Date: Tue, 29 Mar 1994 12:59:24 -0500 (EST)
From: Kenneth Paradis <g9326079-AT-mcmail.cis.mcmaster.ca>
Subject: semiotics of paranoia




well Michael, 

I'm another one your post flushed out of the woodwork-

I bumped into D through Dialogues (with Parnet) a couple of years ago and 
the book fascinated me, very much in the way you described.  

I've since kept D and D&G simmering in the background without ever 
really feeling competent (or in a strange way entitled) to actually work 
with them.  And I didnt have the time or energy to reach 
the critical mass where i felt i knew enough to actually try to work with 
them (If that point exists, and I'm assuming it does by some of the 
quite good articles I've read which deal with D&G since)...

But I think this response is almost written into their work...To "use" 
them "like a tool" as they suggest, necessarily means bringing them down 
to your particular nexus and fitting them into the particular machine 
you're engaging or being engaged by.... tracing their work onto one's 
own particular rhizosperic map necessarily is an act of reterritorialization... 
and the sensetivity of their work to this process makes/made me extremely 
hesistant to even try... conscripting their work to negotiate my 
(as it exists in any particular machine or moment) encounters, to use 
their work as a signifying grid in a way, just seems to implicity 
contradict the a-signifying, deterritorializing impulses of much of that 
work...

but, waffling aside, i've since enjoyed the kafka book and am wading 
through TP in my spare time now, loosely following the TP discussion going 
on here.  

I will however take the chance to pick some brains which may be 
listening, perhaps not "experts" but certainly more thoroughly read in 
the field than I (Prof. Bogue, I just read your overview of D&G and quite 
enjoyed it.  I noticed an article of yours on D&G's semiotics 
mentioned in the MLA catalogue, though I havent been able to get ahold of it 
yet... this may be for you):

can anybody direct me to something in which D (a/o) G elaborates their 
conception of the semiotics of paranioa which D discusses in Dialogues 
(opposed in that particular instance to "monomania")?

thanks for the help- now i'll fade back into the murk behind your screens.

ken paradis



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