Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 14:32:34 +0100
From: Lowe Laclau <lowe.laclau-AT-gmail.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Deleuze's Biophilosophy


This isn't such a bad article, but ultimately quite a few essential
assumptions that he makes --specifically regarding the nature of
"immanence" in D's philosophy, what exactly a BWO is, and what grounds
forces and life when D quits emphasizing "organs"-- are wrong, thus
his thesis (that science disagrees with him) is kinda rendered
pointless.

While I'd agree with Andrew that this guy emphasizes "biology" (the
science, and what biologists do and say) as being far more meaningful
than it was for D, I'd disagree with any assumption that the
philosophy of biology (or the metaphysics behind biological
signification) was unimportant to him --but I'm not saying that Andrew
was implying that.

Beyond his misreading of D --again specifically, his lack of
understanding of machinic phyla, of their levels of agencement, of
what abstract machines do (there is in fact no discussion of the
abstract machine unless i missed it, I would assume he doesn't
understand it... but I would find it impossible to talk about their
discussion of "life" without the abstract machine)-- is his assumption
that their interest is necessarily in the biologists' phenomenology.
Scientists in general don't make good philosophers (or in other words,
they don't usually develop the capacity to jump in and out of
different structures of signification and symptomatology...
scientists, like most academics work in groups, their language, their
objects their tools are generally collective... there thus generally
develops certain hierarchies and hegemonies of discourse that act as
constraints upon such activities that a philosopher could engage in...
because the philosopher is always the outsider). This leads him as
well to fail to see D's objective, which is neither to critique
biology as a science or any particular biologist nor to recouperate
Bergson (a dumb idea IMO) or any type of evolutionism, but rather to
free "life" from its limited conceptions within particular
phenomenologies. How do we conceive it? How could or can we conceive
it? D has no reliance upon a biologists phenomenology. Particular ones
might be interesting or useful, but his only requirement when dealing
with sciences is that it trace the "plane of consistency" (as he calls
it).

But these are problems I've seen other places so he's likely taking
his interpretations from other sources. But D's philosophy is
unfortunately a bit more complex than that. Radical concepts like the
BWO or the abstract machine don't generally make for easy
interpretations. But at the same time one can't act as though they
simply don't exist either.


On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 04:31:12 +0100, Harald Beyer-Arnesen
<haraldba-AT-online.no> wrote:
> 
> The below link leads to friendly but quite devasting critique
> (as far as I can judge) of the claimed biological foundations
> for Deleuze vitalism/biophilosophy, written from a
> complexity theory perspective.
> 
> The essay is quite long, but very much worthwhile and informa-
> tive, and also casts some light on some of the more obscure
> Deleluzian terms, such as Body without Organs and
> plane of immanence. It is not at all a hostile critique (more like
> a rescue effort from a friend),  but the author none the less
> claims, among other things, that Deleuze's "ethology of
> becoming  is -- from the biological standpoint -- nothing
> short of impossible."
> 
> Harald
> 
> ----
> 
> Becoming as Creative Involution?:
>     Contextualizing Deleuze and Guattari's
>     Biophilosophy
> 
>     Mark Hansen
>     Princeton University
> 
> http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.900/11.1hansen.txt
> 
>     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> 


-- 
"I am God most of the time... when I don't have a headache..." - Felix Guattari


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