Tomorrow, I turn to Rawl’s Laws of the Peoples. But as I end this really productive immersion (or what I realized, on the way home from the “library”, is the equivalent of a buggering meant to produce some monstrous offspring (and I publically apologize to the professor for such a violation (and give the good Deleuzians a well deserved break, I would like to shove in as many final points as I can into the small window of this rhizome as I can.
“What’s needed is an analysis that shows how desire and interest can travel in different and conflicting directions.” – pg. 131
I would humbly offer a model that I believe to be perfectly compatible with schizoanalysis and the concept of desiring production. I would suggest that we look at the process of evolution in a kind of Bergsonian way. We start with simple cells that eventually evolve decentralized nervous systems. But as those cells evolve into more complex organisms, those nervous systems start to conflate into central nervous systems that eventually bud into a simple base of the brain that flower into our more cognitive systems. Parallel to this process is a relationship to the environment that starts out completely self centered (the competitive) then, as the organisms grow more complex, adapts by forming alliances with other organisms like itself. In other words, the process has been one of starting with the internal (the competitive) and working its way outward: the cooperative.
Of course, the competitive, having genealogically been the origin, has pretty much dominated our evolutionary process up until now with the cooperative catching up as an evolutionary adaption which is what evolution is, after all, ultimately about. And we have to admit that the competitive model (via capitalism (in which our baser impulses put the higher cognitive functions in their service (is what has gotten us to this point thus far. At the same time, facing our self destruction through manmade climate change or our enslavement through global Capitalism, we can now see the cooperative mode (in which our baser impulses see it in their interest to act in tandem with our higher cognitive functions (as the next evolutionary step we have to make in order to survive as a species.
What we are dealing with as concerns Frank’s book and the move to the right in general is a kind of evolutionary backlash: those who are still stuck in the competitive mode. And it is the dynamic of baser impulses using their higher cognitive functions for their purposes and interests that explains the clearly a-rational tactics that they tend to use.
And to finish with what is the central thesis of D & G’s book (I couldn’t walk away without doing so : if someone doesn’t get how the Oedipus complex has become a kind of overcoding (a form of oppression and outright fascism (just watch Dr. Phil for a few moments. Here we have the perfect expression of Ego psychology (which Lacan was opposed to and I assume Guatarri as well: this notion that most psychological maladies are the product of a fractured ego that can be put back together if the subject just make peace with the father figure (the psychoanalyst: the One suppose to know (and return to the symbolic order. And we see it all over Dr. Phil who, as nice as he seems, is little more than a candy-coated tyrant (fascism at its finest and an agent of normalization (who picks out the most desperate among us (the straw men (so that he can establish his authority and reorganize our egos in ways that are more beneficial to the status quo and powers that be.