Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 11:06:48 -0500
To: deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.driftline.org
Subject: Re: [D-G] deleuze and benjamin on violence


so indeed we are talking of 2 different discussions... I am trying to
stay within the drift of wbenj's essay, which, in my opinion, does not
attempt to explain this type of passionate inter-personal violence
(re: "natural law") that you are discussing (do you think "natural
law" is more interesting to talk about then "positive law"?), and
instead he spends most of the essay developing how violence is
inherent to law/logos (I am at least trying to extend his drift into
logos specifically), as he moves forward so as to talk about
mythic-law-creation.

In terms of Spinoza's ethics-of-passions, the violence that I see,
comes from the mere act of defining the internal space of man in the
manner inwhich Spinoza has done. This kind of law-making violence
(so-called ethics) which spinoza uses to attack the nebulous nature of
human identity, really culminates in freudian psychology, their aim to
pin the subject down, code it, and control(destroy) it, as a modern
project of capitalism (re: anti-oedius). The "self-defence," that you
speak up is a secondary step (in terms of the freudian-type theories
of emotional energy constants internally) - wherein the subject can
only resort to violence... against violence. [Please dont think that I
am eagar to start punching and shooting people for fun, that is not
what I would like to spend my time defending myself against as there
is much to get into here, as you acknowledge....]
So,  It is an acknowledged second step, which is why it is protected
by "positive law" (re: benj.'s "c.p.violence") Wbenj. has some
interesting (too brief) passages that describe these complicated steps
and how they work together and how they are also at odds... like the
part where he talks about "techniques" of arbitration and confrence.
Seems to me that "technique" is very important in regards to violence
control.
One of the key aspects of Spinoza, in my opinion, is the application
of coded action, prescripted action. It becomes like witchcraft where
the blessed reader/user can de-fer a "true" conscious-intelligence,
and instead default to a one-dimensional code. For Spinoza, the truth
understanding principle is limited to logos-centered code... it is no
long language dialog, as Spinoza cannot come to agreement with the
world around him and must spend is time violently defending himself...
and since his work was made illegeal by various religious instituions
of the time, this violence now gets directed at the reader of
modernity and thereby "incorporated" into the cannon of soveriegnty.
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