Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 08:22:57 +1000
From: P.Bains-AT-uws.EDU.AU (Paul Bains)
Subject: Re: nomads, cyborgs, personnes (long, and in 2 parts)


Karen writes:
>I, for one, am all set to
>find out more about this mysterious abstract machine.  For it seems that
that is
>what, or that that is where one is, both physical body and enunciating
body, wit
>nomadic desire on both sides, seemingly pulled in two directions...
I'm curious to know how available Chaosmosis is in the U.S. 'cos in this
book Guattari gives an extended account of abstract machines which acts both
as a valuable introduction and complexification. I won't burden you with
more quotes - I've already overdone that - but see partic. chpter 2.
"Machinic Heterogenesis" where G. introduces machinic assemblages and their
autopoietic dynamism. He gives numerous examples from the hammer to jazz
(q.v. chpter 5 "Machinic Orality and Virtual Ecology". Abstract machines do
not exist within the coordinates of energy/space/time but the components
that they relate together in a functional ensemble may do so - if these
components have a molecular dimension.
Can't resist it: "These assemblages cannot be located in terms of extrinsic
systems of reference, such as energetico-spatio-temporal coordinates or
well-catologued semantic coordinates. For all that they are apprehendable
through an awareness of ontological, transitivist, transversalist and pathic
consistencies. One gets to know them not through representation but through
affective contamination. They start to exist in you in spite of you. And not
only as crude, undifferentiated affects, but as hyper-complex compositions:
'that's Debussy, that's jazz, that's Van Gogh'."(p.92/93)
These machinic assemblages have a pathic transversality that agglomerates
the subject and object. The machinic phylum of jazz is 'an incorporeal
ecosystem' that is threatened when its 'enunciative consistency falls below
a certain threshold.'
I am of course contaminated by this 'text'.
Paul.     


     ------------------