File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1998/deleuze-guattari.9810, message 82


From: Jon Rubin <j_rubin-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: modernity/post-modernity
Date: Thu, 08 Oct 1998 08:20:27 PDT


One question . What point in the history is the begining of the Post 
Modernity?"


"In a sense, everything we attribute to an age was already present in 
the preceding age ... These ... ages ... should not be interpreted as an 
evolution, or as structures separated by signifying breaks. They are 
assemblages enveloping different Machines, or different relations to the 
Machine."
       -Deleuze & Guattari, "Of the Refrain", A Thousand Plateaus

30th September, 1784: Konigsberg in Prussia.

"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. 
Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the 
guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is 
not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it 
without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is 
therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!"

Although I agree totally with the quote Unleash cites I think Lyotard 
makes an interesting point about this which can be thought of in DnG 
terms. How after all are we to characterise "modernity"? which 
assemblage (for there is a multiplicity) should we start with?
Lyotards point is that post-modernity begins with the realisation of 
the failure of the "project of modernity" but that this failure is 
(practically) co-temporaneous with its start. (_What is Enlightenment_, 
1784; the Terror 1892ish)

sapere aude! to me is the most deterritorialised/ing component of the 
Enlightenment-assemblage - not least because it is on the most 
deterritorialsed componenet that reterritorialisations take place; it is 
simultaneously pass-word out of unpragmatic-mysticism (det) and 
order-word into power/knowledge apparatuses (ret). 
post-modernity is a reterrotorialising assemblage but it functions 
against both tendencies of the sapere aude! component.

Jon


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