From: "Ja'far Railton" <railton-AT-dial.pipex.com>
Subject: Re: RE: chaos theory & developmental psych
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 11:18:18 +0100


'aaishah (7.5 mos/kilos) says:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah--AH! (as she jerks her
shoulders into a shrug)
-----Original Message-----
From: Unleesh-AT-aol.com <Unleesh-AT-aol.com>
To: deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
<deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Date: 15 June 1998 8:28
Subject: Re: RE: chaos theory & developmental psych


>"Lets get out of the Library - get some fresh air, feel the body tingling
>
>with life - now that's thinking!"
>
>Oh! All of this is so exciting! I am so gladdened to see these lines
developed
>on this list! I really feel something is happening here!
>By the way, I went to Borders and checked out Daniel Stern's The
Interpersonal
>World of the Infant --- fucking amazing!! I can see why Guattari gushed
over
>it! From what I gleaned, emergent islands of selving (he emphasizes this as
a
>process not a thing) coalesce from the adverbial quality of the ambient
milieu
>in which the baby is immersed : incredible! He calls this "vitality
>intensities". These adverbial qualities : the way the mother folds the
>laundry, the way the wind rushes through the cracks in the window, the
>crescendos and descendos of the voices and sounds around the baby, each
form
>intensive connections which constitute a crossmodal form of
>perception/cognition. In other words, the baby thinks / perceives primarily
in
>terms of intensities, or in other words, musically. Stern explicitly
connects
>this type of learning to body movement when he says it is the same sort of
>inchoate yet very concrete exchange that happens between audience and
>performer in a modern dance performance. He also says that it is absurd to
>consider the baby as "undifferentiated" -- that is the totalizing,
after-the-
>fact view of an adult reifying the baby's emerging experience ; the baby
>experiences no holes between its multiplicities (in other words, WE project
>those holes, those gaps, those lacks between them), and experiences each
>strand with clarity and vivacity. Since the baby's cognition rhizomatically
>connects vitality affects (regardless of how we would molarly categorize
>items), "the mother" in one adverbial quality may be a different (but with
no
>gap) mother than the mother in another adverbial quality : total
multiplicity!
>And since the mother, amongst others, (amongst the whole fucking ambient
>milieu no less) helps form the "self" which is an emergent property of
>organizing relations between body as emerging connective intensive zone and
>intensities in the surrounds, this implies that there are SWARMS of
emergent
>selves or selvings in the infant's experiencing. Stern points out that
these
>selvings, these vital intensive experiencings continue and are probably the
>underlay of what we call the "unconscious", but we fail to recognize them
>because when we begin to integrate the verbal level, our language imposes a
>categorical system that is foreign to the intensive level, and people
"forget"
>their earlier organizational strata. It also means that it is extremely
>difficult for language to translate intensive rhizomattic experiences ;
>thusly, the great work of writers in the past centuries to twist a tool
which
>works in one direction to make it serve other directions... I wonder, then,
if
>language can be turned, can it again become an interactive learning /
>modification between generations, rather than the imposition of one
generation
>upon another? What about studies of language acquisition? Does this happen
on
>some inchoate level anyway, yet is opposed by other imposing forces? In
other
>words, as the parental units and the child interact to organize language
for
>the child, what sort of exchanges are taking place? Would it be possible to
>modify language use to match the baby's experience, and I mean not just for
>that phase, but as part of a building tradition that sees knowing and
>unknowing as fronts that meet in a genuine sort of learning, just as a
>Deleuzian view might see the present moment as a meeting point of the
>geological plates of future and past? This would acknowledge that the
infant
>brings us a certain type of 'knowledge', or rather an opportunity, a
>freshening, an undoing, an unknowing (in relation to our categories) and a
new
>way of knowing. It might be interesting to take a strand of this and
connect
>it to the Fetish of infantilism or abyism (Adult BabYism) ; I am currently
>trying to contact such people on line to form dialogues. Here regression is
>not truly regression but a progressive reexamination of bifurcations in
order
>to reclaim lost developmental lines, lines of flight abandoned --- perhaps?
>
>BTW, I went to the Fetish Ball "WORSHIP" here in downtown Los Angeles last
>night. It's an international event that happens only a couple times a year
and
>only every few years in any one person's home city. It was pretty steep :
>$35.00, but I wanted to check it out, because in terms of "weariness" and
>"sadness" (as mentioned in previous posts about academia, and not wanting
to
>be formed entirely by sadness and disappointment : jeez, what a struggle!),
I
>have desperate needs to connect with vital rhizomes rather than
extinguishing
>parasites, so I'm willing to check out and experiment with almost any new
>social scene. Unfortunately, it was for the most part like a club Plus,
like
>the gothic/fetish milieu I traverse but with more eye candy. It did feature
>Absolutely Fabulous Costumes, which were wonderful, but an air of
>superficiality reigned, and unfortunately, the organizers  provided no
>structured interaction nor space for this to develop. There were two dance
>floors, one Industrial / Electronica, the other House. There was a floor
with
>performances, but I am not interested in being a spectator (most people
were).
>Then there were the floors dedicated to the vendors. So essentially people
>slid from room to room, looking at things, looking at each other, and I saw
>only one "scene" --- a guy in blue latex getting whipped by a number of
>females --- and short at that -- the entire night. I expected to find
people
>living the lifestyle who might actually be more into spectating eachother
and
>consuming each other's appearances and into actually constructing
interesting
>interactions. I made some attempts, but they all fell flat. I did make up
some
>business cards or maybe pleasure cards with my name, phone number, and
>interests (performance art as nonseparated art of the everyday, connection
>amongst creative people as connection of milieus, etc.) and passed out a
>couple hundred of these, Johnny Appleseed throwing out seeds of connection,
>we'll see I guess.
>  I'd like to hear more about people's strategies to avoid sadness, to
>overcome disappointment which so easily "forms" us, even our bodies. It can
be
>difficult. I find that sometimes there are deserts to cross, while other
times
>one finds oneself in lush jungles where everything is happening. If
(un)leash
>is the haecceities which pass through hir, then often there are selves or
>selvings where nothing is happening. What are your desert-crossing
strategies?
>
>(un)leash