Jake Nabasny

This paper attempts to construct a tradition of writers that are usually not grouped together. The unifying theme is an alternative conception of the subject and its relation to alterity. To tease out this implicit connection, I develop the concept of "disavowal" and describe what relevance it may have to our contemporary political climate.

The American Eugenics Movement of the early 20th century was the inspiration that led to the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. In bringing this history to light, I gesture at a rupture in the discourse of race that occurred at the same time. Eugenics inaugurates a fundamental shift from epistemological racism to metaphysical racism. Insofar as our current paradigm can be characterized as none other than "eugenic," I conclude by searching for ways of responding to contemporary techniques of racial oppression.

The French poet Arthur Rimbaud famously declared that “I is an Other” (Je est un autre). To this day, his words are often interpreted as poetic fantasy. They mean, according to many, that the poet is a certain kind of self that plays “make believe.” By acting like others, in place of them or in their style, the poet may have new experiences that can be then be communicated in verse. In other words, this popular conception of Rimbaud’s statement is infused with Platonic undertones which presuppose that the task of poetry is imitation. In contrast to this Platonic reading, one could juxtapose the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, in particular his notion of becoming-animal and its relation to the drug. For Rimbaud as well as Deleuze, the drug signifies an apparatus of alterity capable of challenging the very foundations of subjectivity. Unlike Rimbaud, Deleuze provides an onto-pharmacological framework for understanding the specific causality of the drug. Insofar as this framework enables a material understanding of Rimbaud’s declaration that “I is an Other,” it also destabilizes the Platonic reading with an overt critique of imitation. In this paper, I will articulate the role of the drug in Deleuze’s philosophy and relate it to Rimbaud’s controversial statement. This relation has the dual benefit of highlighting the pharmacological aspect of alterity and clarifying an all-too-misunderstood conception of the Other.