he adds, is “the chance of thought”—a quotation to which I will return in chapter 4 (ibid.).
As Jullien points out, his position also takes us out of what he describes as “easy universalism” and “lazy relativism” (Jullien 2012, 44): a universalism that is identity-driven and exports a certain property to the rest of the world, flattening it, rendering it uniform; or a relativism that allows all cultures to exist in their isolated bubbles (ibid.). These points about universalism are further developed in his later text Il n’y a pas d’identité culturelle, subtitled “mais nous défendons les ressources d’une culture” (but we defend the resources of a culture). There, as well as in his book On the Universal (2014a), he distinguishes between a bad universal—which he characterizes as the general, which renders uniform—and a good, stronger conception of the universal as what has been developed in the context of European thought as an “exigency of thought” (Jullien 2016a, 8). This universal does not name a generality but a necessity: something that cannot be otherwise, in the sense of “the universal laws of nature.” (In philosophy, part of the question of course was whether such universality could be found in the realm of morality as well.) Jullien draws out, however, that in spite of the universality of such a strong universal, such a universal is singular, in the sense that it is local, developed within the context of a specific thought (European thought). It derives from European reason. The uniform, by contrast, is not derived from reason but from production (ibid., 11): it’s the standard and the stereotype (ibid.), not a necessity but a commodity. The good, strong universal is turned toward the ideal; the bad universal is merely the repetition of the one. It’s an “extension of the market” (ibid.). The good universal’s political articulation, Jullien argues, is “the common” (12), which—contrary to the uniform—is precisely not what is similar. Here we see its connection to divergence, which separates and detaches and thereby constitutes the condition for an “active and intensive” (73) common. It gives new meaning to the term “dialogue” (79).
The universal thus must be conceived, Jullien writes later in this lecture, “in an encounter with universalism” (Jullien 2016a, 27). Unlike the latter,
L’universel pour lequel il faut militer est, à l’inverse, un universel rebelle, qui n’est jamais comblé; ou disons un universel négatif défaisant le confort de toute positivité arrêtée: non pas totalisateur (saturant), mais au contraire rouvrant du manqué dans toute totalité achevée. Universel régulateur (au sens de l’idée kantienne) qui, parce qu’il n’est jamais satisfait, ne cesse de repousser l’horizon et donne indéfiniment à chercher. (Ibid.)
The universal for which one must militate is, on the contrary, a rebellious universal, which is never filled; or let’s say a negative universal that undoes the comfort of all arrested positivity; not a totalizing (saturating) [universal] but on the contrary one that reopens the lack in all accomplished totality. A regulative universal (in the Kantian sense) that, because it is never satisfied, never ceases to push back the horizon and indefinitely leads to further searching.
This requires, as Jullien puts it, a certain “care” (souci) of the universal as “promoting its ideal aspect into a never-obtained ideal, which asks the common not to limit itself too quickly” (Jullien 2016a, 27). A slightly stronger way of putting it is that the universal may require “defending,” as the subtitle of Jullien’s book has it. But the notion of “defending” requires some explanation here: in Jullien’s dictionary, it means to “activate” its resources; it doesn’t have, he insists, a fearful and defensive (in that sense) meaning.
Divergence ultimately produces what Jullien calls l’entre, “the in-between.” Such an “in-between escapes,” as he explains, “the determination of ‘Being’”—“l’entre échappe à la determination, elle qui fait être” (Jullien 2012, 51). Or, in a pithier formula, “L’entre n’ ‘est’ pas” (“the in-between ‘is’ not,” Jullien 2016a, 39; emphasis original). In philosophical terms, it escapes “ontology” (Jullien 2012, 51), an escape that Jullien also associates with Chinese thought (as I explain in chapter 2). He notes at this point that Chinese language-thought did not isolate the notion of “being” in the way that Western thought has. Instead it has developed a notion of “nothingness,” which he takes care to explain is not simply the opposite of being: it’s a nonontological nothingness (ibid., 52)—the nothingness of the dao, of the flow of all things (the nothingness of life between birth and death, for example).
This association of Jullien’s overall approach with Chinese language-thought in particular shows that the way in which Jullien theorizes his approach as a sinologist working between China and the West actually has affinities with Chinese thinking. In fact, it’s hard not to read it as a rejection of many elements of Western thinking in favor of elements of Chinese thinking (alterity and difference, for example, are replaced by divergence and its associated concepts). At the same time, Jullien also maintains notions of Western/European thought and insists on the resources of Western culture (the notion of the ideal, for example, in his book on Plato). Still, because it was anchored in being (ontology) and focused on metaphysics (on ideal, geometrical forms hiding behind shadow reality, if you follow Plato), Western thought was unable to grasp the in-between that Jullien proposes: it always wanted to go beyond and access the truth of the idea rather than participate in the flow of all things (Jullien 2012, 53). This separates “life,” as a metaphysical notion, from “living” (ibid., 57; see also Jullien 2016b). The in-between, rather, makes us “de-ontologize” (Jullien 2012, 56). Some in the Western tradition were attuned to this: the painter Braque, for example, who said—in a quotation Jullien mentions often—“that which is between the apple and the plate should also be painted” (ibid., 56). But by and large, Western thought did not think the in-between.
For Jullien, the (Chinese) in-between becomes a tool for working on both Chinese and Western thought. As a Western thinker, he deconstructs Western thought from the outside, as a sinologist; but as a sinologist, he does not “sinize” himself, which, he notes “disappoints orientalists” (Jullien 2012, 60). Instead, he is on neither side, working between the two. It’s this in-between that prevents him from succumbing to those “utopies chinoises” that are so common in France (ibid., 61) and that I discussed in the first section of this chapter. It’s at this point that he now also criticizes Foucault’s notion of heterotopia (ibid.) and its exoticist and orientalist tendencies: Instead Jullien posits China as perfectly intelligible. It’s exterior to the West, but it can perfectly well be understood. This seeks to end phantasmatic constructions of China as some mythological, enigmatic outside to Western comprehension. It’s outside to the West, yes, but it’s not outside comprehension. There can be, as Foucault says about heterotopias but also seems to deny in his text, a “science” of China’s heterotopia. Translation is where the “atopian” (Jullien now shifts to this term, critically reappropriating it from Barthes) work of the in-between is most marked, as a practice that both assimilates and disassimilates (63). It’s the logical language for the cultural dialogue that he envisions (Jullien 2016a, 88).
In the final section of his lecture, he also suggests a perhaps-surprising realm of application for his theory of divergence: gender studies (Jullien 2012, 76). Noting gender studies’ desire to do away with sexual difference, he considers the potential fecundity of thinking a divergence between the sexes, a divergence even within a single sex itself, to see what resources this might yield. This would entail a shift from a thinking of sexual difference to a thinking of sexual divergence, which surely deserves more explanation. But the suggestion is not developed.
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