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

Sylvie Ruelle sylvieruelle at earthlink.net
Mon Feb 21 15:55:56 PST 2005


or as the stoics have said "you say a carriage and a carriage has come 
out of your mouth"
in Emile Brehier's "history of philosophy"

On Feb 21, 2005, at 2:19 PM, Chris Chapman wrote:

> 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 .
>
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> -----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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>
Ms. Sylvie Ruelle
http://home.earthlink.net/~sylvieruelle
rw_artette_lc at yahoo.com




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