CARGO CULT OR TROJAN HORSE? Laruelle’s scientism and the religionists’ denial

PHILO-FICTION

Lyotard was uncompromising in his critique of philosophy and in his experimentation with new forms of thought and expression.  I began my commentary on Lyotard’s short text A l’écrit bâté to show what a real « philo-fiction » (Laruelle’s term) looks like.

Lyotard himself would never have used such a clumsy expression as philo-fiction, except as a playful gesture. Lyotard liked both science-fiction and wordplay, and treated philosophy as a form of writing. Lyotard’s « A l’écrit bâté » (« Of Burdened Writing ») is philo-fiction avant la lettre.

OBSCURANTISM

François Laruelle is known for his excessively long-winded critique of standard philosophy and an incredibly timid step outside its confines into « non-philsophy », or »non-standard » philosophy, or « philo-fiction ». He is the most dogmatic and the most timid, i.e. the most philosophy-bound, of his intellectual generation, and also the worst stylist. Laruelle could only come into prominence once Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard were no longer with us. He pales in comparison. Lyotard in particular says clearly in 50 lines what Laruelle says murkily in 50 pages.

TROJAN HORSE

There is a strong religionist lobby around Laruelle’s thought in English. Religionism is not religion, but rather the suture of religion and philosophy, subordinating philosophy to its religious condition. Far from decrying this tendency as a distortion of his thought, Laruelle cultivates ambiguity on this point. At the conceptual level, Laruelle’s naive, omnipresent  scientism is laughable, noone can possibly take it seriously. This may be why his disciples are content to simply deny that it is a problem. However, his scientism functions as Trojan Horse, allowing Laruelle (or his religionist disciples) to import religious dominance into a purported « democracy of thought ».