Comments on: Meta-ontology http://fractalontology.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/meta-ontology/ refracting theory: politics, cybernetics, philosophy Mon, 12 May 2008 16:07:57 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=MU By: Joseph Weissman http://fractalontology.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/meta-ontology/#comment-2184 Joseph Weissman Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:52:54 +0000 http://fractalontology.wordpress.com/?p=607#comment-2184 Yes, I would say it's likely Deleuze and Guattari have gone further than just about anyone else -- other than perhaps Michel Serres -- on this question of codes and languages. In the chapter you mention they also write: "An assemblage of enunciation does not speak 'of' things; it speaks <i>on the same level as</i> states of things and states of content... In short the functional independence of the two forms is only the form of their reciprocal presupposition, and of the continual passage from one to the other." (ATP 87) We are confronted here with the mutually constitutive difference between bodies and language (eating or speaking?) or between signs and acts. D+G have an interesting point to make here; they argue from this that we never simply see the interlinkage of the order-words, nor the pure causual causual relationship between object elements, not at least each separate from one another. But, on the other hand -- D+G point out -- we don't quite find one representing the other, either. "On the contrary, the independence of the two lines is distributive, such that a segment of one always forms a relay with a segment of the other, slips into, introduces itself into the other." (ibid) Is this not the figure of the parasite or the troubadour -- perhaps even more broadly, the figure of the stranger or the absolutely Other, the body without image? How, if not through this parasitic diagram, this semiconduction, could we slip endlessly between the two layers -- the world of things and the world of words -- from order-words to silent objects? One way of approaching this impasse might consider that both bodies and language have codes of their own -- implying that beneath or beyond this division, neither layer can be separated from a plane of consistency where words and bodies intermingle. Yeah, either way, I hope we hear from them soon. :) Yes, I would say it’s likely Deleuze and Guattari have gone further than just about anyone else — other than perhaps Michel Serres — on this question of codes and languages. In the chapter you mention they also write: “An assemblage of enunciation does not speak ‘of’ things; it speaks on the same level as states of things and states of content… In short the functional independence of the two forms is only the form of their reciprocal presupposition, and of the continual passage from one to the other.” (ATP 87)

We are confronted here with the mutually constitutive difference between bodies and language (eating or speaking?) or between signs and acts. D+G have an interesting point to make here; they argue from this that we never simply see the interlinkage of the order-words, nor the pure causual causual relationship between object elements, not at least each separate from one another. But, on the other hand — D+G point out — we don’t quite find one representing the other, either. “On the contrary, the independence of the two lines is distributive, such that a segment of one always forms a relay with a segment of the other, slips into, introduces itself into the other.” (ibid) Is this not the figure of the parasite or the troubadour — perhaps even more broadly, the figure of the stranger or the absolutely Other, the body without image? How, if not through this parasitic diagram, this semiconduction, could we slip endlessly between the two layers — the world of things and the world of words — from order-words to silent objects? One way of approaching this impasse might consider that both bodies and language have codes of their own — implying that beneath or beyond this division, neither layer can be separated from a plane of consistency where words and bodies intermingle.

Yeah, either way, I hope we hear from them soon. :)

]]> By: Taylor Adkins http://fractalontology.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/meta-ontology/#comment-2183 Taylor Adkins Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:34:58 +0000 http://fractalontology.wordpress.com/?p=607#comment-2183 I wonder if we should use A Thousand Plateaus here in order to replicate their distinction between codes and languages. They use the example of the bee (probably from Benveniste's example) and show that bees don't have a language because they lack indirect (what Guattari calls illucotionary) discourse. Other than that, this sounds like an interesting beginning post: it really makes me hope SPEP takes our panel, because I think this sort of project can be combined with what I wanted to do in my paper. Great stuff buddy! I wonder if we should use A Thousand Plateaus here in order to replicate their distinction between codes and languages. They use the example of the bee (probably from Benveniste’s example) and show that bees don’t have a language because they lack indirect (what Guattari calls illucotionary) discourse. Other than that, this sounds like an interesting beginning post: it really makes me hope SPEP takes our panel, because I think this sort of project can be combined with what I wanted to do in my paper.

Great stuff buddy!

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