In Gentle Praise of the Neutral

Cover of the audio CD MP3 (Seuil, 2002)

 

 

I. 

 

In a recent post, I described the excluded middle as the evil realm of fuzzy logic, dark limpidity, and what Nietzsche terms dangerous knowledge [1].

 

But it's also of course, far less dramatically, the zone of what Roland Barthes termed the Neutral ...

 

 

II. 

 

Le neutre was the title and theme of a lecture course delivered by Barthes at the Collège de France in 1977-78 [2]. He defined the concept as that which bafflles the paradigm, i.e., that which both bewilders and frustrates the system of binary opposition that structures and determines our thinking.  

 

For Barthes, to gently mock the above system and throw a velvet spanner in its works - thereby disrupting its smooth operation - has significant philosophical implications. For opening a gateway to the excluded middle and the possibility of speaking the world differently, also allows one to imagine new ways of relating to others. 

 

Thus, the Neutral has vital ethical and political import, which is why we should embrace Barthes's ideas - drawn from a diverse set of writers and intellectual traditions - on those figures, traits, and twinklings which illustrate or embody the Neutral; such as silence and uncertainty, for example.

 

Better these things, I think, than the arrogant loud conviction of those who would bully with the anti-Neutral blackmail of Either/Or. 

 

I may not always achieve the degree of neutrality [3] in my writing that Barthes dreamed of - I may at times fall back into the kind of violent and assertive language full of judgement and doxa that he loathed - but I do my best on Torpedo the Ark to find a rhetorical form of fiction-theory that avoids imposing its meaning on the reader.

 

  

Notes

 

[1] See the post entitled 'On Traversing the Excluded Middle' (22 Mar 2025): click here. 

      What I'm attempting to do here is further illustrate how the excluded middle might be thought of as a small space for nonpolarised phenomena. 

 

[2] Barthes's lecture course was published in book form as Le Neutre: Cours au Collège de France (1977–1978), ed. and annotated by Thomas Clerc (Seuil/IMEC, 2002). It was published in English as The Neutral, trans. Rosalind Krauss and Denis Hollier (Columbia University Press, 2007). 

 

[3] I use the term neutrality with reservation; for Barthes was keen to stress that the Neutral - or what I'm referring to as the excluded middle - doesn't simply refer to a space of impartiality or indifference, but, rather, to a space for destabilising and experimental activity. The desire for the Neutral is, as Barthes says, born of an intense passion.     

 

 

Readers interested in this topic might like to see a post published on TTA entitled 'Sing if You're Glad to be Grey (On the Desire for the Neutral)' (16 Oct 2015): click here. 

On Traversing the Excluded Middle

Andrew Weir: Excluded Middle (2019)

Acrylic paint on paper, 36 x 48 cm
saatchiart.com

 

Logicians to the left of me, Derrideans to the right, 

here I am, stuck in the excluded middle with you ... [1]

 

 

I. 

 

In classical logic, the law of the excluded middle (p ∨ ¬ p) states that either a proposition or its negation has to be true.

 

It is the third of the three great laws of thought upon which rational discourse is based; the other two being the law of identity - each thing is identical with itself - and the law of non-contradiction - propositions cannot both be true and false at the same time.

 

But such axiomatic rules don't really mean a great deal to me as someone who is happy to do their thinking in the moral no-go zone that is the excluded middle; i.e., the evil realm of fuzzy logic, dark limpidity, and what Nietzsche terms dangerous knowledge.

 

 

II. 

 

Similarly, as someone who privileges difference over identity and refuses to be haunted by the spectre of logical contradiction, I'm prepared also to cheerfully transgress the other two laws. For as I wrote in a post from a few years ago:

 

'Whether our analytic philosophers like to admit it or not, some forms of thinking rely upon daimonic inspiration and so are not regulated by reason alone. Our very greatest poets, for example, creatively affirm paradox and ambiguity; they are unafraid of appearing inconsistent or irrational and are proud to proclaim that if, like Whitman, they contradict themselves, that's because they contain multitudes.' [2]

  

One suspects that a good deal of the continued hostility aimed towards those who take a more continental approach to philosophy is that we see the latter as more of an art than a science (unless it be a gay science). Nothing enrages the Anglo-American mindset more than logical inconsistency and the idea that some feel free in the excluded middle to affirm the neither/nor and defy the spirit of gravity so that thinking becomes pleasurable.      

 

 

III. 

 

In sum: without wishing to explicity reject the law of the excluded middle, I don't support its rigid enforcement and, like Deleuze, see le milieu exclu as a zone in which becoming is stamped with the character of being and where not only do new possibilities emerge, but it is reasonable to demand the impossible.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm paraphrasing a lyric from the well-known song by the Scottish folk rock band Stealers Wheel entitled. 'Stuck in the Middle With You', written by Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan. It can be found on their eponymous debut album Stealers Wheel (A&M Records, 1972) - or played by clicking here. 

 

[2] See the post entitled 'Hello Darkness My Old Friend ...' (1 Oct 2021): click here. 

 

This post is for Bryan Kam who probably cares more - and certainly knows more - about this topic (and many others) than I do. London-based for the last 20 years, Kam studied English and Russian literature at Princeton and Cambridge, but is also widely read in both Western and Eastern philosophy. He regularly publishes work on Substack: click here. 

      According to Kam, the law of the excluded middle, born in Athens c. 350 BC, died in Amsterdam in 1908 at the hands of L. E. J. Brouwer. That might be true, but, unfortunately, even dead concepts can still retain an icy grip on our thinking.