman. One is not a nothing even in terms of a conceptual lack which necessitates the signifier, the partial object. Instead individuation, which is the ultimate practice of the creative nothing, is a creative and productive act. What is called lack, usually used in the context of desire, arises through the positioning of desires within an assemblage of partial objects that attach desire to a given object. Desire, though it has certain connotations wich characterize its zone of operation (personal desire, sexual desire, “natural” desire, the drive, etc), has no given preordained structure or object. Subjectivity is not a theatre with its own idols and figures that characterize what is or is not my cause or essence, instead there is the free individuation of myself and all things.

Of course the traditional account of individuation, stemming from Simondon⁷ and evolving with Foucault (subjectification⁸) and Deleuze, is not a purely individual enterprise. It is the conjunctive synthesis of many abstract machines that make it possible to talk of a subject. This subject does not have to be imbued with subjectivity (haecceity for an individual case or simply a common object) but is instead a conceptual stratification that gives signifiers a given usefulness. In this individuation is explicitly social, as language has no use outside of a social case (in a purely individual case there is only the concept). Of course the creative nothing has free play within the realm of concepts, however the concept is almost always tied to a given signifier which is always within the socius. How can we then talk of egoism when the assignment of cause and essence to ourselves isn’t within our capacities? Cybernetic power and the construction of subjects seems to be a totality within the socius, as all interactions between subjectivities are encoded and individuated into controllable recuperated forms. Stirner is of course aware of these factors, though their immanence to the social plane was far less pronounced in his time. His answer, insurrection, is the withdrawal from the apparatuses of subjectification in order to assert an ownness or set of capacities by which I can say I am in control. However this assumption of the apparatus as a purely transcendent entity is inaccurate, as these conceptual aggregates invade the immanent real and assert their becoming-real. As such another aspect of what Stirner calls insurrection must be emphasized: play. Within free nomadic play there is no concern over who one is, is one in control, etc. Instead there is only the existential territory marked by play which denies the system of values present within cybernetic power. Bonnano puts it best in his infamous Armed Joy, he writes:

“Play is characterised by a vital impulse that is always new, always in movement. By acting as though we are playing, we charge our action with this impulse. We free ourselves from death. Play makes us feel alive. It gives us the excitement of life. In the other model of acting we do everything as though it were a duty, as though we ‘had’ to do it.”⁹

Play is vital, it is the imbuing of life with a certain intensity that breaks down stratification. Play works across a smooth space, yet has the freedom to emphasize any given intensity or singularity it wishes. In this sense it de-individuates, which is ironically often necessary for an egoism. Play leads to a revolution of everyday life¹⁰ which in turn breaks down the cybernetic commodity logic that governs the subjectification of subjectivity. Situations where affective singularities are emphasized outside of commodity spectacle, engaging in a practical critical metaphysics which allows what we might call freedom. It is here that subjectivity is able to mark out its own territory which in turn restores what we might call an ownness, except here in a non-atomized form. It is out of this restored zone of potentialities (the manifestation of the creative nothing in a social form) that we find the new. Here we find a community not based on identity and a way of interacting without sacredness or mediation (communism).

1. Stirner, Max. 2012. Stirner’s Critics. C. A. L. Press.

2. Stirner, Max. 2018. The Unique and Its Property. Berkeley, California: Ardent Press.

3. Deleuze, Gilles. 2014. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. London: Bloomsbury.

4. Kant, Immanuel. 2016. The Critique of Pure Reason. Middletown, De: Pantianos Classics.

5. Benedictus De Spinoza. 2009. A Theologico-Political Treatise. Gloucester, Glous.: Dodo Press.

6. Deleuze, Gilles. 2012. Pure Immanence : Essays on a Life. New York: Zone Books.

7. Simondon, Gilbert. 2020. Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information.

8. Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. New York: Pantheon Books.

9. Bonanno, Alfredo M. 1977. Armed Joy. NihilisMedia.

10. Raoul Vaneigem. 1967. The Revolution of Everyday Life. London: Action Books.

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