File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1996/d-g_Feb.96, message 4


Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 11:20:33 +1100
From: P.Bains-AT-uws.edu.au (Paul Bains)
Subject: Re: three-way metaphysics


I'm all for conviviality or 'graceful playfulness' in cyberspace. There's
not much around here...did I miss  something?
Howie, I'm off to the south pacific for 10days, cool huh (hope I don't glow
in the dark). I'll be back though, like Arnie, and I'll take up the question
of self-enjoyment - as well as Ruyer. It's important because it reinstates
subjectivity as the leitmotif of d/g. As Guattari put it in L'inconscient
machinique, 'there is a proto-subjectivity from the big bang to the most
deterritorialised machinisms of language, poetry' etc...cool huh.
The n.system _is_ a subjectivity in auto-survol.
Whitehead's process philosophy is based on actual occasions that cannot be
abstracted from one another because each actuality, although individual and
discrete, is internally related to all other actualities.. the solidarity or
connectedness of the universe. The best account of this apparent paradox
(besides Adventures in IDEAS, is Jorge Luis Nobo 'whitehead's metaphysics of
extension and solidarity, SUNY, 1986).
Well I'm out of here, but I'll spread some light on Ruyer when I get back.
" what can we see and think today"?
paul

 
>
>Howie wrote recently:
>>(the) notion of "space-time crystallization" is potentially a
>lot more interesting than Ruyer's notion of absolute volumes. It
>finesses the problem of disembodied decision-making which haunts
>...(these concepts)..., and it leads to a tripartite ontology - the actual, 
>the
>virtual and the dimensional or the focal - rather that the traditional 
>binary
>or even bi-univocal "playing field".
>
>>The subject  ... is neither virtual nor actual, neither
>ideational nor immanent. It is an accretion or residue of the immanent - I'd 
>
>be tempted to call this ontological mode "offal", as it is piled on or
>crystallized from the actual.  It serves to dimension the actual - hence,
>space-time crystallization -and to focus perceptions of the virtual. The
>virtual is, in fact, never actualized. It remains a mode apart.
>
>____
>Well, I ran this by marketing the other day, and they threw it right back at 
>me. Offal is awful, they said. Dimensional is too vague and clumsy and Focal 
>isn't sexy enough for an "ontological mode." So we did a little more 
>brainstorming, and came up with Convivial. Shades of my old friend Ivan 
>Illich and (Ugh! dare I say it) even Habermas (life-world). Clearly a 
>trademark issue, but these are different product classes. Just keep out all 
>the transcendentalism and we'll avoid any lawsuits.
>
>In addition to its marketing potential, Convivial actually has a major 
>conceptual advantage. We can now say that the virtual is convivialized, 
>which is more accurate than the erroneous notion of "actualized" (The actual 
>is, of course, crystalized in the convivial - that notion doesn't change). 
>It looks like we've got a real winner here: the actual, the virtual and the 
>convivial. Can we set up a "club for the promotion of a three-way ontology"? 
>Douglas, I'm counting on your rigor. Paul, on your sensibility. Karinne, on 
>your practicality. Can we agree on the percentages?
>
>Howie
>
>PS  Marketing also asked me to do a little research. Is it true that 
>Heidegger's was the last attempt to overhaul ontology? Sartre? Well, he made 
>some forays, but I don't think that was his selling point. Foucault? 
>Deleuze? Baba Ram Dass? It looks like the coast is clear. Can someone 
>volunteer for the press conference?
>
>


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