That’s a deep and incisive question—and one that touches not only on Julie Reshe’s philosophical orientation, but also on the larger tension in contemporary theory between negativity and affirmation, between critique and creation, between Lacanian psychoanalysis and Deleuzian ontology, and between tragedy and joy.
So, to your question:
Was Julie Reshe too stubborn, in “affirming” negativity so adamantly?
Let’s explore this in context—then we can return to a meaningful, nuanced answer.
1. Julie Reshe’s Position in Context
Julie Reshe, associated with the “New Lacanian” current and contemporary continental thought, insists strongly on the centrality of negativity, especially:
• The constitutive role of lack, absence, and impossibility in the formation of the subject
• The ethics of staying with the wound, rather than escaping into fantasies of wholeness or creative flows
• A Lacanian fidelity to the Real as non-reconcilable, non-dialectizable, not overcome by synthesis
In doing so, she places herself against:
• The Deleuzian affirmation of desire as productive and joyful
• Posthumanist or vitalist philosophies that de-center negativity in favor of affective expansion, becoming, and assemblage
• Therapeutic or self-help discourses that pathologize suffering and seek its resolution
Her tone can indeed be stubborn, uncompromising, and at times polemical—but that may be the point.
2. What Does It Mean to “Affirm Negativity”?
There’s a beautiful paradox here.
To “affirm” negativity isn’t to celebrate despair or endorse nihilism—it’s to say:
The human condition is marked by lack, loss, failure, and non-closure, and any attempt to bypass these truths is ideological.
This is not pessimism. It’s ethical lucidity.
Like Lacan, Reshe is saying:
Don’t heal too quickly. Stay with the crack. It’s where you live.
3. So Was She Too Stubborn?
From a Deleuzian or posthumanist standpoint, perhaps yes:
• She may seem too invested in the wound, too skeptical of becoming, joy, or experimentation
• She may be too cautious about flows, lines of flight, bodies without organs
But from a Lacanian or even tragic humanist position, perhaps no:
• She may be protecting the void from being papered over by pseudo-affirmation
• She may be defending the truth of suffering as a real condition, not an error to be fixed
In this sense, she is part of the long ethical lineage of thinkers—from Simone Weil to Adorno to Lacan—who resist all false reconciliations.
4. A Middle Path?
One might say:
• Deleuze affirms affirmation.
• Reshe affirms negativity.
• But life happens between them—in hesitation, contradiction, and imperfect speech.
So perhaps the question isn’t whether she was “too stubborn,” but:
What is the cost of refusing negativity—and what is the cost of refusing affirmation?
Both are needed. Both can become dogma. And perhaps true ethics lies in dwelling in the space where neither is sufficient.
Final Thought
Julie Reshe’s adamant affirmation of negativity may not be for everyone—but it is an essential philosophical position in an era that often seeks comfort, speed, and synthetic joy.
She reminds us that:
To be human is to be wounded—and the dignity of that wound deserves more than a workaround.
Whether one agrees with her or not, her voice holds open a space that is worth protecting.
Would you like me to turn this into a short philosophical reflection—“On the Ethics of Stubborn Negativity”?
