I was in a political science seminar on feminism the other week. It was, of course, incredibly bad (never trust the field of political science to do anything right). Some rational choice Man made the decision, probably in self-interest, to provide a critique of feminism. It was obviously not in the form of a question to the group that had just had a presentation on the case of post-order wives – no, it was in the form of a question to the group of people included in Women As A Global Phenomena. Maybe it was his way to provide a self-refutation of rational choice theories, due to the impossibility to rationally justify this.

Not that there cannot be a rational critique of feminism, of course, but rather that what he did was a huge waste of time, especially given the context, and the content of his ”critique”. And so, now I am wasting your time aswell by making you read this! This seems to happen often around these kind of people: they cause trouble, not just for the people around them – no – their trouble keeps on making waves that reach much further than they should

Ok so I am getting carried away by this meaningless event – but the critique, unbeknownst to him, actually lead to something fruitful. So let us return to this uninteresting situation:

His refutation of feminism relied on the fact that feminism is not always in the interest of women. He used the example that post-order wives stand to gain from the phenomena they are a part of – so we should not be patronizing towards them (he did of course not realize that some feminists would agree – I mean, is there really consensus on anything in Feminism As A Totality?).

Condensed, his argument was that ”doesn’t the fact that women can improve their lives by unfeminist means disprove feminism?”

I am aware that this is a very unoriginal question, so stick with me! Or, just skip ahead to the next section, ”Speculative Ethics”, if you’re that lazy.

Still, it is a question that is quite central to many feminist debates. What do we do with the fact that women(, or people in general, really,) can desire what is oppressing them? How do we deal with women saying they feel empowered by selling sex, wearing makeup, being punched by a man during sex, and so on. All are questions that have different answers depending on which feminist you ask.

I think it is even one of the best ways to illustrate the differences between different feminisms:

1. We do not actually desire own oppression – and this is not fine. Here, a central aspect of feminism is about finding true desires, or healthy ones, atleast. Here you find your marxist, or radical feminisms, and with them ideas of false consciousness. The problem of desire is solved by appealing to true selves under all of the confusion of this corrupting world. By definition, this position will always be essentialist, disregarding the complexity of the here and now in favor of an ideal. What I am writing here is obviously not enough to count as any sort of refutation of this position. Maybe I will write a post on it, when my focus is not on speculative ethics (do not worry, I will soon get to the speculative ethics part in this text)
   
2. We desire our oppression – and this is fine. Here you have the Jordan Petersonian position. Lobsters are just the way the world works, and therefore it is meaningless to say it is bad. An extremely unsatisfying position – and most explanations of why people struggle against oppression would then be to appeal to some sort of false consciousness. It is just the above position but inverted. ”Feminists are just confused about what they actually want, which is to be dominated!” It is just as essentialist and disregarding of the world as it is here and now, and as the position above: there is a lot more to say on this than this that is beyond the scope of this text.
   
3. We do not actually desire our oppression – and this is fine.  Feminism is about ”acceptance in your role”. A sort of (neo)liberal feminism indistinguishable from antifeminism. This position is so awfully uninteresting that I feel guilty for even mentioning it and making you read my mention of it.
   
4. We desire our oppression – and this is not fine. Now this one is interesting, and there are a lot of branching alternatives. First off, this position makes it impossible to have a morality based on the fulfilment of desire – since it clearly states there are some desires that are ”not fine”. However, there are still not any ”true desire” as a horizon to strive towards, but they are still not fine. It may sound confusing, but this is the position I identify with speculative feminism.

So, all of this was going through my mind while listening to the Man, so I decided to provide an answer to his thoughtless question, paraphrased here: ”Your critique is confused – there are feminisms that hold the things you think is a critique as a fundamental assumption. However, what you said still highlights something important – the question of how feminism relates to women desiring their own oppression. Providing an answer to this question is a reoccuring theme central to most, if not all, feminisms.”

The teacher leading the seminar decided to answer this with ”that is a question for critical theory, and not one for political science”. So two weeks later I dropped out of the course, and now – with all of this free time – I am able to write this blog. I do not blame the teacher – it is just clear that political science is not for me.

So, see this text as a thought-painting in response to that specific situation – drawn out and purified of specifics – to be able to provide an explanation of what feminism ought to be.

Before getting into what I mean by speculative ethics, I want to add that I am fully aware of the fact that embracing that we truly desire our oppression is nothing new. This is the diagnosis that Deleuze and Guattari have of fascism (that the german people truly desired it, that they were not tricked by a cunning demagogue). Still, we must reject fascism – so on which ground? I know it is difficult, dear reader, but you will just have to accept that fascism is bad for now. I could also just recommend that you read A Thousand Plateaus, but that is probably a bit too much to ask.

(I am, however, currently working on a text in which I am providing much more thought to justify why we should not be fascists, on something I have decided to call Cyberprimitivism. It is a sort of anti-humanist, anti-civilization, and accelerationist-inspired ”theory”/praxis that I have had in my thoughts for more than a year now.)

What is Speculative Ethics?

Speculative ethics is, of course, an ethic. That is, a way of being, or a code of conduct. It is a clear descendent of Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of ethics, deeply inspired by Spinoza. I do not claim to have invented the wheel – my goals with writing on this is partly because I keep getting into discussions over this, and I am tired of repeating myself. But also that I want to relate this perspective to more contemporary movements and ideals, especially those reaching conclusions of pure nihilism, or anti-praxis.

To begin, it has a focus on the creation of desire, rather than desire as a given. Desire as a given is usually a trademark of liberalism, which states that it does not matter where desire comes from – all that matters is that it is fulfilled. This is a very easy position to take as status quo-defending ideology. ”Never mind why you want what you want and its’ relation to what we propose! All that matters is that you do want it…” Of course, liberalism is not to blame for our situation (that would be quite an idealist position), but the ideology is obviously a church for the market.

Secondly, there is no ”original desire” – even if you could prove that some desire are genetic, what is a gene but a long-term biological memory? The most important part of genetics is the process it works by, not by a defining origin. No, you obviously cannot escape constructivism by appealing to human nature. Therefore, there is no true or authentic desire to fall back on. This is a reason why I do not really like the concept of compulsive heterosexuality, even if it is helpful for many. If you are functionally straight in the way you live your life, then you are straight. There is no true and/or authentic sexuality waiting within you. However, that does not mean that becoming queer in some way would not be incredibly good for you. Most of the time it probably is! I am planning to explore this idea in a future text that might be called something like Constructive Trauma and Sexuality as an Exit from Gender.

Thirdly, rejecting the search for a perfect morality, and the purity politics that comes with it. Not that the aims of that practice are anything but noble – but it is entirely counterproductive to any sort of movement for meaningful change. Rather, I believe we should see ethics purely as a organisational tool. That is, as an informal protocal. While a formal protocal is made by bureaucratic means (at some times necessary), it is subject to ossification – an informal protocal would mean, if successful, a self-replicating code of conduct, constantly in mutation.

The attempts to finds a perfect morality can often lead to pure nihilism. There is a sense that all ideals and identity end up recuperated, and as a prison. However, it seems to me that a pure rejection of ethics is meaningless. An escape from ethics is still an ethic – you cannot escape it! The only way forward for such a pure nihilism is omnicide (since every structure that exists, is a prison. I am specifically refering to certain strands of anarchism/post-leftism here). While I can relate with the emotional motivations for such a position, I actually find it quite abhorrant, functionally. Not going as far, is the position of anti-praxis (as held by certain accelerationists), that means that there is no point in engaging with politics due to it being meaningless – mainly because the determinism of the process of capitalism. My response to this is: striving towards exit is not an escape from determinism. All it is, is another way of engaging with the process of capitalism, of civilization. Therefore, anti-praxis as an exit, is just posturing. The only way to engage with any sort of outside, is by going through – by engaging with, and in, the world that we are in here and now. The most intimate inside is the outside:

It is the most intimate within thought and yet the absolute outside – and outside more distant than any external world because it is an inside deeper than any internal world: it is immanence, “intimacy as the Outside, the exterior become the intrusion that stifles, and the reversal of both the one and the other”. [quote from Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, trans. Susan Hanson]

– What is Philosophy? Deleuze and Guattari, 1991 pg. 59

Of course, what you call pure nihilism, anti-praxis, or exit might very well be a relevant speculative ethics – but I think the names in that case are quite counterintuitive. However, if you use the sense of exit of not being an actual outside, but rather as an effective way to act, it is completely in line with that I am arguing here. That is, in line with the reasoning of the concept of voice vs exit. The important point I am trying to make is that ethics is just a way of being, a way of acting.

The above argument on how anti-praxis is not a true exit is an interesting refrain on what I rejected earlier – ideas of false consciousness. A short response on this:

You can without a doubt be mistaken, epistemically, about the result and meaning of your actions. Desire is a wholly different question: you desire what you desire – but the actual function of the desire can be hidden from you. An example: a woman can love makeup, while not intellectually realizing that the function of the makeup might be in service of patriarchy (or something similar). This is not false consciousness – it is just not realizing what it is you are doing. Of course – if you understand the function of what you are doing; the function of your desires – those desires might change. But that does not mean you found a more authentic or true desire – it only means that your desire was changed due to an interaction with information. Speculative ethics is then a move from a focus on the beliefs in themselves, to what the effects of that ethics is.

I think what I particularly dislike about anti-praxis, is not that it is bad, or anything like that (it is quite harmless). It is more that I connect it with a kind of alienation, and rejection of community. Exit, for them, is an individualist practice of spiraling out into strange becomings. To let yourself be weird, different, strange. I am sympathetic to this – most of my life can be seen as engaging in it. One example is in music. As I kid without many friends in a petit-bourgeois school obsessed with facades and appearances, music became what I identified with. It became what I built up antagonisms over, with the rest of the school. The people there were awful because they did not like, I don’t know, Neutral Milk Hotel? Radiohead? (no one even knew who they were at this school)

The truth is that I was upset about not having a group of friends, not having a community. So I engaged in this internalistic practice of strange becomings – and the earlier bands were replaced by Have A Nice Life, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Xiu Xiu. The further I went, the more I dreamt about finding other people that also liked these ”strange” bands. I even went to a high school (/ gymnasium, in swedish) that was focused around music in the search of this community, which I obviously did not find. Or, when I found people that actually liked some of those stranger bands, it turned out that music taste is, obviously, not a guarantee of character.

So why am I talking about my personal relation with music (that is not even that strange, contrary to what I believed) and becoming-weird? Because it was alienating; I was self-obsessed and isolated. It was self-fulfilling prophecy! People treat you badly, so you decide that you are different from People As A Phenomena, and actually – you start to believe that you are even better than them because of it!

Now, I want to be careful and not reach the conclusion that you should not engage in strange becomings, and that you should strive to become a normie. I will explore this much further in Constructive Trauma, but in a way, strange becomings are really the only reasonable response to life. However, what I want to push back against is the individualism and alienation.

Something that made the last year one of the absolute best of my life for me, was finding friendship and community in lesbianism. That does not mean I have stopped embracing the strange and different – which of course at times can be at odds with ”the community” – something that, so far, has not led to much of an issue at all. We are all different people depending on where we are at the time – we should embrace this. I truly believe that there is not a difference between a community, versus a singular person. Both are subjects, and potentially subject to strange becomings. Let us not get carried away with only doing it alone – it only leads to alienation.

So, relating this back to speculative ethics, it becomes clear that it has two sides:

One side is the pragmatics – being willing to adopt / interact constructively with different frameworks depending on the specific mileu that seems to be a good candidate for hijacking for more radical purposes; this side I see as the rejection of purity politics, the rejection of alienation, and embracing the fact that we are always in the world.

The other side is creation – the creation of new forms of ethics, for the creation of new ways of being, new ways of organizing. This is speculative utopianism – but it is far more about throwing things and seeing what sticks, rather than being about trying to find the perfect utopian ethics – that is a meaningless goal, (unless it is used as a convincing lie to make it stick better!). This, once again, relates back to Constructive Trauma.

Speculative ethics is not a ground, it is a tool. The tool we use to get things done – not what we use to decide what to get done. My goal with writing this, has been to provide one way to escape the swamp of theory, and motivating to acting in the world. Remember what Marx said about how philosophers need change the world, not just interpret it.

What we decide to actually get done is a far more complicated question relating to the question of determinism, which I will go into in the aforementioned post on Cyberprimitivism. This might seem like an unsatisfying answer, but you will have to deal with that for now.