File deleuze-guattari/deleuze-guattari.0502, message 14


From: "Chapman" <chapman0603-AT-rogers.com>
To: <deleuze-guattari-driftline.org-AT-lists.driftline.org>
Subject: RE: [D-G] zinfandel
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 13:29:23 -0500


Hey, yes. I quite like that. I agree with your sight that this quote is
opaque, but precisely opaque about the difference between capital and
empire, I am thinking about the role of interpretation again, here.

Thanks Jon.

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: deleuze-guattari-driftline.org-bounces-AT-lists.driftline.org
[mailto:deleuze-guattari-driftline.org-bounces-AT-lists.driftline.org]On
Behalf Of Jon Mendel
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2005 1:05 PM
To: deleuze-guattari-driftline.org-AT-lists.driftline.org
Subject: Re: [D-G] zinfandel


Sylvie and Chris,

Thanks for forwarding the references - to be honest, I'm starting to
think I might have mis-remembered or imagined what D&G said.

Chris - I'm not sure how much help I can be; to be honest, my first
response to the quote you've forwarded is to think that it's extremely
opaque!  For what it's worth, my reading of this quote would be that
this 'de facto mix' of different semiotics and subjectifications forms a
type of imperialism/capitalism/empire that can work to crush all
non-capitalist semiotics.  D&G seem to be saying both that this can be
interpreted as the semiotic of modern white man but also that this
'white' semiotic is very much penetrated by other semiotics - "each
element suffuses the other like drops of red-black wine in white water"
and "faciality is always a multiplicity" (ATP 182).  Capitalism would
then function through variegation - the "deepest law of capitalism [is
that] it continually sets and then repels its own limits, but in so
doing gives rise to numerous flows in all directions that escape its
axiomatic" and even uses these flows in order to reterritorialise other
flows that might seem to escape capitalism (ATP 472)  Perhaps capitalism
would therefore construct its 'average' white face through the use of
variegation?

Jon
Chapman wrote:

>Jon,
>
>I've just scanned the 'Faciality' essay and was unable to find your desired
>reference under my pink and yellow highlights. Perhaps you can help me with
>something?
>
>Would you consider the following passage, (found in some cantankerous
>purple), to be an accurate inflection or reflection of what they mean and
>whom you think they have in mind when they are considering the 'terrible'
>faces of capital, or is there a distinct difference between stages of
>capital- and imperial- ism that I'm missing?
>
>"Neither (despotic slavery in general or proceeding by authoritarian
>contract) begins with Christ, or the White Man as Christian Universal:
there
>are Indian, African, and Asiatic despotic formations of signifiance; the
>authoritarian process of subjectification appears most purely in the
destiny
>of the Jewish people. But however different these semiotics are, they still
>form a de facto mix, and it is on the level of this mixture that they
assert
>their imperialism, in other words, their common endeavour to crush all
other
>semiotics. There is no signifiance that does not harbour the seeds of
>subjectivity; there is no subjectification that does not drag with it
>remnants of signifier... Our semiotic of modern White Men, the semiotic of
>capitalism, has attained this state  of mixture in which signifiance and
>subjectification effectively interpenetrate." (ATP 182)
>
>I'm unsure if they are suggesting that capital is a stage of entwinement
>beyond imperialism and the place of the 'white face' is as the telos of
>Indian, African, and Asiatic cystemps of empire? I can't square the
>'in-general' of capital's average white sensual face with your memory of it
>being coordinated by variegation.
>
>
>Chris.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: deleuze-guattari-driftline.org-bounces-AT-lists.driftline.org
>[mailto:deleuze-guattari-driftline.org-bounces-AT-lists.driftline.org]On
>Behalf Of Jon Mendel
>Sent: Monday, February 07, 2005 6:59 AM
>To: deleuze-guattari-AT-driftline.org
>Subject: [D-G] capitalism has many faces
>
>
>Hi,
>
>I seem to remember that, in ATP, D&G said something along the lines of
>'capitalism has many faces to the east and to the west, each one worse
>than the last'.  If anyone remembers where, that'd be much-appreciated :)
>
>Cheers,
>
>Jon
>
>
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>.
>
>
>
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