it is true, as Melissa wrote, that an appeal to 'everybody knows', or
common sense, expresses a will to represent;however, such appeals are
not ideological--they are expressions of force. for d&g appeals to
ideology are appeals to the negative. appeals to metaphor as the silppage
from sign to sign or signifier to signifier are appeals to the negative
too. they are modes of subjectification that rely on negative
deterritorialization. See ATP, pp. 135-48. i think D&G doubtless relate
ideology to this negative movement. positive deterritorialization, on the
other hand, is "identical with the earth itself." again, i will say tht
d&g refuse ideology because it separates 'thought' from force, signs from
earth, virtual content from actualized expression. on p. 145 d&g write
that "the abstract machine coexists in what we calll the machinic
assemblage." not unlike the virtual's coexistence with the actual. the
virtual is not the negative but the real; it is not an ideological
mechanism but a positive force, a plane of consistency, a potential
dynamism. deterritorialization remains negative when the reflux of the
virutal in the actual, of content into expression, is codified along
the lines (of flight) of metaphor--sign referring to sign and not the
desire that constitutes it. the primal scream resounds but the semiotician
tells us that the earth is not expressing itself but rather that a sign
must mean something. and it must do so by cutting itself off from the
reciprocal determination of its own content (virtuality-energy-desire),
by denying itself the plane of consistency (BwO), and refer only to other
expressions. therefore deterritoralization becomes positve when content
is exerted back into expression and content and expression (the virtual
and the actual) combine and form a mahcine of double articulation.
chris
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