From: stuart tait <enso-AT-postmark.net>
To: deleuze-guattari-driftline.org-AT-lists.driftline.org
Subject: Re: [D-G] mona has
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 09:14:04 +0000


That's great, I like a mixture of both personally. I admit to having
trouble keeping up with some of these email list because i'm too busy
with work these days to do much reading and the brain tends to move
into slower gears. I am clearly not an expert on D&G and have never
successfully managed to read a whole one of their books (collaborative
or solo) despite repeated attempts, and attempts to read
'introductions to' D&G. This said, I got the impression they were
talking about a couple of different things when they talked about
schizophrenia; the clinical 'condition' recognised by psychiatrists in
the west/north, and a state of being in the world as a reaction to
capitalism. The former being a state of paranoia exacerbated by modern
consumer society where there really are voices telling you to buy,
sell, consume, destroy, cleanse, etc being blasted at you from walls,
TVs, radios, billboards, etc, where the message is constantly YOU ARE
KING IT'S YOUR CHOICE, etc, you are literally being consumed by the
thing you try to consume. The capitalist society is designed to put
people on that edge of ontological insecurity where they are
continuously taking their cues from external messengers in an attempt
to simply be. Whoa, that got away from me there.

Then D&G seem to be suggesting that the way to deal with that society
is to take control of that process of becoming schizophrenic in order
to be able to best deal with, analyse, and subvert that society
without becoming a victim to it. If the society is asking you to
become animal, and to live as a happiness machine, entirely focussed
on feeding your desires, it is important to understand that process of
becoming animal, what it is to be schizophrenic, to become an
homogenous body without organs, etc. 

Not sure if i've missed the point of what they were saying, but it
seems like a good plan to me anyway.

stuart tait
enso-AT-postmark.net

James Depew wrote:

> I am not sure that understanding is the goal.  Or that there is a goal
> at all, for that matter.  Deleuze and Guattari's background led them
> to *express* something in a particular form.  It seems to me that they
> tried their best to show how much the form can vary, from artists to
> scientists to perverts and philosophers.  Life is there, they all say,
> how do we find it?  A field of forces that takes on unlimited forms. 
> Absolutely, the writing is extremely difficult.  But the possibility
> of connection is there.  Once you start, you can't stop.  Or, more
> accurately, you have always been doing it.  I don't know, however, if
> conversing about it can work.  You express yourself, I express myself.
>  And maybe this is your point.  In order to avoid a kind of confusion
> over what is being expressed, one has to take the time to attend,
> intensely, to what is being expressed.  And more than that, why it is
> being expressed, and how...
> That means investing alot of time and energy, just like reading D&G. 
> Except, are we really going to do that for each other and for
> ourselves.  Are we really going to take that much time to make sense
> of what appears to be "the same old string of semicoherent slippages"?
> 
> 
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:47:16 +0200, Dr. Harald Wenk <hwenk-AT-web.de> wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > in my experience, reading Deleuze and Gusattari is more than hard,
> > because the needed backround is vast.
> > To be honest, such as you are writing in this group, I doubt
> > that there is a lot of real understanding - which in my eyes is more due
> > to the unneceassarily complicated presentation of D&G, which, as it is
> > tested by its seminars,
> > Deleuze could do much better, clearer and understandable.
> > The main point is in create a very complicated new code, or a lot of
> > concepts,
> > which are in no obvious relations with the other, also very complicated
and
> > elaborated concepts in Philosophy - if you are so kind to have a look at
> > Husserl
> > or Heidegger or original Kasnt or Hegel oe Schelling - even Spinoza is
> > original
> > not easy to grasp, what had led to a lot of misinterpretations.
> > Now, one can ask, is it worthwhile?
> > It would be concerning the schizophrenics.
> > Physics, as you know, has really become great, as it left with Galilieo
and
> > Newton everyday experience - which has been code in arestotelian physics.
> > The first law of Newton, that a moving body stays moving in a straight
line
> > with unaltered velocity is noot everdy, this is Aristotle, where is to be
> > a mover for keeping the movement, otherwiese it will stop sooner (mostly)
> > or later.
> > Now Quantum Physics and the the theory of relativity are based on
> > experiments and mathematical theories, which are both far away from
everday
> > experience (the Michelson Morley experiment is not everday, similar with
> > Plancks thermodynamical considerations of the radiation of black bodies
> > leading to his quantum hypothsis).
> > This had led to the for yoe all well known state, that modern physics
> > is not understable for non specialist - or did anyone not studied in
> > physics
> > or mathematics really understand the popular writings of Hawking for
> > example - and that is not
> > in first regard due to Hawking?
> > 
> > But, to come back to D&G, in the theories of mind and thinking
> > especially philosophers are not to bring about not to
> > start from everday thinking - what do I say - speaking or writing
> > behaviour of normal people - as for example Heidegger in zthe preface of
> > "Time and Being".
> > This reminds strongly on Hegels "The way to truth is not to go in
> > housegoat".
> >  From the viewpoint of exploring the human mind it would be of
> > much interest to give sophisticated interpretaion of schizophrenic
> > experiences.
> > As you all know,
> >   Freud has elaborated his theories mainly the experience with neurotics
> > (with an overrepresentation of "hysteric" women).
> > His tackling of psychosis canot be seriously be spoken of as satisfying.
> > This one of the starting points of D&G in "Anti-Oedipus".
> > This book is, as the title and the interviews around show,
> > more of critical value.
> > I think, there a few people who have read this book, who didn't ask
> > themselves -
> > as a question of character more or less in despair - what the hell
> > a "machine of desire" should be.
> > This a main thing. If you mention to a professional philosopher or
> > psychatrist
> > the name of D&G t
> > they will mostly show, that they didn't read or understand it.
> > So what should a poor psychotic patient do with this?.
> > 
> > And that doesen't work.
> > 
> > Things in this area are complicated enough and the tendency to
> > bring it back to normal live - "This illnes doesen't really exist" -
> > "Ok, sometimes they dont't think at all,
> >   sometimes they cannot controll their thoughts,
> > sometimes they cannot stop thinking anyway - but do not we all have
> > some times, where we have such experiences - so, it is quite normal,
> > only the frequency
> > is a little bit unusuall."
> > 
> > D&G broke down almost every bridge to the
> > rest of scientific discours and that in  very
> > hard to understand way - affording a lot of
> > non standard background -
> > so that there is no real influence and
> > working further on their grounds.
> > But the theme of schizophrenia or psychosis
> > or non everday experience in the human mind
> > as a field of rersearch for philosophy or
> > new original psychology is almost blocked by them.
> > This is not more than regrettable, this is a catastrophe.
> > To speak as a chess player, they have made the worst out of
> > this variant of thinking and publishing.
> > 
> > To calm a little bit down. In "Chaosmose" of Guattari you can find, if
you
> > are used
> > to the slang, a more understable presentation.
> > 
> > Greetings
> > 
> > Am Tue, 18 Jan 2005 07:30:25 +0000 (GMT) schrieb verlainelefou-AT-yahoo.com
> > <verlainelefou-AT-yahoo.com>:
> > 
> > >
> > > Dearest Forest in the east is the priestof repression sounds like she
> > > got yer number and its like finding the
> > >
> > > voice in deleuze sans guattari c'est n'est pas possible.
> > >
> > > Its all a creation and a becomings.
> > >
> > > Dada
> > >
> > > So this is the second deleuze-guattari list that I have joined just
> > > intime to see it fall apart?  Not enough for a pattern...not yet
> > > atleast.  Does anyone have a point?  I have had poems sent to my
> > > inbox,which are interesting and could stimulate discussion; I have had
> > > someincoherent free-association pass my way, which also could
> > > beinteresting; besides that, mostly banter, oh, and someone asking
> > > foretexts.  Do I have this straight?  People are criticizing someone
> > > forasking for texts?  Under the pretext that it is some sort
> > > ofhierarchically driven authority loving captialist request?  What????
> > > Am I missing something?  (quite possible since I have only justarrived)
> > > Is it: promote creative conceptualisation but let's not readthe books
> > > that inspired that idea because they have come to representthe
> > > functioning of an overcoding regime?  Those of you criticizing:you have
> > > read Deleuze and Guattari, right?  Or did the ideas manifestin your
head
> > > spontaneously?Now that would be
> > >  intersting...foris
> > >
> > >
> > > all  my words are on parole
> > > http://fictionsofdeleuzeandguattari.blogspot.com/
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ---------------------------------
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> > 
> > 
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