What is Deleuze?
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ver$hy ver$h
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Read enough of both now to really feel the subject matter in the respective styles of D&G and Baudrillard. The latter's a much flatter, more rigid read. There's not much grain or detail. It's pure metaphysics. No engagement with anything on any other register than one of signs and simulation. It goes from A (The Real) to B (Simulation) and maybe back to A but going back to A is also B because the real has vanished into simulation and this can't be undone, any attempt to go back is also simulation.
With the former, the books and language feel much more fluid and expansive, much more alive. The geographical and geological stuff they like to draw on comes to mind. I can picture ATP as different territories of a map, rock and sediment-like layers within each one, flora and fauna. I can feel myself being pulled in all sorts of directions, ideas fizzing around. I don't get that from Baudrillard. I enjoy his books, but they don't generate ideas or reach outward like that. They're closed loops. He's a Beckett/Borges/Blanchot/DeLillo whereas the other two are on the Joyce/Burroughs/Pynchon end of the spectrum.
D&G read like exploring a world, Baudrillard like observing a tomb.
With the former, the books and language feel much more fluid and expansive, much more alive. The geographical and geological stuff they like to draw on comes to mind. I can picture ATP as different territories of a map, rock and sediment-like layers within each one, flora and fauna. I can feel myself being pulled in all sorts of directions, ideas fizzing around. I don't get that from Baudrillard. I enjoy his books, but they don't generate ideas or reach outward like that. They're closed loops. He's a Beckett/Borges/Blanchot/DeLillo whereas the other two are on the Joyce/Burroughs/Pynchon end of the spectrum.
D&G read like exploring a world, Baudrillard like observing a tomb.
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
D&G's whole desire thing re: politics keeps tapping me on the shoulder whenever I hear of Trump and co. doing some other appalling thing, e.g. the deportation ASMR clip from the other day, and some people cheering them on. I'm not sure there's any way of getting around the fact there are people who do just want this sort of thing to happen because they get a kick out of it rather than because of any practical or consciously ideological concerns. The same sort of thing @shakahislop was talking about in the Kendrick thread.
shakahislop
Well-known member
what's the link with d&g version?
the way i've been thinking about it is that trump-musk have got everyone talking about them, and it's what they want, and it's working. i tell everyone i meet IRL not to talk abou tthem if they get brought up
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
One of the things they were attempting to understand was the role of desire in politics. They felt fascism didn't just happen from the top down, a substantial number of people genuinely wanted it, and the available philosophical tools didn't, or couldn't, explain that.
Here's the famous question posed at the beginning of Anti-Oedpius,
"That is why the fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly, and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered: "Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?" How can people possibly reach the point of shouting: "More taxes! Less bread!"? As Reich remarks, the astonishing thing is not that some people steal or that others occasionally go out on strike, but rather that all those who are starving do not steal as a regular practice, and all those who are exploited are not continually out on strike: after centuries of exploitation, why do people still tolerate being humiliated and enslaved, to such a point, indeed, that they actually want humiliation and slavery not only for others but for themselves? Reich is at his profoundest as a thinker when he refuses to accept ignorance or illusion on the part of the masses as an explanation of fascism, and demands an explanation that will take their desires into account, an explanation formulated in terms of desire: no, the masses were not innocent dupes; at a certain point, under a certain set of conditions, they wanted fascism, and it is this perversion of the desire of the masses that needs to be accounted for."
shakahislop
Well-known member
yeah i get you. people really want to see humiliation and suffering. maybe not for themselves but for other people. right now they really want it through a screen. the apprentice always made me think of this.
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
Whether this stuff really is a 'perversion' of desire as they claim's an interesting question. I'm not sure it's safe to assume it's an inherently benevolent thing, only going bad due to external pressure.
sufi
lala
depends how far you think our sadistic atmosphere is manufactured?
the direct path from the apprentice tv show to the white house is plain to see
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
Sadism's much older than the current atmosphere though, isn't it? It's difficult to picture a point in history when you wouldn't find someone doing something sadistic.
I think Third would say something about D&G leaving no room for the negative in their conception of desire.
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
What do you think would be the effect of people not talking about them?
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
That doesn't deal with the material impact of their policies though. Obviously neither does simply talking about them, particularly in countries outside of the US, but I think people collectively turning a blind eye might make things even worse.
You're probably right in the sense the press should have done that the first time around. They gave Trump so much publicity, continually fed the beast in service of the ragebait economic model. Now it seems too late to ignore him.
I'm not quite saying turn a blind eye. Obviously you need to be aware of what's going on. But you need to protect yourself from actually engaging and talking about it. Cos you get caught up in bullshit. When you could be spending your time positively impacting your fellow cosmic life brothers and sisters
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
Oh, right. Yeah, we've talked about that a million times. Not getting too sucked into the news. Everyone knows that already. The way you phrased it made it sound as though you thought people turning their attention elsewhere would actually do something.