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Cole (2015): Educat ional non-philosophy, Educat ional Philosophy and Theory: Incorporat ing ACCESS, DOI: 10. 1080/ 00131857. 2015. 1036827 To link to this article: ht t p: / / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1080/ 00131857. 2015. 1036827 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Taylor & Francis m akes every effort t o ensure t he accuracy of all t he inform at ion ( t he “ Cont ent ” ) cont ained in t he publicat ions on our plat form . However, Taylor & Francis, our agent s, and our licensors m ake no represent at ions or warrant ies what soever as t o t he accuracy, com plet eness, or suit abilit y for any purpose of t he Cont ent . Any opinions and views expressed in t his publicat ion are t he opinions and views of t he aut hors, and are not t he views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of t he Cont ent should not be relied upon and should be independent ly verified wit h prim ary sources of inform at ion. 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COLE Downloaded by [University of Western Sydney Ward] at 19:57 20 May 2015 Centre for Educational Research, University of Western Sydney Abstract The final lines of Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy? call for a non-philosophy to balance and act as a counterweight to the task of philosophy that had been described by them in terms of concept creation. In a footnote, Deleuze and Guattari mention François Laruelle’s project of non-philosophy, but dispute its efficacy in terms of the designated relationship between non-philosophy and science, as had been realised by Laruelle at the time. However, the mature non-philosophy of Laruelle could indicate a resolution to the problematic relationship between science and educational philosophy that we have inherited due to the poststructural theories of Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze. Non-philosophy suggests a framework for thought that includes science in a non-positivist style and provides the means to view education as a performative practice. This article explores the non-philosophy of Laruelle in education as a means to view education under the conditions of strict immanence and in line with an anti-phenomenological metaphysics of non-representation. Laruelle is perhaps one of the most important critics of Deleuze in France, and as such, his insights into the Deleuzian oeuvre reveal a way forward for education as a practice that analyses science, philosophy and politics through non-philosophy. Keywords: non-philosophy, immanence, the Real Laruelle, educational philosophy, difference, Introduction A useful place to start with respect to this exploration and creation of ‘educational non-philosophy’ is with the dictionary of non-philosophy, and in terms of a definition (of sorts) of non-philosophy: Non-philosophy is initially a theory by or according to the One, therefore a unified theory of science and philosophy. It is over time a theoretical, practical and critical discourse, distinct from philosophy without being a meta-philosophy. It is specified according to the regional material inserted into the structure of the philosophical Decision (non-aesthetics, non-ethics, etc.). (Laruelle, 2009a, p. 45) Ó 2015 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia Downloaded by [University of Western Sydney Ward] at 19:57 20 May 2015 2 David R. Cole In the case of this article, the ‘regional material’ that will be inserted into the structure of the ‘philosophical Decision’ is educational. Yet one can immediately sense how Laruelle’s non-philosophy introduces an alien conceptual language into the frame, that from the outset derails an ordinary language explanation of the notion of non-philosophy, or at the very least makes reference to its tenets almost impossible without introducing further non-philosophical terms and ideas. In this brief definition, one can appreciate how non-philosophy aligns itself with science, yet how is this alignment achieved? Apparently through, ‘the One’: but what is the One in this context, furthermore, what is the philosophical Decision? And why is the philosophical Decision so important, given that we are working with non-philosophy? Perhaps these questions can be partially answered with reference to the type of Neoplatonism that non-philosophy looks to shadow and ultimately replace or supersede (Figure 1). The structure that represents non-philosophy in the diagram above (Figure 1), by Srneick’s (2010), has been heavily influenced by Brassier (2007), shows how nonphilosophy depends on a fundamental dualism between ‘Man’ and ‘the One’.1 This dualism is opened up and serviced through the practice of non-philosophy that is in fact a dualysis (see, Laruelle, 2009b) that deals with the duality of ‘Man’ and the ‘One’ as a procedure. The philosophical Decision leads from the real and immanent cause or the determination-in-the-last-instance to philosophy itself. Non-philosophy clones this process in a reversible pathway from philosophy to ‘the force-of-thought’. In contrast to the ‘paths to knowledge’ that one finds in Plotinus, the practice of non-philosophy opens up a transcendental identity by exceeding philosophy and engendering ‘the force of thought’ (Srneick, 2010). In other words, non-philosophy is not philosophy by another name that seeks to represent connections between knowledge, thought, reality and the self. Rather, non-philosophy determines rupture points and thinks through the problems that philosophy leaves behind in the dualism between Being and thought. Laruelle takes an important step away from the 1970s French philosophers such as Foucault, Derrida or Deleuze in that he does not Figure 1: Neoplatonism vs. non-philosophy (Srneick, 2010) Downloaded by [University of Western Sydney Ward] at 19:57 20 May 2015 Laruelle, non-philosophy and education 3 reconcile the Heideggarian project of discovering the lost Being (of the Greeks) via the investigation of Western metaphysics, either by working through the examination of power, subjectivity and discourse (Foucault), the deconstruction of logos (Derrida), or by the construction of a plane of immanence (Deleuze) and its application in, for example, the understanding of schizophrenia and capitalism. Rather, non-philosophy attends to a state prior to and adjacent to philosophy, that is closer to and in line with science (or science-thought) and achieved through cloning and effectuation. This is where knowledge lies for Laruelle; it is parallel to the Real, but in a wholly different dimension that is excavated primarily through the act of non-philosophy that tends towards ‘Man’ and ‘the One’. The work of educational non-philosophy therefore may be located in this realm according to the schema from Laruelle; i.e. in thinking through to a point where one reaches the Real or ‘radical immanence’, and that which is, in the case of this article, wholly ‘non-educational’. Non-philosophy axiomatically deploys immanence as being endlessly conceptualisable by the subject of nonphilosophy. This is what Laruelle means by radical immanence. The task of the subject of non-philosophy is to apply its methods to the decisional resistance to radical immanence which is found in philosophy. This thinking could activate a new ‘education-thought’ that is beyond scientism in education, and closely aligned to how we learn. However, before we come to this point, it is worth exploring non-philosophy and educational non-philosophy from the perspective of a ‘philosophy of difference’ and in understanding Laruelle’s immanence and the Real further. A Philosophy of (non)-Difference? In his 1986 piece, Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-philosophy, Laruelle (2010) begun leaving behind the philosophies of difference that had dominated the 1960s and 1970s in France. Laruelle examines difference from a number of perspectives in this enquiry that lead back to the ways in which continental philosophy has dealt with the key term of ‘difference’. For example, Hegel read difference in and through the Aufhebung, which is a form of dialectical self-overcoming determined and unfolded by ‘spirit’, and which leads to the negation of nature and the rise of civil society and ultimately, ‘the state’ (Hegel, 1977). In contrast, Heidegger posited an pre-ontological difference or Being that he called ‘Dasein’ (Heidegger, 1996), and which is locatable in Greek philosophy, in, for example, the oeuvre of Aristole, and which has been progressively diminished and evacuated through the practice of Western metaphysics. Nietzsche, in many ways parallel to Heidegger, looked to the Greeks and noticed their ‘over-life’ and wondered what had happened in terms of the contemporary situation, and where that over-life had disappeared to (Nietzsche, 1956). However, instead of looking for an explanation in pre-ontological Greek thought itself, Nietzsche explained ‘the difference’ that he perceived in terms of the will to power and the differentials between power relations, instinct and the drives. According to Nietzsche, the Greeks could celebrate life to a far greater extent than contemporary man by being closer to their drives, whereas modern man is shackled by Christian morality, living in and as part of the herd, and through the creation of a new reality that has given rise to the progressive lies of a ubiquitous slave morality Downloaded by [University of Western Sydney Ward] at 19:57 20 May 2015 4 David R. Cole (Nietzsche, 1956). In contrast, Derrida constructed a concept of difference that he termed, ‘différance’ and that he employed to deconstruct the power relations through time that have been left to us in and by Western civilisation (Derrida, 1982). Derrida wanted to understand the Western ‘logos’, or how reason has become manifest through words and in texts as an invisible force. Therefore, Derrida analysed between texts, looking for the generalisations and ways in which the logos of the West has become a predominant and discriminatory power construct. Deleuze operated in a similar manner to Derrida, but rather than deconstructing the prejudices and clichés of logos, Deleuze examined the difference that has been quashed or denied through the transmission of philosophical thought (Deleuze, 1994). Echoing, but distinct from Derrida, Deleuze invented a new concept of difference, that he termed as the ‘differenciator’ and that he used to investigate the ‘difference of difference’. However, in opposition to Derrida, Deleuze did not homogenise Western society, or look for singular ways that Western power has worked through logos or in words. Rather, Deleuze sets his ‘differenciator’ to function through studying other philosophers by novel means, by systematically examining capitalism and schizophrenia, and through studies on literature, cinema and art. Laruelle (2010) does not dismiss this important work into and about difference in the continental tradition, but critiques it, and reinvents difference in terms of the philosophical Decision and consequent mixtures. For Laruelle, the fundamental problem that the philosophies of difference demonstrate is that they are still doing philosophy. Rather than flattening hierarchies and creating a space for the truly novel to emerge in thought, Laruelle (2010) perceived the ‘philosophies of difference’ as exemplified above as extenuating the discipline of philosophy and as turning difference into something which it is not; i.e. a part of philosophical systems and approaches that subsume difference from their own philosophical perspectives. This is why one should dispense with the philosophical notion of difference in the continental tradition according to Laruelle and integrate the ‘philosophies of difference’ into an expanded but more focused notion, that he terms as the philosophical Decision (with a capital D) and that comes closer to dualysis (see Figure 1) and understands difference in terms of mixtures. It is with this move that Laruelle can start to sketch his nonphilosophy in relation to a transcendental position that can think ‘the Real’. Laruelle’s non-philosophy owes much to the heritage of the ‘philosophies of difference’, and one could add lies in their trajectory, yet Laruelle attempts to go beyond them, to discover a logic of its own that revolves around the formation of a philosophical Decision as a means to circumvent the possibly stultifying and suffocating effects of philosophy on anything novel or new. However, at this point, one could argue that Laruelle (2010) is proposing a form of ‘thought-empiricism’ or even a type of transcendental empiricism à la Deleuze (1994). In many ways, Laruelle’s position of the philosophical Decision is parallel to Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism in Difference & Repetition, with of course the proviso that one accepts the procedure of dualysis. Deleuze’s monism integrates the One and Man into the ‘crowned anarchy’ or chaos of the natural world through singularities and doesn’t artificially separate Man from nature. Laruelle is not proposing to take philosophy back to the Enlightenment and re-establish a grounds Downloaded by [University of Western Sydney Ward] at 19:57 20 May 2015 Laruelle, non-philosophy and education 5 for the domination of nature through logic, reason and industry, or a slippage into the romanticism of an othered nature with all (her) imperial majesty (see, Harrison, 2006). Rather, Laruelle’s move to undercut the philosophies of difference through the philosophical Decision is a means to come closer to the thinking through of the Real. The problem of Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism according to Laruelle is that Deleuze is still ‘doing philosophy’, and therefore produces an idealisation of empirical multiplicities via philosophical thought, and the reappearance of multiplicities throughout Deleuze’s oeuvre, for example, as ‘desiring-machines’ or ‘rhizomes’ demonstrates this form of idealisation. In contrast, Laruelle’s non-philosophy proposes to unify science with philosophy through dualysis, and not as just another ‘philosophy of difference’. If one accepts the dualysis in Laruelle’s non-philosophy, and that the unification of philosophy and science is possible, there could be a significant way forward for educational research and philosophy that is currently divided between quantitative and qualitative methods (see, Johnson, Onwuegbuzie, & Turner, 2007). Quantitative methods imply a positivist, empirical approach to data, whereas qualitative methods have used ‘the philosophies of difference’ to interrogate the data fields that are uncovered through research (see, Wolcott, 1994). Non-philosophy offers the tantalising possibility for educational philosophy and research of a unified conceptual and theoretical field that could integrate quantitative and qualitative methods, not merely as mixed-methods, but as theory, concept, methodology and science. However, before we can move to explicate such a possibility, we need to understand how non-philosophy figures the Real and immanence. Immanence: The Real Central to the claims of non-philosophy is its positioning as a means to reach ‘the Real’ through immanence. In contrast to, for example, the immanent materialism of Deleuze and Guattari (1988) in 1000 Plateaus, wherein the Real is constructed through temporal ‘plateaus’ that define ‘planes of immanence’ that show how historical, political and intellectual influences and intensities have intermingled and produced affects; the job of non-philosophy is to catapult us to the Real immediately, or as directly as possible without convolution. Radical immanence is in the hands of Laruelle a powerful method of active scepticism with respect to any philosophising about the real (see, Laruelle, 2013) or what constitutes ‘the Real’. The project of non-philosophy therefore turns on its ability to ‘see-through’ other philosophical modes of thought that contain a material thesis about the real, even if it is an assumed or unstated position. In sum, these philosophies can blind us to what is real by constructing a Real out of their idealisms about material reality that they wish to carry forward in situational analysis according to Laruelle. High amongst the list of positions that Laruelle shoots down are the left-leaning materialisms that one may derive from 1970s French thought, and these include the work of Deleuze, Foucault and Derrida as has been mentioned above. In an early political piece that dates from 1981, Laruelle has stated that: When, in its better moments, materialism abandoned its empiricist concept of matter, on the whole it never proved able to go beyond the hyle, the 6 David R. Cole Downloaded by [University of Western Sydney Ward] at 19:57 20 May 2015 identity of thought and the real, of ideality and matter -the level of relative materiality or of materiality ‘as such’ [comme telle] rather than of matter ‘itself’ [telle quelle] or absolute matter. (Laruelle, 1981, p. 78) This crucial distinction that Laruelle is making between materiality ‘as such’ and matter ‘itself’ leads us to the conception of the Real that Laruelle wants to be introduced into the analysis of reality. The Real is fundamentally linked to immanence through non-philosophy (Schmid, 2012, p. 128) according to Laruelle. Immanence is used by Laruelle to think materiality beyond the ‘as such’ positions that he derides in materialism. If one refers back to (Figure 1), and Srneick’s (2010) representation of non-philosophy, the Real is presented by radical immanence as a means to push through to ‘the One’. The duality and consequent dualysis that Laruelle’s nonphilosophy reintroduces into thought between ‘the One’ and ‘Man’ according to this interpretation was scrupulously theorised against in 1970s French thought by Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze, in an attempt to circumvent dualism and the separation of various irrevocable realms, such as ‘man’ and ‘nature’ or ‘mind’ and ‘body’. Laruelle (2013) suggests that we require these separate realms to think and that the ‘dualysis’ of reality is an inevitable result of the structuration of science; i.e. objectivity. The Real for Laruelle is therefore an all-encompassing concept, which is tied to immanence and not to transcendence, which is reached through the force-of-thought to ‘Man’ in Figure 1. Accordingly, ‘the Real’ according to Laruelle is conceptually at odds with the usage that one finds in Lacan (see, for example, Žižek, 1991), or as a part of the psychoanalytic triad of concepts that make up the self: i.e. ‘the Real’, ‘Language’ and ‘the Ego’. This is because Laruelle (2013) escapes the symbolic order and anti-philosophy of Lacan by thinking through immanence ‘to the last degree’. Lacan’s psychoanalysis does not do the work of non-philosophy because ‘the Real’ is still trapped according to Laruelle in the structures of formal thought and not subject to the radical immanence that could possibly unify philosophy with science. These ideas about the Real and immanence in non-philosophy have recently been expressed by Greg Seigworth: In Laruelle, any single entity cul-de-sacs in the densest pitch-black of its own immanence (not at all the infinite gradations of light that Deleuze finds arrayed across the immanence of Spinoza’s three ethics). Or, as Graham Harman (2011, online) remarks, “it is not just the night but, even more so, the daylight, for Laruelle, in which all cows are black”. This understanding of immanence—as a mute, hermetic, and brute facticity of ‘the Real’. (Seigworth, 2014, p. 110) In other words, one cannot ask the questions: What is the Real? or What is immanence? Because these questions express fundamental relational problematics or enquire into the metaphysics of representation. Laruelle’s non-philosophy needs ‘hollowed out’ concepts of the Real and immanence that do not allow any relation to exist. There is a type of ‘mute otherness’ that surrounds the Real and immanence of Laruelle and that could be explained as a need for nihilism or the belief in nothing that leads to the force-of-thought and the unemotional explanation of the darker sides of reality (see, Brassier, 2007) and has been represented by Srneick (2010). This Downloaded by [University of Western Sydney Ward] at 19:57 20 May 2015 Laruelle, non-philosophy and education 7 contrasts to the form of Spinozism that Deleuze and Guattari (1988) deployed in ‘the plane of immanence’ that connect ethics with reality, and works around the dynamics of desire in, for example, joy. Laruelle (2013) has no need for joy it seems, or at least in his construction of non-philosophy as a counter-weight and contemporary option to the task of philosophy. Ethics exists in the framework of non-philosophy as ‘nonethics’, and not in rational decisions made in relation to the affects of joy, happiness or tragedy that might or might not pass through the self. In many ways, Laruelle’s non-ethics is clearer than Deleuze’s Spinozism, in that it is a thinking around ethics that does not consider the relations in ethics. Rather, Laruelle’s non-ethics leads towards a non-relational ethics or a non-hierarchical formulation of ethics as ‘ethicsthought’, that could be used, for example, in politics, or in understanding how democracy works (see Laruelle, 2012). Yet one can surmise that much of Laruelle’s attention in the reworking and expansion of the psychoanalytic Real and in the radical redrawing of philosophical immanence in the understanding of reality, is drawn towards the Deleuze & Guattari’s plane of immanence, as it appears in 1000 Plateaus. As Ray Brassier has noted: The plane of immanence remains Ideal because it operates according to a logic of absolute self-relation: immanence is no longer attributive as immanence ‘to’ a transcendent universal, but only at the cost of becoming this self-positing, self-presupposing hybrid of the transcendental and the transcendent—which is to say, of unobjectifiable immanence and unobjectifiable transcendence—, so that every continuous multiplicity, every molecular becoming is simultaneously virtual and actual, molecular and molar, smooth and striated, dividing itself interminably between these two states, passing from one to the other in a continuous circuit. (Brassier, 2001, p. 80) In this quote, one may perceive how Laruelle’s Real and immanence differ from the plane of immanence as formulated by Deleuze and Guattari (1988). In Deleuze & Guattari’s terms, immanence turns back on itself through the plane of immanence and ‘the logic of self-relation’ as expressed above. Deleuze & Guattari’s plane of immanence is in this formulation from Brassier, a type of ‘cosmic vacuum cleaner’, which imbricates everything in its wake, to leave irreducible complexity and richly veined-ontic-mixtures. In contrast, Laruelle’s non-philosophy, that relies on the Real and immanence to construct reality, is a type of ‘thought sink-hole’, which churns up reality in its sceptical wake, uncovering idealism and showing how delusions may be created. In fact, the Real and immanence do not construct reality at all according to Laruelle, but act as conduits for dualysis, or for the absolute thought of identity, or the ‘One-in-One’ (see Figure 1). Deleuze and Guattari (1988) grand scheme for understanding capitalism and schizophrenia is in these terms fraught with selfperpetuating mythological elements such as the ‘machinic phylum’ that demonstrates how hybrid ideality works according to Laruelle. The machinic phylum is according to Deleuze and Guattari (1988, pp. 409–410) supposed to explain how artisans can work from and in nature and produce startling designs in stone as shown in, for example, mediaeval Gothic cathedrals. In Laruelle’s terms, this explanation is nonsense and leads to the romantic nomadism of Deleuze and Guattari (1988, 8 David R. Cole Downloaded by [University of Western Sydney Ward] at 19:57 20 May 2015 pp. 351–424), as nature and man cannot be reconciled in an ideal hybrid conceptual form. In contrast, Laruelle’s force-of-thought works through the artisans as a type of transcendental craftsmanship, joining the Real with immanence as their designs transmit powerful messages combined with the stewardship of a particular context. Nature stands outside of Laruelle’s non-philosophy, not as a mystical other, but because material explanations of nature always stop at the level of explanation, formulation or thought. Once again, Ray Brassier has expressed this idea succinctly and to the point: … the autonomy grounding the possibility of all materialist thought expresses the materialist’s philosophical faith in the supposition that the nature of matter can be sufficiently determined through a Decision, and hence, by implication, through thought, even in the limit-cases where it is decided that ‘matter itself’ must remain undeterminable, unthinkable or undecidable. (Brassier, 2001, p. 114) Laruelle’s (2013) non-philosophy takes a non-suppositional approach to matter. Rather, the Real and immanence engender dualysis and give ‘one’ access to Man through non-philosophy. In other words, the Real and immanence in non-philosophy are not about matter, the connection to the outside world is not through thought or thinking about matter, thought rather leads to the transcendental instance of Man according to Figure 1. In contrast, the thought about matter that leads to conceptions of nature, the unconscious or any anti-foundational groundings as has happened in poststructuralism (Popke, 2003), conceals a resentment for Man according to this interpretation of non-philosophy. As Laruelle (1989) has expressed the point: ‘The identity of the Real is lived, experienced and consumed by remaining in itself without the need to alienate itself representationally’, (p. 57). Therefore, the Real and immanence remain elusive to direct representation in language, but are an implicit aspect of science, which is, as Laruelle argues, ‘… the absolutely undivided identity of the surfaces and of the internal, of horizontal platitude and the immanent Real’, (p. 104). Laruelle distances himself from ‘the canon’ of 1970s French thought by reintroducing science, albeit in an immanent, Real, non-philosophical manner. Whereas poststructural thought can be used to critique science as narrative, or as a power construct that hides other influences, whether they are commercial, state-backed or elitist (see, Tierney, 1993); non-philosophy engages with science on an equal footing to philosophy in order to reposition both practices through non-philosophy. In so doing, Laruelle gives science and philosophy a thorough revision, in order to create a nonhierarchical, democratic approach, that leaves both science and philosophy to do their work separately, projects which should, ultimately and according to Laruelle, give way to non-philosophical modes of thought. However, the task of reconciliation with educational philosophy remains and the question as to whether this mode of thought is useful as a philosophy of education is pertinent. In the next section, the interpretation of non-philosophy in this article, which relates to the Real and immanence as a philosophy of (non-) difference, and has been influenced by Brassier’s (2007) study, shall be carried forward and applied to education. Certainly, this is not a straightforward task, but it is hoped that the section below is a beginning to a mapping of ‘educational non-philosophy’. Laruelle, non-philosophy and education 9 Downloaded by [University of Western Sydney Ward] at 19:57 20 May 2015 Educational Non-philosophy In a manner which is reminiscent of explaining the philosophy of Kant or Heidegger, non-philosophy requires that one takes on board and accepts the particular conceptual vocabulary that Laruelle has borrowed from other sources such as the oeuvre of Althusser (determination-in-the-last-instance) or has invented himself. For those of us functioning in the field of educational philosophy and looking for ordinary language explanations of phenomena, the sometimes obscure terminology of Laruelle’s nonphilosophy can be a reason not to accept the thought of non-philosophy in the first place. However, once this barrier to understanding and working with non-philosophy has been broached, one can begin to see the usefulness of non-philosophy to the philosophy of education, especially with respect to the relationship between those looking to put 1970s French philosophy to work in education, and those striving to enable a coherent scientific approach to education. The most useful aspect of Laruelle’s nonphilosophy for the philosophy of education lies in the way it can enable a coherent politics and ethics to accompany a rigorous and scientifically proven perspective on education. In these terms, it is worth exploring the consequences of Laruelle’s philosophy for education, and in suggesting ways in which one might understand ‘educational non-philosophy’. One could state that ‘educational non-philosophy’ takes the most comprehensive available methodology and methods to explore the facts of education without positing any ideological or consequent frameworks around or on education; e.g. reductive positivism. In these terms, educational non-philosophy could be termed as ‘noneducation’. A rigorous, mixed-methods approach to educational research could be positioned as entirely methodological and not impinging on what happens in education ‘as a practice’ (see, Cole & Hager, 2010) and perhaps called: ‘non-mixedmethods’. A non-mixed-methods approach to educational research would avoid the ideological fluctuations between the potentially opposing poles of quantitative and qualitative methods. One could henceforth question how can the educational system be changed, if one is doing non-mixed-methods research, it is called ‘non-education’, and one is not intervening in what happens, for example, with students from discriminated against, minority or disadvantaged backgrounds. One might state that this is precisely the point that one might glean from non-philosophy; i.e. that the research that one undertakes in education, if it is rigorously factual, is non-relational. However, this picture of mixed-methods educational research can be clouded by the introduction of participatory research, action-based research, ethnographic research, narrative research, or the concepts of teachers and students as researchers. Such methodologies have been supported and bolstered through the introduction of 1970s French philosophy into education and often categorised as ‘poststructural’, and that do work in education by creating a political field that one could term as materialist and be aligned with helping the under-represented in education to succeed (see Masny & Cole, 2014). The application of Laruelle’s non-philosophy to education acts as a critique to such approaches and, if applied, may help to rid educational research and educational philosophy of its idealisms. The idealism of poststructural philosophy in education could be seen to create false hope around aspects of disadvantage and the Downloaded by [University of Western Sydney Ward] at 19:57 20 May 2015 10 David R. Cole underprivileged, that, one could argue, are in fact structurally implicit in the current capitalist education situation (see, Cole, 2012). Laruelle’s reply to his fierce critique and dismantling of materialist positioning in philosophy comes in the formulation of non-Marxism (Laruelle, 2000). Non-Marxism takes the rigorous and scientifically proven aspects of Marx’s determination of the capitalism system, but does not make a revolutionary ideology out of them. In fact, non-Marxism is entirely about the Real, ‘determination-in-the-last-instance’ and immanence in the interpretation of non-philosophy in this article (see Figure 1). This means that in terms of the current situation, which is almost entirely dominated by the experience of ‘integrated world capitalism’ (see, Guattari, 1989), the facts of Marxism, which help to explain the functioning of capitalism, but does not act as the ‘lived material’ of non-Marxism. Non-Marxism takes Marxism as a scientific explanation of capitalist facts, but does not project its ideological impetus to ‘changethe-system’ through revolutionary means. For those of us still with any revolutionary zeal, this position might come as quite a disappointment! Yet, as Kolozova (2012) has suggested, the revolutionary aspect of non-philosophy and non-Marxism in particular lies in understanding that rebellion is still possible, but only through the Real and immanence. In other words, Laruelle’s non-philosophy creates the conditions for revolution through the non-normative and non-standard approach to Marxism that does not produce another mode of Marxism, dedicated to overthrowing the capitalist order through the ‘same old means’, but looks to get inside of the reality of capitalism itself. One could state that non-Marxism is a project for the radical understanding of capitalism that acts as a critical counterpoint to the ubiquitous modes of marketdriven consumerisms that can deny and smother any purchase on sustained thought about their effects (see, Cole, 2014a). In many ways, Laruelle’s non-philosophy is anti-capitalist (see, Galloway, 2012). This is because it attempts to rigorously posit a non-relational structure around itself that does not allow for capitalist interference of its tenets or any exchange. This requisite for understanding and practising non-philosophy makes it wholly nonrepresentational and this has consequences for the types of epistemology, ontology and metaphysics that one can derive from the non-philosophical position or dualysis. In contrast to philosophies and scientific approaches that can be exploited for surplus value or strategic advantage through capital markets, non-philosophy works on its own non-representative grounds and does not engage with systems of thought that potentially turn difference into profit. In this respect, non-philosophy is a throwback to pre-capitalist modes of thought that were not impelled to survive amid the postmodern, consumer-driven, global marketplace (see, Cole, 2014a). In many ways, what is at stake in non-philosophy and in this application of non-philosophy to education, is thought itself. In a situation where any new thought has to market and sell itself to be called ‘a thought’ in the first place, non-philosophy uniquely stands outside of these tenets and works to a rhythm and logic of its own creation. As such, it could be said that non-philosophy could be used to deal with the influences of market-driven, power forces and elitism in education. What counts in education for the evolution of new practises is evidence. As suggested above, non-philosophy could be aligned with a rigorous, mixed-methods Downloaded by [University of Western Sydney Ward] at 19:57 20 May 2015 Laruelle, non-philosophy and education 11 approach to educational research; i.e. ‘non-mixed-methods’—that could be used to find out what works best in the educational context and would hence produce high quality and rounded evidence and not ideology or subjective opinion. This approach would differ from realism or positivism in education, in that does not describe the reality of education, or impose a reductive frame on complex phenomena, but adds a non-relational, conceptual plane for thought about education as a practise (see, Cole & Hager, 2010). Wholly stepping outside of the notion that education is a training and preparation for the rigours of contemporary, market-driven capitalism, means that other thoughts about the role, purposes and methods of education become possible. For example, education could be recast as a hub for sustainable and long-term community building, it could be seriously re-examined as a place that properly educates about taking care of the environment, the notion of schooling could be reinvented and removed from bland conditioning and replaced by thoroughgoing critical thinking practises. Non-philosophy activates these ideas not as idealisms of a materialist philosophy in education, but as a new, evidence-based (through ‘nonmixed-methods’) education-thought. Of course, questions remain as to the practical means to implement these ‘education-thoughts’, and how to make them part of the Real and immanent to what happens in education. However, non-philosophy stops here, it gives intensity and life to these ‘education-thoughts’ but does not determine what becomes of them. Conclusion There is something incisive and dislocating about Laruelle’s non-philosophy, especially for those of us who have been working on developing a coherent philosophical approach to education through the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (see, Cole, 2011). Laruelle’s non-philosophy can make one extremely wary of anything that claims to be materialist, and that could tend towards delusional and idealist educational realities. However, one can question the political strength and unifying power of Laruelle’s non-philosophy, especially because it is written in such a dense and sometimes obscure manner. It is correct to question any claims to learning efficacy that ‘the rhizome’, or ‘becoming’, or what ‘affects can do’ may produce, yet one might well ask what is left behind once these conceptual strategies have been removed, and the bare, empirical foundations of education are exposed without the means to counteract their potency (see, Cole, 2014b). If one wishes to go down the path of non-philosophy and apply it to the workings of education, one exposes a global socio-economic machine that processes and develops subjectivity to serve the needs of contemporary financial capitalism. Laruelle’s non-Marxism and immanent or ‘Real’ revolution could be considered as a means to think outside of exchange or the processes of relation (Galloway, 2012) that exist in the workings of education and therefore initiate a new science of education. However, science as it is currently practised, is wholly imbricated inside the processes of the global financial capitalist machine, often providing the means to develop surplus value as cognitive and intellectual capital by: (1) inventing new methods for industry; (2) by discovering new chemicals and materials, and; (3) by making the analysis of data more efficient, often Downloaded by [University of Western Sydney Ward] at 19:57 20 May 2015 12 David R. Cole through statistical means. Non-philosophy whilst offering assistance to the execution of ‘science-thought’ and ‘education-thought’ through ‘non-science’ and ‘non-education’, one could argue does not allow for and encourage a complex (re)inter-thinking between disciplines to happen as does, for example, the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. The current capitalist–industrial complex includes science as an essential and integral part of its functioning. In contrast, non-philosophy stands outside of these relations as a non-normative practice of thinking through of philosophical problems such as the nature of materialism to their nth degree, or at least to what could surmise as ‘the Real’, ‘the One’, ‘Man’ or ‘immanence’ through dualysis. As such, non-philosophy could be considered as an adjunct to the types of philosophy that one might derive from 1970s French materialist thought, but not serving to elucidate the current workings of science. This is mainly because those employed in the practical action of doing science, for example, those examining statistical data in educational research, will most likely not consider Laruelle’s philosophy as a basis or framing for their study. Therefore, Laruelle’s non-philosophy cannot be understood as a resolution to the continuing tensions between those who deploy 1970s French thought for qualitative research in education and those who deploy quantitative methods; i.e. statistics. The fact remains that those who seek to deploy Foucault, Derrida or Deleuze in educational research, frequently use qualitative methods, and those who deploy quantitative methods do so within an empirical, analytical and positivist framework. Non-philosophy helps to sharpen and deepen the thought process of the 1970s derived philosophical approaches to education as ‘non-education’ by questioning idealisms, but has little to add to statistically derived, evidence-based approaches to educational analysis and theory. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. Note 1. However, as an anonymous reviewer of this article has commented: ‘For Laruelle, “the One” is a privileged name for the Real, but the Real is precisely the radical immanence of the human. It is the lived reality of the human that is foreclosed to philosophical representation, but a true foreclusion that disallows both nihilistic claims about the human just as much as naively romantic notions’. The reviewer points out that Srneick’s diagram is ultimately derived from Brassier’s (2007) interpretation of Laruelle and not Laruelle himself. I have retained this interpretation of Laruelle for the benefit of the article, as it helps to explain the work that I put non-philosophy to in education that is aligned with Brassier’s project (2007). Notes on contributor David R. Cole is an Associate Professor in Education at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He has published eleven academic books, and numerous (100+) journal articles, book chapters, conference presentations and other pubic output. He has been involved with major educational research projects across Australia and, internationally, and is an expert in mixed-methods design and execution, and the application of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to education. David’s latest monograph is called: Capitalised Laruelle, non-philosophy and education 13 Education: An immanent material account of Kate Middleton (Winchester: Zero Books, 2014). 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