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Futurability
The Age of Impotence andthe Horizon of Possibility
Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi
First published by Verso 2017
© Franco Berardi 2017
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
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Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-743-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-746-2 (US EBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-745-5 (UK EBK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Typeset in Fournier MT by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh, Scotland
Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays
To Juha Varto, Tere Vadén, Axeli Virtanen, and Geert Lovink, albeit with a certain delay
Contents
Introduction
Part I. POTENCY
1.The Age of Impotence
2.Humanism, Misogyny and Late Modern Thought
3.The Dark Side of Desire
Part II. POWER
4.Automation and Terror
5.Necro-Capitalism
6.Money Code and Automation
Part III. POSSIBILITY
7.Conundrum
8.Superstition
9.Disentanglement
10.A Short History of the General Intellect
11.Dynamics of the General Intellect
12.Invention
Afterword: The Inconceivable
Notes
I’m not going to write about the future, again.
I’m not going to write about no-future, either.
I’ll write about the process of becoming other: vibration, selection, recombination, recomposition.
Possibility is content, potency is energy, and power is form.
I call possibility a content inscribed in the present constitution of the world (that is, the immanence of possibilities). Possibility is not one, it is always plural: the possibilities inscribed in the present composition of the world are not infinite, but many. The field of possibility is not infinite because the possible is limited by the inscribed impossibilities of the present. Nevertheless, it is plural, a field of bifurcations. When facing an alternative between different possibilities, the organism enters into vibration, then proceeds making a choice that corresponds to its potency.
I call potency the subjective energy that deploys the possibilities and actualizes them. Potency is the energy that transforms the possibilities into actualities.
I call power the selections (and the exclusions) that are implied in the structure of the present as a prescription: power is the selection and enforcement of one possibility among many, and simultaneously it is the exclusion (and invisibilization) of many other possibilities.
This selection can be described as gestalt (structuring form), and it acts as a paradigm. It may also be seen as a format, a model that we can implement only by complying with the code.
Possibility
In 1937 Henri Bergson published the article ‘Le possible et le réel’ (The Possible and the Real) in the Swedish magazine Nordisk Tidskrift. In this text, later included in the book La pensée et le mouvant, the French thinker answers the question: what is the meaning of the word ‘possibility’?
We call possible what is not impossible: obviously, this non-impossibility is the condition of its actualisation. But this possibility is not a degree of virtuality, is not ideal pre-existence … From this negative sense, we shift unconsciously to the positive sense of the word. In the first definition, possibility means absence of hindrance; but we are shifting now to the meaning: pre-existence in the form of an idea.1
‘B is possible’ means that B is inscribed in A and nothing is preventing B from deploying from the present condition of A. Bergson speaks of pre-existence in the form of an idea, but I don’t want to use the word ‘idea’, preferring to say that a future state of being is possible when it is immanent or inscribed in the present constitution of the world. However, we should not forget that the present constitution of the world contains many different (conflicting) possibilities, not only one.
Extracting and implementing one of the many immanent futurabilities: this is the shift from possible to real. Futurability is a layer of possibility that may or may not develop into actuality.
Bergson writes:
Why is the Universe ordered? How can the rule impose itself on the irregularity, how can form impose itself on matter? … This problem vanishes as soon as we understand that the idea of disorder has sense in the sphere of human industry, in the sphere of fabrication, not in the field of creation. Disorder is simply an order that we do not seek.
We stare at the chaotic intricacy of matter, of events, of flows, and seek for a possibility of order, a possible organization of chaotic material. We extract fragments from the magma then try to combine them, in an attempt to reverse entropy: intelligent life is this process of local, provisional reversal of entropy. Time is the dimension of decay and resistance, of dissolution and of recomposition. Time is the process of becoming other of every fragment in every other fragment, forever. Bergson defines the concept of possibility from the point of view of time: ‘Why does reality unfurl? How is it not unfurled? What purpose does time serve (I speak here of real, concrete time, and not of abstract time which is merely the fourth dimension of space)? Doesn’t the existence of time prove the indeterminacy of things? Isn’t time this very indeterminacy?’
The old philosophy, he says, was centred on Eternity: Immutable Categories of Being, Eternal Conjunction of Thought and Idea.
The moderns place themselves on a different ground. They do not treat time anymore as an intruder, a perturbation of Eternity. But they would like to reduce time to a mere appearance. The temporary is for them a confusion of Reason … Let’s forget about theories, let’s stick to the facts. They do not treat time anymore as an intruder, a perturbation of Eternity.
In the first place, Bergson defines the possible in a tautological way: possible is that which is not impossible.