[D-G] deleuze and benjamin on violence

[andw at riseup.net]

> the subject is
> still the same even if it is not right now,

In a context such as this (a listserve), where time is an ever-present
aspect of our inter-changes and dialogues, the production of knowledge
(that is to say, how we engage in interperting "the subject" per post and
in a kind of continuity) does in fact shift and change "the subject" at
hand, in so far as we on this list are engaged in the discussion. Or we
are engaged in a virtual silence -- which is absurd and in a certain sense
an impossibility.  Things are produced here.  Maybe only symptoms, I am
not really sure. But nonetheless, there is more hope then accumulation at
play.

A thread is developed wherein it is dreamed, no I would say that a
listserve (as a "territory" if you like, or better as a real term in
language) *depends* on fairly clear communication in the pursuit of actual
knowledge and thought. A glossary or as you say mathematics of items skips
too fast, very often, as much as it may be poetic, and I would further
suggest plays far too closely to some of the poorer dimensions of the
world of the internet: a  tendency to place the role of index-marking as
above or even worse, the same as knowledge, insight, illumination, etc.

>
> Have you read Delezue's book on Neitsche?

Yes.


> From what I can tell it is very odd, describing imaginary
> readings and such things.

I don't recall any hallucinations in it. I found it one of the more
straight-forward of Deleuze's texts.  The concluding section on the
Eternal Return is not all that clear to me, but the rest is pretty easy
reading, really. In it, he releases the possibilities of Nietzche's joy.


> http://www.usc.edu/~douglast/review/deleuze.html

this isn't writtten very well.

one 'nutshell' to ponder is this: "Genealogy is thus the analysis of Will
to Power, the differential element, by means of interpretation of the
conformation of forces which are symptomatic of it. The progression, in
other words, is from symptom (or sign) to force to the differential
element (Will to Power)"

it becomes something of a circle really. Nonetheless, there is also a kind
of spurring on towards meaning (even if provisional), which this text
doesn't quite identify very well, imo.

The latter section on Nietzche and his interest in artists is not really
very close to how Deleuze was focusing on Nietzche. Nietzche in his later
work saw art and science as along vitally similar paths, if they meant
anything to 'our' times at all (lest they were engaged in hatred for the
world, i.e. anti-science mysticsm au currant in his day). Both engaged in
imagining the world, towards a kind of modernity of post-God crystal
clarity in a space of will to power (I am using will to power in the sense
of forces -- from micro to macro, natural, artificial, etc.).

-A