All posts filed under: Deleuze and Guattari

Dooley on Deleuze: the Dieulieuzian-Dooleuzian Disjunction

Monday, July 30, 2012
by Taylor Adkins
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Deleuze / Deleuze and Guattari / Laruelle / transmutation / zero

Let me just say that it has been such an honor and such a treat to welcome Brian Dooley and his voice to Fractal Ontology (cf. Brian’s recent work “Schizophrenia of Zero” and “Transvaluation“). I can only inadequately convey my excitement and joy to share a mutual interactive space with a free-spirit like Brian, who, in (not being) himself, constitutes a veritable thought-force, a violence that forces one to think. Nevertheless a positive violence that […]

Dream

Friday, February 20, 2009
by Joseph Weissman
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coding / Deleuze and Guattari / dream / freud / joyce / production / psychoanalysis / unconscious / writing

    “When I’m dreaming back like that I begins to see we’re only all telescopes.” Joyce, Finnegans Wake     Dream-analysis does not necessitate an affirmation of the existence of universal structures of expression; it need not amount to the tiresome interpretation of the same hidden message over and over again, wherein the forms of thinking and speaking and finally reality itself are rendered identical, cruelly reduced to a single and all-encompassing formula. It suffices […]

A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter Eight: Lines and Segmentarity

Sunday, June 1, 2008
by Taylor Adkins
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A Thousand Plateaus / body without organs / BwO / Deleuze and Guattari / deterritorialization / line / line of flight / micropolitics / molarity / molecularity / plane of consistency / segmentarity

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Although Deleuze and Guattari consistently use the line of flight as a concept along with the distinctions between molecularity and molarity throughout the earlier chapters of the book, plateau 8 on the three novellas is the first time that we see the distinctions being formalized. Earlier in plateau 3 on the geology of morals (I say earlier provisionally […]

Guattari’s Schizoanalytic Pragmatics

Monday, May 5, 2008
by Taylor Adkins
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A Thousand Plateaus / abstract machine / abstraction / assemblages / guattari / machinic unconscious / pragmatics / redundancy / rhizome / Schizoanalysis

Until Marxism, capitalist political economy has also pretended for a long time to pass as the general grammar of all economy, but linguistics still has not found its Marx and Engels who would reset it on its feet. –Guattari, L’Inconscient Machinique, p.30 fn. 14. The sign is a position of desire; but the first sings are the territorial signs that plant their flags in bodies. And if one wants to call this inscription in naked […]

Minority

Wednesday, April 9, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
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A Thousand Plateaus / abstract machine / becoming / Deleuze / language / machine / ontology / Politics

The scientific enterprise of extracting constants and constant relations is always coupled with the political enterprise of imposing them on speakers and transmitting order-words. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus 101 Deleuze and Guattari admit that the notion of “minority” is very complex, with references and correlations in all dimensions of human and non-human existence. The opposition is not simply quantitative: “Majority implies a constant, of expression or content, serving as a standard measure by […]

Meta-ontology

Sunday, March 9, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
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abstract machine / antiproduction / body / code / diagram / diagrammatics / flux / idea / language / model / ontology / parasite / process / symbol / text

It is impossible to conceive the assemblage of a scientific experiment apart from a field that generates plans and topological, mathematical, axiomatic and computational descriptions. But sign-machines can function equally well directly within material and social machines without the mediation of significant processes of subjectivation, something which has become more obvious each passing day. The fact that the common essence of semiotic machines and material or social machines proceeds from the same type of abstract […]

On Learning

Saturday, March 8, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
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abstract machine / code / Cognition / diagram / difference / energy / entropy / identity / knowledge / learning / memory / problem / structure / Thought / unconscious / wittgenstein

One way of approaching the difference between knowledge and learning (so profound in our opinion that, despite their entanglement, there can be postulated neither a material nor conceptual ground which could ever serve to unify them) is by considering that even while wholly disparate, they are not in the least opposed for that reason. To learn and to know are two divergent operations, contrapositive dynamisms, which are nevertheless always both active simultaneously, as the “cutting […]

Imperceptible

Monday, March 3, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
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abstract machine / assemblage / becoming / code / cosmos / diagram / God / intensity / language / molecular / segmentarity / semiotics / sign / subject / truth

“Regimes of signs are not based on language, and language alone does not constitute an abstract machine, whether structural or generative. The opposite is the case. It is language that is based on regimes of signs, and regimes of signs on abstract machines, diagrammatic functions and machinic assemblages that go beyond any system of semiology, linguistics or not. There is no universal propositional logic, nor is there grammaticality in itself, any more than there is […]

Notes to Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus: November 20, 1923 — Postulates of Linguistics

Sunday, February 10, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
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abstract machine / assemblage / chomsky / content / diagram / expression / hegemony / indiscernible / information science / intensity / Labov / linguistics / pragmatics / production / rhizome / semiotics / signifier / variation

In truth, the nature of the abstract machine is the most general problem: there is no reason to tie the abstract machine to the universal or the constant, or to efface the singularity of abstract machines insofar as they are built around variables and variations. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (92-93) Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of the Chomsky-Labov debate exemplifies a well-developed but perhaps under-emphasized aspect of their thinking — namely, their theory of […]

Thinking Cybernetics

Saturday, February 2, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
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algorithm / apparatus of capture / authority / biopolitics / call for papers / code / control / cybernetics / desiring machines / einstein / ethics / humanity / language / media / metaphysics / technology

(Matt Dixon) Thinking Cybernetics: Mapping the Intersections between Metaphysics, Technology, Biopolitics (abstract for panel) The purpose of this panel is to gather together ideas, perspectives, and questions from a diverse variety of thinkers and disciplines relating to the theory and practice of cybernetics. Our goal is to raise a series of critical questions concerning the intersection between biopolitics, metaphysics, and technology. While each paper is devoted to a specific author or authors and is generally […]

Deconstructing Cybernetics

Saturday, January 19, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
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abstract machine / catastrophe / chaos / communication / conservatism / cybernetics / decentralization / derrida / distinction / exteriority / godel / humanity / machine / metaphysics / ontology / spencer-brown / spirit / writing

Notes on Derrida and Cybernetics Let us conjecture that the invention of the transistor — an auto-controllable circuit — indicates the attainment of a critical level of development in cybernetics, a “tipping point.” Then for writing the corresponding moment is the invention of the video camera, perhaps more precisely the photograph: now seeing is writing, literally marking. Visio-literature is the only kind that can ever exists for us today — even ancient literature is post-modern […]

On Borges: Labyrinths

Friday, November 16, 2007
by Joseph Weissman
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becoming-animal / borges / infinity / jorge luis borges / labyrinth / literature / madness / maze / minotaur / multiplicity / pride / sacrifice / salvation / transmutation / work

I deny, with the arguments of idealism, the vast temporal series which idealism admits. Hume denied the existence of an absolute space, in which all things have their place; I deny the existence of one single time, in whcih all things are linked as in a chain. The denial of coexistence is no less arduruous than the denial of succession. (Jorge Luis Borges) The maze is (a) work, mazes are always at work within work. […]

Nietzsche and the Capture and Domestication of Peoples

Wednesday, November 14, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
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apparatus of capture / culture / custom / decay / democracy / genealogy / image of thought / individual / instrumentality / Nietzsche / nomad / overman / Politics / power / religion / society / sovereignty / state / unground / universal / universal politics / utopia / war / war machine / warrior / Zarathustra

  “You shall obey—someone and for a long time: else you will perish and lose the last respect for yourself”—this appears to me to be the moral imperative of nature which, to be sure, is neither “categorical” as the old Kant would have it (hence the “else”) nor addressed to the individual (what do individuals matter to her?), but to peoples, races, ages, classes—but above all to the whole human animal, to man (Beyond Good […]

Translation: Véronique Bergen’s Diagram of the Evolution of Deleuzian Concepts

Monday, November 5, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
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A Thousand Plateaus / abstract machine / concept / Deleuze / diagram / Difference and Repetition / French Translation / Logic of Sense / ontology / Véronique Bergen

The following is a translation of a section containing a table of the evolutions of the names of the transcendental field and the operators of differenciating liaisons from L’Ontologie de Gilles Deleuze, Véronique Bergen. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001. 545-549. Original translation by Taylor Adkins 11/05/07.

Translation: Two Entries from Francois Zourabichvili’s book on Deleuze’s Vocabulary: Univocity and Pre-Individual Singularities

Saturday, November 3, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
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A Thousand Plateaus / definitions / Deleuze / difference / Difference and Repetition / French Translation / intensity / Logic of Sense / nomadic distribution / ontology / pre-individual / singularities / Theory / Philosophy / transcendental field / univocity / Untranslated Theory / Zourabichvili

The following are two entries from Francois Zourabichvili’s book La vocabulaire de Deleuze. Paris: Ellipses, 2003. Original Translation by Taylor Adkins 11/03/07. Pre-individual Singularities * We cannot accept the alternative which thoroughly compromises psychology, cosmology, and theology: either singularities already comprised in individuals and persons, or the undifferentiated abyss. Only when the world, teeming with anonymous and nomadic, impersonal and pre-individual singularities, opens up, do we tread at last on the field of the transcendental […]

Blogosphere Kinships: Activity at Massthink

Friday, November 2, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
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Arthur Danto / Darwinism / Deleuze / Deleuze and Guattari / evolution / hylomorph / identity / Manuel DeLanda / massthink / Nietzsche / philosophy blog / Theory / Philosophy / Uncategorized

I’ve been visiting the massthink blog (populated by Ryan and Aless) for a couple of months now, but, as a bad reader, I failed to leave comments. I was thrilled not only with the content, but more so with the way in which these two have organized their site. I was inspired to see their text page (which encouraged me to put up the bibliography, still under construction) and by the way in which they […]

Zarathustra and Genealogy: Where the State Ceases…

Wednesday, October 31, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
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apparatus of capture / genealogy / Nietzsche / nihilism / nomads / overman / Politics / state / warrior / will to power / Zarathustra

In Book 1 of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, there is a speech on the state (“Of the New Idol”) that is surrounded by a speech on war and the warrior prior to it and also a speech “On the Flies of the Marketplace” following it. All three speeches in a way need to be read together (not only in order but also juxtaposed in other ways) to be fully understood. Having said that, I want to […]

Notes to Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus: Rhizome, Chapter 1

Tuesday, October 23, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
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A Thousand Plateaus / assemblages / BwO / Deleuze / deterritorialization / guattari / interbeing / multiplicity / Nomadology / rhizome / Schizoanalysis / tracing

D+G have reached the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I [This, of course, is preceded by similar assertions about the schizophrenic in Anti-Oedipus]. (3). A book is an assemblage and a multiplicity: One side of a machinic assemblage faces the state, which doubtless makes it a kind of organism, or signifying totality, or determination attributable to a subject; it also has a side facing a body without organs, […]

Notes to Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Chapters 1 and 2

Tuesday, October 23, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
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abstract machine / Anti-Oedipus / Deleuze / desire / desiring machines / family / guattari / lacan / libido / machinic unconscious / molecularity / Schizoanalysis / subject-group / transversality

Anti-Oedipus 1: Desiring-Machines For every organ-machine, an energy machine (1). Schizophrenia and the time before the man-nature dichotomy/split (1). Nature lived as process of production (2). Oedipus presupposes a fantastic repression of desiring-machines (3). The schizophrenic experiences not nature, but nature as a process of production (3). Production is immediately consumption and a recording process, without any sort of mediation (4). The recording process and consumption directly determine production, but within the production process itself […]

Translation: Simondon, Completion of Section I, Chapter 1, The Individual and Its Physico-Biological Genesis

Friday, October 19, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
comments 8
abstract machine / assemblage / autopoeisis / becoming / being / change / communication / complexity / differentiation / Disparation / formalization / French Translation / individuation / information / materiality / metastability / model / modularity / morphogenesis / morphology / ontogenesis / ontology / philosophy of science / production / self-actualization / Simondon / singularities / structure / system / technology / Untranslated Theory

In the first place, singularities-events correspond to heterogeneous series which are organized into a system which is neither stable nor unstable, but rather ‘metastable,’ endowed with a potential energy wherein the differences between series are distributed. (Potential energy is the energy of the pure event, whereas forms of actualization correspond to the realization of the event). In the second place, singularities posses a process of auto-unification, always mobile and displaced to the extent that a […]

Machines, Morphogenesis and Complexity

Tuesday, October 16, 2007
by Joseph Weissman
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abstract machine / atomism / autopoeisis / chaos / code / complexity / Deleuze / differentiation / digital space / evolution / form / individuation / modularity / molecularity / morphogenesis / network / self-organization / Serres / speed

Cellular automata The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty. D’arcy Thompson All organisms are modular: life always consists of sub-organisms which are involved together in a biological network. The interrelations between organ and organism form a series of feedback loops, forming a cascading and complex surface. Each organ parasites off […]

Machinic Autopoesis

Thursday, October 11, 2007
by Joseph Weissman
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abstract machine / biology / cybernetics / form / information / model / ontology / structure / system / theory

Process In Mechanism and Biological Explanation [Maturana 1970], Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela argue that machines and biological forms are very closely related — so closely, in fact, that biologists can reasonably claim living systems are machines. This is not meant merely as a pedagogical metaphor, but rather as a rigorous analogy, which emphasizes important symmetries, and even better, expresses concisely specific experimental and theoretical aims. In what sense, then, are living systems machines? A […]

The Hero and the Kingly Function: Starkadr in Dumezil’s Stakes of the Warrior

Monday, September 3, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
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Anti-Oedipus / Dumezil / epic / incest / kingly function / mythology / sovereignty / war machine

There are two versions of the story of Starkadr (Starcatherus), one Latin, the other Old Icelandic. Starkadr is forced into a precarious position, caught between Odin and Thor. Here I will follow the Icelandic tale for concision, only referring to the Latin to offset some details. In the Icelandic tale there are two Starkadrs—the hero’s grandfather is of the same name. The first Starkadr is a powerful giant and is slain by Thor because the […]

Converging Debord, Badiou, Deleuze and Guattari

Friday, May 11, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
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badiou / BwO / Debord / Deleuze / Logic of Sense / oedipus

Three aspects of the spectacle—society itself/parts of society/means of unification. This is the place of false consciousness because it is where all consciousness converges–it is merely the official language of generalized separation [Badiou, language of the state of the situation, field of knowledge that is encyclopedic in its domination–a truth pierces the whole of knowledge by piercing a hole in knowledge, and, shall we say, causes an irruption to take place within the “official language,” […]