[D-G] more capitalist than the capitalists, more socialist than the socialists

Mon Feb 21 14:19:57 PST 2005

Nice, please check out 'The Way of All Flesh'. Butler brings the ethological
vision into direct focus as he aligns the force of the earth with the force
of choice and interpretation. The story is about five or six generations of
a pastoral English family, beginning in the 15C through to early 20C. The
elder male's name is always Ernest Pontifex. 'The Pontifex' as it comes to
be called, reflects on itself and the unchanging path of its trans-historic
life, in spite of the history of genetic and environmental factors. (Maybe
you shouldn't read it. It's kinda' repetitive...)

I think Harald asked me about Culture and why I think it's dangerous to
appoint 'all' to its dicta? This is a short answer and in some manner
includes my idea about technology over which we may or may not agree.

"It is widely felt that these words of psychiatry and psycho-analysis
somehow fail to express what one 'really means'. But it is a form of
self-deception to suppose that one can say one thing and think another.
     It will be convenient, therefore, to start by looking at some of the
words in use. The thought is the language, as Wittgenstein has put it. A
technical vocabulary is merely a language within a language. A consideration
of this technical vocabulary will be at the same time an attempt to discover
the reality which the words disclose or conceal." (19 'The Divided Self',
R.D. Laing)

Sincerity of utterance isn't compromised by gizmos, which is what I think
you mean, Harald, by 'technology'. When I think of technology it's in
perhaps a special sense - I think of the machine which is a model for human
organization, lovingly parodied by Kafka. In short technology is the bureau,
neither organic in the sense that it proceeds by continuity or mechanical in
its contiguity, but the heterodyning of each such that a binary system may
be produced but no single agent is essential to its procedure. In a real
bureaucracy there is no boss, her office is 'as much at the end of the hall
as it is on the top of the ladder'.

A gizmo's ecstasy is produced by the how it effects to produce
instantaneity, 'it does not partake of phenomenality', is how I think TJ
Clark puts it, he may have been quoting de Man. This ecstasy of the gizmo
can only mimic the effect of a group-decision which disembodies language,
empties it into an apparatus of signs. Gizmos certainly do help affect the
tyranny of bureau-technology, 'the psychiatrist rebelled when I pulled out a
tape-recorder for our session.' 

Speaking of mimicry, has anyone read about Povinelli's experiments with
apes? Apparently the same bundle of neurons that fire when an object is
recognized also fire when that object is desired. Apparently s/r chains
doesn't fracture into modes.

When we make Culture the miracle from which reality flows we lose the
language for the words, metaphors for signs. No one is denying that signs
are becoming immaterial, it's metaphors that have body.

Stopping for my tea,
Chris .

-----Original Message-----
From: deleuze-guattari-driftline.org-bounces at lists.driftline.org
[mailto:deleuze-guattari-driftline.org-bounces at lists.driftline.org] On
Behalf Of Sylvie Ruelle
Sent: Monday, February 21, 2005 11:33 AM
To: deleuze-guattari-driftline.org at lists.driftline.org
Subject: Re: [D-G] Things said and things unsaid

When I see people being for example "anti-bush" i say ok, he stands for 
something they do not like... but what do they like?
the mass media is exhausted and one is no longer to get any ideas from 
it anymore. (excuse me if i am wrong in any way in what i am trying to 
say, being "american")
so one does a "corretage" (sp?) and goes to the archives and books... 
thus one might read deleuze and guattari (economic thinking... 
capitalism and schizophrenia).

what you say here reminds me very much of a book i read a long time ago 
called "Erewhon" by Samuel Butler... where the machines take over in 
the future.
What is scary is all these people not being ever able to catch up in 
anyway financially (Kafka images).  I am originally from Los Angeles 
and it is very clear there that more and more and more people are going 
into poverty because of many complicated factors.  There simply are 
exhausted physically, the wages do not pay the bills, the city is 
terribly overcrowded, and the jobs are not enough, and to top it off 
everyone "migrates" there... so from your ideas I sort of see a race 
going on with different areas of the world competing for the upper hand 
financially and the key being in technology... But what kind of 
technology?  and i think it was said a higher technology...  better 
technology.

It is scary to think of the world as forces, regardless of human 
beings.  For the earth does not know what it is, i think someone said 
(D+G?)... for it is alive.

On Feb 21, 2005, at 11:05 AM, Dr. Harald Wenk wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I think that is a very good objection.
> The main thing that has changed, thatr it is no longer crucial to be
> "anti". The generation of 68 wasinst the establishment and suppression 
> in any form.
> My generation, which is more that of 78, tried a little to build up
> some alternative ways of living, substituting families by communities,
> non autorative education and non-hirarchical organisation of work.
> This has led to a own left wing scene, with the obstacle that it was 
> apart
> from the majority of normal people. Thes people were also interested
> in overcoming the difficulties of family life and hirarchic work.
> But as the left liked to critize the things in such a way that only a
> change of system, e.g. the destroying of capitalism, is able to bring 
> freedom,
> the communication, in a emphazic sense, broke down.
> Especially the attitude of making the majority feling guilty as  their 
> wealth
> was said to relay on the explotation of the third and fourth world, 
> has been
> deseastrous in this respect.
> If you look, the main profit in the western countries
> is earned with indusrtrial and postindustrial (media, software) goods.
> So  think this economically utterly nonsense, the wealth is a effect 
> of higher
> productitvity based on higher technology.
> If anyone remembers, the original critic of Marx goes, that capitalism
> is a bondage for productivity. This is indeed the case, but the critic 
> was
> often, that the development of technology goes too fast.
> I dont if you imagine what kind of freedom, first of work,
> automatization brings.
> I my eyes, and also in the eyes of the economy, a lot of paid work 
> today is more or less
> superflous. Now as people need income, we got a problem of
> unemployment, which is a expression of wealth.
> Now this wealth goes in zthe totally wrong direction,
> as it sharpens the concurrence among the people, who want to be 
> employed.
> This is also thge case for very educated people.
> It is a effect of technological pprogress, that more and more
> qulified work becomes superflous.
> Another effect of the high productivity is that human work is
> exorbitant expensive compared with industrial produced goods.
> So there is a strong urge to avoid it as a cost factor.
>
> In short, the economical "empire of freedom" has grown,
> but most people do not participate adequately.
>
> In this situation it is in my eyes necessary to develop
> a economical thinking, especially concerning the distribution
> of money, which on one hand encourages technological
> develpopment and on the other hand let a lot of people profit of
> the spare time gained by the higher productivity of the machines.
>
> Thats economics.
>
> On the other hand i don't see what cultural interest
> are for the majority, to suppress something cultural worhwhile.
>
> The poorness of mass media is mainly due to the exhaustion of the 
> public,
> having no real time and habit to think about things and develop goood 
> habits.
>
> In short, thinking in suppression is not the main thing anymore, 
> perhaps it is time again
> to think of solutions for the majority, incliding oneselft, of people.
>
>
> Concerning the undevelopped countrys, it is necessary, as tghe 
> industroal take off got a new phase,
> to do this with high tech, by mas production not so expensive, which 
> is ecological effectiv.
>
>
> Harald Wenk
>
>
> Am Mon, 21 Feb 2005 09:08:39 -0800 schrieb sid littlefield 
> <falsedeity at lycos.com>:
>
>> To clear some confusion and ask another question:
>>
>> My original post, that started a bit action, was not a condemnation 
>> of all poetry or creative posts to this list, nor was it an attempt 
>> to maintain the "original identity" of this list. It was a particular 
>> reaction to "bad poetry." The fact that it has gotten such a response 
>> from certain members (some even calling for my removal) strikes me as 
>> strange since I did not mention a specific entity that should 
>> question their own posts.  This unconscious reaction seems to me to 
>> verify my original post. So now that that is cleared up, I have this 
>> question:
>>
>> For a poilitics of the left to not only continue to exist (which it 
>> seems to barely be doing at this point) but became viable once again 
>> it seems that we should re-think the conditions that we find 
>> ourselves within today, and how these conditions differ significantly 
>> from the time of the 60's, a time when most of the philosophers that 
>> we are drawn to are writing and/or beginning to formulate a thought, 
>> or series of thoughts. Is idenity, the signifying language system, 
>> and so one, truly what (to use a sort of out of fashion term) 
>> oppresses us and, more importantly, the third-, forth- world? I am 
>> thinking of this in terms of D & G's use of and understanding of 
>> Marx.  Can we not understand Capital today, at the beginning of the 
>> 21st century, as already opperating on a level of 
>> non-identity/a-signification? Yes, capital must always 
>> reterritorialize (the revolution of the means of production feeds the 
>> desire that capitalism has promised to fulfill) but what if it no 
>> longer opperates under the signs of identity?
>>
>> So this is my question:
>> What has changed since the May '68 in terms of our conditions for 
>> political thought and action?
>>
>> sid
>>
>> "Speed is the elegance of thought, which mocks stupidity, heavy and 
>> slow. Intellegence thinks and says the unexpected; it moves with the 
>> fly.  A fool is defined by predictability."   Michel Serres
>
>
>
> -- 
> Erstellt mit Operas revolutionärem E-Mail-Modul: 
> http://www.opera.com/m2/
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
Ms. Sylvie Ruelle
http://home.earthlink.net/~sylvieruelle
rw_artette_lc at yahoo.com

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