deleuze (and guattari)

was your argument on that thread the above or was it the following: "God what a facking Nazi. The 'herd' quite clearly means the proletariat. The fact that Hitler liked a ridiculous strawman version of him makes him in an intrinsically right-wing thinker, meaning anything he says is totally worthless and untrue, and anyone on the left who draws from him will be corrupted, which is why I refuse to read him." If you're going to play the everything's political game can I say that you're version of him puts you in the same corner as right-wing assholes who'd prefer not to think twice about the Enlightenment such as Conor Cruise O'Brien. The Nazi Nietzsche was a good example of divorcing the texts from the context they were written in

a) obviously we can refuse this challenge (if it exists at all -- did these 'major philosophers' state this anywhere to hand?) b) in practice phooey, you will never get inside the head of someone living 150 years ago. the doctrine is as stale as its conception.

a)they do state it in that they spend a lot of time polemicising against received ideas, call you to 'saper audis', state that they are attempting to 'think Being', and so forth. you can refuse it, but don't expect to be taken seriously if you do.

b) you're an idiot.

i made it through only about 1/2 of 'a thousand plateaus' but i did read 'anti-oedipus' and while i would never say that i fully comprehend the book, i did come away with a slightly different idea than the one above. at times i recall feeling that they were actually 'pro-capitalism' in the book. i really can't elaborate as it's been so long since i read it. as to the last part about schizoids being the saner ones, i'm pretty sure i've read interviews where deleuze points that out as a common misinterpretation of their work, that in fact they were not trying to romanticize the schizophrenic.

F: "was your argument on that thread the above or was it the following: 'God what a facking Nazi. The 'herd' quite clearly means the proletariat. The fact that Hitler liked a ridiculous strawman version of him makes him in an intrinsically right-wing thinker, meaning anything he says is totally worthless and untrue, and anyone on the left who draws from him will be corrupted, which is why I refuse to read him.'"

there isn't a massive contradiction there, i don't think. i didn't say that FN advocated all aspects of nazism like genocide or europe-wide war (he was, of course, a notable pacifist, cough). what i did say was that his mobilisation of concepts like 'the herd' and the ultra-lame 'resentment' are abhorrent or useless or both as categories. even today 'resentment' is used in entirely elitist ways to discredit legitimate complaints (cf a thousand post-structuralist bloggers). and also that his anti-historical ideas *did* feed into the far right 'German Ideology', so to speak, of the age, culminating in the 1920s with the avowedly anti-progress ideas which circulated in the german bourgeoisie, wherein anti-collectivism meant a total, national failure to confront nazism, even where there wasn't actual active support.

i'm unqualified to judge how inaccurate hitler's version of nietzsche was -- why it is more ridiculous than derrida's, for example? other than arguing from the text, ie privileging *your own* version of FN, which isn't really in the spirit of the thing, i don't know.

i'm not going all out for morley/green type victorian silliness as regards historical progress, but with progress went process in nietzsche, and it's that anti-historicism that i find most problematic (ie it's that which has been picked up by later writers, more than the obviously elitist philosopher/warrior stuff).

but anyway in the same way that i am interested in the uses of nietzsche more than nietzsche in himself, that's then kind of interest i have in deleuze for now. that's perfectly legit, so didn;t deserve such aggressive... ressentiment.

i'm not so sure about them not being anti-capitalist. they argue from a pretty intense marxian perspective, i think. one of their main points against freud is that he was something of a capitalist dupe, who restrained himself from advancing toward the real (d&g's real, natch) in favor of butressing bourgeois family values. i think they appreciate capitalism only insofar as its rapid development portends its demise. they're cheering the car as it drives toward the cliff.

but i'm not remotely an expert on these guys, either, amon. and as i'm sure you know, they're funny, slippery dudes, hard to get an absolute read on (much less in translation). if someone could set me straight, that would be beautiful. but i'm still pretty sure they're marxists.

he is an elitist, but it doesn't mean that he holds the 'dodgy views' you're attributing him; they fit a lot more easily with the stuff he hated: in Plato the belief was that most people are incapable of being smart enough to know how the behave, what's best for them, and how to govern themselves, while in Christianity you have all that stuff about the shepherd leading his flock. he does not think he knows what's best for humanity, he just doesn't care about most other people

there is no 'philosopher/warrior' stuff in there.

you didn't say the certain concepts of his could lend themselves to fascism, what you said was that he was 'on the whole, without being too fine about it, a proto-fascist' as if that's the inevitable outcome of his thought. do you really think someone like Adorno, who spent most of his career critiquing all the parts of German culture that fed into Nazism, would have drawn on him as heavily as he did if he thought there was some intrinsic link between the two. Nietzsche hated the comfortable militaristic bourgeois culture that sprung up in the wake of the Franco-Prussian war, thought nationalism was stupid, and he broke with Wagner coz of his anti-Semitism, and because he saw all the pompous mystical New Agey stuff in there, which the Nazis went for, as a symptom of the decadence he was lamenting.

i think you might be a bit confused about what his 'anti-historical ideas' consist of. he was totally apathetic towards the wider historical picture. he was not the only one to believe that: are you saying a nice guy like Kierkegaard is a proto-fascist as well? the reason a lot of left-wing folx don't go for him is not because he is condoning the nastier parts of life as in-and-of-themselves good, he is resigning himself to them; he is a fatalist. (which is why Adorno and Camus and so forth liked him)

'ressentiment' refers to reactive thinking, turning the status quo on its head instead of moving beyond it. i don't think he would side with a political movement based on a desire for the revenge of the German people on all others. although he wouldn't side with any political movement at all coz he saw politics as totally trivial and impotent

i hope you aknowledge that the uses of nietzsche are not nietzsche himself: the fact that a philosophy could be used by asshole x or dickhead y does not mean it should be off-limits to cool person z. i mean, some supply-side economists think Marx is cool.

can i note as well that in English-speaking countries 'Nietzsche' more often than not means Kaufmann's or Nehamas's, where his main concerns are seen to be: human psychology, destroying anything remotely like religion, and art

i've been agressive; but you've been competing to be the Marxist A Nairn

Oedipus at last: in the end it is a very simple operation, one that indeed readily lends itself to formalization, although it involves universal history. We have seen in what sense schizophrenia was the absolute limit of every society, inasmuch as it sets in motion decoded and deterritorialized flows that it restores to desiring-production, “at the bounds of all” of all social production. And capitalism, the relative limit of every society, inasmuch as it axiomatizes the decoded flows and reterritorializes the deterritorialized flows. We have also seen that capitalism finds in schizophrenia its own exterior limit, which it is continually repelling and exorcising, while capitalism itself produces its immanent limits, which it never ceases to displace and enlarge. But capitalism still needs a displaced interior limit in another way: precisely in order to neutralize or repel the absolute exterior limit, the schizophrenic limit; it needs to internalize this limit, this time by restricting it, by causing it to pass no longer between social production and the desiring-production that breaks away from social production, but inside social production, between the form of social reproduction and the form of a familial reproduction to which social production is reduced, between the social aggregate and the private subaggregate to which the social aggregate is applied.
Oedipus is this displaced or internalized limit where desire lets itself be caught. The Oedipal triangle is the personal and private territoriality that corresponds to all of capitalism’s efforts at social reterritorialization. Oedipus was always the displaced limit for every social formation, since it is the displaced represented of desire. But in the primitive formations this limit remains vacant, precisely insofar as the flows are coded and as the interplay of alliances and filiations keeps families extended according to the scale of the determinations of the social field, preventing any secondary reduction of the latter to the former. In the despotic formations the Oedipal limit is occupied, symbolically occupied but not lived or inhabited, inasmuch as the imperial incest effects an overcoding that in turn surveys the entire social field from above (the repressing representation); the formal operations of flattening, extrapolation, and so on, that later belong to Oedipus, are already sketched out, but within a symbolic space where the object from on high is formed. It is only in the capitalist formation that the Oedipal limit finds itself not only occupied, but inhabited and lived, in the sense in which the social images produced by the decoded flows actually fall back on restricted familial images invested by desire. It is at this point in the Imaginary that Oedipus is constituted, at the same time as it completes its migration in the in-depth elements of representation: the displaced represented has become, as such, the representation of desire. Hence it goes without saying that this becoming or this constitution does not develop under the categories imagined in the earlier social formation, since the imaginary Oedipus results from such a becoming and not the inverse. It is not via a flow of shit or a wave of incest that Oedipus arrives, but via the decoded flows of capital-money. The waves of incest and shit are only secondary derivatives of the latter, insofar as they transport the private persons to which the flows of capital are reduced or applied.

"But capitalism still needs a displaced interior limit in another way: precisely in order to neutralize or repel the absolute exterior limit, the schizophrenic limit; it needs to internalize this limit, this time by restricting it, by causing it to pass no longer between social production and the desiring-production..."

i just don't get it, how can capitalism 'need'? this is me just not getting it, i'm not being snarky.

anyone know of any good entry-level guides to d/g?

so in a way i'm olooking at d/g as a way out of that nexus, because i'm following the trajectory of jean-pierre gorin, a filmmaker who was a young maoist at the sorbonne and ended up a deleuzian in southern california. he made a film about, basically, language acquisition that in its own way is a rejection of lacan. i am determined to give d/g a go, because in interviews they do seem a lot more sympathetic than, especially, althusser or his (english) followers. so perhaps it's d/g's version of 'interpellation' that i'm interested in.

(sorry that was autobiographical -- really appreciate the posts, rms)

'poverty of theory' is a number of things, but mainly against the dissolving of history into philosophy, with the main argument being about althusser's definition of 'empirical'. the abject retreat of the british althusserians (hindess and hirst) means that he has a far lower reputation among academic historians than among cultural theorists, i think.

the original 'poverty of theory book' from 1978 is the main anti-althusser piece and three other brilliant polemics, and i can't recommend it highly enough. it isn't hard to find, it's always in oxfam!!

'writing by candlelight' is a bunch of essays from the late 70s about the 'secret state' among other related themes, a state-of-the-nation book, which i like a lot. in the 80s he wrote or edited a few books about the new cold war, in general, when he got involved in END, a cross-iron-curtain anti-nuke organization. he was big in CND in the 50s and 80s.

committing to 'the making of the english working class' is a tall order, and it took me a long time to read it in all truth. it isn't difficult to read -- EPT was good At Writing -- but it's tough all the same and it helps to have some prior knowledge of the period (1780-1830). i must read the william morris book, though it is long.

If you haven't read it already you might enjoy Michele Barrett's The Politics Of Truth, which basically traces the history of "ideology" as a concept from Marx up to Laclau/Mouffe and then contrasts the concept of "ideology" generally against Foucault (who comprehensively does away with the real-truth/perspectives-serving-power-interests divide present in most of Marxism). She doesn't talk about Deleuze & Guattari though.

"For me, a text is nothing but a cog in a larger extra-textual practice. It’s not about using deconstruction, or any other textual practice, to do textual commentary; it’s about seeing what one can do with an extra-textual practice that extends the text."

been tempted by deleuze for a while. not so interested in the french post-marxists he was in dialogue with, but thinking of trying his stuff on hume or kant as I am very curious about his concept of immanence as a possible outgrowth/solution to the problems of the latter. earning the ire of alan sokal is probably a badge of honour, but i'm a little Curious about how he structures his writing - feels like i might need to decide on a character-class before i can read a thousand plateaus.

oh man so classic

- oh yeah?

Negri says in an interview somewhere that Mille Plateaux is sort of like a conceptual history, setting up these huge dynamic systems and then showing what revolutionary transformations look like within them. Not totally sure that I 'get it' (or that I'm representing Negri's words accurately), but there's a thought.

read Nomadology and was straight-up brainblown to the extent where I wrote my greatest academic & creative work, the latter very much as a response to it - and no you don't need to read anything else in preparation, just dive in. I wrote 6 A4 pages of quotes in a notebook, and reading back thru them the other day I'm struck by how fiercer and truer still they seem now

yeah, it's pretty and seductive, but basically snake oil. louis kinda proving my point here^^^

"Sometimes it gets kind of comical, say in post-modern discourse. Especially around Paris, it has become a comic strip, I mean it's all gibberish ... they try to decode it and see what is the actual meaning behind it, things that you could explain to an eight-year old child. There's nothing there." -Chomsky

oh man not this argument again

"this argument"

arrrrrgh

"This is really obscure! But at the same time, I know exactly what he's trying to say, and I could say it more clearly than him so that more people would understand it!"

a way-in is pretty tough because he covers a lot of ground in v different styles and it can be difficult to see where the connections are, and for the same reason there isn't, as far as i know, an all-encompassing introduction that's adequate for both breadth and depth. if immanence is yr thing then the slim and v readable spinoza: practical philosophy may actually be a good place to start. then read the two 'memories of a spinozist' section of a thousand plateaus' 'becoming-intense' chapter. then of course ???, then profit. on the other hand don't listen to me because i'm biased towards certain spinozist perspectives in his writing. i've been working around this fella for three years now and it was only as i was finishing off my 25,000 word dissertation on him that i really felt i had an understanding of him. now, again, i'm not so sure. (p.s. will accept that deleuze was from time to time a bit of a silly hippie, will vehemently oppose any suggestion that he wasn't an excellent scholar and a thinker of huge merit.)

yeah I think that spinoza book was the first one I read (not all of it, but enough to get some idea of where he was coming from) — seconding yr recommendation

[xp to myself] damn so much odd phrasing there, wish i'd proofread before looking like a mealy-mouthed continentalist.

lj is yr great work about kant's categories?

couldn't give a whisper of a shit about what the seer chomsky has to say about anyone's critique of kant.

thanks merdeyeux, the spinoza might be a good call.

[blowing of own trumpet]"I LOVE WRITING" MAIDEN VOYAGE appendix: self-appointed and unwieldy meisterwerks[/blowing of own trumpet]

you must be capable of circular breathing

hahaha yeah sorry about that

'a thousand plateaus' is really... seductive? it 'flows' really well, it submerges you. at the same time im not really reading it skeptically, just admiringly, w/o 'seeing it from the middle' (vs 'seeing it from the inside')

anyway i wish my french wasnt so lousy but its still nice to read, much more so than i remembered

i couldn't manage it in French but yeah it is pure fun times. i'm not sure how you cd read it skeptically since it uses such deft judo to avoid dogmatism. i think about assemblages in the world around me a lot, then i wonder whether i will ever get my head around the body without organs, then you get to a funny joke and forget it for a bit. it's one of those books that when i'm reading it i tell myself i will spend a couple of years or more just re-reading it to the exclusion of everything else.

part of the seductiveness is the adventure of it i think, i never approach them trying to nail down each sentence before moving onto the next, i'm happy to go for a wander and maybe get a bit lost but then find myself somewhere quite recognisable and think "yes this is a thing" and then wander off again. it engages like literature and never pretends to be some banal science thesis.

Lamp, if you start talking here about subjective realism and ooo I am disowning you.

Spec realism, sorry, pwned by preemptive ire

dammn

ah!

Marxism is back

deleuze (and touche)

D&G are a classic example of where their enemies tell you more about themselves qua enemies than they do about D&G

deleuze and guattari vs. dolce & gabbana

SAME

haha i remember reading some thing where deleuze is like "we explained the body without organs to a classroom of seven-year-olds and they all uderstood it immediately" and i was like, uhm, i'll just be over here scratchin my nuts if you need me

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https://libcom.org/library/intellectuals-power-a-conversation-between-michel-foucault-and-gilles-deleuze

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