Transcending the Binary: An Interview with Maxwell Kennel

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”     ~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

[Maxwell Kennel is an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo who for the last three years has been working on a multivolume work entitled Notes on the Compendium, which exposits his philosophy of "binary metaphysics."  Throughout the summer he has been working on the first volume, tentatively titled Being & Chiasmus, which posits that the chiastic relation (roughly, X is Y and Y is X) is a fundamental principle of reality.  To do this, he utilizes a neo-Hegelian metaphysics of contradiction to venture beyond the limits of ontology & theology.  His current research interests include the continental philosophy of religion, speculative realism, deconstruction, and critical theory.  Max has generously taken time from his writing in order to be interviewed by The Wordsmithy; this interview will to some extent serve as his public debut, since, besides his blog and online workbook, his work has thus far remained unpublicized.  This interview aims to provide an accessible primer to binary metaphysics, as well as an introduction to its founder.]

Habitus

Nietzsche states that all philosophy is autobiography. How is your philosophy autobiographical?

I cannot imagine any philosophy that escapes autobiography and self-reflexivity. As for myself, when I became interested in philosophy and theology I read works like Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Peter Rollins’ How (Not) to Speak of God, both of which are situated somewhere between the spheres of theory and life. Around the same time, I began to keep a journal of important ideas, people, and events that arose during my daily routine (a habit which has remained). After a while these journals accumulated, and I began to notice patterns in the ideas I was archiving. Soon after I noticed these patterns I began to amass a collection of fragmented ideas on slips of paper (in a way similar to Pirsig’s writing method which he describes in his later work Lila). I then decided to systematize the fragments into a coherent and ordered whole. This pursuit is still in progress.

This is how my philosophy is autobiographical. In short, there was a period in my life where I was archiving thoughts compulsively, and I am now systematizing these fragments into a larger schematic work of theory.

More generally, I think about the interconnections between philosophy and biography in terms of several important works. I think of Bernard Stiegler’s Acting Out, or Alain Badiou’s recent article for The Symptom, or Louis Althusser writing The Future Lasts a Long Time, or Friedrich Nietzsche as described in Pierre Klossowski’s Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle. These works exemplify, for me, the dialectical and chiastic relationship between philosophy and biography, or more precisely the concerns of theory and life.

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How do you think your various demographics (e.g. being Mennonite, Canadian, Anglo-Saxon, male, etc.) impact upon your work?

For the most part I’m thankful for my demographics. My being a Caucasian male makes for some obvious biases which I endeavor to be conscious of, as I am a member of a traditionally hegemonic gender and ethnicity. As for my denominational affiliations, I would choose no other spiritual community to participate in, and no other religious conviction to hold. The Mennonite church has been very good to me. My own congregation has been patient with my critical spirit, and encouraging to the point of providing me with valuable and fulfilling work for the past two summers. This is the way to test a religion or denomination, look at the communal aspect before the doctrinal aspect. For me, if the life of faith is not enacted and embodied (given body) before it is proclaimed, it is lost.

In general I endeavor to allow these attributes and demographics to be manifested in my theoretical work in a way that is not hegemonic in the case of gender and nationality. In the case of religion I attempt to avoid fundamentalism (on one hand) and tame pluralism (on the other).

How do you go about the process of writing? What are some of your methods, rituals, and bad habits?

My worst writing habit, for the time being I hope, is the difficulty I have closing a project. This is usually due to the combination of a backlog of ideas alongside a desire for exhaustive coherence. Unfortunately this drive for wholeness, completion, and fulfillment is an inextricable part of my work, making it even more difficult to put an end to the drafting process.

As for the writing process itself, I try to isolate myself from distractions (using headphones and music, etc.), or place myself in an environment that provides enough background noise to allow me to focus (Café, library, etc.).

My method is such that I begin by writing a theoretical portion of text that defines terms and describes relations between terms, followed by an example of some salient nature, followed by an engagement with a pertinent thinker or work (which may be cited, summarized, or merely referenced). The idea in completing an ideal draft would be to have all of the pieces and their relations present alongside an appropriation in terms of a theory that is already established. After drafting, I add segues in an attempt to smooth out the transitions between the exposition of theory, the example, and the discursive engagement.

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Which philosophers and schools of thought do you dismiss as balderdash and/or irrelevant for your work?

I am hesitant to dismiss or to be dismissive, to the point where I would argue for a principle of non-dismissal which would seek to marry identity and otherness in contradiction (this is my developing knowledge of G. W. F. Hegel and the dialectic showing itself). With that said, there is one particular discourse that is irrelevant to my work, and one school of thought that I would call complete balderdash.

Many people talk about the divide between Continental philosophy and Analytic philosophy, and I am very supportive of those who seek to bridge the gap between them. For the time being, however, my theoretical pursuits and interests are lodged firmly in the Continental school. My education does involve a certain degree of engagement with the Analytic school of philosophy and I welcome this learning as much as I am able to, but one frustration persists.

I would be prepared to say that I have yet to encounter any reductive model that contributed positively to good and healthy discourse. It is balderdash, I think, to participate in a discourse that is reductive in nature. If there is a patent dismissal of thinkers, or schools of thought, or disciplines in a discourse I find myself unable to participate and contribute fully. My reason for separating the concerns of my work in Continental philosophy from the concerns of Analytic philosophy is not because I am prepared to dismiss or reduce Analytic philosophy in itself, but rather it is because I am concerned with the questions of the Continental school. I am open to learning about proper logic and reason in my studies, but the questions that resonate with me at this point lie outside of the Enlightenment project and the concerns of late modernity.

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Field

Louis Althusser disagrees with Marx’s eleventh thesis (“The Philosophers have hitherto only described the world; the point is to change it”); he cites examples such as Plato’s Republic and Heidegger, who said “Phenomenology will change the world.” (Althusser asks, ‘why only phenomenology?’) How will binary metaphysics change the world?

If binary metaphysics is to change the world, which it is my hope that it will do, then it will not do so in the usual way in which we think of ‘changing the world’. Instead of the change being apparent and concrete, I would hope that binary metaphysics will become a force for change in its potential to actualize and fulfill, rather than to rupture or destroy. I find that if life is to be changed it will not be changed in the long term by a rupture, but rather it will be changed by what Nietzsche called “a long obedience in the same direction” in Beyond Good and Evil. This obedience (or fidelity) may indeed be to the rupture of a violent event, but I too often see the negative aspects of pursuing peak experiences (whether philosophical or theological) at the expense of projects, enterprises, or undertakings.

[See the first question of the 'Virtuality' section for further elaboration.]

What are some of the practical applications of binary metaphysics? For example, do you think that it might be able to bring about insights into computer technology and robotics?

I can say very little about the technologies right now, but what I can say about method may give insight to people in those fields, rather than informing the concerns of the fields themselves. Having grown up with a parent in the technologies field I feel that I have a perspective on technology that allows me to see it for the pharmakonic tool that it is. In this way the theory called binary metaphysics, which I have yet to expound upon, has more to do with seeing the pharmakonic nature of things than serving the concerns of any industry or business.

I see the practical application of binary metaphysics as being more akin to psychoanalysis (an unfashionable term to be sure). I had a conversation with a close friend with whom I often discuss these theories, and during our conversation he was able to apply the method of binary metaphysics, in a beneficial way to a concrete social situation. If I am able to give a method to people that they may use to attain any degree of health or well-being, then I am doing something right.

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What is the major selling point of your philosophy? That is, what does it bring to the table that no other philosopher has hitherto brought?

Graham Harman has posted (on his blog) on what might be described as ‘playground philosophy’. He says that, if reduced to a childhood exchange on the playground, Alain Badiou’s philosophy might be described in terms of a child yelling “googolplex!” in order to trump a claim made by another child. On the other hand, Harman says that François Laruelle’s thought might be comparable to a child yelling “not!” in response to a claim made by another child. These are obviously simplifications and parodies of complex schools of thought, but they do offer a unique insight into the philosophical systems of Badiou and Laruelle. Appropriated in the same way, my own system of thought, which is still being developed, might be comparable to the child who contradicts his or her self.

I bring only contradiction for the time being. This is anything but a selling point (which I reject as a commodification of ideas), and it has turned many people away, but I am confident that if I push the idea of contradiction to its radical end I can offer something that ‘no other philosopher has hitherto brought’.

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Are you particularly active in the blogosphere? If so, what are some of the blogs that you read? How do you find blogging as a medium for philosophical exchange?

I am not particularly active in writing blog posts, but I do follow several blogs that I find valuable. Last summer I began following the Speculative Realists and Object Oriented Ontologists, which exposed me to a live discourse if there ever was one. I subscribe to a few theology blogs, mostly of friends like David Driedger or Melanie Klampen.

As a medium, blogging leaves me feeling hesitant. This is to say, the speed of blog discourse makes me cautious. Don’t misunderstand me, I am certainly frustrated with the molasses-pace of the peer review process – I have waited eight months for a polite rejection from a very prominent journal – but I am just as frustrated with the knee-jerk reactions I often see in exchanges online. I have a blog more for the sake of necessary virtual presence, than for true enjoyment or discursive ability. My hit counter matters to me less and less, but I do enjoy when blogging gives rise to opportunities to engage with other thinkers like yourself.

Virtuality

What are the stakes of binary metaphysics, i.e. what are some ossified ideas you have overturned (or hope to overturn), and what are some of your goals for the future?

If I could overturn one dogmatic pattern it would be overcorrection: the swinging pendulum that I see far too often in individuals and the positions with which they link their identities. I see individuals who are completely unable to make a decision that is contrary to their pre-established positions, even if their life might depend upon it. I see people who have so thoroughly self-identified with religious views, or political views, or even ecological views, that they have no sense of a greater perspective that could include any concept of otherness. My goal, having declared war on reductive models, is to think otherness in a new way.

In line with that goal, but more concretely, this coming term I will begin work on my undergraduate thesis, which I hope will become a study on the dialectic as it is found in critical theory (The Frankfurt School). I am reading through Alexandre Kojève’s Introduction to the Reading of Hegel and finding it very fulfilling and inspiring.

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Does your work draw upon empirical evidence/analogues (as exemplified by Deleuze & Guattari’s ransacking of science for new concepts), or is your work purely speculative? If the former, describe some of these influences. If the latter, how do you reflexively guard against bias and idées fixes? Have you developed a methodology?

My commitment, for the time being, is to speculative inquiry. But I am confident that I will not remain in this mode of thinking for long. I have a great sense that when I am able to close (or even publish) the first volume of my Notes on the Compendium, then I will be in a better position to pursue other initiatives outside of the humanities edifice.

My tacitly speculative influences are Graham Harman and Quentin Meillassoux, and more broadly I endeavor to follow Alain Badiou’s imperative given at the end of his Logics of Worlds to ‘live for an idea’.¹ As for guarding against biases and the like, I tend to follow Hans-Georg Gadamer’s suggestion at the beginning of his that we maintain “a positive concept of prejudice”.² Gadamer writes in the following paragraph that,

Prejudices are not necessarily unjustified and erroneous, so that they inevitably distort the truth. In fact, the historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word, constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience. Prejudices are biases of our openness to the world. They are simply conditions whereby we experience something – whereby what we encounter says something to us.

I hope that my biases remain in this vein, as described by Gadamer, and not end up as distortions. Perhaps speculation always runs the risk of bias, but I would rather take the speculative risk than stay within the safe confines of contemporary thought.

In answer to your other question, at the end of the day, I feel that all I have developed is a methodology. Although I pursue a metaphysics, an ontology, an ethics, and so on, I feel that without method the pursuits of the aforementioned discourses fall flat.

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This is a question derived from the philosophy of science developed by Karl Popper: what would it take for you to abandon binary metaphysics as incorrect? That is, what are its conditions of falsification?

The conditions of falsification for binary metaphysics are very difficult to articulate (making it a frustrating theory). This has more to do with a commitment to contradiction than anything else. I have run a discussion group on these theories for the past two years, and there have been a few people who find binary metaphysics to be too contradictory to handle. I feel that it is a failure on my part if the contradictory nature of the theory overcomes its coherence or cohesion as it is perceived by the reader (and it has done this in its early days). I am more confident now in my ability to describe the theory accurately and succinctly, but this is coupled with a persistent desire to publish a book length work of theory (making some degree of secrecy necessary).

To falsify binary metaphysics one would need to engage it on its own terms, and in order to do that one must first understand what the theory sets out to do, and what it does not set out to do. Binary metaphysics is a worldview which is not reasonable, rational, or logical. It does not operate under the conditions that Enlightenment values have set, like empirical demonstrability, or consistent replication. Instead, it requires nothing less than Kierkegaard’s leap of faith: it is like a closed circle that one must leap into in order to understand. This is what makes it frustrating, but this is also what makes it falsifiable. If one were to enter into the theory under its own conditions one could prove it to be unworthy of being called truth. Unfortunately for those following Popper, the theory cannot be refuted by proving that a contradiction is present, or by proving that it is inconsistent, or by proving that it is useless (for these are characteristics that define it). This is not a cheap way to ensure that the theory is not refuted, it is an honest appraisal of the weakness of the theory – a weakness that might well be its strength.

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If the common definition of metaphysics is ‘the investigation of the nature of reality via the use of reason,’ and your work draws so heavily upon contradiction (contra Aristotelian logic), what makes you retain the word ‘metaphysics’ to describe your philosophy (rather than, say, ‘Binary Ontology’)?

I retain a commitment to metaphysics, not for its dependence on reason but for the questions it asks, ideally speaking, about the nature of reality beyond the bounds of ontology and its concern for the question of being. I have some misgivings about the concept of ‘reason,’ and I feel like the word itself has been so thoroughly damaged by the scientific and capitalist realisms. Mark Fisher’s book Capitalist Realism outlines this version of realism more clearly than I could.

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Real(ity)

Many academics are strongly opposed to binarism, even if their reasons are only vague (and usually inspired mainly by a desire to separate themselves from the binary-thinking hoi polloi). What motivated you, then, to take this oft-disparaged way of thinking and elevate it to an ontological principle?

I elevate the binary relation in a very specific way, and my motivation for latching on to this particular way of thinking came, ironically, from the world that I perceived. Right now I see couplets everywhere, insofar as they are carved out from the infinite multiplicity of being by human thought. As much as I elevate binarism, I do seek a way apart from it. For me, it is not so much that there is binary categorization, it is what we do with binary categorization that is important. This conviction has led me to pursue a method for dealing with couplets, rather than a rejection or avoidance of the binary.

Charles Sanders Peirce

Where do you think you are situated within the history of Western philosophy? That is, which philosophers and schools of thought have influenced you, and which schools of thought do you view yourself as a part of?

Right now I am young thinker, as you have said, so I believe that where I am situated is still in progress. With that in mind, I have already been heavily influenced by the works of Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, and John D. Caputo. These thinkers are at the top of my list. Reading Badiou’s Ethics and John D. Caputo’s The Weakness of God has resulted in my desire to take up the academic life as a vocation, just as Žižek’s writing has allowed me to see a place beyond the dry and stale domain of much academic writing.

If these popular thinkers spark cynicism in the reader, make no mistake, I have many other influences from French philosophy in general (Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Félix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, Bernard Stiegler, Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, François Laruelle, Quentin Meillassoux, and Louis Althusser), some American (Robert Pirsig, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Ken Wilber), and many others (Ferdinand de Saussure, Boris Groys, Giorgio Agamben, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, G.W.F. Hegel, Herman Dooyeweerd, Heinz Leymann, Marshall McLuhan, Jim Reimer, J.M. Straczynski, Pete Rollins, Katarina Kolozova, and Terry Eagleton). The list of names could go on.

As for schools of thought, I am interested in the broader humanities, and because of this I try to avoid putting any boundaries on my interests. Specifically, and for the time being, I enjoy literary criticism, semiotics, hermeneutics, structuralism and poststructuralism, deconstruction (and religion), phenomenology, and existentialism.

What are some of the main axioms of your philosophy? How come no one else has taken them to their logical conclusions?

I have some doubts about my ability to answer this question publicly and in full. As I mentioned I am hesitant about releasing my ideas until I am comfortable that they are in their finished form (a requirement that may be technically impossible, but practically necessary). What I can do is provide the reader with an excerpt from the obscure blog post from which Graham Joncas derived his view of my work (and wrote of it in “A Brief History of the Real, or, Laruelle’s Niche”). The excerpt, having undergone some minimal editing, is as follows:

The thesis of the following work will be that chiasmus, or the chiastic relation, is the most primary attribute of being. On one hand some effort will be made to prove that this thesis is indeed true, and on the other hand the posited thesis will be taken axiomatically. Proving that chiasmus is characteristic of being will not be the primary concern of the following intervention, for to prove the chiastic nature of being under the conditions established by contemporary thought would be impossible. Rather, a systematic apparatus will be constructed in order that the reader may come to a fuller understanding of the theoretical and categorical possibilities that arise when chiasmus is taken to describe the coupled relation of the constitution of being. This coupled relation, that for our purposes will be called ‘the category of the two,’ is structurally required for the aforementioned chiastic relation.

If the structure of this compendium project is to rest upon first principles, a formal quality which seems unavoidable, then it is the category of the two that most fully fills the role in question. Chiasmus, best described as the feeding back or mirroring of two terms, precisely requires the two pre-existing terms offered to us in the category of the two. Where we are concerned, both metaphysically and theoretically, these two terms will be (1) the designated categorization of a particular identity, and (2) the set of that which is alternate to the designated identity. This primary division structures what will be called binary metaphysics, the blanket term for the following exploration of being and chiasmus. The premise, in its most basic form, is that the relationship between the designated and categorized identity and the set of its alternates is chiastic, and that this chiasmus constitutes being.

Chiastic structure, seen often in the structure of literature or poetry, takes the following form: x is y and y is x. If we substitute x and y for the previous two terms we will find a collapse of identities, meaning that which is designated categorically is the set of its alternates, and the set of alternates is that which is designated categorically. The collapse of all identity is evident in the chiastic relationship between that which the designated identity is, and the set of everything that is alternate to it. A further consequence of structuring being around the category of the two is that if there was ever only one identity – a singularity – the result would be a void. This is because without the set of alternates, or even one alternate, an identity cannot be discerned therefore it cannot be designated.

The collapse of identity in the chiastic relation, and its required category of the two, is the ground from which the apparatus of binary metaphysics will be built. Following the phenomenologists and their search for the primordial a priori we have arrived at the category of the two which structures and conditions all identities. At first face the compendium project begins with a proposal for the coupled foundation of not only reality but also of theoretical categorization, and of being itself. (unpublished draft)

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What are some of the main questions you originally set out to answer, and what answers have you developed thus far?

The pertinent question for me, in terms of both the individual and the community, is “how can one be whole?” To answer this we must find a way to engage with the contradictions that we will all inevitably encounter, and as far as I am concerned this begs the question of ontology. If I can write the theoretical scaffolding of my own grand theory, and provide an ontology while engaging with some key thinkers, then I feel that I will be well on my way to answering the questions I have been asking for the past few years. Alain Badiou puts it well in his introduction to Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude:

‘What wound was I seeking to heal, what thorn was I seeking to draw from the flesh of existence when I became what is called “a philosopher”?’ It may be that, as Bergson maintained, a philosopher only develops one idea. In any case, there is no doubt that the philosopher is born of a single question, the question that arises at the intersection of thought and life at a given moment in the philosopher’s youth; the question which one must at all costs find a way to answer. ³

 

1 Alain Badiou, Logics of Worlds, trans. Alberto Toscano (London & New York: Continuum, 2009), 507.

2 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. David E. Linge (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), 9.

3 Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude trans. Ray Brassier (New York: Continuum, 2008), vi.

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