Date:        Thu, 14 Sep 1995 19:53:27 EDT
From: Karen Ocana <BJFC-AT-MUSICB.MCGILL.CA>
Subject: Re[2]: brains and refrains


>on thought about the outside and pure exteriority i would like
>to quote from massumi's fine _user's guide_, note 44, p. 170:
>
>"If the virtual is a space of pure exteriority, then every point
>in it is adjacent to every point in the actual world, refardless
>of whether those points are adjacent to each other(otherwise some
>actual points would separate the virtual from other actual points,
>and the virtual would be outside their outside--in ohter words,
>relative to and mediated by it)."
>
>Obviously this is massumi and not Deleuze, but i don't have
>_Foucault_ with me and there are few references to the 'outside'
>in Deleuze's other works. my question is: how does the virtual
>attain this state of pure exteriority? by virtue of being indeterminate
>in relation to the actualized present? i don't claim to have come with
>alternative conceptual terms to describe space where inside and
>outside no longer apply. rather i am suggesting that perhpas a
>different terminological system wuld be more appropriate for the
>kind of topology Deleuze is trying to describe. in fact, that
>terms like 'exterior' and 'outside' actually hinder the conceptualiztion
>of mobean like space.
>
The first time I saw or heard of a moebius strip was at a lecture
Elizabeth Grosz gave at McGill. I asked a question which I don't recall
and she pulled out a piece of paper and ripped off a strip and made it
into one of those strips, the likes of which you see in books about
Goedel, Escher, Bach or at the back of Baurdrillard's Xerox and Infinity

I haven't been reading any physics lately, you can be sure of that,
and my memories of _Foucault, Blanchot_ and _Foucault_ and _Difference
and Repetition_ are fuzzy at best which is where 'la pensee du dehors'
is discussed in greatest depth and at greatest length. However, I'm
rereading _Marcel Proust et les signes_ and here Deleuze is clearly
operating with a conceptual scheme which speaks of an enigmatic inside
as the envelopment of an outside or a 'world', and this cipher at the
heart of 'subjects' as producing their individuation (a variation
on the theme 'je est un autre').  In _Foucault_ you have the image of
the self as a fold or invagination of the world.  Our difference is
our enveloped force expressed as a point of view....Clearly this is
all too simple and doesn't address your concerns regarding a new
vocabulary which would do justice to Riemannian space. I can think
of Deleuze-Foucault's concept of the diagramme, I can think of the
aleatory point & its relation to aionic time, smooth space, haptic
events, but what these *mean* unfortunately remain a mystery to me,
and retain the allure of the unknown.

>I think, at bottom, what Deleuze is attempting to describe is finite
>foece, as he says int he appendix to _Foucault_ i believe (something
>about  an 'unlimited' finity, referring to Nietzsche's eternal return.).
>I think the limited essence of force as described by Deleuze in
>_Nietzsche and Philosophy_, when delineating the will to power, does
>a much better job od describing terminal physis. The problem, as
>described by Nietzsche and Deleuze, is that space must be thought
>as other than empty space. Space must be thought in relation to
>force, as a dimension of force, and only as a dimension of force.
>Force is not inserted into an empty space, but is the _shaping
>movement_ that becomes space. The essence of force is time, which
>of course relates to the virtual. This is described by LDeleuze
>in terms of the synthesis of eternal return and will to power.
>This conceptual framework avoids the inside/outside paradoxes
>and confusions.
>
In _Lucretius and the Simulacrum_ the universe is described of as
being composed of voids and atoms or bodies. A void is not the cliche
of the vacuum that nature abhors, but an unpopulated space, and the
sine qua non of movement. Intensities extend...maybe I'm think of
the 'wrong' kind of physics, newtonian physics? idaknow. But it doesn't
seem to me that there's anything wrong with empty space. I kind of
like the derridean notions of temporization and espacement for that
matter, although they may be far from Riemann. As for Nietzsche, as
far as I know he was far from a physicist, but then most philosophers
are; face it, their idea of thinking is coming up with c**l concepts,
whcih they've stolen from the hard sciences, arts, music....
cuckoo birds, mockingbirds, the lot of them!

But hey, enough shooting the shit. (I, for one, kind of like Susan's
colourful language....'dick-munch' is pretty good.)

Ta,
   Karen arcana

>anyone? more later.
>
>chris

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