such peculiar eddies in this stream of late. of unanticipated yet memorable cadence.
could it be none other than my brother? How has the path been treating you?
Clearly, guys: I need to be notified when people are responding to this string.
I am authentically sorry for ignoring you!!!
Anyway, let me post this and get back to to you:
A couple of things I’ve gained from my recent reading of Deleuze and Guattarri’s What is Philosophy:
First of all, the general point that (as I understand them and the manifesto that the book represents (it is mainly about a style of philosophizing as compared to any assertion about what the truth is or is not. It treats philosophy like an art which means that any meaning extracted from it must come from the discourse that goes on around it.
Secondly, it centers around three important concepts: the plane of immanence, concepts, and conceptual personas:
The plane of immanence which I only recently came to understand (being slow on the uptake (is best understood as being the diametrical opposite of the plane of transcendence, that is even though the plane of immanence easily absorbs the plane of transcendence in that any embrace of the transcendent is an imminent phenomena. If someone decides to believe in some transcendent God, that is a very real and imminent aspect of our existence: the univocity of being.
We create concepts in the face of the plane of immanence that we are always facing at the same time we are creating it. (It’s a feedback loop between the plane of immanence, concepts, and conceptual personae (
(Conceptual personae are what we present as the intellectually and creatively curious through the concepts we create in the face of the plane of immanence. D&G say:
“No list of the features of conceptual personae can be exhaustive since they are constantly arising and vary with planes of immanence.”
They then go on to point out the Madman as a conceptual personae, as well as the friend, the claimant, the rival, the boy, the lover, the fiancée, to which I would add the rock star. Once again, D&G:
“The conceptual persona is needed to create concepts on the plane, just as the plane itself needs to be laid out. But these two operations do not merge in the person, which itself appears as a distinct operator.”
Given what I have to work with, what else can I do but fumble in my attempt to explain it to you: what I am experiencing? I can only explain it to you through the conceptual persona of the rock star.
etherspeak bounces off of other incidences of etherspeak:
and says something…
.
Thanks for contributing, guys.
One of the terms that tend to bother and elude readers of Deleuze is the Body Without Organs (BwO). And in a study point (pg. 88) of Logic of Sense I came across a section that led to a kind of epiphany that involves suddenly starting to feel what you already know in the sense of what Zizek referred to (in reference to Rumsfeld (as the unknown known. And it was important to the extent that it crystallized for me how Deleuze chose to be approached and why he, along with other French thinkers, chose to engage in free indirect discourse which I’ll explain below. Anyway:
“To these values a glorious body corresponds, being a new dimension of the schizophrenic body, an organism without parts which operates entirely by insufflation , respiration, evaporation, and fluid transmission (the superior body or body without organs of Antonin Artaud.) Undoubtedly, this characterization of the active procedure, in opposition to the procedure of passion, appears initially insufficient: fluids, in fact, do not seem less harmful than fragments.”
Being as focused on Deleuze, a philosopher, as we tend to be, it gets easy to forget that he actually copped the concept from Artaud (a writer who was clearly trying to convey a schizophrenic experience (and assimilated it to the point that he could write as poetically about it as he did above. Note, for instance, the last line:
“….fluids, in fact, do not seem less harmful than fragments.”
It’s as if Deleuze just threw the line in because it seemed pretty and fitted in with the rest of the quote. And the important thing to understand here is that the BwO was conceived by Artaud, a writer, as a literary concept to be felt as compared to a philosophical concept which is meant to be known or understood. And I’m not sure Deleuze ever departed from that original sense of it. He used it because it sounded cool and inspired a lot of evanescent and oblique (that which glances the corner of the eye (systems of meaning.
To engage in the futile effort of zeroing in on an elusive target: this is why we have to consider any attempt to “truly” explain the BwO as suspect. Since it started (and may well have remained in the hands of Deleuze (as a creative expression meant to suggest a schizophrenic state, there is no reason to believe that the BwO is something that was ever meant to be truly understood. Beyond that, any meaning extracted from it is pretty much like that of a dream or abstract art: it comes from the discourse that goes on around it.
Therefore, the question to be asked about the BwO is not so much what it actually means; but, rather, how it feels. You mainly have to ask how it feels to you and play those feelings against how it seems to feel to Deleuze as well as Artaud. And the important thing to take from this is that we are dealing with a philosophy that has engaged in the deconstruction of stealing the privilege of objective presence in philosophy and demarginalized the role of feel and sense. Hence, the book that was one of Deleuze’s first attempts to write his own philosophy: Logic of Sense.
And I’m quite sure if we dug deeper into Deleuze, we would also find points at which he sought to steal the privilege from feel and sense.
He is, after all, the suspect.
“The clue for understanding BwO is to be found in the distinction that Deleuze makes between the vital (physical life) and the organic (biological life). The former may be fragmented and molecular, and the latter totalized and molar… BwO thus involves a schizo-critique of totality…” Frans Maññali
Out of all the responses I gotten to this particular post (or rhizome (this is the one I’m most sympathetic with. Now, first of all, I use the term “sympathetic” because to say that “it seems most accurate” would be to contradict the main point of what I said: that the meaning to be derived from it comes from the discourse that goes on around it. But this not to say that everyone is perfectly free to just offer whatever interpretation they happen to have and all will be considered equal. This assumption seemed to be at work in a lot of the other responses I got. But as Yonathon Listik wrote of Derrida in his article “Derrida’s Performance” in Philosophy Now (which I think can be applied to Deleuze as well:
“The purpose of his performance in writing is to call our attention to the spectacle. For this reason, he is serious about joking, and joking about being serious. We may say that Derrida’s argument is precisely that seriousness and foolery have no clear demarcation.”
In other words, we can assume Deleuze to be meaning something, even if he does it in a playful way. But, as with Derrida, you always have to start with Deleuze’s terminology (the BwO in this case (in terms of how it feels or the sense of it. Still, at some point or other, you will always have to play it against the reality of the text Deleuze actually wrote.
As concerns Frans’ point, I would first admit to a bias in that, whether he intended it or not, it actually complimented my point concerning the FEEL of the BwO. I’m thinking here of Ronald Bogue’s book, Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts, and the first section on Music which focuses on Deleuze’s preoccupation with a composer who attempted to utilize birdcalls as compared to the more classical preoccupation with “the music of the spheres”.
We get a sense here that when it comes to Deleuze and his focus on the biological that it is primarily about FEEL (that of biology as compared to the music of the spheres (and is confirmed by the various amorphous and biological imagery he tends to use in his writing such as his and Guattarri’s use of Dali images, in A thousand Plateaus, of folds of skin with hairs poking out of it like spikes or the description that starts The Anti-Oedipus:
“It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the Id. Everywhere it is machines –real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other ones, with all the necessary couplings and connections. An organ-machine is plugged into an energy-source-machine: the one produces a flow that the other interrupts. The breast is a machine that produces milk, and the mouth a machine coupled to it. The mouth of the anorexic wavers between several functions: its possessor is uncertain as to whether it is an eating machine, a talking machine, or a breathing machine (asthma attacks). Hence we are all handymen: each with his little machines. For every organ-machine, an energy machine: all the time, flows and interruptions.”
And let’s not forget the biological sense of the rhizome.
Once again: FEEL and the meaning we extract from it through discourse.
And if you think about it, Continental philosophy (especially of the French kind (is, more than anything, about adopting a new style of philosophizing. And I cannot help but feel that most attempts to present what Deleuze wrote, and the BwO, as having some kind of fixed and final meaning are basically guilty caveats to the analytic tradition: the desire to justify it by their standards when that really isn’t necessary. True, as Yonathon argues in behalf of Derrida, Deleuze wrote to mean. But I would also note a point made by Deleuze in the intro to Difference and Repetition:
“We write at the edge of what we know.”
He may well have been writing to mean. But it was also a struggle to put into words that which eluded words. The only thing he could have possibly hoped for was to somehow get across the FEEL of what he was experiencing: the biological one described by Frans. As Yonathon said of Derrida:
“Similarly, when Derrida describes the university in Mochlos (1980) and The University Without Conditions, he is not just performing in the sense of being on a stage, he is describing a university as if what he is saying were possible, and so performing an idea into being.”
:I think that we can equally say that Deluze performed his ideas into being in an oblique manner that, paying tribute to the elusive reality he was trying to describe, defied any hope of a final and authoritative interpretation.
As I grow more familiar with Deleuze’s writing (the suspect (I crystallize the recognition that his main appeal for me (at a time when I still doubt my ability to tell you what he actually means (is his writing style. You get the feeling of someone who knows a lot about a lot of different things to such an extent that he can almost randomly play one thought or concept off of another and make it feel as if he is actually writing a coherent thesis, make it seem as if he is being completely serious while engaging in a form of intellectual play.
You can sometimes hear him chuckling in the background.
(In his photos, one sees the grin of an ever elusive suspect with the cockiness to know that he has what he needs to draw you down a path of no resolve and make you love him for it:
As Sokal has proven all too well, Deleuze is not a philosopher for philosophers who take themselves too seriously: the paradox of the serious joke. Deleuze embraced paradox, thought of it as the only authentic domain for philosophy.
“Paradox is opposed to doxa, in both aspects of doxa, namely good sense and common sense.” –LOS, pg. 75
You have to ask: why grovel for the Truth when one could more effectively shine? And how does philosophy distinguish itself from science if it does not embrace paradox: that which can never truly be answered? Of course the truth monger will ask: what use is such a thing? To which we can only respond “Why does it need a use? What use is use?”
Still, we have to nod to the use Camus made of it:
“Ultimately, all arguments for beauty are arguments for freedom.”
And I would argue the reverse to be true: that all arguments for freedom are, ultimately, arguments for beauty. Perhaps Deleuze, out of love of the freedom that allowed him to be who he was, built his writing style around this: a serious form of Play or the idea of connecting one thought to the other just to see what happens.
“ a) They [Deleuze and Guattarri] did word by word… as I said, there isn’t a single word in their texts that" has not a rigorous place in the system… and when I say, a rigorous place, I really mean, a f#%$ing rigorous place… it is insane… it is a “conceptual cathedral” that Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Cassirer could only dream about… And Spinoza… but well… Spinoza was not able to be a pluralist…
… Do you know Gueroult? Vuillemin?.. But also… do you know anything about Alquie, Hyppolite…well… believe me… you have a quite naif image of french academy lol (and clearly you don’t grasp what a “philosophical system” is… but, let me tell you, it can be more systematic than physics…
(as I suggested in another comment… I believe reading him in English is a catastrophe… the translators were not prepared to grasp the conceptual matrix and so… it is not there…it is a catastrophe…” -Rui
“Okay, you get to win, Rui. Out of the around 20 books I have bought by and about Deluze (w/ and w/out Guattarri (you are the only one that can claim to have any real authority on Deleuze.I mean it makes sense: you’ve read him in French and I had always suspected that one of the main barriers between me and Deleuze is I’m not as comfortable with the French culture that he constantly refers to. So now what happens? Either everyone turns to your authority which won’t do them a lot of good since you speak in the same etherspeak that Deleuze does. I mean I can hardly understand a thing you are saying to me.” –me
First of all, this discourse started with my focus on Deleuze’s sense of Play and Rui’s complaint that I was working from a bad translation. Secondly, I still concede to Rui his right to claim some authority on the matter given that he apparently has read it in its original language and can assume that he has a little more knowledge about the French culture that Deleuze frequently refers to than I do. But as I began to think about it last night at work, it began to make less sense to me.
For one, it seems a little arrogant to more or less imply that all the translations of Deleuze (w/ and w/out Guattarri (and the anglo-American attempts at understanding him (those I have been working from (are somehow all lacking in validity, that is given what they have suggested to me is that Deleuze may have never meant himself to be fully understood. As one writer of secondary text pointed out (I believe it was Joe Hughes: thus far, all texts written on Deleuze have been too focused on trying to explain him to actually offer any real criticism. And we are talking about scholars here. Yet what Rui is suggesting here is that such a clear and rigorous understanding of a clear and rigorous system is available to those who read it in French. In other words, our best bet would be to leave Deleuze to the French since all attempts to understand him outside of French culture have basically been failures.
But the bigger problem for me has to do with Deleuze’s etherspeak or what has been referred to as free indirect discourse –which may be 2 different things but similar in spirit. Deleuze’s use of obscure language makes sense as framed by one writer: as the attempt to not control the readers process (that is through a direct impartation of knowledge (but guide it, through what Barthes referred to as the writerly process, in such a way that the reader arrives at an instinctive understanding that falls in the ballpark. And this seems to compliment Deleuze’s emphasis on the creative act and production.
However, if we concede to the notion of D & G working from a clear and rigorous system, all I, personally, can see is Deleuze’s use of etherspeak as something a little more authoritarian and likely to shut down the flows of energy that D&G talked about. In this case, etherspeak becomes little more than the self indulgence of a wannabe guru. Now Rui could take the route of Heidegger and argue that the reason this obscurity was needed was because such a system requires a new language in order to be understood -that is because it is so subtle and profound. But I don’t buy that. It seems to me that such a clear and rigorous system could be described by starting off with the simple and immediate (that is with the understanding that it is starting with the simplified version for the sake of process (and move on through the different degrees of complexity and subtlety. And that is clearly not what Deleuze (w/ and w/out Guattarri (did. Let me illustrate:
“Yes,D&G says that Philosophy is the creation of Concepts (variation), Science the creation of Functions (variables) and Art the Creation of Sensation (varieties). But, “as you know!”, the proprieties of the Concept is to be endo-consistent/exo-consistent and self-referent (and not endo.referent and exo-referent, “extension”/“intension” as science and logic). Do you know what it means in Maths to be “consistent”? “non-contraditory”?” –Rui
Now focusing on one of the few things I did manage to decode here:
“But, “as you know!”, the proprieties of the Concept is to be endo-consistent/exo-consistent and self-referent (and not endo -referent and exo-referent, “extension”/“intension” as science and logic). Do you know what it means in Maths to be “consistent”? “non-contradictory”?”
Now to blue-collarize (maybe even vulgarize (the point Rui is making here: the conceptual play and creation mentioned in What is Philosophy is a matter of conceptual systems in which the sub concepts are consistent and non-contradictory. Whether that system is consistent with external systems (ie Reality (is of secondary import. In that sense, it is a lot like math which is basically about playing with numbers to see what they can do. And it seems to me that even if the system were more complex and subtle than this, one could easily start from such a simple point and work their way up to it: work part by simple part to the whole.
But let’s say I were not only to concede to Rui his claim to authority, but set my ego aside and make him my guru. Then what would follow in terms of the etherspeak (similar to that of Deleuze’s (he tends to work in? Most likely, his ego would kick in and express itself through an endless powerplay of him making some obscure statement, me trying to decode it, and him saying:
“No!! You don’t quite understand.”
All of which would continue under the understanding that he had some kind of understanding of the rigorous and clear system (the reterritorialization ( that Deleuze and Guattarri presented that I could only gain access to through him –that is since he is the only one reading it in the original language. In other words, while he was shutting down (blocking (my flows of energy, he would be opening up a lot of them for himself.
And this is how he wants us to see Deleuze (w/ and w/out Guattarri.
First of all: some really good points, guys! It’s like common souls brought together by another common soul: Deleuze. And I think he would have liked that. The downside is, you having worked in my comfort zone, the wheels just turned all that faster producing thousands of thoughts which I can only hope to capture in the window I have. Otherwise, it’s the extra walk to the liquor store to give me time to finish up –the one I really shouldn’t make. But then this kind of accelerated discourse (production (might have pleased Deleuze as well. As Alexandre rightly said:
“Conversely, Deleuze always asked us to take lines of flight and to create a consistent field of variations, to think in erratic, yet, consistent ways!!”
Anyway:
“I read your answer with much sadness, because this situation is clearly not friendly. I am sure that Deleuze’s texts are quite mixed with French language, culture and a LOT of subtleness regarding the history of philosophy and inexplicit problems, but it, by no means, invalidate great translations and intellectual accounts.” –Alexandre
While there was some tension (basically 2 egos clashing (I can assure you that I have no desire to beat Rui down or for this to turn into a pissing contest. He was by no means the most obnoxious opposition I have ever faced and actually put in an honest attempt to be cordial. And he’s clearly passionate on the subject matter and, therefore, could be useful to me. My only point is to make clear to him that he is only useful to me to the extent that he is useful.
“Indeed, I do not know Rui Mascarenhas and I’m not here to defend his point of view, but to suggest you to take in consideration a very rough intuition expressed in his opinions.” –Ibid
Certainly!!! While I still maintain that Deleuze left interpretation of him a little more open than Rui argues, you still have to admit that reading him in French and having a familiarity with French culture would serve as a clear advantage in interpreting Deleuze –that is w/ and w/out Guattari. To argue, as I did, that Deleuze asks us to find our own creative ways to him is not to say that there won’t be individuals who have better resources to approach him. And this goes to one of his criticisms of my point: that my creative approach to Deleuze (interpretation as a form of Play (seems absurd given that the book I was talking about, Logic of Sense, was one of 2 of dissertations to the French academy. In other words, Rui had brought up a concern that I had, at times, thought about: if it was a like a dream or work of abstract art in which most of the meaning came out of the discourse that went on around it, how would it have passed the strict scrutiny of the French academy. And there are three things I would ask you to consider:
First of all, before Deleuze had presented his two dissertations, Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense, he had written several scholarly studies of various philosophers which included Bergson, Hume, and Kant. And this would have earned Deleuze a little leeway with the French academy: made them a little more tolerant towards the playful rock star style he was developing from the very beginning.
Secondly, as I said, having a familiarity with the French language and French culture would have given the academy better tools to appreciate what it was Deleuze was trying to do. And this puts some shine on the last point:
At the time, there was an emerging sense of the import of philosophical Play in French culture that can be traced to structuralism’s recognition of the arbitrary and precarious relationship of language with reality. This, in turn, was rooted in the French revolutionary tradition. In this sense, Deleuze and the post-structuralist and postmodern environment he was working in was an important evolutionary step in French culture –one it was best suited for or always working towards. The idea was, as I understand it, is that since there is always something about reality that transcends the language we use to describe it, there is no reason we shouldn’t play with language in the hope of stumbling into something relevant to reality. This goes to Alexandre’s point:
“This is especially ironic since Deleuze is driven in a large extent towards the English and American pragmatism, literature!!!”
Having been a fan of both Deleuze and Rorty, I have seen the overlap in that both seem to give privilege to creative discourse over any hope of finding some final truth. And this allows for the import of Play. Alexandre says:
“This is crazy. He is so un-french!!!”
I would add that he is a bit of a prankster as well. Take, for instance, his explanation of how to read him in an interview: multiply differences. Now what does that tell us? As far as I tell: something, but not very much. It was a performance like everything he wrote. And I would also note the beauty of his writing style, the amorphous and biological imagery (as compared to the music of the spheres (and the witty asides: dinner and conversation at the Rorty’s.
Still, there is the matter of what gets lost in translation:
“I don’t think it’s at all impossible to ‘understand’ Deleuze in English, or that the ‘original’ French is authoritative, especially if you really apply his own philosophy here to the meta- discussion…but Deleuze in English is perhaps a different Deleuze - yet no less valid. Check out Benjamin, The Task of the Translator, for instance.” –Boris
Or as Frost put it: poetry is what gets lost in translation. And I would argue that it is mainly poetry we are talking about when it comes to Deleuze. He asks us to feel (in our own creative way (what he is saying and work our way beyond it to the system he is offering: rigid or not. And I’m not sure he wants us to understand him as much as he wants us to bounce off of him in acts of social production: discourse. Alexandre says:
“I am Brazilian and I am sure that our readings here are a step behind those made in Paris.”
But I’m not sure that would be a problem to Deleuze. I would argue that his main genius laid in recognizing that everyone would come into what he was doing with their own set of psychological and cultural filters and create an infinite matrix of overlaps that would continue his legacy.
“Beliefs or non-beliefs don’t exist in an vacuum. They exist within and are connected to an extensive web of beliefs-- our worldview or ‘story’. So the likelihood of a belief being true is not simply a matter of evidence but of its coherence with lots of other beliefs we have come to rely on in living our world. Now we are committed to some beliefs much more than others–what Rorty calls our ‘deep vocabulary’. Ideas which challenge our deeply-held notions of how things are will be be strongly resisted because they threaten the foundation or structure of our story/worldview as a whole.”
First of all, Steven, Amen, brother!!! and Hallelujah!! You kind of get at the essence of the pragmatic approach here.
That said, bricolage being my primary mode of operation these days, I’m going to try to connect this with a point I wanted to make about Deleuze’s Logic of Sense and hopefully cap it off by connecting it with your point, maybe even highlight the connection I see between Rorty’s pragmatism and the process of Deleuze. Anyway:
“Alice and Through the Looking-Glass involve a category of very special things: events, pure events. When I say “Alice becomes larger,” I mean that she becomes larger than she was. By the same token, however, she becomes smaller than she is now. Certainly, she is not bigger and smaller at the same time. She is larger now; she was smaller before. But it is at the same moment that one becomes larger than one was and smaller than one becomes. This is the simultaneity of a becoming whose characteristic is to elude the present. Insofar as it eludes the present, becoming does not tolerate the separation or the distinction of before and after, or of past and future. It pertains to the essence of becoming to move and pull in both directions at once: Alice does not grow without shrinking, and vice versa. Good sense affirms that in all things there is a determinable sense or direction (sens); but paradox is the affirmation of both senses or directions at the same time. “ –Gilles Deleuze: Logic of Sense
One of the cool things about philosophy (as I’m sure you well know (is that everything can be right in front of your nose without your actually having fully articulated or, more importantly, assimilated it to the point of becoming a part of your natural being. You’re just going along collecting a lot of different things from a lot of different sources until one moment of reading brings it all together into what can be said to be an epiphany. And sometimes that epiphany can involve actually realizing that a lot of what is being said is actually included in the title. I had that experience with Sartre’s Being and Nothing when I realized the book was basically about the interaction between Being and Nothingness as well as Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition which is based on the metaphysical/analytic recognition that even a pure repetition must consist of different instances of the same thing.
This is where I’m at with the above. I now realize (or am actually feeling it (that what Deleuze is talking about is the Logic of Sense (how we initially encounter the world: our reality (which he describes as the passive synthesis in Difference and Repetition. And in that passive synthesis, nothing is fixed. We cannot even find a fixed point in time which we can truthfully call the present: perhaps the “deep vocabulary” that Rorty refers to. It isn’t until we move to the active synthesis that we get the point of capture: the illusion of real presence.
There is every reason to believe that it is the Logic of Sense (the paradox (becoming (that underwrites how we understand the world. But in our desire to control (our desire to fix (our understanding of the world has become a kind of overcoding. Perhaps even those epistemological systems believed to underwrite anything me might say about the world comes out of the conflict between the passive and active syntheses.
I could ask the question, do you know the truth for real? If so, then I doubt you’re into overcoding. Rather, I bet you like to keep things completely simple. :-"
we all would like to keep things as simple as we would like, but getting cluttered is oft a by-product.
Yes: that which overflows our overcodings: our territorializations.
In light of the internet, one can better appreciate the prophetic nature of Deleuze and Guattarri’s rhizomatic model (one I think fuses into Layotard’s (described in The Postmodern Condition (model: the matrix of communicative displacement (especially as concerns the relationships we tend to form on the boards. It’s like an endless forward flight of relationships formed and soon moved beyond. We connect and, with a kind of ease, move beyond the connection. Connect and forget as Deleuze implores us to do. And after a while of this kind of training, it becomes (perhaps frighteningly so (even easier. And this is because no matter who moves on themselves or what board we get rejected by, there is always somewhere else to go (someone else to interact with (another step forward in our individual process. And I know this sounds cold. But it is this coldness (almost psychopathic in nature (and that in which we are trained on the boards (that allows us to carry on with the sense of self worth needed to carry on.
It’s certainly changed me. When I first started on the boards and anyone attacked me, I retreated into my paranoid/fascist center, re-gathered, and attacked. This has gotten me kicked off of or suspended from many boards. But as I was discovering then, there was always somewhere else to go. Getting kicked off or suspended was little more than a speed-bump. “What was that?” Still, there was the problem of how I reacted: the guilt of having lost my cool. And it was the training of the boards (that is as they developed (that brought me to understand that I have no commitment to anyone whatsoever, not to mention someone I consider to be an asshole, and that the only real solution to such an asshole was to simply ignore them thereby making clear to them the one reality of the boards that they seem to forget: that there is nothing they have to say that is so important to us that we would put up with the disrespect and abuse to get it. Such people are clearly suffering from a pretention based on the fancy one might develop getting too deeply into and becoming a true believer of the TV series House.
But the boards have taught me to let go. Now it has come to a point where I will let an individual go simply because they threaten to turn it into a pissing contest. I just don’t need it. And this is my process! Now my training has brought me to point where I will shut someone out of MY PROCESS well before the point that they have become intolerable, but rather at the point I recognize that it is not a matter of whether they are an asshole, of whether it is THEIR entire fault or mine, but that we simply cannot get along. And FaceBook accommodates me in that when I block this individual they become lacunae, a nothingness, at the same time I become lacunae to them: a part of our individual forward flights that are no longer part of our individual forward flights.
I see the same dynamic at work with those I actually like –only less hostile. In that case, people just move on. And that coldness that the boards have trained me in tells me to just let go, that there is no reason to stalk them down and force them to be your friend forever. Once again:
Connect and forget
:the very motto of the rhizomatic model and manifesto. I mainly bring this up because I noticed today how this sensibility has bled into my real world life. I (a man who has his Einstein’s wardrobes (do the same thing every day –that is while the world around me changes constantly. People (pretty much like they do on the boards (come and go. I have come to a point where I forget their names if they have been gone too long.
This is because their names become buried in the vast rhizomatic network I have built for myself: forgotten words in an always evolving language. I love, but always love based on what furthers my process. I am always with you while clearly being alone.
The following are quotes from Deleuze’s book on Spinoza: Practical Philosophy.
“As Deleuze will say, we always start from the middle of things; thought has no beginning, just an outside to which it is connected.” –from Robert Hurley’s preface.
And I would say the same about any intro or preface to a book: it’s never the beginning; it is only the point at which the thinker began to record their thoughts in any possible kind of lasting way. As Deleuze, with Guatarri, pointed out in A Thousand Plateaus:
A book doesn’t reflect the world as much as form a rhizome with it.
And even here we see, in one of Deleuze’s early books, one of the primary themes (the rhizomatic approach (that provided a backbone to pretty much everything else Deleuze wrote after that. It tends to show up in all of Deleuze’s writings as well as writings about him. It could, in fact, be the main thing that anyone that only wanted to dabble in him needed to understand. But in order to truly understand it, one needs to understand the mechanistic model that Deleuze utilized (more for convenience than any final statement about the nature or existence of free will (as described by Hurley:
“Deleuze opens us to the idea (which I take as a contribution to ecological thought) the elements of the different individuals we compose may be nonhuman within us.”
The creative act (that which gives us the experience of free will (never being that far from the back of Deleuze’s mind, he encourages us to treat ourselves as nodal points in a vast rhizomatic network of discourse (much like the model provided in Layotard’s The Postmodern Condition: the earth as a ball drifting through space with individual ball bearings stuck to it, via gravity, clacking against each other in acts of displacement (so that we may participate in the communal creative act he considers himself to be a part of –that is as compared to the leader of it all with some kind of grand narrative.
And while those of a more neo-classicist sensibilty or who, embarrassed by the term “Postmodern” (that which is Passé (would either try to fix him in the post-structuralist category or argue that regardless of how most people take him, he is offering some kind of fixed meaning as his use of scientific and mathematical terms suggests , I would argue that to understand Deleuze is to understand the postmodern sensibility: which is always about participation as compared to control. This is why he works in the elusive style he does, to encourage us to read him in the same way we might a poem. Once again, Hurley:
“The fact is that Spinoza is difficult. And this book on Spinoza is difficult. But the situation is helped by the author’s word to the wise: one doesn’t have to follow every proposition, make every connection –the intuitive or affective reading may be more practical anyway. What if one accepted the invitation –come as you are- and read with a different attitude, which might be more like the way one attends to poetry.”
And if you think about it, the movement of philosophy has been one of moving from the control of Plato’s classicism to the postmodern emphasis on participation laid out by Deleuze.
You know that point in a philosophical process with a given philosopher and a given text where you’re starting to see (or feel (these vague connections that you’re not very confident about articulating? I had such an experience tonight with my study point in Deleuze’s book on Spinoza. In the 4 pages I got through, I filled my notebook with all kinds of points. And as Deleuze encourages me to do, I’m going to have to do a little (maybe a lot of (chancing and write at the edge of what I know (think: Difference and Repetition (and go randomly through the quotes –that is to see what happens and hope I manage to make some kind of sense:
“Adam does not understand the rule of the relation of his body with the fruit, so he interprets God’s word as a prohibition.”
And this refers to an earlier point:
“But because Adam is ignorant of causes, he thinks that God morally forbids him whereas God only reveals the natural consequence of ingesting the fruit. Spinoza is categorical on this point: all the phenomena that we group under the heading of Evil, illness, and death, are of this type: bad encounters, poisoning, intoxication, relational decomposition.”
Now I would note the connection with the joyful and sad effects described in Deleuze’s lecture on Spinoza (gold.ac.uk/media/deleuze_spinoza_affect.pdf) which is basically about power relationships. A joyful effect is one in which the individual is empowered while the sad effect is one in which the individual is disempowered. Easy enough to understand for anyone who has went through a shit phase. Such sad effects have even led to suicide.
But the more subtle point at hand is the distinction being made between Morality, which is social (even socially mandated (in nature and Ethics which is a study of the relationship between sad and joyful effects. In other words (and as I understand it, Spinoza’s book on Ethics makes the revolutionary step of moving beyond the socially mandated (morality (and into the study of how power relationships should best be arranged to maximize joyful effects (ethics: a kind of prelude to utilitarianism and even pragmatism if you think about it.
But even more interesting to me is how this anticipates Deleuze’s work with Guatarri and the notion of social or machinic production. Once again:
“Adam does not understand the rule of the relation of his body with the fruit, so he interprets God’s word as a prohibition.”
As has been often said of Deleuze’s earlier studies: one never knows where the philosopher he is studying ends and he begins. And here we see the larval beginnings of what he and Guatarri described in the Anti Oedipus: this sense of ourselves as nodal points in a vast system of exchange: the plane of immanence. This eventually led to the manifesto of conceptual play for the sake of the creation of concepts laid out in What is Philosophy. In this sense, he eventually comes to a prescription for the failure of Adam.
And don’t even get me started on the univocity of Being –at least not tonight.
Today’s meditative reading of Difference and Repetition (And I call it meditative because, at that point, I’m just reading the text from the beginning to end of a given section without worrying whether I’m getting it or not. I’m basically letting it flow through me just to see what happens. Compare this, for instance, to the study point I return to later and take my time to take notes: that which results in pretty much almost every post I make here.) brought back to me the moral element involved in repetition. One of the main oppositions (as I understand it (and that is among modern and postmodern thinkers (against representation is the overcoding of reality that it represents, often in the form of assuming something that can be perfectly repeated. We see this, for instance, in Kant’s Categorical Imperative. This, consequently, is the main motivation behind the post(modern gravitation towards the eternal elusiveness of difference: that which art specializes in as compared to science. And in that sense of it, we can see Difference and Repetition as Deleuze’s attempt to rescue Repetition (that is given its import to the creative process (from those who would turn it into a moral imperative.
That said (and I apologize for the clumsy segway (?: does anyone know how that word is actually spelled; I keep getting the finger wag from Word (allow me to connect this with the quote I offered yesterday:
“Finally, in this book it seemed to me that the powers of difference and repetition could be reached only by putting into question the traditional image of thought. By this I mean not only that we think according to a given method, but also that there is a more or less implicit, tacit or presupposed image of thought which determines our goals when we try to think. For example, we suppose that thought possesses a good nature, and the thinker a good will (naturally to ‘want’ the true); we take as model the process of recognition –in other words, a common sense or employment of all the faculties on a supposed same object; we designate error, nothing but error, as the enemy to be fought; and we suppose that the true concerns solutions –in other words, propositions capable as serving as answers. This is the classic image of thought, and as long as the critique has not been carried to the heart of that image it is difficult to conceive of thought as encompassing those problems which point beyond the propositional mode; or as involving encounters which escape all recognition; or as confronting its true enemies, which are quite different from thought; or as attaining that which tears thought from its natural torpor and notorious bad will, and forces us to think. A new image of thought -or rather, a liberation of thought from those images which imprison it: this is what I had already sought to discover in Proust. “–from Deleuze’s preface to the English version of Difference and Repetition
Only this time I want to focus on the first part:
“Finally, in this book it seemed to me that the powers of difference and repetition could be reached only by putting into question the traditional image of thought. By this I mean not only that we think according to a given method, but also that there is a more or less implicit, tacit or presupposed image of thought which determines our goals when we try to think. For example, we suppose that thought possesses a good nature, and the thinker a good will (naturally to ‘want’ the true); we take as model the process of recognition –in other words, a common sense or employment of all the faculties on a supposed same object; we designate error, nothing but error, as the enemy to be fought; and we suppose that the true concerns solutions –in other words, propositions capable as serving as answers.”
Now here, we (by which I mean “I” but tend to work and write better with the philosophical convention of “we” –excuse the arrogance or, rather, cockiness of it (can see the reference to overcoding that evolved into Deleuze’s (as well as Guatarri’s (sense of overcoding involved in the Anti-Oedipus, mainly as concerns the Oedipal Complex as described by Freud and possibly elaborated on by Lacan. And this resistance and rejection of overcoding seems to be an important theme throughout the process of Deleuze as well as post(modern thought: think, for instance, of Roland Barthes’ Mythologies. Deleuze didn’t work in a vacuum.
This was the import of the Image of Thought as well as Common sense which, as Deleuze describes it, involves a stimulation of all the faculties (sensibility, imagination, memory, and thought) in such a way that the subject is deluded into believing they have achieved some kind of final epiphany. And this is what comes from taking “the model of recognition”, the process described in the doctrine of the faculties, as the model of thought: as that by which we come to true knowledge.
And, once again, we return to the oblique and poetic approach Deleuze chooses (over straight denotation (as a kind of strange attractor towards that which even he can’t fully describe and invites us (like two people on Acid (to describe with him. Joe Hughes, in his reader guide to Difference and Repetition, describes Deleuze’s free indirect discourse as a kind of exchange with whatever great writer he has participated in an “engagement” with. But I, with all humility, would argue that he is also (if not equally (interested in his “engagement” with his reader.
He, like Rorty, is more interested in stimulating discourse in ways that most people are not interested or willing to do –that is as compared to controlling it: of overcoding- and sees that as the only way out of the mess we have created for ourselves.
“Like a painter, I start with the broad swashes: 3 points that have become central to how I understand Difference and Repetition at this point thus far:
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Joe Hughes’ point in his reader’s guide to the book: that it is primarily a critique of representation. It is here that I see a pragmatic overlap with Rorty, no matter what differences the two may have shared.
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(And this is where I risk going off the grid: the analytic/metaphysical understanding and core I have extracted from the book and secondary text:
a: even a pure repetition can only consist of different instances of the same thing
therefore b: the only thing that is ever repeated is difference.
And, finally, 3. The creative act is never that far from Deleuze’s mind.”
And in hindsight, I now realize there is yet a 4th point: that in terms of the analytic/metaphysical dyad of the two, Deleuze seeks to take the privilege given to repetition throughout our cultural history and give it to difference: a clearly postmodern move. And as I see it at this point, much of the book is a survey of the various strategies he has found to do exactly that.
But for today, I would like to focus on one he pursues in Chapter Three, “The Image of Thought”. In it, he seeks to undermine the notion of recognition (that which we do with the objects that occupy our space (as the basic model of thought. And it is a seductive image in that it seems to lie at the very foundation (especially in evolutionary terms (of the various things we can do with mind and brain. We assume, by studying this basic act, we can somehow find clues to the more complex activities of our minds such as philosophy. But if we really look at it, the act of recognition seems too automatic to account for the kinds of things that philosophy (along with the arts and sciences (try to do. Deleuze writes:
“On one hand, it is apparent that acts of recognition exist and occupy a large part of our daily life: this is a table, this is an apple, this the piece of wax, Good morning Theaetetus. But who can believe that the destiny of thought is at stake in these acts, and that when we recognize, we are thinking?”
And later:
“However, the criticism that must be addressed to this image of of thought is precisely that it has based its principle upon extrapolation from certain facts, particularly insignificant facts such as Recognition, everyday banality in person; as though thought should not seek its models among stranger and more compromising adventures.”
This is why he makes the distinction between the passive synthesis of sensibility, memory, imagination, and thought and (with the overlap of thought)that of the active synthesis: where we creatively create concepts and engage in philosophy.
And we see the folly of this misguided image of thought even today in scientism and Rand’s objectivism which talks a lot about facts (as if they were simple acts of recognition (then steps into conjecture while acting as if they were simple facts. Once again, it’s like saying:
“1+1=2; therefore Capitalism is only valid economic system on the face of the earth.”
Or:
“We can demonstrate and correlate mental activities with brain activity; therefore, all mental activity is little more than brain activity.”
It’s as if we are to be so impressed with the incontestable premise that we should automatically accept the conjecture of the conclusion. In other words, the image of thought that conflates thought with recognition leads to a common doxa (socially programmed responses to socially programmed cues (that those engaged in power discourses can use to shut down the discourses of others. We need only look at what facts can actually tell us in order to understand how erroneous the above jumps and conclusions actually are:
1+1=2
If I hold up a pencil and let it go, it will fall to the ground
And even a relativistic hippy knows better than to step in front of moving bus
Enough said. So how do we, as Deleuze asks, get from recognition (and simple facts like water, at atmospheric pressure, boils at 212 degrees (to the kind of things that philosophy concerns itself with? How else do we approach what philosophy is actually interested in (that which distinguishes it from science: that which can only be sensed as compared to known (but through literary and metaphorical methods?
I would first show the post of my German jam-mate, Harald, in its original form, then offer my translation of it. I do this because I fear when doing so, I’m prone to writing myself into it. So it seems only fair to post the original so that others can “write their selves” into it and offer a translation that may be better than mine.
“Perhaps Spinoza’s derivation of “abstraction” in its genius form,“universals” and “transcendentals” are “produced” by a capacity surpassing flood of images or sound is helpful. “The old thought more in images” -where poetry and narratives steem from. But in Spinpza, ther “more geometrco” method solves the very very very severe “being true”, aqdequate ideas problem !!”
“Perhaps Spinoza’s notion of “abstraction”, in a provocative and intriguing way , suggests that “universals” and “transcendent properties” are “produced” by a flood of images or sound [experience [is helpful. For instance, our primitive ancestors [not having the technology of language [thought primarily in images, which is where our propensity towards poetry and narratives stem from. But according to Spinoza, the “more geometrical” method serves the more necessarily methodical systematic process of seeking out what can be adequately demonstrated.”
Now what I am mainly working from here is the connection I see with Keats point concerning poetry: that it is the spontaneous overflow of emotions that comes from experience. And I would also note that Keats also said that poetry is the pick axe with which we penetrate the frozen sea of knowledge. And this, to me at least, now seems Deleuzian in spirit in that it recognizes that any act we can engage in order to get beyond ourselves (art, science, and philosophy (is a matter of accumulating experience to the point of that spontaneous overflow: what we experience as revelation. This is why Deleuze, in his A to Z interview, talks about the import of engagement: that which we experience in concentrated forms of experience such as a poem, a movie, or a book on science, philosophy, fiction, social commentary, etc., etc., etc… And we can see the pragmatic overlap (yet again (between Deleuze and Rorty in that both seek to facilitate this process by accelerating discourse for the sake of the kind of momentum and inertia required to get beyond the discourse at any given point. We get beyond ourselves (difference (by repeating ourselves (repetition.
That said, I want to tie this into a couple of points made by Deleuze in the preface to the English edition of Difference and Repetition:
“Every philosophy must achieve its own manner of speaking about the arts and sciences, as though it established alliances with them.”
I bitch a lot about scientism. But this pretty much describes where I stand as concerns the role of philosophy in relation to science and literature: that which lies in that no-man’s land between it. What I am mainly reacting to is scientism’s smug dismissal of all other approaches to understanding not just out of some selfish desire to justify my own role in it, but out a desire to see us advance as a species and perhaps even save ourselves. This is because I believe such smug dismissals (as I have been encouraged to believe by both Deleuze and Rorty (only act as blockages to the flows of energy required to create the momentum needed to get beyond ourselves, to reach that “spontaneous overflow” –such smug dismissals being more about one’s role in some petty power struggle encouraged by producer/consumer Capitalism. And we can see this blockage described in Deleuze’s further point:
"Finally, in this book it seemed to me that the powers of difference and repetition could be reached only by putting into question the traditional image of thought. By this I mean not only that we think according to a given method, but also that there is a more or less implicit, tacit or presupposed image of thought which determines our goals when we try to think. For example, we suppose that thought possesses a good nature, and the thinker a good will (naturally to ‘want’ the true); we take as a model the process of recognition -in other words, a common sense or employment of all the faculties on a supposed same object; we designate error, nothing but error, as the enemy to be fought; and we suppose that the true concerns solutions -in other words, propositions capable of serving as answers. "
And given the limited window I have here, I would like to focus on one part of this and get back to the rest tomorrow:
“….we designate error, nothing but error, as the enemy to be fought; and we suppose that the true concerns solutions -in other words, propositions capable of serving as answers.”
First of all, what we are looking at is the tyranny of functional. And, hopefully, I’ve committed myself to going deeper into this tomorrow.
But what is immediate to me here is a point made by Picasso: that taste is the enemy of art. Of course, he being an artist mainly concerned with images, he wasn’t one to define his terms. What he meant (as anyone who has engaged in the creative act knows (is that the creative act must always involve a sense of play. And play is hardly play under the scrutiny of a critic. And I think this is what Deleuze was getting at: that error (or the fear of it (is the enemy of thought.
I suppose one of the main appeals of Deleuze to me is that, when writing about him, I’m always writing at the edge of what I know: it’s always a dice throw that can take me places I’ve never been before. In this sense it’s always an act of experimentation or Play.
*
I would first add an inquiry made by xhightension appropriately titled Rhizome Meditation:
“Hey, I’ve been reading through your posts about Delueze. I have the book “Anti-Oedipus.”
How do you apply the the artistic flow, that you learn from Delueze or Derrida, and make it practical for daily life?
From what I remember from your posts, you said something along these lines: we believe in things like afterlives, higher powers and higher principles. The point from A to B is a given, so we should Play with our minds. Given that the results are an import of individual experiencing them, why would it matter who happened to be having the superior experience?
I don’t remember exactly where you said it or I would have quoted directly. “Finding the flow,” as you say, "because anything else is a block to the flow of energy.
?: isn’t that our main issues with analytics
Is there a mantra for Play, like some kind of meditation that joints one into the now? Or is it feeling or instinct that one coils into?”
I bring this into this rhizome because it shows a deep understanding of what I’m approaching with Deleuze as well as to illustrate its connection with today’s rhizome and as a segue to tomorrow’s more detailed and focused response to their points. As Deleuze encourages us: connect and forget. Anyway:
“He wants to show how real learning and teaching involve a search for signs and a creative experimentation with them that triggers learning as radical change in another or in oneself, as opposed to the concepts of learning by rote or acquiring knowledge of facts and procedures associated with correct moves on those facts. This explains the relation between critique and the search for conditions, followed by an experimental and creative work with signs. He criticizes learning through the repetition of the same, in order to clear the way for learning as the triggering of intensities. The only way we move towards a complete learning is by expressing the intensities locked up in a situation in a new way (How can I make the industrial revolution live for them?).” -Williams, James (2013-01-15). Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition: A Critical Introduction and Guide (p. 21). Edinburgh University Press. Kindle Edition.
Now I have spent a lot of time here working at the more superficial social/political level of Deleuze’s agenda. And I’m hoping, given William’s reasonably clear explanation of it early in the book, to drive deeper into the metaphysical/phenomenological aspects of it. (And I’m hoping my response to xhightension’s inquiry tomorrow will facilitate that.) But William’s quote allows me to tie up some loose ends before I do.
What we see in Deleuze’s point concerning learning is his general manifesto for how to live a life. We see in it a mandate to treat our intellectual and creative processes as experimentations that (via the dice roll (that can land us somewhere exciting at the risk of landing us somewhere less so. And I’m guessing that he would agree that the risk of landing us nowhere is minimal to the point of being irrelevant. Still, we have to consider William’s following point:
“An interesting paradox is worth pointing out at this point. It may be that forcing someone to repeat and learn by rote is the best way of setting down signs for a more intense learning.”
What Williams is pointing to here is the important role that repetitions can play in the intellectual and creative process: how we can embrace order for the sake of embracing chaos without succumbing to it. Think, for instance, of Einstein’s wardrobe. Deleuze, himself, describes 3 types of repetition: habit, memory, and creation. So isn’t it possible that the habits of Kant was more about how he managed the creative acts he did as compared to expressions of character limits to Kant’s philosophy that Deleuze and Nietzsche described them as?
I mean I, myself, am all over and excited by Deleuze’s manifesto. But that could prove less an endorsement and more of a vulnerability in that Deleuze’s critics could easily point to me and argue that Deleuze’s philosophy seems perfectly accommodated to my psychedelic/70’s addled mind as well as my middle aged propensity towards AADD.
Still (at least to me (it has value. At the same time, we have to recognize the value of repetition even if it is illusory. We have to recognize the value of the momentary stay against confusion (the aborescent as compared to the rhizomatic, if for nothing else, as a resting place. Once again: Deleuze’s agenda has the ability to excite, especially the creatively and intellectually curious. At the same time, you have to look at how unappealing it might be to people, today, who are feeling the pressures of constant change (becoming (under producer/consumer Capitalism. We have to ask how appealing Deleuze’s agenda could be to people who are already experiencing speed smear.