Date: Thu, 14 Sep 1995 00:33:24 +0100
From: destanley-AT-teaser.fr (douglas edric stanley)
Subject: re: brains and susan says


cnd wrote:

>.....Interiority and exteriority too.
>Notions like absolute deterritorialization, pure exteriority are
>probably not only wistfull, but serve only hinder the comprehension
>of noneuclidean space. Outside and inside no longer apply; they are
>eliminated.

I cannot but violently disagree. They certainly are not eliminated. You
simply need a more functional and fluctating definition of outside, there.
An outside is not a time-space, locality, whatever. An outside is a totally
Nietzschean becoming - almost a becoming-outside of thought if you will.

Let's try to be less terminology-bound: you're trying to "think something
out" (important phrase). You've got this crime, let's say, and it's getting
the best of you. Detectives know this one: there's something outside of
your logic, outside of your thought and it's that ONE THING that you've got
to figure out before you can move on to the other elements. You're leaving
something out, and you cannot help feel the urgency of this missing
element. But this missing element to solving the crime is not "lacking" in
the Lacanian sense, you are simply in a relation to an outside of thought
and whatever it is, it is not "lacking" because there's not even a place
for it. For all you know, once you get that information you'll have to
THROW EVERYTHING OUT and start all over again. Like scientists do (see
Kuhn). So there is no conceptual terrain for the outside element, it's just
outside. Only as it's bugging EVERYTHING inside the investigation - as it's
pulling you almost from the heart of the investigation - calling you
without you knowing what it is - you cannot will all sureity say it is
outside. So you're stuck, you know there's something outside (depuis
l'interior), but you don't know what it is. "...Oh there's something
happening but you don't know what it is...Do you, Mr. Jones..."

This is the logic Deleuze explained on TV about drinking: the drinker is
always trying to get the last drink. The next drink to the drinker is THE
LAST drink, and until he cannot get that LAST drink, he'll go on drinking.
It is not the pleasure of some diferred-oedipal object-fixation. He's just
trying to get at the exteriority of the last drink. His impossible dawn
Nietzsche would say. Same logic. Anyway Deleuze knows what he's talking
about - and it's no wonder he's in such bad health.

Well, let's assume that you suddenly land on this outside element of the
crime that you hadn't thought of: "Damn, that's it: The Blue Sleeve! But
no, that can't be....But it is!..." Well, suddenly you've interiorized this
exteriority, sort of moved your limits outward to encircle it: it is now a
thinkable thought... But once you've interiorized this exteriority, i.e.:
remodeled your conceptual framework to be able to understand this
exteriority, you are nevertheless, de nouveau, faced with something
exterior. Detectives all know this one as well: once you've solved a crime
- especially the ones that "fit" perfectly - there's always something left,
something unknown, and you cannot even know what it would be because you
don't even have the conceptual tools for understanding it. But whatever it
is, you've got this "feeling" that you've forgotten something. If only you
could put your finger on it.

This process is an eternal one. You cannot, then, simply take "exteriority"
and place it in opposition to "interiority". "Exteriority" is not
"interiority" turned inside out like a glove. Even more: when you look at
Deleuze's book on Foucault (I don't know if this has been translated), you
see an extra element: the "ligne du dehors" is not only "outside" the
inside, but it is equally at the innermost interior of the inside. The
ligne du dehors is passing though interiority "itself". Like our bodies if
you think of our digestive system: mouth-stomach-anus - just another ligne
du dehors.

This is a nice phrase too: ligne du dehors. You could think of it in
multiple senses, just like Foucault's book on Blanchot: La pensée du
dehors. Both "the outside" thought or line (as in spatially outside: the
outside patio) and "thought" or "line" FROM the outside - as in French
something can be seen from the outside, "du dehors", like "le foyer vu du
dehors". The reader of "La pensée du dehors" and "La ligne du dehors" are
OSCILLATING between an inside looking out, or an outside looking it.
Gramatically. Either you're looking at thought from the outside, or your in
an "outside-thought" (located on the outside). Same thing with the line:
either outside or passing through the inside or both, or simply "and".

And this oscillation is located at the inception of this "vocable". You are
already taking part. So I cannot but help disagree. I don't know what you
are making reference to - you didn't give me page numbers, nor did I - but
I will, I just have to find that Deleuze book before I do and I can't seem
to right now...

Let's dicuss this more if we all can. I think it's important.


Take care,

Douglas Edric
Par Ici, 14.9.1995


P.S. Whatever you said about that woman (I didn't even really read it so I
can't comment in detail) seems to me really "con". Des gens qui s'occupe
des histoires des autres sont vraiment des cons. Take care of your own
shit, you little sex-cop, you. Always a little fascist hanging around the
block worrying about someone else's life. I don't know about you but I've
had enough with morals no matter where they're coming from. I have nothing
to "hide", it's just got nothing to do with you who I fuck or how I fuck.
Or should I say, it's got nothing to do with me how you fuck, or how you
think someone else should fuck - insinuating of course in the end that that
person should be fucking you. Freud was right, dirty jokes are an attempt
to slowly transform the listener into the object in question - pussy-joke
front for "let me fuck you". Well, keep your dick to yourself, I've got
plenty when I need them. Keep your morals to yourself. Just because you've
got some sort of masturbating-directive from the central office, it doesn't
mean that I've got to hear about it.



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