From: "Mr R B O'Toole" <pypcs-AT-csv.warwick.ac.uk>
Subject:  re:nietz/force/elements
Date: Sun, 6 Nov 1994 21:05:33 +0000 (GMT)


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In reply to Tom's questions,
 
I'm not totally clear what kind of questions/Question your getting at,
but I would probably identify `force' as a most lubricious entry-point
into the D&G rhizome. I've tried to cut down the notion of
`force' to a bare minimum. Perhaps this will give at least a starting 
point for a discussion (my simplicity will spark disagreement)....
The point I'll try to establish is that its not a question of
elements or elementality, but rather any such question, and indeed
questioning itself, is a matter of force. Force itself is not a being
or a matter of Being (as it is separate from the virtual dimension of
singularity which such a Question implies). Force is a becoming.
 
`Force' is probably most effective as a concept when determined as
minimally as possible. The base-lines of the D&G reality are singularities 
and multiplicities, repetitions and differences. Singularities are best
described as having the value of scarcity (as in Foucault's Archaeology
of Knowledge, Statements are described as scarce). That's what makes them
singular. The scarcity of singularities is established through the iteration
of their code as the only acceptable code (exclusive disjunction) - a
re-presentation of the determined code. This re-iteration would supposedly
map out a community or conjunctive synthesis of acceptable disjunctions to 
infinity (if reiterated so far). Like God.
 
But sigularities are also sterile code, they refuse _connectivity_
by (at least virtually, as that is their mode) determining all possible 
code in advance, or rather, they have too much _connectivity_ in that they
want to connect _everything_ in an over-general manner. Singularities, by
attempting to synthesise the infinite in a certain way, actually (not 
virtually) fail to synthesise anything. 
 
The reiteration of a code is, however, productive, not of an exclusive 
disjunction to infinity, but rather of more code. When code is processed, or 
decoded (supposedly, when viewed at the _virtual_ level of production), it is 
re-activated, hence the force which seeks to re-iterate it is (virtually) the 
activator of the re-acted. But, to reactivate code requires the (actual) 
production of new code (its return). Production involves the cutting across 
of one line of code with another (the original code, plus a code or capturing 
War Machine that reiterates it - think of it as one program that tells another 
program to initiate). Thus it can be said that `we never deterritorialize 
alone'. There is, however, no perfect reiteration of a code 
to reiterate a code. The reiterating code must itself be reiterated, and so 
on. The active force must itself be reactivated, and this involves its 
constant production in relation to another active force. 

This is, at the moment, merely a linear series of active-reactive-active..
..etc. Complexity is introduced into the process of production when we 
consider that to reactivate code, the active code must adapt its method of 
activation to the code which it is connected to, thus the reactive force is 
simultaneously an active force affecting the active force (also reactive).
Such non-linear perturbations leave code constantly on the move, as every
code is in a process of adaption, and this adaption feeds back upon itself,
with every act of adapting causing an alteration which again must be 
compensated for. Hence when seen at the level of analysis that is complexity
(as opposed to singularity), or the Eternal Return, as Nietzsche states, all 
reactive forces are returned as active forces. Symbiosis.

The concept of force seeks to diagram this complex non-linear movement of 
things away from themselves as a non-reversible temporality of becoming, 
moving around or away from singularities (or single point attractors). I 
could say that that's all that could be said about force, other than its
specific empirical assemblage. It would be more at keeping with D&G to
say that i've just given one possible empirical instantiation of force,
and that its at work _everywhere_ in any other _empirical_ assemblage 
that we could diagram, including the elemental.
 
That's far more complex (and long) than I intended it to be. These things
have a habit of escalating. I hope that its of some use anyway.
 
Robert O'Toole,
University of Warwick.
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