File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1998/deleuze-guattari.9812, message 97


From: "michelle phil lewis-king" <king.lewis-AT-easynet.co.uk>
Subject:  'Partial recall'
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 14:03:21 -0000



Dear Daniel,

 you wrote about 'Total Recall':

> right-wing
> > > reactionary nonsense.
> >
 One of the aspects of Deleuze and Guattari that has always appealed to me
is their moving beyond an easy  sense of 'left wing progress'.. of some kind
of left wing master programme.. thought is surely more difficult and complex
than this and can include nonsense, reversals and contradiction..paranoia's
.. thinking through  right wing bits and pieces .. I am somewhat confounded
by the notion of 'rhizomes' as unproblematically 'drawing trajectories
opening out onto the unknown' being found only in approved 'left wing'
narratives.. as if rhizomes are somehow contained in the narrative and not
developped in the difficult relationship(s) with the viewer.. who knows
where we might encounter rhizomes? Where 'trajectories' might start? Why
does there have to be a goal?

> okay, okay - the film does have a few weirded out moments... but its
> just throwaway stuff, just sparkles and bangs...

I thought this quote from Michel Cressole gleaned from Charles Stivales book
( thanks Charles we're enjoying it very much )  might be pertinent:

" I always used Anti Oedipus as a fantastic toy, a book and laughter, hot
nights of Marrakesch, a tube of lipstick, sparkling backfire from
motorcycles, the expression "imperious violets," a frighteningly beautiful
transvestite, science fiction with the mad savants Deleuze-Guattari. "

then talking about the experience of watching a film (The Faceless Man) :

"that was showing at the cinema, right next to your place, where I had a
stroke of good luck right after visiting you. From the upper balcony
slightly askew in relation to the main floor, the film could only be watched
there at an angle and, perhaps due to this angle, the viewers are the actors
of an immense sucking and engorging, bits of film caught between trembling
legs, little pieces of lovers dialogue mixed with gasps of pleasure,
characters in "The Faceless Man", torn from their pitiful Made-In-Hollywood
adventure that everyone lost track of, are caressed with the faceless
neighbours thigh, the screen from in front or behind, as  all are in front
or behind us, nothing and no one in its place."
Michel Cressole 'Deleuze' 1973

Deleuze responded to this passage in his ' Letter to a harsh critic ' as:
" This is reading with love  (une maniere amoureuse)."  : a series of
experiments for each reader in the midst of events that have nothing to do
with books..

Quoted in  Two fold thought of Deleuze and Guattari by c.Stivale pp 285 and
pp7

'Total Recall' might be a bit of a sideline to a discussion on special
effects but I find it irritating when things that I find very useful are
dismissed as 'trivial'in the name of some 'higher goal'.

phil.


   

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