From: N.E.Widder-AT-lse.ac.uk
Date: Sun, 28 Jul 96 14:29:55 GMT
Subject: Re[2]: I am God very little of the time . . .


     This is my attempt to help the self-proclaimed "often mis-understood" 
     and "cumbersome" Ed Kazarian, and maybe get us "back to Deleuze".
     
     I think one of the best little fragments where the Deleuzean 
     "framework"/"project"/call it what you will is outlined is p. 206 of 
     DR:
     
     "For the question is to know how affirmation itself can be multiple, 
     or how difference as such can be the object of pure affirmation.  This 
     is possible only to the extent that affirmation as a mode of the 
     proposition is produced from extra-propositional genetic elements (the 
     imperative questions or original ontological affirmations), then 
     'carried through' or determined by way of problems (multiplicities or 
     problematic Ideas, ideal positivities).  Under these conditions, it 
     must be said in effect that the negative in the proposition sits 
     alongside affirmation, but only as the shadow of the problem to which 
     the proposition is thought to respond -- in other words, like the 
     shadow of the genetic instance which produces the affirmation itself."
     
     (This is, btw, a shorthand explanation for why Lack is such a lousy 
     concept for Deleuze -- it doesn't guarantee a true dispersion.  This 
     can pretty well be seen if you look through someone like Zizek and 
     look at all the times that otherness is reduced to a binary (i.e., 
     man/woman, etc.) in which the elements interpenetrate and disrupt each 
     other, but don't become much more than an adulterated binary.  You can 
     also look at the few times when Zizek seems to get beyond binaries 
     only by not talking about Lack anymore).
     
     What Ed is asking, I think, is whether there is any point to labelling 
     this extra-propositional genetic element as god, or the gods, or some 
     similar theological name.  I suspect that there's very little point to 
     doing this, although I think some of the gnostics (Valentinians and 
     Sethians) were onto something:  the gnostic god is nothing more than a 
     principle of dispersion, against which the demiurge and the created 
     world are nothing more than a negative shadow.  This is, at least, 
     what I think, as I have yet to ask any "gnostic expert" to take a look 
     at what I've written on the gnostics.  BTW, does anyone know if there 
     is such a thing as a Deleuzean-Gnostic expert, or a Gnostic-Deleuzean 
     expert, or in any event someone who is fairly knowledgeable on both?
     
     Nathan
     
     n.e.widder-AT-lse.ac.uk
     
     (Sorry I'm not Nick Land when you need him)