Notes on Translating Force (of) Thought or Thought-Power

Arbeitskraft, Force (de) pensee

Specifying just the transcendental (later immanental) phase of the Organon (rather than the apriorico-transcendental structure that is the Stranger-subject), the symbol Force (of) Thought {Force (de) pensée} (specified otherwise depending on the occasion — Force (of) Creation, Force (of) Invention, Force (of) Labor, Force (of) Acting, Force (of) Law, etc.) arises from a transformation of Marx’s Labor Power {German: Arbeitskraft, French: Force de travail}. The inherent difficulty in rendering an adequate translation of the term (even if it doesn’t quite matter all that much as long as one reads with care) results from three main constraints: the ambivalence of the translations of Kraft (rendered specifically as Power in English and Force in French in this context), including the parenthesized of {de} (which indicates a reduced bilaterality or specularity), and the desire to give the translated term an air of familiarity with how Arbeitskraft usually appears in English. Early translators of Laruelle usually went with Force (of)… and mentioned its lineage often enough, until recently when Jeremy started using Thought-Power instead (bringing it closer to the standard English translation of Arbeitskraft and replacing the suspended of with a hyphen for better legibility a la Taylor Adkins). A complication, however, arises from 2007’s Mystique non-philosophique à l’usage des contemporains (Paris: L’Harmattan; Nous, les sans-philosophie) onwards: Force (de)… is also used as one of a set of three alongside Weak Force and Strong Force (arising from a quantum modeling and symbolizing the non-acting of Man-in-person and the duplicitous acting or over-acting of the philosophical subject in-World respectively). As such, we have the radically immanent Weak Force, the immanental Force (of) Thought, and the transcendent-and-transcendental Strong Force. Save for the issue that “power” can be interpreted in ways that are not intended here (although interpretation isn’t particularly important), it makes sense to use both translations as long as the reader knows that it’s two phrases for the same symbol.