What is Deleuze?

[josef k.]

This move is great!

but - and here's a confession no proper philosopher should make - Zizek played more of a part. I've been a Zizek fan, but I only ever admired (aspects of) Badiou.

 

[event_mechanics]

head fuck

My blog was referenced page 11 of this thread so I decided, perhaps unwisely, to read through the whole thread. What a head fuck. For a thread that opens with a question on Deleuze I can only imagine that there was some kind of unspoken collective response to perform Deleuze.

To respond to the OP, I quite enjoy reading Deleuze's work just before Guattari. The Logic of Sense, D&R, little bits and pieces, some Foucault, etc. I only ever wanted to understand what Deleuze meant by the 'event' the rest is interesting but not what drove me to read everything I could get my hands on. I suggest you need to find your own interest/problem, and let this guide your reading and re-reading.

The way Poetix keeps on bringing up Badiou is fucking hilarious! Surely some kind of Badiouist power bloc is also performed in a similar fashion to the rambling Deleuzian thread? Poetix with the number and subnumbered dot point posts. This is epic!!!:

Why I think Badiou is worth bothering with:

i) He presents a concept of truth which does two important things at the same time:

i.i) It says that there are truths (plural), and that these are not reducible to opinions, cultural preferences or figures of ideology.

i.ii) It completely separates truth from knowledge. You don't come to know a truth by studying higher mathematics, reading deeply of the great poets of the Western Tradition (tm) and attending reverently to the sage words of an intellectual master. You construct a truth by doing-thinking, in equality with others, and come to embody a finite part of the truth in doing so. A truth can only appear where knowledge gives out, where there is something genuinely new to be thought and done.

ii) He does not present his own philosophy as a truth of this kind. Knowing Badiou - knowing his texts and his arguments exceedingly well, down to the last detail - will not bring you the slightest bit closer to any truth. It may however help to persuade you that there are truths, and that they are worth fighting for.

iii) He esteems cultural and intellectual greatness, but does not regard it as the centre of all human value. He acknowledges plainly that no amount of philosophy or mathematics will emancipate suffering humanity. He does not regard philosophy and mathematics as worthless activities because of this. The humanity he wishes to see emancipated is a humanity that is capable - all of it, no matter how mean its circumstances or limited its horizons - of creation, of participation in the doing-thinking that makes a new truth, be it artistic, scientific, political or amorous.

iv) He recognises that violence and terror are an unavoidable part of the creativity of political truths. He rejects the contemporary moral consensus that says that a world without truths is a price worth paying for the physical safety and social peace of a sheltered minority.

iv.i) Speaking as a member of that sheltered minority, I don't feel at all comfortable about this. I don't want to indulge in any false bravado about being ready to die for a worthy cause. Still less do I wish to surrender myself to the reckless obscenity of declaring my readiness to kill for one. When I think about the last hours of the Paris Commune, or the frenzy of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, I am afraid.

iv.ii) Nevertheless, I agree with Badiou that we must not allow the managers of our wealthy societies to use the fear of violence and terror to force us to accept the world as it - precariously - is. That world is already a violent and terrible place. We must accept rationally, even if it is impossible to accept emotionally, that history has not ended with us, that our safety and prosperity are a temporary illusion, and that there is a great deal still to be done.

v) He makes intelligible, for the educated reader who is not a mathematical adept, mathematical concepts of tremendous beauty and power.

v.i) Only a minority of people, even in our wealthy societies, are fortunate enough to have been educated to the point where they will be able to encounter these concepts through Badiou's texts. And of those that have, not all will want to progress through the often ponderous demonstrations through which they are carefully exposed. Nevertheless, for those who have had the good fortune to become members of that large literate public that an affluent society affords, and who have the desire to educate themselves about some of the great intellectual accomplishments of 20th century mathematics, Badiou is an able and enabling tutor.

v.ii) Politically speaking, Badiou's commitment to conceptual clarity and transmissibility militates against the authoritarian obscurantism of a Heidegger or a Lacan. His prose style is certainly "elevated", and his language full of the terms of art of the specialist discourse that 20th century French philosophy has become, but when it comes to the formal dimension of his argument, he takes enormous pains to be unambiguous and consistent. Quite simply, it is possible for him to be wrong - demonstrably and corrigibly wrong - in a way that it is never possible for Lacan to be wrong.

vi) He pisses off all the right people. Badiou reports that Derrida said to him, during a period of late rapprochement, "at least we have the same enemies". Those are enemies worth having: one should be proud to have acquired them, and endeavour to affront them in all things.

I find maths completely arse. I studied it at university for a while but found it boring and full of hyper-intelligent smug fuckwits that paradoxically lack sefl-confidence. Plus lectures were at 8am and this did not fit with my social life. But most of all it was boring. Using somebody else's answers to solve problems does not require one to think. Therefore I do not comprehend this reference to "mathematical concepts of tremendous beauty and power". Math as sublime? Right? So where is the transformative/creative dimension? How do they have power if they make no difference, only allow one to formalise the difference that always already existed?

Oh, but Badiou's philosophy has nothing to do with truth procedures per se. Yeah?

No doubt the tacticians of the IDF, having thoroughly mastered their nomadology, will presently be poring over Badiou's account in Logics of Worlds of the rout of the Persian army

The IDF will not use any of Badiou's works. They are not weapons. I would love to speak with some of the soliders who were actually exposed to D&G's work.

The Badiou variation seemed to begin with this post of a POetix blog post:

(a blog post of today, x-posted here as it seems relevant)

I’ve never come away from any of Deleuze’s texts feeling that I understood any more (about) mathematics than I did when I started. There’s enough in Deleuze about differential calculus, Riemannian manifolds and so on to make you think that there ought, at some point, to be a settling of accounts with mathematical formalization; but the settlement never arrives, and the reader who undertakes (like Manuel DeLanda) to put things in some sort of scientific order must wrestle with the fact that Deleuze’s texts frequently resist such organization through a combination of willed incoherence and masterful pronouncements about the “nomadic” untameability of the matter at hand. They do so with the fine, pleasant and anti-dogmatic intention of evoking a virtual, problematic field behind every conceptual solution or actualization, so that the reader might not be enslaved by a system or held captive by an image of truth. But what is sacrificed by this approach is any experience of what Lacan called the impasse of formalization (Valéry: “Une difficulté est une lumière. / Une difficulté insurmountable est un soleil.”). It would be illuminating for example to be shown just why the “arborescent” cannot fully comprehend the “rhizomatic”, by means of a demonstration of the exact limit of its ability to do so. As it is, one is sometimes left feeling that some of the most stirring passages of “Capitalism and Schizophrenia” amount to little more than the varied and passionate affirmation of an emotional commitment to untidiness.

Excellent, the first line rehashes one of the points from the Sokal book about how French philosophers are awesomely useless for maths. Seriously though, some fine points in the rest of the repost.

Rather than reducing arbo/rhizo to DeLanda and crew's organisational/complexity theory, which is a sophisitcated form of pattern recognition, I prefer a more Foucaultian apprehension of a way to try to problematise the outside of thought. There are no 'limits', exact or otherwise, only thresholds of composition. As a thought develops through my body and I grasp at something conscious, the unthought of thought is still active and still inducing comprehension in ways that can not be comprehended as thought, only subjacently through scientific representations or poetics. The matheme is a fucking worse-then-useless blunt instrument for grasping what is graspable and damning the rest.

BTW, I joined Dissensus some time ago under a different name, when Steve from the old Spoons lyotard list brought it to the list's attention, but the email linked to that account was with a university at which I no longer work.

 

[poetix]

But what's become clear to me in the past few days especially (it probably would've been clear well before, but I haven't been interested in philosophy for very long, as you can surely tell); philosophy seems to be more of a lifestyle choice, either it's like an intellectual kind of self-help, or you chose your ontology because of the consequences it'll have for your politics, your ethical status, or at least how it'll aid you in 'grounding' either or both of those things

That is the insinuation. I recommend that you squint at it suspiciously. Not everyone thinks of philosophical ideas as primarily a) tools for ego-repair b) tokens to be exchanged for social kudos or political clout, or c) love-objects that will subsequently enable them to act out the supremely thrilling drama of renegacy. They do, of course, perform magnificent service in all of these capacities; but in my view, for the purposes mentioned, you're better off participating in YouTube comments flamewars about whether Dave Mustaine wrote most of Metallica's early songs.

Philosophy won't make you rich, happy, sexy or a weaponised viral agent infesting the body of Capital with rogue intensities. It is a workshop and repository of conceptual images (including the image of the weaponised viral agent...etc...). Do it because you want to make something, or reproduce in yourself the conditions under which something (an argument, a theorem, an image) was made. The rest is circumstantial dreck, the same dreck that coagulates around everything human beings do. It can't be eliminated, but making it the focus of attention is a way of eliminating everything that isn't it - and that's not much, but it's something.

 

[luka]

i get frustrated with k-punk because he doesn't seem to be able to write with intensity although he's cleary able to think with intensity.
he slips into journalese all the time. really sloppy stuff. grotesque. he could be amazing if he would let me teach him to write.

 

[luka]

leaving aside the ungainly neologisms
oed-e-o-pod! for crying out loud.....

 

[poetix]

The way Poetix keeps on bringing up Badiou is fucking hilarious!

I brought him up because there's a difference between him and Deleuze on one significant point (use of / attitude towards mathematical formalisation) which says something about Deleuze as well as something about Badiou. The rest of the argument was fundamentally about the daft notion that Deleuze teaches you to think for yourself while Badiou teaches you the ropes of submission to (or subordinate exercise of) intellectual authority. The alleged "Badiouvian" power-block was a spectre conjured in support of this idea. I flapped my arms at it and tried to drive it away, but Mit der Dummheit...

I find maths completely arse. I studied it at university for a while but found it boring and full of hyper-intelligent smug fuckwits that paradoxically lack sefl-confidence. Plus lectures were at 8am and this did not fit with my social life. But most of all it was boring. Using somebody else's answers to solve problems does not require one to think.

Thank you for this consumer report on the "Studying Maths At University When You'd Rather Be Getting Wasted" Experience. I can see that failing to learn mathematics in a stultifying pedagogical environment would tend to lead one to the conclusion that it was "arse", but failing to learn mathematics in a stultifying pedagogical environment is not what mathematics is.

Therefore I do not comprehend this reference to "mathematical concepts of tremendous beauty and power". Math as sublime? Right? So where is the transformative/creative dimension? How do they have power if they make no difference, only allow one to formalise the difference that always already existed?

Formalisation is creative: it's a making, a straitening. Mathematical formalisation is the production of a new form - the inscription of differences - not a commentary on some already-produced form. It's "transformative" because it coalesces around impasses that would not be visible without it. This is the dimension I think Deleuze is missing; giving himself the freedom to be inconsistent (an important and useful freedom), he surrenders the ability to bring any part of his discourse to its "extreme form", to the point where its powers of nomination fail. Deleuze often leaves you with a sort of vague sense that anything's possible, which can be enabling; my point would be that the experience of the impossible is important too.

Oh, but Badiou's philosophy has nothing to do with truth procedures per se. Yeah?

It's about truth procedures, but it isn't one itself. It would be ridiculous, for instance, to think of oneself as a militant Badiouvian. There's nothing there to militate for. Some people, on discovering this, conclude that Badiou is useless; which suggests to me that they at least agree with him about the importance of militating for things, even if they think they disagree with him about the importance of, well, him.

The IDF will not use any of Badiou's works. They are not weapons. I would love to speak with some of the soliders who were actually exposed to D&G's work.

IIRC, the episode was overhyped and the glamour soon wore off. I didn't mean this as a slur on Deleuze; just pointing out that the destinations of philosophical thought are many and various, and it's not Deleuze's fault if he's the patron saint of wankers. It actually wouldn't surprise me if someone, somewhere decided that Badiou's notion that military strategy was all about identifying the "transcendental functor" of a battle situation was useful to them. (They might get it completely wrong, of course, but "utility" and "correctness" are not the same thing. In this case, it may well be that only a "wrong" apprehension of the notion could possibly be "useful").

Rather than reducing arbo/rhizo to DeLanda and crew's organisational/complexity theory, which is a sophisitcated form of pattern recognition, I prefer a more Foucaultian apprehension of a way to try to problematise the outside of thought. There are no 'limits', exact or otherwise, only thresholds of composition. As a thought develops through my body and I grasp at something conscious, the unthought of thought is still active and still inducing comprehension in ways that can not be comprehended as thought, only subjacently through scientific representations or poetics. The matheme is a fucking worse-then-useless blunt instrument for grasping what is graspable and damning the rest.

Arbo/rhizo translated roughly into Badiou's terms comes out as encyclopedia/generic multiple. The mathematics of the "generic" is anything but blunt - it's tortuously subtle, and I don't entirely understand it...

 

[luka]

josef k is growing on me.... he's not that thick. makes me wonder why his poems are so slight

 

[luka]

maybe being clever and writing well are mutually exclusive

 

[massrock]

Oh for fuck's sake-- duh.

You are the one who claims not to understand.

I don't really subscribe to terms like "ignorance" "awareness" and "knowledge" the way you seem to be using them.

Aw

Sorry but I don't understand a single word you say because I refuse to accept the way you use any of them. Fingers in ears, nananana.

Is this not what everybody learned in kindergarten? Be nice to others?

Well nomad that's just great. How fantastic that everyone is just nice to everybody else and endlessly considerate and thoughtful and nobody abuses power and none of this is a problem at all because everybody learned to be nice in kindergarten. What on Earth was I ever worrying about?

How old are you?

This again. You sound like a teenage brat.

I'm not buying this normative regulatory shit about how it's a Big Meany if teh internets theeree kidz donnt plah niys.

And there we have it. You think all this (questions of ignorance, awareness, intelligence...) is about arguments on the internet, or about how 'philosophical discourse' is conducted. About you in other words actually.

Does illustrate the point about arguments on the internet though. I suspect it's not that people have a problem with disagreement or argument in their comment boxes or whatever, it's that it would be better if you were actually talking about vaguely the same thing!

Really, if the role of philosophy is to be a formal discourse where thought is meant to roam free in purest abstraction, then I want to hear all sorts of voices, all sorts of reactions, and all sorts of arguments--not just the exclusively "rigorous" professional-scholastic ones.

This thread is so beyond dead ...

Hahaha.

It's true though, I was talking about the real world. I mean I asked if certain things were a question for philosophy. Actually I think they should be. Josef seems to think otherwise and perhaps so do you.

 

[luka]

but i think he has room for growth

 

[scottdisco]

I mean I asked if certain things were a question for philosophy. Actually I think they should be.

would you care to sketch out some rough answers to your own questions here?

 

[luka]

i'd take him under my wing but he's too arrogant.

 

[luka]

he's got the right idea, being wilfully idiotic

 

[luka]

craner would be a good mentor for him, as craner is univeristy educated.

 

[massrock]

Do you know what the questions are scott?

 

[luka]

i don't approve of this thing that kpunk and poetix are promulgating
that creative people are thick and useless
and you know you are doing that so don't try to lie to me
like what you do
'rigourous thought' is somehow superior to what i do
do you think what i do is easy? like, you just let it all hang out? what the fuck?!!
how come no other cunt can do it then? how coe you two and josef k can't do it then, you're all clever cunts/ its a discipline just as much as philosophy is. more so, much more so... i don't think you have any inkling of the jedi training i've put myself through. if anyone could do it, anyone would.... it takes a lot of jedi shit to be me.

 

[luka]

ask craner, he had more writing talent in one toenail than any of you lot and he couldn't hack it.... he ran off to be a teacher.

 

[luka]

Slips
Politeness is pointed (at bluntness).
Points are connected (by tightropes).
Flights are betrayals (by slipping).
Slips are betrayals (like kisses).

(josef k)

EVEN AS SUCCUBUS you remain sardonic,
intractable, to get hung up about.
Sour introject, what will it take

to liquidate you, unquenchable
by many waters, undrownable
by spate? You are the rock

of a schismatic church of twisted rafters,
crazy pews; the lectern bearing countless
verses of illegible good news.

(poetix)

vote now!

 

[scottdisco]

Do you know what the questions are scott?

start with your

Are these questions for philosophy -

Should we value intelligence and awareness over ignorance and stupidity?

Can those things be measured?

Does it matter?

What can we do about it?

Is it hip to be square?

though i allow you have, in a fashion, already been answering them. but i thought it might be useful or helpful for you to sketch out some answers to the above in one post.

 

[luka]

i want to know why 'creative' is being used as a derogatory term. nomad does it too.