Hello.
Let me say thank you to all for sharing your ideas, and especially for access
to the uploaded articles.
Let me say that I am an ex-Deleuzian of sorts. That is I have become
increasingly critical of D&G's work and the necessity to read it to surpass
their work, even in order to complete their project. To begin, I understand
the Schitzophrenia and Capitalism project as being one that attempts first to
demand, then to construct an alternate negotiation of the symbolic or entry
into the symbolic. This I believe is exactly what is necessary both from the
position of psychoanalysis and Marxism. I find however that MP makes certain
jumps which are either essentially reactive, about returning to a form of
immediacy in communication which has a reactive characteristics. By
simplifying rather than complicating the symbolic they valorize the
pre-oedipal rather than actually imagining a truly post-oedipal construction
of the symbolic. As such, I find myself in what I believe is the less popular
position of placing more emphasis on AOE's critique than MP's strategies.
This does not mean I place critique ahead of strategy, negotiation and
practice, it just means, in looking at D&G's work that is where the real
strength lies.
Maskitt asks whether the rhizomatic is outside of metaphysics. Well, I
believe that the rhizome is intended to be outside of metaphysics, I also
believe it is not. In fact the questions as they are constructed in MP are
quite often around questions of space etc. which frame them around
traditionally metaphysical concerns. This is another level on which they
attempt to remove themselves from the symbolic. I have found that the account
in Lefebvre's *Production of Space* are much more satisfactory in negotiating
the relation between space, which is usually seen as presymbolic, and its
real political condition as a repressed symbolic order. That is to say that,
space, like the unconscious, is as Lacan says structured by language. It is
not outside the symbolic, it is politically repressed within it. By imagining
structures they remove actions, even historically subjected actions from
these structures.
On the other hand, I think there is a real step forward in a position,
developed in both OEE and MP, the slogan. In this, I find unlike the
contemplative aspects of MP, a reorganization off the symbolic which advances
the understanding of political action in relation to meaning. In this way
they develop ideas that are latent in Marx's work that needed development,
especially in relation to the the blockages in Lacan and Althusser around the
relation between ideology and practice. I would be interested in knowing if
any of you have knowledge of D&G's access to Voloshinov/Bakhtin. In a
collection of Kristeva's writings, the editor, Toril Moi, I believe, notes
that she brought with her a lot of these writings to Paris in the late
sixties (I don't know how literally she means this either... knowledge or
*manuscripts*). I find a real parallell in V/B's work on ideology and
subjectivity to certain sections ofOEOE. Also, worth noting, thhe slogan and
the swarm in Kristen Ross' *Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and The Paris
Commune*, (which she attributes to D&G). To those looking for actual slogans,
I recommend *Writing on the Wall* ed. Fisera. Anyone thought of this work in
relation to the Situationist International? Not so much Society of the
Spectacle as Debord's writings on practice or Vaniegem's *Revolution of
Everydaylife* which is a particularly example of a text as practice. In fact,
I would like to add that this is so particualrly in the identification of a
specific audience (jeune generations). While I am sympathetic to the idea
espoused in "Intellectuals and Power", I have found, as a cultural
practitioner, it amaziningly difficult to bridge the gap between theory and
practice *in practice*.
Nietzsche notes that we will not destroy god without destroying grammar. The
slogan is the form in which desire is shown to preceed the subject and the
object. DO IT! This, not it's position within power, especially a position of
unquestionability, is its usefulness. One might ask, in the association
between the slogan as it is turned into a form of interpellation, a "hey
you!". The slogan (qua imperative without subject) in the hands of power is
obviously a tool of producing and stabilizing subjectivity, of internalizing,
inter-pellating power in the form of guilt in order to produce a disciplined
subject. (YOU) DO IT- you even fill in the blank, you know who I mean *little
man*.
Currently, one of the issues I am trying to work through is the relation of
some of these issues to questions of gender. I am especially concerned with
certain problems with Kaja Silverman's account of pleasure and masochism (I'm
critical of Deleuze's account as well... but that's another issue, as I read
Deleuze in terms of literature, not psychoanalysis.) and the possibility of
reading in Freud esp. 3essays on sexuality a positive form of somatic
pleasure which can replace pleasures through identification. You run into the
same problem as D&G though in valorizing the Pc. Judith Butler's recent work
has also started to develop, on the basis of desire and pleasure, strategies
around the het/capitalist forms of the symbolic.
Sorry if I've jumped around a lot, or talked more about D&G in relation to..
as opposed to questions internal to D&G. Before anyone else has the
opportunity, let me analyse my method, as one of partializing, collaging,
layering, of complicating the symbolic order, and rupturing its wholeness.
This I think is different from actual rhizomatic development (qua natural
flows escaping order and canalizing).
Seamus Malone.
------------------
Let me say thank you to all for sharing your ideas, and especially for access
to the uploaded articles.
Let me say that I am an ex-Deleuzian of sorts. That is I have become
increasingly critical of D&G's work and the necessity to read it to surpass
their work, even in order to complete their project. To begin, I understand
the Schitzophrenia and Capitalism project as being one that attempts first to
demand, then to construct an alternate negotiation of the symbolic or entry
into the symbolic. This I believe is exactly what is necessary both from the
position of psychoanalysis and Marxism. I find however that MP makes certain
jumps which are either essentially reactive, about returning to a form of
immediacy in communication which has a reactive characteristics. By
simplifying rather than complicating the symbolic they valorize the
pre-oedipal rather than actually imagining a truly post-oedipal construction
of the symbolic. As such, I find myself in what I believe is the less popular
position of placing more emphasis on AOE's critique than MP's strategies.
This does not mean I place critique ahead of strategy, negotiation and
practice, it just means, in looking at D&G's work that is where the real
strength lies.
Maskitt asks whether the rhizomatic is outside of metaphysics. Well, I
believe that the rhizome is intended to be outside of metaphysics, I also
believe it is not. In fact the questions as they are constructed in MP are
quite often around questions of space etc. which frame them around
traditionally metaphysical concerns. This is another level on which they
attempt to remove themselves from the symbolic. I have found that the account
in Lefebvre's *Production of Space* are much more satisfactory in negotiating
the relation between space, which is usually seen as presymbolic, and its
real political condition as a repressed symbolic order. That is to say that,
space, like the unconscious, is as Lacan says structured by language. It is
not outside the symbolic, it is politically repressed within it. By imagining
structures they remove actions, even historically subjected actions from
these structures.
On the other hand, I think there is a real step forward in a position,
developed in both OEE and MP, the slogan. In this, I find unlike the
contemplative aspects of MP, a reorganization off the symbolic which advances
the understanding of political action in relation to meaning. In this way
they develop ideas that are latent in Marx's work that needed development,
especially in relation to the the blockages in Lacan and Althusser around the
relation between ideology and practice. I would be interested in knowing if
any of you have knowledge of D&G's access to Voloshinov/Bakhtin. In a
collection of Kristeva's writings, the editor, Toril Moi, I believe, notes
that she brought with her a lot of these writings to Paris in the late
sixties (I don't know how literally she means this either... knowledge or
*manuscripts*). I find a real parallell in V/B's work on ideology and
subjectivity to certain sections ofOEOE. Also, worth noting, thhe slogan and
the swarm in Kristen Ross' *Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and The Paris
Commune*, (which she attributes to D&G). To those looking for actual slogans,
I recommend *Writing on the Wall* ed. Fisera. Anyone thought of this work in
relation to the Situationist International? Not so much Society of the
Spectacle as Debord's writings on practice or Vaniegem's *Revolution of
Everydaylife* which is a particularly example of a text as practice. In fact,
I would like to add that this is so particualrly in the identification of a
specific audience (jeune generations). While I am sympathetic to the idea
espoused in "Intellectuals and Power", I have found, as a cultural
practitioner, it amaziningly difficult to bridge the gap between theory and
practice *in practice*.
Nietzsche notes that we will not destroy god without destroying grammar. The
slogan is the form in which desire is shown to preceed the subject and the
object. DO IT! This, not it's position within power, especially a position of
unquestionability, is its usefulness. One might ask, in the association
between the slogan as it is turned into a form of interpellation, a "hey
you!". The slogan (qua imperative without subject) in the hands of power is
obviously a tool of producing and stabilizing subjectivity, of internalizing,
inter-pellating power in the form of guilt in order to produce a disciplined
subject. (YOU) DO IT- you even fill in the blank, you know who I mean *little
man*.
Currently, one of the issues I am trying to work through is the relation of
some of these issues to questions of gender. I am especially concerned with
certain problems with Kaja Silverman's account of pleasure and masochism (I'm
critical of Deleuze's account as well... but that's another issue, as I read
Deleuze in terms of literature, not psychoanalysis.) and the possibility of
reading in Freud esp. 3essays on sexuality a positive form of somatic
pleasure which can replace pleasures through identification. You run into the
same problem as D&G though in valorizing the Pc. Judith Butler's recent work
has also started to develop, on the basis of desire and pleasure, strategies
around the het/capitalist forms of the symbolic.
Sorry if I've jumped around a lot, or talked more about D&G in relation to..
as opposed to questions internal to D&G. Before anyone else has the
opportunity, let me analyse my method, as one of partializing, collaging,
layering, of complicating the symbolic order, and rupturing its wholeness.
This I think is different from actual rhizomatic development (qua natural
flows escaping order and canalizing).
Seamus Malone.
------------------