Kant, Capital, and the Prohibition of Incest by Nick Land: A Detailed Guide

Published on Apr 20, 2024 — 15 min read

Summary

The high-water mark of revolutionary Deleuzian Feminism.

Introduction

The article "Kant, Capital, and the Prohibition of Incest" (1989) by Nick Land explores the relationship between philosophy, political economy, and the social structures that constitute global modernity. At the heart of this analysis is the notion of "inhibited synthesis" - the cultural tendency of human societies towards expansive exogamy (the exchange of women between groups) that is systematically suppressed under the conditions of patriarchal capital accumulation.

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Exogamy refers to the practice of marrying outside one's own group, clan, or tribe. In contrast, endogamy is the practice of marrying within one's own group.

The author draws on the work of influential thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Friedrich Nietzsche to unpack the philosophical and anthropological dimensions of this phenomenon. By engaging with these diverse perspectives, the article sheds light on the ways in which the inhibition of synthesis - the denial of radical alterity and the enclosure of human potential within restrictive social and economic structures - is fundamental to the functioning of modern global capitalism.

The introduction sets the stage for a multilayered analysis that encompasses the following key themes:

The Paradox of Enlightenment: An examination of how Kant's concept of "synthetic a priori knowledge" exemplifies the contradictory nature of enlightenment thought, which simultaneously seeks novelty and timeless certainty.
Racism and the Geopolitics of Capital: An argument that racism stems from the geographical separation of capitalist production from its political consequences, including the isolation of the consequences of poverty in the "Third World."
Revolutionary Feminism as a Path Forward: A proposal for a revolutionary feminist politics as a means to combat the patriarchal and racist structure of global capitalism, leveraging the revolutionary potential of the "anonymous female."

The Paradox of Enlightenment

The emergence of modern industrial societies was a highly ambiguous process, simultaneously marked by explosive possibilities for novelty and the systematic inhibition of these possibilities. This ambiguity is perhaps best captured in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, whose thought sought to establish the conditions for the legitimacy of enlightenment thought and culture.

Kant recognized that the previous philosophical traditions he inherited were characterized by a series of dichotomous concepts, such as spirit/matter, form/content, and abstract/concrete. These oppositional terms were often wielded in attempts to construct coherent, but ultimately unconvincing, metaphysical systems. Kant sought to resolve this antinomy by restricting the deployment of these pure concepts to the realm of possible appearance - that is, to the phenomenal world accessible to our faculties of understanding and reason.

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Kant argued that pure concepts could only be meaningfully applied to objects of possible experience, not to the thing-in-itself (the noumenal realm beyond appearance). This was his attempted resolution of the antinomies plaguing previous metaphysics.

However, Kant's own critical project remained haunted by the very dichotomies it sought to overcome. Every attempt to formulate a relation or distinction between the phenomenal and noumenal realms - the world as it appears to us and the world as it is in itself - inevitably relapsed into the pre-critical deployment of conceptual thought. Kant's own system perpetuated the oppositional structure of metaphysical thinking, even as it sought to restrict its speculative reach.

This fundamental inhibition of synthesis - the delimitation of radical alterity in advance - is a key symptom of the paradox of enlightenment. It sets up the modern ontological question: "How do we know that matter exists?" The very existence of materiality becomes problematic for enlightenment thought, precisely because alterity can only be registered insofar as it can be inscribed within the system, according to the interconnected axes of exchange value (price) and the patrilineal.

What falls outside this recognized form is everything that resists commodification - the primordial independence that antedates the constitution of the destituted proletarian. This inchoate mass of resistance to capital is isolated outside the metropolis through a combination of automatic economic processes (the concentration of poverty) and restrictive kinship practices.

In the following sections, we'll examine how Kant's philosophical project exemplifies this paradox of enlightenment, and how it relates to the evolution of modern capitalist society and its attendant forms of oppression.

Kant's Philosophy and the Thought of Synthesis

Kant's critical philosophy, particularly his Critique of Pure Reason, is central to understanding the paradox of enlightenment. Kant's key contribution was his concept of "synthetic a priori knowledge" - knowledge that is both new and certain, without being derived from experience.

Kant's predecessors had generally aligned the "synthetic" (adding new information) with the "a posteriori" (based on experience), and the "analytic" (deriving information from concepts) with the "a priori" (prior to experience). Kant rejected this simple alignment, and instead proposed a perpendicular grid of possibilities:

Analytic a priori (e.g. logical deductions)
Synthetic a posteriori (e.g. empirical observations)
Analytic a posteriori (a contradiction in terms)
Synthetic a priori (Kant's key contribution)

Synthetic a priori knowledge, for Kant, represents the possibility of learning something new about the world while remaining certain about it - without relying on experience. This is the "Copernican revolution" in Kant's philosophy, shifting the question from "what must the mind be like to know?" to "what must the objects of experience be like in order to be known?"

Kant's answer was that there are certain a priori forms or "transcendental" conditions that structure our experience of the world. These forms, such as causality or substance, are not derived from experience, but are the necessary preconditions for experience itself. As Kant famously wrote, "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind."

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Kant's synthetic a priori knowledge represents the attempt to control the "trade" with alterity (otherness) - to assimilate the new and unknown into a formal system of exchange values, while maintaining certainty and stability.

This is the key to understanding Kant's philosophy as emblematic of the paradox of enlightenment. Kant wants to both learn from and legislate for the world, to open up to novelty while remaining identical to himself. His "transcendental" forms are the universal "exchange value" that allows the unknown to be "marketed" to the enlightenment mind.

Kant's approach can be further elucidated by drawing on the anthropological concepts of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Lévi-Strauss distinguished between "normal food" (consumed by producers) and "rich food" (traded between groups). This maps onto the difference between the "analytic" (internal to the system) and the "synthetic" (coming from outside).

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Just as "rich food" marks the primordial element of trade, the modern "commodity" can be seen as a suppression of radical synthesis - the problematic process that provides enlightenment reason with its object of thought.

Kant's project, like the capitalist system it mirrors, is an attempt to capture this radical synthesis within an expanded horizon of unchanging forms. His "transcendental" concepts are the philosophical equivalent of the "dual organization" that Lévi-Strauss identified in mythical thought - a means of inscribing alterity within a closed system of reciprocal relations, denying the possibility of the radically different.

In this way, Kant's critical philosophy is both a symptom and a further instantiation of the paradox of enlightenment - the drive to learn from and control the unknown, to open up to novelty while remaining firmly rooted in the same.

Rich Food, Commodities, and Dual Organization

In this section, we'll explore how the suppression of radical synthesis in cultural myths mirrors the transformation of "rich food" into the modern "commodity" under capitalism. This provides important insights into the economy of knowledge and the cultural inhibition of alterity that characterizes Enlightenment thought.

Rich Food and the Distinction Between Filiation and Alliance

As Claude Lévi-Strauss notes in The Elementary Structures of Kinship, many societies make a distinction between "normal food" and "rich food." Normal food is consumed by its producers as a means of subsistence, while rich food is given to another to consume, and received from another. This distinction maps onto the difference between filiation (relation by blood) and alliance (relation by marriage).

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Rich food occupies the position of women within a patrilineal exogamous marriage system, with its producer renouncing it for themselves and echoing the prohibition of incest.

Philosophically, this distinction also marks a terrain upon which we can sketch an "economy of knowledge." Rich food comes from outside the system, and the efforts of structural anthropology to recapture it within an expanded system of relations replay Kant's attempts to reduce synthesis to an expanded horizon of unchanging forms.

The Transformation of Rich Food into Commodity

The metamorphosis of "rich food" into the modern "commodity" can be seen as a suppression of radical synthesis - the problematic process that provides Enlightenment reason with its object of thought. As rich food is transformed into the commodity form, the cultural inhibition of synthesis takes on a particular shape that Lévi-Strauss calls "dual organization."

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A dual organization arises when two groups form a closed system of reciprocal exchange, in which each consumes the rich food, and marries the women, of the other. Such organizations reproduce themselves culturally through shared myths articulated around basic dualities, in order to capture alterity within a system of rules and exclude the possibility of the radically different.

Kant and the Antinomies

It should not surprise us, then, that Kant inherited a philosophical tradition whose decisive concepts were organized into basic couples (spirit/matter, form/content, abstract/concrete, universal/particular, etc.). Kant delineates this dichotomous heritage as a problem (which he calls the "antinomy") and initiates a new phase of Western philosophy, now characterized as the critique of metaphysics.

As we saw in the previous section, Kant's efforts to restrict the deployment of pure concepts to the realm of possible appearance suggest a crucial difficulty with his project. Every attempt to formulate a relation or distinction between the phenomenal and noumenal realms must itself relapse into the pre-critical and illegitimate deployment of conceptual thought.

In other words, the vocabulary that would describe the "other" of metaphysics is itself inscribed within metaphysics, since the inside and the outside are both conceptually determined from the inside, within a binary myth or cultural symptom of dual organization.

The Inhibition of Synthesis and the Ontological Question

It is this inhibition of synthesis - the delimitation of alterity in advance - that sets up the modern form of the ontological question: "how do we know that matter exists?" The very existence of materiality becomes problematic for Enlightenment thought, symptomatic of the colonial trading systems that correspond to it.

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Alterity cannot be registered, unless it can be inscribed within the system, according to the interconnected axes of exchange value (price) and the patronymic, or in other words, as a commodity with an owner. What falls outside this recognized form is everything that resists commodification, the primordial independence that antedates the constitution of the destituted proletarian.

This inchoate mass of resistance to capital is isolated outside the metropolis by a combination of automatic economic processes and restrictive kinship practices. The primordial anthropological bond between marriage and trade is dissolved, in order that capital can ethnically and geographically quarantine its consequences from itself.

By examining this dynamic, we gain important insights into the complex relationship between racism, patriarchy, and the functioning of global capital - a topic we'll explore further in the next section.

Racism and the Geopolitics of Capital

This section examines how the geographical separation of capitalist production from its political consequences has given rise to contemporary forms of racism.

Capitalism has always sought to distance itself from the violent political infrastructure that enabled the rise of wage labor relations. The ideal of bourgeois politics is the absence of politics, as capital aims to displace social decision-making into the marketplace. However, this fantasy of total de-politicization is impossible, as Marx rightly observed that labor trading at its "natural price" will tend to express a "natural" political refusal of the market.

The practical solution for capitalist societies has been the global disaggregation of the political system, accompanied by a regional distortion of the world labor trading system in favor of metropolitan working classes. This process of displacement is the ultimate "base" or "infrastructure" of capital accumulation, and it is deeply intertwined with issues of "kinships" or "marriage organization" - the sexual economy of gender and race.

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The global labor market can be understood as a sustained demographic disaster that is systematically displaced away from the political institutions of the metropolis.

This displacement of the political consequences of wage labor relations is not an incidental feature of capital accumulation, but a fundamental condition. As Marx's analysis of "so-called primitive accumulation" demonstrated, the origin of wage labor relations lies in an overt war against the people, or their forced removal from previous conditions of subsistence.

The outward "shock-wave" of this violent process of coercion, whereby the subsistence producer is driven into the marketplace, determines the character of the imperialist project and its offspring. Capital has always sought to distance itself geographically from this brutal political infrastructure, in order to uphold the "ideal of bourgeois politics" - the absence of politics.

However, this ideal is an impossible fantasy, and the tendency of labor trading at its "natural price" to express a "natural" political refusal of the market continues to haunt the global bourgeoisie. The only practical option has been the global disaggregation of the political system, accompanied by a regional distortion of the world labor trading system in favor of metropolitan working classes.

This process of displacement is deeply intertwined with issues of kinship and marriage organization, as the sexual economy of gender and race is a crucial component of the system of inhibited synthesis that characterizes global capitalism. The displacement of the political consequences of wage labor relations away from the metropolis is not an incidental feature, but the fundamental condition of capital.

The Separation of Alliance and Filiation

The fundamental insight underpinning the argument in this section is that capital has systematically severed the historical bond between kinship relations and economic relations. This decoupling is a crucial mechanism by which the consequences of capitalist exploitation are geographically and demographically quarantined from the metropolitan centers of power.

The Suppression of Exogamy

Traditionally, kinship systems based on exogamous marriage practices—where individuals are required to marry outside their own kinship group—have been intimately intertwined with systems of trade and exchange. As Claude Lévi-Strauss observed, the exchange of "rich food" (goods given to others) parallels the exchange of women through marriage, both of which serve to establish alliances between distinct social groups.

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However, under global capitalism, the cultural imperative of exogamy has been systematically suppressed, leading to a situation where kinship and trade have become increasingly disconnected.

This decoupling is a crucial mechanism by which the consequences of capitalist exploitation are geographically and demographically quarantined from the metropolitan centers of power. By restricting kinship practices to narrowly defined national or ethnic boundaries, capital has been able to abstract itself from the "demographic disaster" of its global labor market, displacing the political instability generated by wage labor relations onto the peripheries of the world system.

The Displacement of Political Consequences

As the author argues, "the global labor market is easily interpreted, therefore, as a sustained demographic disaster that is systematically displaced away from the political institutions of the metropolis." This displacement is achieved through a combination of "automatic economic processes (the concentration of poverty) and restrictive kinship practices."

The suppression of exogamous kinship practices, coupled with the geographic segregation of labor markets, allows capital to abstract itself from the political consequences of its own economic operations.

In other words, by isolating kinship within narrowly defined national or ethnic boundaries, capital can maintain a separation between the economic and the political, relegating the destabilizing effects of its global labor market to the peripheries of the world system. This, in turn, facilitates the "chronic passive genocide" that trails in the wake of capital's displacement around the Third World, as it "disciplines" local labor markets and ensures the suppression of surplus value.

The Nationalist Retrenchment of Kinship

The decoupling of kinship and trade has led to a nationalist retrenchment of kinship practices, where "the internationalization of the economy was coupled with an entrenchment of xenophobic (nationalistic) kinship practices, maintaining a concentration of political and economic power within an isolated and geographically sedentary ethnic stock."

This process is exemplified by the apartheid policies of the South African regime, which sought to "recast the currently existing political exteriority of the black population in its relation to the society that utilizes its labour into a system of geographical relations modelled on national sovereignty." By confining the black population to "bantustans" or "homelands," the South African state was able to effectively displace the political consequences of its economic exploitation.

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This pattern of "nationalist retrenchment of kinship practices" is not unique to apartheid South Africa, but is in fact a fundamental characteristic of global capitalist development more broadly.

The Abstraction of Capital from Politics

The ultimate goal of this process is the "abstraction of capital from all political reference," where capital becomes "offshore," although still maintaining its geopolitical condition of existence (e.g., the U.S. war machine). This abstraction is achieved through the "increasingly rigorous differentiation of marriage from trade, or politics from economics," culminating in a "moral agency which is utterly impervious to learning, communication, or exchange."

By systematically suppressing the historical bond between kinship and trade, capital is able to displace the political consequences of its own operations, effectively quarantining the demographic and social upheaval generated by its global labor market.

This separation of the economic and the political, the author argues, is a fundamental condition for the persistence of global capitalism, enabling the perpetuation of "chronic passive genocide" in the peripheries of the world system.

Fascism as the Politics of Purity

Kant's moral theory is an ethics of appropriative modernity, breaking from the parochial or scriptural morality of the ancien regime. Where previous moral codes served to legitimize imperial projects, Kantian morality is instead legitimized by the position of universal jurisdiction.

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Only that which can be demanded of every rational being unconditionally, in the name of an "empire of ends", is moral according to Kant. The law of this empire is the "categorical imperative" - a law stemming solely from the purity of the concept, dictated by the absolute monologue of colonial reason.

In the purity of categorical morality, the incestuous bloodline of the pharaohs is still detectable, but sublimated into an impersonal administration. The law is that which cannot be legitimately discussed, an unresponsive and unilateral imposition.

Kant's practical subject already prefigures a deaf führer, barking impossible orders that seem to come from another world. Categorical morality is forbidden from entering into any real relation with alterity, except to issue commands.

The Inevitability of Fascism

This aggressive logical absurdity reaches its zenith in Kant's philosophy, where the basic problem is to find an account for the possibility of "synthetic a priori knowledge" - knowledge that is both given in advance by ourselves, and yet adds to what we know.

As we've seen, this problem is the same as that of accounting for the possibility of modernity or Enlightenment - the inhibited encounter with alterity. Kant's resolution of this dilemma lays the groundwork for the emergence of fascism as the ultimate outcome of Enlightenment thought.

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The only possible politics of purity is fascism, or a militant activism rooted in the inhibitory and exclusive dimensions of metropolitanism. Racism, as a regulated, automatic, and indefinitely suspended process of genocide, is the real condition of persistence for a global economic system dependent on an expanding pool of cheap labor.

Kant's Moral Absolutism

Kant's moral absolutism, with its impersonal and uncompromising dictates, is the distillation of the xenophobic violence implicit in the first Critique. Where theoretical knowledge is open to a limited negotiation with alterity, practical or moral certainty is forbidden from entering into any real relation with anything outside itself, except to issue commands.

Kant makes the law that which cannot be legitimately discussed, an unresponsive or unilateral imposition. His practical subject already prefigures a deaf führer, barking impossible orders that seem to come from another world.

The Path to Fascism

This moral fanaticism, which elevates the "categorical imperative" to the status of an absolute and inhuman decree, paves the way for the emergence of fascist ideology. The Kantian subject is a prototype of the fascist leader - a figure whose actions are not subject to debate or compromise, but stem from a pure and inflexible reason.

Kant's philosophy thus distills the xenophobic violence of his first Critique and elevates it to the most extreme possible fanaticism. In doing so, it lays the groundwork for the modern politics of purity, where resistance to the market and the administration is met with systematic violence and oppression.

Revolutionary Feminism as a Path Forward

The erasure of matrilineal identity under patriarchal systems has paradoxically created a revolutionary feminine subject. By divorcing women from any recourse to an ethno-geographical identity, the patronymic has stripped them of the stabilizing influence of lineage and ancestry that serves to buttress male power.

"The women of the earth are segmented only by their fathers and husbands. Their praxial fusion is indistinguishable from the struggle against the micropowers that suppress them most immediately."

The Radical Nomadism of the Feminine

Without the anchoring provided by patriarchal kinship structures, women exist in a state of radical nomadism, unbound by the parochial loyalties that define masculine identity. This anonymity and homelessness, far from being a weakness, represents an immense revolutionary potential. As the article argues, "only the twin powers of father and husband suppress the nomadism of the anonymous female fluxes that patriarchy oppressively manipulates, violates, and psychiatrizes."

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The article cautions against the "sentimental 'feminism' that Nietzsche despised, and whose petit-bourgeois nationalist implications he clearly saw." True revolutionary feminism must move beyond the nostalgic reclamation of lost matrilineal genealogies.

Feminism and the Dissolution of National Totality

A radical internationalist socialism "would not be a socialist ideology generalized beyond its culture of origin, but a programme of collectivity or unrestrained synthesis that springs from the theoretical and libidinal dissolution of national totality." It is the lack of attachment to any specific national, ethnic or cultural identity that gives feminine struggle its subversive power.

The path to a truly emancipated future lies in the radical nomadism of the feminine, unfettered by the rigid structures of patriarchal kinship and national belonging. Through the "theoretical and libidinal dissolution of national totality," revolutionary feminism holds the key to dismantling the interlocking systems of capital, race and gender that define our current global order.

The Inescapable Violence of Revolutionary Struggle

"Revolutionary war against a modern metropolitan state can only be fought in hell."

To fight a war against a modern, powerful government, it's going to get really ugly and violent. This harsh reality has made politics in Western countries become more focused on small reforms instead of big changes. At the same time, it has made nationalist movements in other parts of the world the only ones really fighting against the current global economic system.

But even when these nationalist movements succeed in their own countries, they don't actually threaten the overall global capitalist system. As long as they keep the structure of a nation-state, they will still be part of that system.

The Necessity of Escalating Violence

As long as guerrilla wars just lead to new leaders taking over, without bigger changes to the system, things will still be bad. The truth is, you can't defeat a powerful modern state without being willing to use extreme levels of violence. It's a terrible fact, but cruelty and brutality are the driving forces in these struggles, not just a bad side effect.

The political left often avoids talking about how much violence is part of revolutionary change. Feminists especially tend to dislike violence and sometimes even support totally unrealistic peaceful approaches.

The Feminist Path to Victory Over Patriarchy

Feminist movements have often been treated as less important, both in theory and in practice. A big reason for this is that they shy away from violence, which is the cold, hard reality of politics.

This idealistic rejection of violence is a major obstacle holding feminism back from creating real revolutionary change.

This is the difficult truth that feminists must face: brutality and atrocity are not perversions or side effects, but the core driving force of revolutionary struggle. Only by fully accepting this can the feminist movement find a path to defeating patriarchy. The alternative is staying marginalized and allowing the current global patriarchal system to continue.

Accepting that revolutionary violence is necessary is the only way for feminists to release the "anonymous female fluxes" that patriarchy suppresses.