Laruelle’s “Fragments of an Anti-Guattari”

[This may be cited as Laruelle, F.; Wolfe, C. (trans.). (1993). “Fragments of an Anti-Guattari.” Long News in the Short Century 4, pp. 158-164. Retrieved from linguisticcapital.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/laruelles-fragments-of-an-anti-guattari.

The following is reproduced with permission. A pdf version is available here.]

1.1   It was the Post-Modern times
        Unlimited becoming-cinema
        Image-debris in a state of fixed surview
        Thinkers were then producing the Real
        A bachelor philosopher a bachelor analyst
        A dyad of bachelors was inventing
        The reversibility of desire and the concept
        The “D-G” desiring-machine
        Consider the following diagram

1.2    About-face inversion of the Greek horizon
        Great Desirers they went down to the Heraclitus stream
        Bathed once-for-two in the same flux
        Foreswearing the One-logos of the hospital-schizos – The Sensible
        In the Collective-logos of schizo-processes – The Senseless
               “The right to madness, superhuman right of the human”
               “Take into consideration desire in its entirety”
               “A thousand Oedipuses do not make one incest”
               “The Same is the Desired and the Desiring—by one machine more or less”
               “The stream is the self-production of the stream”

“Heraclitus! Heraclitus!
Only one ‘flash’ can set fire to a thousand plateaus”

“Emblem of necessity
Supreme constellation of Desire
Eternal Yes of Desire
Forever I shall be your Yes”

         Thus they spoke of the eternal and cunning speeches
         Tautologies linking past and future
         New theory of indiscernables – the concept as bridge

1.3    Transcendental cartographers of the thousand eternities of Being
         To the proximity constellations Mythos and Logos
         Their extinction has not yet reached us -
         They have added shining-obscure
         The so-called “Chaos” constellation
         A stream of neighbouring stars
         “Chaosmos”, “Chaosmosis”, “Chaology”, “chaosmology”
         And the most recent “Ecology-of-Chaos” also known as “Echaology”

         - Its birth has not yet been announced

1.4    A philosopher – an analyst up to one auto-position
         An analyst – a philosopher up to one unconscious
         Reversible up to an “up to an X”
         Naming their common non-sense “Desire”
         The archaic originary One-Two of “desiring Desire”
         Oh mythology which never ceases to bring back
         The D(i)eux [D(y)ei] of grammar

1.5    We have loved these transcendental tautologies
         Stretched out like a temple over our heads
         Worlding World/nullifying Nothingness/speaking Speech/desiring Desire
         Merry-go-round spun around by a Leibnizian ritournelle

“The philosopher, turning, so to speak, the general system of these tautologies that he deems suitable to be produced to manifest his thought, from side to side and in all ways, and looking over all the facets of this ‘fourfold’ in all possible ways, since there is no relation which escapes his omniscience; the result of each view of this system, as seen from a certain place up to a turn, is a philosophy which expresses this total, if the philosopher deems it suitable to render the thought effective and to produce this philosophy.” From which 12 founding statements [follow]: “take into consideration …
                the nullifying world
                the speaking world
                the desiring world
                the worldifying nothingness
                the speaking nothingness
                the desiring nothingness
                the worldifying speech
                the nullifying speech
                the desiring speech
                the worldifying desire
                the nullifying desire
                the speaking desire … in its entirety”
        For 12 new philosophers among the thousand
        Coming up from the bottom of the Future

.

2.1   I call “One (of) desire” desire as One rather than One as desire

        Consider the One (of) desire …

(up to a point, more or less, up to a being more or less, not
   approximating “as close as X”, not on the basis of any
      desire, before it disjoins itself into desired and desiring,
          and blends in the concept and the unconscious)

        … What is called thinking?

2.2   I call “Desiring desire” the doublet which opens analysis
        and the difference which implodes it in super-analysis

Either it desires itself
Inverts reverts itself into super-analysis
Big with a thousand desired-desiring amphibologies

Either it ceases in the One (of) desire to desire itself
Emerges to its own manifestation
As three states (of) desire
Categories of a non-analysis

           - The One (of) desire
                       - or the Desired-without-desire
                               - the order of the real
           - The Being (of) desire
                       - or the Desirings which are [the] multitude
                                                                                of desire-thinking
                               - the order of the symbolic
           - The Entity (of) desire
                       - or desiring Desire
                               - the order of the imaginary

2.3   I call “One (of) desire” or Desired the Enjoyed (of) jouissance

The One (of) jouissance rather than the jouissance of the One
That which in desire is enjoyed from both ends
That to which desire does not give its share
That part of desire which appears to desire alone
Its absolutely un-desirable and just so desired phenomenon

The Enjoyed suspended in its own immanence
What begins and completes itself with no circle
Begins there without departing from it
Completes itself there without return

Deserted without desire
Too simple the desert is not rare

Desired, absolute past of desire
Enjoyed, absolute past of enjoyment
As the Lived
Precedes the living the Affected
Affection the Enjoyed
Jouissance
Solitude of closed eyes before
The confinement of solitude

Reduced form enjoyment spark of desire
The Ir-reduced of the Enjoyed, the intense Extinguished of the Desired
Are a mystical razor
An ante-essential rather than supra-essential state

2.4   If as Desirings it is still possible to say of desire that it desires
        Being (of) desire
        It is suspended in-
        Desired
        The Desirings remain

I call Desirings the multitude (of) axioms
Inhabitants
Of the void beyond the Desired
On this side of the desire-Entity

Think in-Desired
Make Being void of desire
Prepare the dwelling of the Desirings

Of the Desired the axiom is never stated
Unless it is also the cause of the axiom
And insofar as it is

The axiomatics of Desirings adds nothing to the Desired
Just itself to itself
The axiom seen-in-full

Consider the fluxion of desired-desiring connections
Its suspension like a photograph
Reveals to the unclear side of the stream
A strict identity between the source and the mouth
The frozen flux of an eidetic Heraclitus
Frozen-in-One like a sky of eternal axioms

Desired is the non-moved and the non-moving
Desirings are the mobile or the flying moved once each time
Desire-desiring is the moved motor

.

The One (of) desire gathers without division all possible (undividable)
The Being (of) desire gathers without division all possible division
Being is particular – oh Desirings
Particle is the partition with nothing to part
A partition from one end to another
Without mixing with the Desired as is
The undiscernable molecule
of desiring Desire

Desire receives thinking not from thinking itself
From the grace of the One (of) desire and then thinking
Thinking receives desire not from desire itself
From the grace of the in-Desired and then of desire

.

Translated by Charles Wolfe^†

.

Author’s notes

“Desired”: past participle of ‘desire’, which I make into a noun.

“in-Desired”: en rather than dans, indicating an interiority or a radical inherence/immanence.

“Sensés”-Senseless: translation of Heraclitean terms.

“Fourfold”: Heideggerian term (Cf. “The Thing”).

“Jouissance”/“Enjoyment”: Lacanian term. I extract from it the past participle Joui (Enjoyed) which I make into a noun.

“Reduced”-“spark”: mystical terms. (Cf. Meister Eckhart).

“Ir-reduced”: not opposed to “Reduced”; cf. “irreducible”.

“Extinct”/“Extinguished”: past participle of ‘extinguish’, which I make into a noun.

“razor”: Cf. Ockham’s razor.

“ante-essential”: cf. the mystical term ‘supra-essential’; before Essence (=Being), above or beyond Essence (=Being).

.

---

^†: Editor’s notes:

I have emended the second term in §1.3’s antepenultimate line. It originally read ‘Chaosmose’, while Laruelle doubtless means ‘Chaosmosis’, the title of one of Guattari’s books. Cf. the French osmose, which translates to the English ‘osmosis’.

In §1.4, ‘self-position’ has been changed to ‘auto-position’, in keeping with standard translations of Laruelle.

“Nullifying nothingness” (1.5) refers to Heidegger’s statement “The nothing nothings.” Laruelle clearly has in mind the meaning ‘nothinging nothingness’, which unfortunately does not parse well into English.                                                                     — G.J.

Goethe on Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz

Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz

One is aware of that species of self-torture which, in the absence of any external or social constraints, was then the order of the day, afflicting precisely those possessed of most exceptional minds. Things which torment ordinary people only in passing and which, because unengaged in self-contemplation, they seek to banish from their thoughts, were instead acutely registered and observed by the better sort, and set down in books, letters, and diaries. But now the strictest moral demands placed upon oneself and others were commingled with an extreme negligence in one’s own actions, and the vague notions arising out of this semi-self-knowledge encouraged the strangest proclivities and most outlandish behavior.  This unremitting work of self-contemplation was further abetted by the rise of empirical psychology, which, if unwilling to describe anything that causes us inner unrest as wicked or reprehensible, could nonetheless not entirely condone it; and thus was set into motion a permanent, irresoluble state of conflict. Of all the full- or half-time idlers intent on digging into their innermost depths, Lenz excelled in cultivating and perpetuating this state of conflict, and thus he suffered in general from that tendency of the age to which the depiction of Werther was meant to put a stop; but he was cut from a different cloth, which set him apart from all the others, whom one had to admit were thoroughly open, decent creatures. He, by contrast, had a decided propensity for intrigue, indeed, for intrigue pure and simple, without any particular goal in view, be it reasonable, personal, or attainable; on the contrary, he was always concocting some twisted scheme, whose very contortions were enough to keep him wholly entertained. In this way, throughout his life his fancies played him for a rascal, his loves were as imaginary as his hates, he juggled his ideas and feelings at whim, so that he would always have something to do. By these topsy-turvy means, he would attempt to impart reality to his sympathies and antipathies, and then would himself destroy this creation again; and so he was never of use to anybody he loved, nor did he ever do harm to anybody he hated, and in general he seemed only to sin in order to punish himself, only to intrigue in order to graft some new fiction onto an old one.

His talent, in which delicacy, agility, and extreme subtlety all vied with each other, proceeded from a genuine depth, from an inexhaustible creative power, but, for all its beauty, there was something thoroughly unhealthy about it, and it is precisely talents such are these that are the most difficult to evaluate. One cannot fail to appreciate the outstanding features of his works; they are suffused with by something quite sweet and tender, but this is intermixed with instances of buffoonery so baroque and so asinine that, even in a sense of humor this all-pervasive and unassuming, even in a comic gift this genuine, they can hardly be pardoned. His days were occupied by airy nothings to which, ever assiduous, he managed to give meaning, and if he was able to idle away his hours in this fashion, it was because, given his outstanding memory, the time he actually devoted to reading always proved to be most fruitful, enriching his original way of thinking with a great variety of materials.

• Goethe, J.W.; Oxenford, J. (trans.). (2003). Poetry & Truth. Pennsylvania State University;
• excerpted in Büchner, G.; Sieburth, R. (trans.). (2004). Lenz. New York: Archipelago Books, pg. 135, 137, 139.

_

Lenz eventually came to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, which inspired Georg Büchner to write a speculative biographical novella based on the diaries of Johann Friedrich Oberlin, at whose house Lenz lodged for a period of three weeks as his mental health steadily deteriorated. I post the above excerpt here due to its incisive analysis of Lenz’s personality, which I admire both for its perspicaciousness and the way it highlights Lenz’s relation to the Romantic zeitgeist.  As well, Deleuze & Guattari refer to Lenz in the opening pages of Anti-Oedipus. See here for an excellent synopsis of Lenz’s life and place within schizoanalysis.

The Libidinal Economics of American History X

[I wrote this a couple of years ago for a sociology class I took, and it has been my best ideological film interpretation to date. Though AMX is somewhat dated now, perhaps this will allow a more detached perspective for readers unaccustomed to ideological critique, allowing them to notice details that would otherwise have been taken for granted. Each section (separated by the picture) was an answer to a separate question, the latter being a 'reflective' question, hence the autobiographical elements, which I leave in because I imagine that the mindset I display is fairly general. I still have not studied racial politics extensively, but as I eventually delve into postcolonialism and Fanon, the topic will likely pop up here more often. On the whole, this critique serves as an excellent prelude to my more long-term study of differing types of libidinal economies and the social conventions which instantiate them.]

Though the film made very clear its message of hatred being “baggage”, the film also contains the implicit message that instead of hating people because of their race, people should vent their hatred upon more socially acceptable targets, namely, promiscuous women, the obese, and the elderly. In the opening scene of the film the viewer immediately sees Stacey engaged in coitus, passive except for her continual yelps of pleasure. The viewer is immediately repulsed by her and continue to be throughout the film, as they are as well with the unnamed “blond girl” who is introduced to the audience as dirty, drunk, and begging for Danny. Secondly, the character Seth is deliberately portrayed as repulsive; as well as his bigotry, the director induces comedy by having him beg to be fed as well as pouring a bowl of jellybeans into his mouth. Seth has absolutely no positive qualities; he is childish, vulgar, disloyal, et cetera; in essence, the audience’s negativity is displaced onto him, presumably in order to help viewers to forget the atrocities that Derek performed in the beginning of the film.

Finally, the character Cameron Alexander is the main human antagonist of the film, being the leader among the neo-Nazi subculture in the story’s setting, as well as a (former) father figure to Derek and his comrades. Furthermore, he is portrayed as an embodiment of evil, with absolutely no sympathetic nuances to his character; the audience becomes convinced that he is rigidly set in his ways, fossilized into an outdated mindset which has thankfully been abandoned by the mainstream, with such atavistic blights as Cameron being the only obstacle to genuine progress. The negativity of these characters cannot be denied, nor can the fact that much of this negativity plays off of existing stereotypes about promiscuous women, the obese, and the elderly: Stacy is shown as having being blindly accepting of whatever Derek says, but later on is shown to have absolutely no loyalty to Derek when he abandons racism; Seth is shown as having absolutely no sense of self-control, as is seen with the jellybeans, as well as incapable of having any real feelings, most notably when he instantly turns a gun on his Derek, his best friend, because Derek no longer wants to participate in racial hatred; Cameron is a shameful remnant of America’s segregationist past, incapable of seeing beyond the scope of his outdated values, and bringing nothing to the younger generation but corruption of values which could be used in much more productive ways (as seen in the case of Danny’s well-researched book report). Racial hatred has been passé since desegregation; the film urges its viewers to ‘get with the times’.

The colonialist 'mythology' of this magazine cover (published during the time of the war in Algeria) infuriated Roland Barthes, who denounced it, as well as the ideology for which it stood, in his popular newspaper column.

The film is certainly extremist, in that the vast majority of viewers can in no way directly identify with its content. I am genuinely concerned about the ideological biases that have been instilled into my perception of others, and try, though I have had little opportunity, to place such paradigms within conscious control. I found it interesting that the film managed to posit an entirely hedonistic reason for not discriminating; its concept that ‘hatred is only baggage’ presented the notion of bigotry to each individual in a manner that is, to be frank, entirely self-concerned. This method is extremely fitting when considering the moral state of the contemporary world; externally imposed commands (Thou shalt not…) are, if followed, done so either grudgingly or unthinkingly. In order to instill the film’s moral within its audience, the directors have felt it necessary to present a moral solipsism—individuals are not asked to try and empathize with those who are discriminated against, nor are they asked to go out of their way in any form, they are simply asked to ‘look out for number one.’ I personally find it interesting that such methods as the solipsistic morality mentioned above are the lengths to which people must go in order to acquire a veneer of morality. As much as I would like to gloat over my moral superiority, I cannot help but wonder whether my own attempts at acceptance of diversity are any different. After all, I care very little at this point in my life about most ethnicities, except for abstract nuances such as Asian collectivism, predispositions provided by language toward viewing the world a certain way, and intellectual & political histories of specific nations. Even if I wanted to, I simply cannot learn enough about each culture to be sufficiently able to empathize with them, therefore it seems that solipsistic morality will have to suffice for now until I can find a better method of empathy.

_

[See the Wiki page here and the IMDb page here for more information about the film.]

Guattari’s Glossary of Schizoanalysis

[I recently had to type this out for an acquaintance, so I figured that I might as well post it for fellow confuzzled readers of D&G. One should, however, note the suspicion of 'tautological' definitions explicitly posed by Bourdieu, evidently adopted from Wittgenstein, who decried the assumption of Western metaphysics that every word references a distinct object. Rather, says Wittgenstein, we should look at words in terms of what they do: as a 'toolbox'. Here, then, is a glimpse into some of the tools utilized by Guattari and Deleuze, though these are by no means exhaustive, tautological definitions, but merely two-dimensional renditions of multifaceted concepts. For other renditions, the reader is directed to this and this, as well as the following books:

• Parr, A. (Ed.). (2005). Deleuze Dictionary. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press.
• Bonta, M. & Protevi, J. (2004). Deleuze & Geophilosophy: A Guide & Glossary. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press.]

Richard Webster on Intellectualism

The tragic predicament of such intellectuals [as Lacan] is that, driven by terrifying feelings of emotional emptiness and insecurity, they mistakenly conclude that intellectual truths can be an adequate substitute for emotional warmth. Convinced that difficult or abstract intellectual formulations can alone fill the void they feel within them, they develop a voracious appetite for such formulations, anorexically judging their goodness by the degree of difficulty or abstraction they possess. Believing that what they have devoured is intrinsically nourishing and failing to grasp the poverty of the diet they have adopted through their own self-denying ordinances, they now feel impelled to share their ‘truths’ with others. Indeed they are driven by their own generosity to do so. Like a starving man who compels others to eat the diet of stones he believes has saved him, they give abundantly of their poverty out of a genuine conviction that they are enriching others. Because their own most generous impulses have become inextricably entwined with their impulse to self-denial they are unable to discriminate between generosity and cruelty and unable to understand that by compulsively sharing with others (or compelling others to share) their own chosen form of intellectual or spiritual wealth they are merely disseminating their poverty.

Webster, R. “The Cult of Lacan“

[The above is the only thought-provoking paragraph of an otherwise disappointing essay.]

A Question For Lacanians

When Jacques-Alain Miller was a philosophy student at L’Ecole Normale Superieure, Althusser told him to read “all of Lacan,” so he did.  Then, one day when Lacan was visiting the school, Miller asked him a now-”famous” question that supposedly revealed the key to Lacan’s psychoanalysis, and the two thenceforth entered into an understanding which was to last all their lives.  Miller’s question was: “Does your notion of the subject imply an ontology?” (Source)

Another account of the exchange (which includes Lacan’s answer), located here, is:

The ontological concerns of the Cahiers pour l’Analyse themselves are prefigured in a key moment in Jacques Lacan’s seminar in the spring of 1964, when Jacques-Alain Miller asked Lacan if his theory of the subject, grounded in an account of lack and its structuring function of the unconscious, presupposed an ontology. In the seminar, Lacan answered this question with the suggestion that the constitutive gap of the unconscious was essentially ‘pre-ontological’. The Cahiers pursue Miller’s original question along multiple lines, identifying points of contact between Lacan’s theory of subjectivity and the ontological concerns to be found in recent and contemporary developments in logic and the sciences.

As far as I can tell, there are two possible interpretations of the word ‘ontology’ in Miller’s question.  Ontology can mean ‘study of being’, or more rarely can mean ‘diegesis’ (fictional ‘world’), though I’m not sure if the latter is still true in the French.  In the former case, it would seem that Miller is asking “Does your notion of the subject imply that your work is a study of being?”  In the latter case, he would be asking if the ego (which is an imaginary construction) subsists in a distinct diegesis (i.e. a plane of reality separate from everyday existence).

Even after hearing Cahiers pour l’Analyse‘s account, I still do not understand the question (nor how Lacan’s answer can be correct).  My question to Lacanians, then, is: what does Miller mean, what does Lacan’s answer mean in relation to Miller’s question, and what are the broad implications of this question?  (I would appreciate if this could be answered as clearly as possible, since I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be interested.) As you may guess, I have agonized over this question a fair bit, and no one I have asked has been able to answer.  Thank you much.

(Note: the above exchange can be found in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, which I have not yet read because I want to go through Lacan chronologically.)

Hopefully tagging my favorite psychoanalytical bloggers will entice them to answer.

Trying to Get Immanence Out of a (Philosopher’s) Stone: Archetypes, Sociobiology, & Harry Potter, And What They Have To Do With The UK Riots

Click the picture for a more detailed explanation of the notion of signifier/signified.

[This is too late in the game to do anyone much good, I realize, but I feel that I still ought to put in my two cents regarding the August riots in the UK. I wrote this during my breaks at work when I was on 12-hour shifts, so all that I had time to do when I got home was to read blog entries about the riots; nobody hailed the end of them, so I (amusingly) did not realize they were over until the 23rd, after reading the Wiki page. To my credit, at least, I successfully predicted its outcome (though I feel silly in saying that); I will therefore leave the tense unaltered. In order to make my linking of Harry Potter to the Tottenham riots seem less farfetched, I recommend readers to first peruse this.]

There are a number of popular (i.e. non-academic) intellectual movements whose objective is to find an immanent basis for the meaning of signifiers. One such example is Jungian archetypes, which states that various symbols are innate in the human mind, and thus that symbols are “universally recognizable.” As well, the sociobiology of Desmond Morris seeks to ground social phenomena in biological instinct (once again, innate), e.g. he ascribes the tradition of women coloring their lips red to the fact that when a woman becomes aroused, her lips become engorged with blood, appearing fuller and redder; thus lipstick is a display of availability for mating, just as is the peacock displaying its feathers. A third, more contemporary instance of this tendency can be found in the Harry Potter series. In Hogwarts, students of witchcraft & wizardry are taught combinations of signifiers (e.g. a “swish & flick” of one’s wand combined with the words “Wingardium Leviosa” pronounced in a specific way) which are somehow inherently connected to their magical function. There is no talk of ‘inventing’ spells; presumably experimental wizards merely spout out Latin-sounding words in hopes that they’ll bring a result connected to their etymology. This essay will outline the three views described above; show how meaning is in fact not immanent, but for the most part purely arbitrary; and show how this immanent treatment of signifiers resonates within the UK riots, perhaps to the point of precluding any significant cultural change.