From: "hwenk" <hwenk-AT-web.de> To: <deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.driftline.org> Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 15:44:17 +0200 Subject: Re: [D-G] The Anti-Ordipe is so to say "Neurobiology" pur Hello Dr. Crownbony and Filip, am very pleased that we are trying to go very deep into the basic definitions and thsoeoretic assumptions and architercture of Deleuze and Guattaris philosophy. As there have been written a lot of Ph.D. thesis about their philosophy, for example Massumis commented translation of "Mille Plateaux" into englisch is one, things are really not so easy to grasp. Therefore I have the tendency, almost programatic, to find as much connections to the mainstream notions of scientific knowledge including everyday life examples. As I already wrote in an email, the use of simple everday life exampels in combination with very complicated and elaborated theoretic concepts is very hard to understand. I mean, if you are doing particle physics or quantum theory, everyone expects that you have to work through hard and complicated mathematics and physics - starting with Newtonian mechanics. Now, the technology of particle accelerators, needing the electricity of a middle town and having supra conductor magnetic fields is really impressing, so there is a kind of balance between theoretical effort and practical realization. Now, the phenomena of schizophrenia and psychosis are in some respect also very impressing, compared with everday life. Of course there has been always tendencies to say: OH, is only a little bit more crazy than eveyone of us is. Now, there are some cases where this is not longer true. This is the one thing. Now let us turn, as treated in your email, to the fundamental connection of inner world and the social world within and neurology. What I have tried to express as the real revolutinary insight is: The negative feelings, sometimes very painful negative feelings, are in a paranoic way rooted back by the individuum siuffering friom this brain driven pain, directes it against itself - or is directed by inhibitory brain mechansims like inhibitory synapsis, sees its own defiency as cause, So this is functioning as a strong force to surrrender to social values as: Not to have done ones duty, to be not so perfect or going as th individual expects of itself. Freud wants to keep the function of the superego intact, funcctiong, peole should obey to some extend, otherwiese society will nit survive. Even Jaspers still find the menace with the hell pains not dispensible for the education for the lower educated masses. Now, and this is very imoportant, if there were some more or less bits of pain brains, things might be tolerabel. But there is something like a "chinese wall", as expresses Deleuze and Guattari in the Anti-Oedipe, as the brain, especially the neocortex, functins normally on a 10 per cent level, the rest is in some way protected by sa lot of inhibitory synapsis or other (neurotransmitter) mechansims. There is for example thought that the T4 recepors of Dopamin, which give pain instead of the usual other receptors of dopamin, which give more kinds of good feelings, plays a role for a turnin to the depressive side ogf manic-depressive schizophrenia or to a depressive side in general. Also serotin is suspected to play some role in depression. Dopamin and serotin are two of the most used neurotranmiter sof the brain. Therfore, in recepting dopamin by T4 receptors, the brain acts, its the dopmainm produced by the body or by the brain itself and the receptors are also of the brain. This is acting and not suffering or being passive in the sens of Spinoza. I am deaaling with the couple joy/sadness - activtiy/passitvity. So thebrain is acting, but is depressive. Now, the probailtiuy is great, tha this bad feelings are connected, by an active identifcation or building an idea or an object, as to turn the image of a sympahtic friend into tje picture of an enemy, or building some phantom of outer reason for the feeling of "bad air", "bad vibrations" (a term often used in the 70ies.) So her we have acting, but an acting whic gives sadness. Now we can understood Spinozas Definition: "Sadness is the becoming worse (Ontological in a more poor state) conected with the idea of an exterior object". I f we understand this that the becoming worse is an effect of the inner brain chemistry and the connection to an exterior object, which is often is an activ memeber of the society, maybe with some legal power, is done by us, we have also grasped Spinozas idea of mental liberation: We have to cut the artificial, product of our suffering minds, connection of the inner pains to the society or the idea of our own defiency, the direction against ourselves, and take it as brain chemistry like headache. This is also what yoga teaches: De-identify, cut the identifications: Neti,Neti - that you are not. You as a salesmen has not been successful - remind Millers "Death of a salesmen". I insist on this point, because it is very important and gives insight. The power of society makes "Surplus value on code" as it is called in the Anti-Oedipe, it profits from pain giving chemistry in our brains without producing or real influencing it - until it comes with drugs, which are a real chemical intervention into brain chemistry. As I said, ther are some kinds of schizophrenic mental illnesses, which give indeed hard to think, what to do about it. But that is a minority of the cases running under the diagnisis on mental illness. In order to focus the discussion a little on this point, it is hard to treat 10 points in every email, I stop here. greetings Harald Wenk -----Original Message----- From: deleuze-guattari-bounces-AT-lists.driftline.org [mailto:deleuze-guattari-bounces-AT-lists.driftline.org]On Behalf Of .+oot8am wakeup Sent: Dienstag, 8. Mai 2007 03:26 To: deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.driftline.org Subject: Re: [D-G] The Anti-Ordipe is so to say "Neurobiology" pur ++++++++++ Hi, the parallels I find between your captioned history of iraq and the issue concerning "agency" of joy/sadness is surprizing. First there is the ethical context to consider "arms and arms" which is literal, then to continue inward inside the mind there is "states and states". There are more, but I cannot get into to it, so now I'll jump in here to the main point: BWO. While I know the BWO to be neuro-material, I must point out that it is not the material which makes up "a brain", but actually a "body", that is the body of combined brains... they are the assembleges of neuro-materials. So instead of looking at an inward psychology, I continue to see the rhyzomatic social character of this assembled BWO to be the main agency of joy/sadness. So when the social skeleton does not move by command of the mind there is a certain sadness felt as if for the loss of limbs. when I ponder: "why would I want to know 'How to fabricate a BWO"? I also look to this same foucault as you suggest, but I hear him shouting loudly that I am reading a 'guide to anti-fascism'. I don't see the BWO serving to better "internal perception" at all - acting like "breaks" for lower neuro-momentum. Instead, it is specifically fabricated to allow for social agency as opposed to conformity. this is how the BWO directly addresses the problem of hegemony and the ability to feel joy w/o participating in the singular grim heirarchy of society's skeleton after it has been cannibalized by order of the megamachine. When you say "it is not so difficult", I begin to watch myself so I don't conflating the terms of depression with sadness and then go equating sadness with non-agency. While it is certain to say this for clinical depression, sadness deserves another category altogether. Then at what point can the finer catagories begin to acknowledge ubergrief? despite what may have been read about areas of the brain that trigger addiction, the brain is not a logicboard where one can find specific areas that correspond to specific functionality. yes, there are certain areas where bottlenecking occurs (typically in the hypocampus) but the brain is a semi-liquid substance, like jello, and its functionality is highly integrated to withstand damage and loss. how easy it is for persuasive theories of T4 receptors to forget. The neuro-mechanisms for broadly defined experiences like "joy" are supercritical and cannot be pushed in like a button b/c it is an assemblege of chemicals that determines its significance, not just one. I refer to the example of dopamine. with many narcotics, once the joy has passed, one is left feeling sadness - no doubt from an internal neuro-chemical over-compensation, & here is a feedback clue. But something additional has happened: the agency of action has been spent internally burning calories on that chemical anemnesis with external causes: addiction. can I speak of cultural addiction yet? The cause of this sadness is much like an alienation of the self which leads to a spiraling chain reaction of symptoms stunting everything from neurogenisis to sense perception to sexual drive etc... this is not joyous. there are many theories on learning that support the general idea of a two-fold process especially in learning birdsongs (and prime numbers too). There is always a first stage of noisy chaotic failure for the young bird that serves as feedback information. This stage establishes a scope/horizon of play that does not result in social agency but only in internal calibration with the projected sounds. The second part of the learning process designates when the birdy can perform his song with controlled variation according to success like an adult. Now, if I am supposed to believe that joy=agency, it would have to be on these kinds of terms, that 2nd stage with the joyous potential for mating perhaps. But its the 1st stage that is so interesting because of the feedback. What is happening? If the feedback sounds ring false, compounding negatively and thereby impressing sadness, then the birdy does not identify and looses agency within that particular scope of noise, hopefully not leading to the repetition of the false song. But if the feedback sounds ring true, compounding positively and thereby impressing joy, then the birdy identifies and gains agency for repeating the song and entering the 2nd stage. The difference between spinoza and the birdy is the agency of feedback as relegated to the 1st stage of learning. Spinoza's ethical model differs greatly, yet it fits very well, providing accurate connectivity between the joy/sadness/agency matrix. So I am willing to accept it for this adolescent stage where agency is a correlation of feedback response and relegated to the internal body - even though I cannot find actual feedback in spinoza's model, it must be a veiled assumption or some strange kind of ideal form of a persistent adolescent psychology. But what about the second stage ,where agency is a correlation of body extension? (ie if joy is experienced, agency is allowed and so the body extends)Here, both the birdy and spinoza experience their joy/sadness when they are subjected to external causes, as when Miss Birdette responds favorably. but unlike the 1st stage, Miss birdette does not exist in mr.birdy's brain, and so his agency is contingent upon those external hierarchies, membership to that BWO, of which mr.birdy is a skeletal child happily moved from above. It doesn't seem to fit so nicely, does it? mainly because it is an adult social situation that extends beyond the solipsisms that the feedback environment provided. The ethics model operates adversely in this circumstance b/c it offers a seat in the skeletal chain that is under the main parental mover. The scope of this agency is limited by a "joy" that can only affirm external "heirarchical movement" but the promises it cannot keep is that agency within a participatory environment. that's why I called it a sabine ethics; it breeds exclusive members. It is also particular to spinoza's lifetime and the historical foundations for capitalist governmental rule that seeks a supporting psycho-social backbone; specifically one where money equals agency. As with the greco concept of "morals", which the "ethics" merely overwrites, the hegemonic bedrock must be laid from the get go. Before it was the triremes that required a skillled democratic body for coordinated movement, but these emerging capitalist experiments in vertical money power needed a horizontal class of man who wasn't only divided from other men, but one who's divided from mature BWO. -cb _______________________________________________ List address: deleuze-guattari-AT-driftline.org Info: http://lists.driftline.org/listinfo.cgi/deleuze-guattari-driftline.org Archives: www.driftline.org _______________________________________________ List address: deleuze-guattari-AT-driftline.org Info: http://lists.driftline.org/listinfo.cgi/deleuze-guattari-driftline.org Archives: www.driftline.org
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