Date: Mon, 08 Jul 1996 10:44:54 EDT From: Karen Ocana <CXKO-AT-MUSICA.MCGILL.CA> Subject: humid, all too himid In light of a recent glitch or two & given the fragile state of "one's" synapses in humid, all too humid Montreal & soz to clear the air -- this is to say, peace, out. Besitos, Karen (off to Erewhon/whoknowswhere) cxko-AT-musica.mcgill.ca until 30.08.96 PS--an interesting experiment: send a message to Majordomo with nothing in the subject line & a message reading "who deleuze- guattari". PPS--Bains: keep up the excellent work & don't mind them glitches. It's not, of course, that i don't want to read Ruyer and Maturana, it's only that i haven't yet the leeway to deviate properly in that direction, but even just from readings in _Anti-Oedipus_ all the signs say you're definitely on to something big. I still think there's a chance someone will come up with Timothy Murphy's paper, but I don't even know that youse guys are in the same ballpark. * & * & * N a c h l a s s: (Crispin et al,) I'd be interested in reading (in the confines of my mailbox) what you have to say about the disparity between, on the one hand, the idea of parthenogenesis (becoming or being made a man -- being reborn as a new man -- via the oral mother) in Deleuze's _Masochism_, and, on the other hand, the oft-repeated Deleuzoguattarian claim that one cannot become a man (because that is a molar condition, hence undesirable) and that man (and in the later work any molar entity) must become anything but man, - intense, -woman, -animal, - imperceptible... I'm working through this idea of parthenogenesis in a thesis chapter dealing with becomings, _anti-oedipus_, _the passion of new eve_ & (sexual/textual) politics. [re: secondary literature on masochism, i've read some interesting work by carol siegel that pertains directly to _the passion of new eve_, and some less pertinent & more psychoanalytic stuff by kaja silverman, and plan perhaps to look at parveen adams...any other suggestions? on the problematics of becoming-woman, i know there is lots, from irigaray, through to e.a. grosz. have to go back and check whether any of these take the same approach i do.] Becoming a man in _Masochism_: "But what is the significance of this constantly recurring theme: "You are not a man, I am making a man of you?" What does "becoming a man" signify? Clearly it does not mean _to be like the father_, or to take his place. On the contrary, it consists in obliterating his role and his likeness in order to generate the new man. The tortures are in effect directed at the father, or at his likeness in the son. We argued earlier that the masochistic fantasy is less an instance of "a child being beaten" than of _a father being beaten_: in many of Masoch's tales, it is the master who undergoes the tortures....we should conclude that what is beaten, foresworn and sacrificed, what is ritually expiated, is the father's likeness, the genital sexuality inherited from the father -- however miniaturized he may be. This is the real "Apostasy." To become a man is to be reborn from the woman alone, to undergo a second birth. This is why castration, and the "interrupted love" which represents castration, ceases to be an obstacle to or a punishment of incest, and become instead a precondition of its success with the mother, since it is then equated with a second, autonomous and parthenogenetic rebirth...." (M 99, Zone) "The final objective of Masoch's work expresses itself in the myth that embraces both Cain and Christ: Christ is not the son of God, but the new Man; his likenes to the father is abolished, he is "Man on the Cross, who knows no sexual love, no property, no fatherland, no cause, no work..." [footnote 32: Letter to his brother Charles on January 8, 1869.] (M 100, Zone) No becoming-man in A Thousand Plateaus: "Why are there so many becomings of man, but no becoming-man? First because man is majoritarian par excellence, whereas becomings are minoritarian; all becoming is a becoming-minoritarian." (ATP, 291) This disparity is one that has perhaps been remarked upon many times. Perhaps even by Michel Cressole, I'm not sure. Perhaps it is more a deviation than a disparity. I'm far from considering it objectionable for writers to deviate... It may be that Guattari's influence is at work here. I am looking forward to Charles Stivale's new book, which I am hoping will shed some new ligh on the mutual influences, on the reciprocities between D&G... Another example of a seachange in Deleuzean thinking, this time bearing on the life/art nexus: >From _Proust and Signs_: "What is the superiority of the signs of art over all the others? It is that the others are material." (Proust and Signs, 39) "The superiority of art over life consists in this: all the signs we meet in lif are still material signs, and their meaning, since it is always in something else, is not altogether spiritual." (Proust and Signs, 41) 12 years later, from the Faciality Plateau: "The point is to get out of it, not in art, in other words, in spirit, but in life, in real life. *Don't take away my power to love.*" (ATP 187) "But art is never an end in itself; it is a tool for blazing life lines, in othe words, all of those real becomings that are not produced only *in* art, and all of those active escapes that do not consist in fleeing *into* art, taking refuge in art...&c" (ATP 187) There is a question that I hope to take up from the point of view of desiring-machines...since, in Part II of _Proust_ (i think), and, in _Anti-Oedipus_ art is called a desiring-machine to the extent that it is self-positing, to the extent that it creates its own intrinsic meaning... creating internal resonances between signs (to be elaborated...) ... which does not mean that it is an end in itself, only *auto-poietic*, (i.e. self-creative, or self-constitutive...) Perhaps the becoming a man process in _Masochism_ is really already a becoming-woman considering all that is involved in Christ's Passion. However, there is the problematic fact that masochism tends towards a cure ... from being an anvil, one may become, of all things, a hammer, and don one's father's Spanis leather boots! (in _Venus in Furs_). Doesn't Severin become the father? Or, no, perhaps he becomes the master (the woman). It may just be possible that Masochian masochism only works in a culture where the woman is generally dominant. And masochism is really a subversive strategy for 'becoming-woman' & getting a piece of the action. But such a reading would seem to exude more than a whiff of ressentiment, no? On a different tack, there is the problem of the faciality of the Christ figure, and all that that involves. (But D&G find a way out of that impasse in the famous denouement of the Faciality plateau with the promise of probe-heads!!) What's really interesting in Sacher-Masoch's masochism is the formal and dramatic contract -- a framework/construct in which ordinary selves may dissolve and set in motion the circulation of aformal flows of desire -- so to speak. However, Deleuze makes no bones about masochism involving large doses of ego-satisfaction, for the masochist -- As Crispin points out, it would seem that the real 'dom' in masochism is the flagellattee -- the one who initiates the contract. (In Severin's case, the woman must not be cruel for her own sake.) And the pseudo-sadist & even the sadist is supposedly really a victim, or rather speaks the language of victims...idaknow, this is tricky esp. for one not terribly well versed in the intricacies of freudian psychoanalysis and the dance of ego, superego and let's not forget the id... for on the one hand Sade supposedly identifies entirely with the superego and can find an ego only outsid of himself in the external world!? but on the other many of Sade's stories centr on female narrators, although i've read many a Sadean tale (Gothic Tales) where the narrator is gender-neutral or "imperceptible". In any case, it seems to me that the genius of great novelists-artists is precisely how they imagine and mak speak, convincingly, a vast range of masculinities and femininities whilst belonging 'statistically' to only one gender. The ongoing problem: what does desire have to do with gender? It is of utmost importance. (And in D&G's work, it has to do with becoming, and becomings tend away from forms (molar entities, gendered entities) and towards flows, despite the fact that they flows would seem to be unimaginabl without forms to make flow and to flow towards. Though on another level, one is hard pressed to imagine anything that does not both have a form and flow, which is why the important thing is precisely the question of speeds and slownesses an rates of mutability ... quantum quantum, ra ra ra!!!)..... substance and (potential) movement, particle and wave, matter and force. Lots to learn. Mireille Buydens is very good on the question of how Deleuze's formalism tends towards an aformalism without losing sight of form! karen in knots and ribbons.
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