This is long, a bit garbled in places, but gives some idea of the
relationship of Spinoza to Marx and others..I eliminated some introductory
stuff on Spinoza.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
POWER AND DESIRE IN THE POLITICAL ONTOLOGY OF SPINOZA AND DELEUZE/
GUATTARIPOWER
AND DESIRE IN THE POLITICAL ONTOLOGY OF SPINOZA AND DELEUZE/ GUATTARI
Draft by Jan Sjunnesson, Dept of philosophy, Uppsala Univ, Sweden, May 1998
"If two men unite and join forces, the together they have more power, and
consequently more right against other things in nature, than either alone;
and
the more there be that unite in this way, the more right will they
collectively
posses",
Baruch Spinoza
"There is only desire and the social. Nothing else ",
Gilles Deleuze and F�lix Guattari
Introduction
In these preliminary notes, I want to incite a discussion on the 17th
century
philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, along with the contemporary French authors
Gilles
Deleuze’s and F�lix Guattari’s joint works , that brings forth a
reflection on
ontology as political, constituted by powers and desires rather than a
reductionist apolitical naturalism. In some sense, every philosophy of being
(i.e. ontology, or the wider concpet metaphysics), has to make a place for
man
and his well- being in the whole of reality. That place is a political
question
which I do not fully answer here, neither give full account to Spinoza or
Deleuze/Guattari, but only hope to open up for further theoretical
reflections.
Being as the assemblage of "composable" relationships ( of powers, of
desires,
of essences, multiplicities. . . ) is the leitmotif in this paper. The
essential
element for ontological constitution is Spinoza’s focus on the
productivity of
being. For the Spinoza - scholar and historian of philosophy Gilles Deleuze
this
means ability to express being .
Expression - the movement from power (essence) to act (existence) is the
concept
Spinoza used to develop an immanent ontology, as shown in Deleuze thesis on
Spinoza’s "expressionism" - written in 1968 as a habilitations -
schrift. Four
years later, and with the May ‘68 experience behind, Deleuze
transformed the
Spinozist expressions to political desires togheter with the left- wing
activist
and psychoanalyst F�lix Guattari in vol 1 of Capitalism and schizophrenia.
Ten
years later, the marxist Antonio Negri wrote (while imprisoned in Rome 1979-
81)
a treatise on Spinoza’s politics and metaphysics that is strongly
influenced by
Deleuze, opening up an urgent and innovative perspective on the spinozist
"anomaly" that still is not surpassed but totally updated to our age of real
subsumption under capital, of late modernity, late capitalism. It is these
connections between power, desire, knowledge and being, that I hope to
introduce
here.
In his last unfinshed posthumous work in 1677, Political Treatise (PT),
Spinoza
states that ". . . the power by which things in nature exist, and by which
they
in consequence, they act can be none other than the eternal power of God/. .
.
/But men are led more by blind desire than by reason; and so their natural
power, or natural right, must not be defined in terms of reason, but must be
held to cover every possible appetite" (Ch. II).
God as understood by Spinoza is not the transcendent Father, but rather what
is
real, existing as virtual essence or as actual realised essence in existence
The
power to act is not in need of a divine support. It is nothing else but the
power of a certain mode itself as far it expresses an essence. For Spinoza
there
is no teleology, pre- give plan, either for men or nature or states. Rather,
there is freedom to develop from a cause within (causa sui), an endless
interaction of the powers of singular things , according to the laws of
nature.
There is no other order, divine or made by humans (such as in states) but
the
endless interaction of the powers (potentiae ) of singular things according
to
the laws of nature. Things are different degrees of powers, but there are no
pre- established order of relations, rather he dynamizes that order . And if
the
"acting powers of the indiduals are the only resources on the human
societies
can draw, and if no one definetely renounces with his /her own acting power,
than government if nothing but the disposition (potestas ) of those who
govern
about the acting power ( potentia ) of the governed" (Walther, p 52, 55) .
"Spinoza’s true politics is his metaphysics" Negri says (1992). The
political
implications of his metaphysics are his definition of things by their
capacity
of act (potentia agendi ). This capacity is enhanced or diminished according
to
the affects or passions that encounter modes, how they are being affected,
affect others or let others, by their passions, rule them. If there exists
nothing else but the acting powers of human individuals, it follows that the
power of the state and its government is nothing but the disposition of all
the
citizens’ powers together, i.e. democracy in a sense before it got its
liberal
interpretation. And since powers give right, people have as much right as
they
have power, contra Hobbes who saw men as giving up their powers in a
fictious
contract. Spinoza states that men always retain their powers, and never
actually
leave them. But do people know this ? What is the political function of 1st
order of knowledge, imaginatio, besides 2nd ratio and 3rd, beatitudo
(salvation)in Spinoza’s epistemological scheme? Can imagination
develop to some
extent into reason, 2nd order of knowledge ? What is the (political) place
of
desire in the transformation of the people’s imagination and reason ?
What role
does antagonism play in the political strife of different desires, between
men
and men/state? These questions remain to be solved in depth in further
research,
and have been to a large extent by French contemporary Spinoza scholars
since
the 1960’s. Here we now consider passions in Spinoza’s theory.
Passions
Power has two equal sides, the power to exist and to be affected . Above all
we
seek in all ways to become active, yes even joyful ! Production of affects
(chosen actions from self-preservation, conatus) and sensibility to be
affected.
Their sum is constant (either you decide, or someone else). This sensibility
may
be chosen, actively, internally caused , or passive, externally caused. Most
of
our lives are filled with passive affections, since we do not understand the
real causes behind things and events.
When my body encounters another and agree, we form a new body, with a new
power
to exist Spinoza says. Our bodies meet other bodies and change accordingly
to
relations of power and affects. An encounter between two bodies, that are
not
fixed units according to Spinoza but may form a new "body", a relationship
of
bodies/thoughts/modes, will be interpreted to their composability or
incomposability. A body of any kind is defined by the possible relation into
which it may enter. This is its power of acting. If the bodies agree " in
nature" it is a joyful passive affection that increases the bodies’
power to
act. If not, sadness occur and either body or both may be decompose the
relationship , the new "body".
The question arises immediately: How can we get as many active affections
and as
little passive ones as possible ? How do we experience as much (self-caused)
joy
as possible ? Most encounters are sad since men are often subject to
passions.
Spinoza’s pessimism may be saddening but realistic and interpreted
both in a
conservative and radical fashin, enlightments notions that do not really
apply
to Spinoza (nor his hero Machiavelli whom also has both kinds of adherers).
In a
commonwealth, we (hope to) organize (good) encounters, which is why we form
it.
But Spinoza did not mean a mediation from above, but a building of power
from
below, from the modes, which are the what constituts our (immanent) world,
what
we can perceive of substance/nature/God. The term "contract" in his Tracatus
Theologico Politicus (1671, TTP) is replaced in PT with "common consent", to
which individuals renounce their rights (but not all, more on contracts and
rights later). The reason they do this is that the extends their power to
constitute the state, if that is their goal. In order to build a community
of
mutual consent, free communication must be possible between citizens, who
always
have the right to think and speak, but not act unlawful while they adhere to
the
state , that is Spinoza says.
Passions like fear are important to understand for the wise in order to
survive.
The fear of the masses in both ways, i.e. what it fears and the fear it
induces
in rulers , is very present in Spinoza (see Balibar 1994). The ruler posses
right only insofar as his real force is greater than the masses and as the
masses accept to be ruled.
Natural rights
If we start explain Spinoza’s doctrine of the state with natural
right, we find
that political views contemporary or precedent to him, relied of traditional
concepts of natural right; Spinoza’s solution is far more naturalistic
and
realistic, as immanent as his ontology. For him, all political theory must
start
with two basic conditions:
1) Human emotions are not contingent vices, which just can be thought away.
Rather, they are necessary, in harmony with the rest of nature,
2) Therefore they must be understood, not criticised or loathed.
Spinoza had no use for theories of people written by thinkers "as they would
like them to be". A political theory must start from the predicament of
common
men, not saints. "I have therefore regarded human passions like love, hate,
anger, envy, pride, pity, and other feelings that agitate the mind, not as
vices
of human nature, but as properties which belong to it in the same way as
heat,
cold, storm, thunder and the like belong to the nature of the atmosphere."
PT,
ch. I, )
If we grant men their necessary passions, we may build up a secure state.
Politicians who relies on good faith are not long-lived and would prepare
his
own destruction, a Machiavellian theme, the difference is that Machiavelli
recognised a civic virtue in all men that possibly could ground a stable
state,
whereas Spinoza kept the virtuous way open only to the wise. The multitude
(people,) neither could nor wanted to walk the narrow road to higher
political
or theoretical interests. Machiavelli resigned himself to the people’s
passions
("They should know better!"), but Spinoza noted that they probably neither
should nor could ("No, they’re only natural !").
Right as power
Spinoza starts his theory of right from a state of nature, as in Hobbes, but
this right is equal to the power of the right - holder. The contract is not
an
abstract entity which keeps a society stable. Rather all rules must depend
on
power, i.e. Machiavellian force or Spinozist (divine) power in all beings:
"It follows that the power by which things in nature exist, and by which, in
consequence, they act, can be none other than the eternal power of God. / .
.
./Now from the fact that the power of things in nature to exist and act is
really the power of God, we can easily see what the right of nature is. For
since God has the right to do everything, and God’s right is simply
God’s power
conceived as completely free, it follows that each thing in nature has as
much
right from nature as it has power to exist and act.; since the power by
which it
exists and acts is nothing but the completely free power of God " (PT, ch.
II,
Spinoza’s italics).
Passions lead the multitude to use its power by natural right. If people are
in
bondage by their passions it follows that they may use it in a wrong or good
way. To strive to exist, conatus, is the base whatever means one chooses.
The
multitude use passions, the wise reason. Both ways have the same natural
right
to do it. Non- utopian politics may just use the first way, the passions of
the
multitude. "The natural right of the passions, and therewith the rule,
founded
in natural right, of conflict, hatred, anger and so on is against reason in
respect to our [the wise] nature, but not against reason in respect of the
laws
of nature as a whole "( Strauss , p. 232).
Rights as external norms are not to be taken seriously, when judging acts
according to Spinoza’s theory of causality. Less if they are "freely
chosen", as
Spinoza does not believe in a simple form of human freedom of choice . Power
gives rights as in "To be able to exist is power " ( Ethics, part I, prop
11,
3rd proof). Power is the essence of substance, as the concept of conatus
showed.
We should not confuse Spinoza’s concept of right as power with
cynicisms as
"might as right", "the right of the stronger" etc in an elitist fashion. "He
is
not only the first modern thinker to defend democracy as such, but to do so
on
the principle that might makes right" (Smith, p. 376). Weak men have as much
power as the strong in absolute terms, but is somehow separated from what
his
powers, his essence, can attain. To attain as much as we can, we must
increase
our actions and increase our active affections, joys and lessen what makes
us
sad and powerless.
"When considering right as a natural ability, including the ability of
reasoning, Spinoza never leaves to any degree the ‘naturalistic’
level. Whatever
one does is ‘right’ in his concept of right, because one can do
it and must do
it", historian Geismann notes (p. 44). Spinoza bases his doctrine of natural
right not on humanity but on God or the one substance where all participate
as
part of nature.
Each being in its essence is a result or an element in God, so all beings
are
comparable in that they express God in different degrees, i.e. that they are
to
different degrees. " Man is only a particle of nature. But this particle of
nature which is man must, in an eminent sense, be nature, be power"
Strauss ,
p. 239). The right to exist is greater in beings that "exists" in a higher
degree. The power of the multitude has greater power and therefore right
than
the wise men, if they not quantitatively change that balance (with technical
and
ideological means for example, as shown below ).
If we conceive power as the power of a body, we get closer to
Spinoza’s concept
of power. We do not know what a body can do, he says, but we know that it
will
exercise its natural powers, its rights, if not blocked as in "anti-
production
( see last Part III in this paper). "Pushing to the utmost what one can do
is
the properly ethical task. It is here that the Ethics take the body as a
model;
for every body extends its power as fast as it can. In a sense every being,
each
moment, pushes to the utmost what it can do " (Deleuze 1990, p. 269). This
model
applies to states too, and people’s ability to conceive new states, or
abolish
states altogether as the radical interpretation by Hardt: "Spinoza’s
conception
of natural right, then, poses freedom from order, the freedom of
multiplicity,
the freedom of society in anarchy" ( 1993, p. 109) .x
The contract theory as in Hobbes, Locke or Rousseau does not have the same
value
in Spinoza, although he mentions "pactum" in TTP for men in order to live in
security beyond the reach of fear. Men must obey their rulers, not subvert
or
overtake the state. Unreasonable laws shall be exposed in public but all
citizens must submit to their power, although they do not agree. But this
contract does not mean that men give up all their power to a sovereign
whether
monarch, noble or democratic council).
"Nobody can so completely transfer to another all his right, and
consequently
all his power, as to cease to be a human being/. . ./It must therefore be
granted that the individual reserves to himself a considerable part of his
right, which therefore depends on nobody’s decision but his own" (TTP,
ch.17).
The "void" left by the absence of contracts, and State authority, is filled
by
the practices and powers of the masses, in Negri’s (1992, 1994a) and
Hardt’s
(1996) radical democratic interpretations which we turn to at the end of
this
part.
TTP states fully that right (ius) must rely on and is the same as power
(potentia) (Montag 1995 and Balibar in Montag ed. 1997). If right as a
subjective right is identical to the power to act, it follows that the laws
as
rules of politics own their force, in the last instance, to the acceptance
of
the governed themselves, i.e. their collective power to agree. If Hobbesian
individuals would gain all natural and contractual rights without full
power,
they would be in a powerless and contradictory position visavi the state.
Now,
individual powers are less isolated than taken together, which is what
rulers
know. From what the ruler fears, the mass (multitudo) can know. "If it is
true
that we can know the people only from he view of the prince [ as Machiavelli
stated], it is equally true that we can know the people only from the point
of
view of the Prince" (Montag 1995, p 101).
Peace and stability are the aims of the state for Hobbes, as they are for
Spinoza. But peace is not to best at all costs for Spinoza. Peace must be
endurable, otherwise opposed, even with arms.
Democracy
Spinoza envisioned that men only can live as reasonable and free in a state
or a
city. Experience teaches man that living together in states or other
commonwealths is the best way to attain security and develop free thoughts .
The
formation of society is necessary and useful, although not " natural" in the
sense of being self-evident to all citizens at all times. If men lived
according
to reason, and were not prey to superstition, a state based on reason would
be
possible. "There is no singular thing in Nature which is more useful to man
than
a man who lives according to the guidance of reason (Ethics, part IV, prop
35,
cor. 1). / . . . /Still, it rarely happens that men live according to the
guidance of reason. Instead, their lives are so constituted that they are
usually envious and burdensome to one another "(ibid, schol.) .
The urge to exist, conatus, teaches man that life in common is better than
solitary life in a state of naure. Better in the sense of useful to oneself,
to
one’s advantage. Spinoza lets the "satirists" laugh at human affairs,
the
"theologicians" curse them, and "melancholiacs" praise lower animals and
disdain
mankind - all are mislead by not taking man’s own desire for his
advantage, his
conatus, , as his real cause for building society (ibid). Democracy is to be
preferred, being the most natural government of men. A democracy is better
since
there is less danger of a government behaving unreasonably, for it is
practically impossible for the majority of a single assembly, to agree on
the
same piece of folly. But Spinoza views democracy also as an effective means
to
rule. Tyranny might arise, but they do not last long . Spinoza notes ( as
Seneca) that despotic regimes never lasts long,whereas moderate ones do. The
state is usually superior to the individual by its united strength of many
citizens, that power is the state’s " right". Spinoza asserts that
" . . . Since the right of the commonwealth is determined by the collective
power of a people, the greater the number of the subjects given cause by a
commonwealth to join in conspiracy against it, the more must its power and
right
be diminished. . . The right of the state is nothing more than a natural
right,
limited not by the power of the individual , but by that of the multitude,
which
is guided by one mind" (PT, ch.3).
The balance of powers are important: "The reason of the state lies not in
the
governing nor in the governed, but in the capacity of the ruler to rule, and
in
the capacity of the ruled to be ruled " (Strauss , p. 240). A state ruled by
force is weaker than ruled by a free multitude. Therefore the state must
secure
that the citizens get freedom and security, out of adhering to the state .
"The
state proves its own reason against the irrationality of men not by an
appeal to
reason of its citizens, but by the realization of self - preservation
[conatus]
according to the principles expounded in the ontology. This is realized by a
power that force the masses. ", Bartuschat says in Deugd, ed. p. 35.
Contracts, ideology and religion
The state must rely on a balancing of collective powers, rather than
individual
rights, obligations and contracts. Since it is not individuals who counters
the
state’s Power, but the united mind of the multitude, the conclusion is
that this
mind of its own has a certain existence, essence and power. History becomes
a
history of mass struggle, not of relationships between individuals and
states
(Balibar 1994 and Negri 1992).
Spinoza rejected in PT the juridical and transcendental apparatus of
contracts,
obligation and rights since he saw where the real power was, in the
multitude.
Individual power were never as strong as collective material forces. Hobbes
started from pure individuality in the origins of the state, where Spinoza
could
speak of a "body" being composed of several individuals, with one nature as
we’ve seen. The multitude is not reducible to anything but itself, a
new body of
(former) individuals. It has then attained a state when its passions have
been
transformed to actions.
The multitude is hard to govern, since "whoever has experienced the
inconstant
temperament of the multitude will be brought to despair by it. For it is
governed not by reason but by the affects alone" (TTP, ch 17). The state
must
combine affective means ( piety, patriotism, superstition) with rational
utility, private wealth). The "affections of reason" are outside the scope
of
the free community’s mutual consent, since they are useful, at least
in the long
run, to the community. "Men should really be governed in such a way that
they do
not regard themselves as being governed, but as following their own bent and
their own free choice / . . / they are restrained only by love of freedom"
(PT,
ch. x)
Religion can degenerate to superstition Spinoza showed. But other
ideological
means are just as efficient and lead to obedience and destructive stupidity.
A
central question if men strive for self- preservation is why do men fight
for
their own repression, in wars, in fights for fascism, despots? The answer is
that inadequate but useful ideas for a short brutal life, hold us down with
power from material strength. The reasons why the mass obeys its rulers are
not
just pure power, but foremost ideology in a Marxist sense. Spinoza’s
analysis of
17th century ideology, i.e. religion, degenerated to superstition and
dominating
theories, have Norris 1991 and all of and on Althusser). And free
communcation
of individuals, humans, states, modes of all kinds, are to be a political
(and
ontological) question, as Etienne Balibar concludes:
"If we admit with Spinoza /. . . / that communication is structured by
relations
of ignorance and of knowledge, of superstition, of ideological antagonism,
in
which are invested human desire and which expresses an activity of bodies,
we
must also admit with him that knowledge is a practice, and that the struggle
for
knowledge (philosophy) is a political practice. In the absence of this
practice,
the tendentially democratic processes of decision described by the PT would
remain unintelligible. We understand thereby why the essential aspect of
Spinozist democracy is from the outset liberty of communication. We
understand
also how the theory of the ’body politic’ is neither a simple
physics of power,
nor a psychology of the submission of the masses, nor the means of
formalising a
juridical order, but the search for a strategy of collective liberation, for
which the password is: to be the greatest number possible to think the most
possible (thoughts)"(p. 118 in Balibar 1985, my transl).
Spinoza the proto- marxist
Negri goes much further than Balibar in his summary: "Spinoza’s
innovation [of
the genealogy of the power of the multitude] is in fact a philosophy of
communism; Spinozian ontology is nothing but a genealogy of communism"(Negri
1994a, p. 139). His interpretation of Spinoza is very decisive to any
reflection
on Spinoza’s political philosophy, Marx and Deleuze/ Guattari,
although I can
only turn to it briefly here (see Surin for in depth analysis).
Negri views Spinoza as an "anomalous thinker", situated between the crisis
of
the renaisance humanist utopia and the change from mercantile to industrial
capitalism. The bourgeois utopia of the market underpinned his aspiration
towards a fuller and richer humanity. Just as Spinoza came after an era of
hope
and meditated (although only as a metaphysician) on its crisis, the
contemporary
crisis of the revolutions of 1917 and 1968 has a similar experience, a lapse
in
time, in post - modernity just as Spinoza was pre - modern (or
"L’anti-
modernit’e de Spinoza" as in Negri’s essay in 1994, ch. 6). The
crisis of
Keynesianism and the brutal transition to its susseccor, Integrated World
Capitalism (Guattari & Negri), is what motivates Negri to read Spinoza
through
Marx’ eyes, as Surin notes so well:
"First he [Negri] has seen the need to shift his own focus as a reader of
Marx
from Capital (with its negative emphasis on the irresolvably constradictory
nature of capitalist production) to the Grundrisse (with its positive stress
on
the constitute capacity of the proletariat to appropiate social wealth; and
second, he has turned to Spinoza in his quest for an ontological foundation
for
the new revolutionary subjectivity that has emegerged since 1968" (Surin, p.
13).
Negri takes Marx’ notions of formal and real subsumption (see Hardt
1995 for the
marxist notions) to deal with what has happend in 20 th century capitalism.
In
formal subsumption, there exist still pre- or noncapitalist modes of
production,
of pre - bourgeois values etc, but in real subsumption, all of society is
dominated by the command of capital (and what is left of non - capitalism is
fully integrated. This move spreads the antagonism between capital and
labour
(and its allies) to all of the planet and all beings in its entirety. The
sites
of struggle become fluid, generalized and diffused, just as the student
rebellions, the sudden presence of marginalized groups, were in the
60’s and
early 70’s, especially in southern Europe. There is no way to
establish the old
corporate order in such a flow of desires and productions, but rule through
postmodern fragmentatization by a postfordist capitalist ideology and
command by
political measures (fiscal crisis e.g.), which creates new protests and so
on.
Negri’s other reason for using Spinoza now, is his position against
the concept
in political philosophy from Hobbes, Rousseau to Hegel, especially in the
contractarian tradition, to pose a dialectic between powerless individual
men
and a powerful state. In the state, individuals subsume their power (which
they
give over in Hobbes’ as well as in Rousseau, and get aufgehoben in
Hegel), to
the potestas of government. In the age of real subsumption, it is impossible
to
rule as before ( e noted above), it possesses no power of it own, but is a
site
for capitalist command and labour struggles. "In this society -state complex
there cannot be a ‘vertical’ resolution of the manifold
contradictory individual
wills (as maintained in the Hobbes - Rousseau - Hegel tradition [the"
democratic
soup" Negri calls them], because in an integrated world - capitalism which
is
essentially ‘paranational’ in form, there is no state. No
‘new state’ into which
the contradictions of civil society can be sublimated by negative power",
(Surin, p 14 , referring to Hardt 1995 on civil society).
In Spinoza’s time there was no possibility for his "physics of the
power of the
multitude" to develop, but now, in late 2nd millenium, late capitalism, late
modernity, we finally have a politics that needs this kind of open surfaces
that
immanence provides.
" . . Spinoza needs new real conditions to be given: Only teh revolution
poses
these conditions. The completion of the Political Treatise [see Negri 1997],
the
development of the chapter on democracy [which never got started as Spinoza
died
1677], or better, on the absolute, intellectual and corporeal form of the
government of the masses, bcomes a real problem only within and after the
revolution. Within this actuality of the revolution, the power of
Spinoza’s
thought gains a universal significance " (Negri 1992, p. 210.) The only
comparable work to Spinoza’s are Deleuze/ Guattari’s, Negri
maintains (in Negri
1995), to which we now turn.
PART II: Deleuze and Guattari
In this part, I will express some aspects of Deleuze/Guattari’s
philosophy and
politics, with emphasis on their conception of desire as a part of a
politics
and ontology. Deleuze/Guattari’s political and social thought is less
a critical
theory of capitalism and conformism, than an effort to create effects,
practical
and theoretical for change. Their books must be used, rather than read as
theory
claiming the truth of society, the world, mankind. The relation between
theory
and society that interests them, is not a question of represention, models
or
reference, but of the genetic (biological, social and historical) relations
by
which society produces theory. The question of truth of any theory is less
important than what political and desiring intersts it expresses, in
products,
effects of all kinds. This anti- representationalist strategy is uncommon in
political theory, but has a theoretical tradition in anarchist and
libertarian
socialist thought to which the French "gauchists" Deleuze/Guattari belong
(see
May 1993).
Their politics has more to do with 19th century French utopian - socialists
like
Charles Fourier than scientific socialists like Karl Marx, more with
alternatives than deconstruction (Derrida only deconstructs, never
constructs).
Too much energy gets wasted in critique of the establishment (reactive
thought
in Nietzsche’s sense) , better to build the new (create values "beyond
good and
evil"). Artists are better creators than most political theorists they
claim,
which is why authors of all kinds, painters, film directors, musicians etc
abound in their books rather than political philosophers.
First, their overall picture of society. Deleuze and Guattari argue that
capitalism is a schizophrenic system. Because it is interested only in the
individual and his profit it must subvert or deterritorialize (as they name
a
down- mantling process, of leaving land) all territorial groupings such as
the
church, the family, the group, indeed any social arrangement who occupies a
practical or theoretical "territory". But at the same time, since capitalism
requires social groupings in order to function (for work and sell goods to),labour. In
order to accomplish this deterritorialization, everything sacred,
ritual or traditional has to go. Capitalism has no need of any sacred system
of
belief. It is the most radical of all systems, since it undercuts anything
that
represses the autonomous individual. And yet, the reality of capitalism is
the
greatest repression of desiring production in history. Presumably, it should
have led to an absolute freedom, but it has not. Instead, disciplinary
societies
in early capitalism as analyed by Michel Foucault has ginven way to
societies of
control of late capitalism, where poeple in (developed) countries are
controlled
by infinite digital systems rather than a structuring disciplinary gaze.
Ontology and desire
If we now turn to their conception of ontology and the place of man and his
desire, we find not a romantic play of innocence but a materialist
"machinic"
thought. Their effort is not critical deconstructive or naive escapist
stance
from hegemonic discoures, power structures and lives, but affirmative,
posing
alternatives instead of judging the old and wearsome.
They want to construct a social space where immanent "surface" relations can
be
produced, which may, instead of acting out pregiven roles by some real or
imaginary God/Ruler/System, be capable of crerating new relations, a social
space non-existent before its immanent construction. First, they mean that a
ontological whole, a One, must to be replaced by a Multiplicity, an
heterogenous
intensive manifold of differences where as many connections as possible are
established (Spinoza’s concept of substance in not understood as a
hierachial
One by Deleuze). Secondly, to move this multiplicity, we need it to create
something, produce a "consistency". A machine is something (organic or non-
organic, or mixtures as cyborgs) that is able to draw and assemble new
events
from old in a creation, the second element in the immanent multiple
relations.
Thirdly, Deleuze /Guattari pose desire as the tendency to come into
existence of
such creations.
"Desire, a concept deterritorailized from adult sexuality, while not losing
its
erotic character, becomes applicable in any context or relation: it is a
spontaneous emergence that generates [new] relationship[s] through a
synthesis
of multiplicities . Desire is the machinic relation itself, in respect of
both
its power of coming into existence and the specific multiplicity to which it
gives a consistency" (Goodchild, p. 4). To liberate is to relate knowledge
to
desire and power. Knowledge must deal with what kinds of multiplicities and
immanent relations exist in society; power concerns production and
transformations of relations (capacity to affect and be affected in
Spinoza’s
sense); desire handle the driving force behind creation and relations.
[Exkurs on univocity (may be skipped on to next section)
The inspiration from Spinoza’s ontology is clear in this context, as I
will try
to show in a brief exkurs on expression and univocity ( a concept where
"being
is said in the same sense [in one voice] of all there is , whether finite or
infinite - although the sense may differ modally" , Boundas , p. 51) :
Spinoza has philosophy of immanence appears from all viewpoints as the
theory of
unitary Being, equal Being, common and univocal Being. This claim, which
applies
equally to both Spinoza and Deleuze, must be understood if we are to see how
a
Deleuzian philosophy of surfaces and differences is to be coherent.
Deleuze’s
concept of difference is essentially an anti- transcendental one; he is
trying
to preserve the integrity of surfaces of difference from any reduction to a
unifying principle lying outside all planes of immanence/consistency, a
metadiscourse that would hold other discursive practices under its sway.
For Deleuze, the central Spinozist concept is expression as we noted
earlier.
Expression is the relation among substance, attributes, essences, and modes
that
allows each to be conceived as distinct from, and part of, the others; "The
idea
of expression accounts for the real activity of the paticipated, and for the
possibility of participation. It is in the idea of expression that the new
principle of immanence asserts itself. Expression appears as the unity of
the
multiple, as the complication of the multiple, and as the the explication of
the
One" (Deleuze 1990, p. 176). With Spinoza, it is not merely a neutral
description of being but at the same time revealing of being as an object of
affirmation, of desire. It is expression that, by substituting itself for
emanation and by displacing all forms of dualism, introduces into philosophy
the
anti- transcendental notion of the univocity of being ."What is expressed
has no
existence outside its expressions; each expression is , as it were, the
existence of what is expressed"(ibid, p. 15-16). Exactly the same defintion
as
machinic creation and desire ! All three concepts, multiplicity, creation
and
desire cannot be grasped apart from one another ( in a social world),
The essence of substance/God/Nature (Spinozist terms) is its infinite (but
not
indefinite) power, the absolutely unlimited power to exist and generate
affects.
"Essence is power" Spinoza states several times. Now, things exist not as
essences but as existent finite and infinite modes. Substance is both the
process of making expressions, natura naturans, |creative nature] and those
expressions, natura naturata [created nature]. Throughout all its
expressions,
being remains univocal. It must be seen that to univocal is not to be
identical;
"The significance of spinozism seems to me this [Deleuze writes]; it asserts
immanence as a principle and frees expression from any subordination to
emanative or exemplary causality. Expression itself no longer emanates, no
longer resembles anything. And such a result can be obtained only within a
perspective of univocity" (ibid p. 180). Back to the discussion of ontology
and
desire. ]
Readers unfamiliar with philosophic desiring machines (see appendix) must
free
themselves from a naive conception of Deleuze/ Guattari’s philosophy
of desire
as simply envisaging a celebration of anarchy or sudden removing all
political
and social obstacles. Rather, one must extract, express, produce, or better,
multiply, create and desire the new in a selective way, as what empowers
people,
make them able to do more, go as far as they did not know. Desire is not a
universal ontological concept (there are none as such in Deleuze own
philosophy), underlying all of existence, but as something existing "outside
or
alongside" existence. In Deleuze earlier writings (on Hume, Bergson,
Nietzsche),
he developed strange irreducible concepts like "intensive difference",
"becomings", "extra - sense" to escape traditional Western philosphy of
representation, that relates all being to a model, a standard, to represent
something or someone, in order to get away from a hegelian dialectic,
whether
liberal universialist or marxist proletarian. Instead he posed difference as
something in itself, not different in ressemblance, identity, in opposition,
by
analogy (see Deleuze 1994). In his preface to the French publication of
Negri
1992, Deleuze called this tradition a "juridicism" which Spinoza opposed as
himself. This implies four things: 1) that forces have an individual or
pirvate
origin, 2) that they must be socialized, 3) that thre is a mediation of
Power
(potestas ) and 4) that being is inseparable from a crisis, a war or
antagonism
for which Power is presented as the solution, but an "antagonistic solution"
(like in Hobbes’ contract), that never will be abolished if not its
conditions
(of capital) are.
Spinoza’s way of considering bodies is important here. He envisaged as
we saw
before that bodies could be of all kinds, of matter, thought etc. Bodies
then
are composed of relations between parts that also have smaller parts etc.
But
since all boides have the same substance, they are distinguished in two
ways;
their degrees of speed and slowness, movement and rest; and "their sets of
affects that occupy a body at each moments, that is, the intensive states of
an
anonymous force [i.e. desire] (force for existing, capacity for being
affected)"
(Deleuze 1988, p 127-8, written 1970 before his preoccupation with desire).
Bodies can only be known through the changes that happen to them. The
affects of
a book for example. "We will never ask what a book means . . . we will not
look
for anything to understand in it. We will ask what it functions with, in
connections with what other things it does or does not transmit intensities.
. .
" (Deleuze/Guattari 1987, p. 4). The question is not, is it true ? but, does
it
work ?
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APPENDIX DELEUZE/GUATTARI’S VOCABULARY
Machines: A term coined by Guattari to escape the Lacanian notion of the
"subject" which is often mistaken for consciousness itself. A machine is any
point at which a flow of some sort (physical, intellectual, emotional etc),
either leaves or enters a structure. A baby’s mouth at its
mother’s breast is a
mouth machine meeting a breast machine. There is flow between these two
machines.
Desiring machine: a machine connected to a "body without organs, engaged in
productive desire
Body without organs :A phrase from the French author Antonin Artaud. Any
organized structure, such as a government, a university, a body, or the
universe. Desiring machines and the body without organs are two different
states
of the same thing, part of an organized system of production which controls
flows.
Paranoic machine: A state in which the body without organs rejects the
desiring machines.
Miraculating machine: a state in which the body without organs attracts the
desiring machines.
The Socius: a body without organs that constitutes a society, as in the body
of
the earth of primitive societies, the body of the despot in barbaric
societies
and the body of capital in capitalist societies.
The nomadic subject: the free autonomous subject which exists momentarily in
an ever shifting array of possibilities as desiring machines distribute
flows
across the body without organs.
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