Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 02:59:21 -0500 (EST)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re: Dialectics


On Fri, 22 Jan 1999, Paul Bryant wrote:

> TMB--
> 
> You are right to point out the importance of semantic analysis as
> central to any discussion.  I particularly like your example
> surrounding multiple ways of viewing a computer program and the need
> to clarify which perspective is at work when conflicts arise. 
> However, as I saw it, I had clearly demarcated my concept of
> "critique" and your replies struck me as gesturing to the effect that
> they appeared to say "but what about this, isn't there something
> else?"  Of course there's something else, but I wasn't talking about
> that something else at that time.  One can't talk about everything
> yanno.  Taking up Deleuze-speak for a moment, the concept of critique
> that I offered marked the singularities embedded in the practice of
> critique well enough to cover the systematic variations or different
> forms of critique found in diverse actualizations of this event. 
> Here, "singularity" is roughly equivalant to what you seem to mean by
> "boiling point" or "crisis point".  As such, it's what might be called
> a well-formed concept.  Further, that concept also anticipates what
> takes place in critique, which is to say, something is produced.  This
> differs from a straight argumentative approach insofar as such
> approaches tend to set two positions in opposition to one another so
> that one position might be summarily dismissed upon failing to meet
> the requirements of reason or some other criteria.  In this context,
> nothing really changes except for the fact that were left with one
> alternative where before we had two.  Critique, on the other hand,
> provides us with new concepts or modes of motion as can be aptly seen
> in Foucault's archaeologies and geneaologies.  As such, it's a
> positive project, despite the fact that it destroys as it produces. 
> Wasn't it Sartre that said we have to destroy in order to create?
> 
> As for your questions why someone uses this term or that term in order
> to describe their project, I can only say that is a thinker's way of
> naming his or her particular style of critique.  For there is not one
> way of carrying out critique, but many.  Along these lines, it is
> always interesting to look at the presuppositions of these particular
> modes of critique, to determine what values they embody, what their
> aims are, what their strengths are, what their limitations are.  This
> would be a critique of critique, or, perhaps, the perspectivism that
> Deleuze describes as the only means of total critique in _Nietzsche
> and Philosophy_.  Well, that's about all I have to say about that.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Paul
> 

Ok, we're roughly in agreement, though I definitly don't want to use
critique as far as you do, I think there is a serious loss. We agree vis a
vis "argument". The Sartrean phrase is ok, but a little, um, Sartrean, and
bo(u)n(e)d up in rather extreme terms. Your mention of "criteria" has
interesting and obvious resonances with "critique". Generally, the notion
of "critique" has a *mood* which I find to be far too "in place" and
continuously operative. I don't stay in Deleuze-speak too long as it lacks
to many things in my view and is, indeed, all too restricted to the mood
of "critique" as you use it. What is it? I don't know. You're making it
the "grandest" term, that is clearly meant to admit of may things. This
reads to me rather as a bit of an imperialist gesture, that seeks to
expand one mood out to a position of domination or totalization. To keep a
certain sense of "fight", perhaps, and an umbilical chord to the mother of
physics and negation as auto-nourishment along the way, or failure to
broach any moment of a certain kind of cessation or chromatic alternative.
The only reason I'm being so direct and honest about this is simply
because I think that is what is likely at work. I don't mean to be
offensive, and identify something perhaps a bit personal (not to mention
potentially quite wrong, oof course) not in hopes of eliminating it, but,
indeed, simply to make room for more basic things, which perhaps is the
only good excuse for such an intrusion.

Really, in this context the "grandest" or a really "big" term here would
appear to be be "thinking", left a bit open, which is about right for that
level. I can't see genealogy and archaeology as "critique" plain and
simple, nor do I find an expanded version of the term quite fitting, but
it might not matter too much. The language of "singularities", etc.,
doesn't work, in my opinion (it looks just horrible to me, but I'm also a
bit enticed by it; I'm not dismissing at all, if you can believe it), but
it can be made to work. It generally all presupposes a founding mood and
experiential condition that is a bit simplistic and grounded in,
suprisingly, an often rather argumentative and decidedly
metaphysical/constructionist (not to mention perhaps rather masculine)
approach that moves a bit too quickly to either "destruction" or polemics,
for that matter (witness this list at times). I am never more than
partially in Deleuze and Guattari, to say the least. I definitely move,
semantically, into specific "enterminations", as I call them, rather than
see in terms of the black and white of "creation and destruction" or in
terms of the metaphysics of D/G (so what I am I doing here, you may well
ask.) The terms I tend to want to use to get at the positive side of
things are: the "en-" in general, "econstruction", thoughtaction as a
somewhat subject-oriented version of power (action) knowledge (thought).
When I hear the word "creation", I get queezy and nauseated. I always end
up insisting, or rather, since I'm never quite "in" here (at least),
*ensisting* on an independent notion of nonviolence, which resonates with
a couple of main issues you point to: making room, and oppositionality. The
general failure to recognize this is a very serious and highly substantive
issue, in my view, and operates everywhere, anyhow. When these issues are
opened up (and it takes a lot of work despite how easy it is), nonviolence
emerges as a crucial (hehe) issue. In the bargain, the general Deleuzian
tapestry or machinics break down fully, as they are founded on a largely
oppositional grounding, one that is a bit hidden, and have a consistency
that decidedly does not make room in certain, again crucial, ways.
Generally, I tend to want to free terms up and accomplish a microtic
"bricolage" with terms, in a rich ground, while the DG space usually
involves extending their meaning a bit too much for me, as, precisely, in
how you think "critique" here. I could think that, but ultimately it would
lead to a conformity I guess I can't tolerate, which may be my weakness.
But, I ensist on that weakness, precisely, as part of my ground out of
which language, terms, definitions, etc,. precipitate. There's a notion
for you, by the way: precipitation, which I find very helpful in general
around this area, and in conjunction with the notion of "creation", a term
I really dislike. In terms of Deleuze, I didn't like the quotes that
recently surfaced, or precipitated, on here, the language was far too
hubristic, totalistic, and so forth. There is a kind of object side of
things with D that vaunts many notions of plurality and so forth, but on
another side (subject? I don't know), it rilly rilly feels like business
as usual, which I am quite sick of. No offense intended. My way of
thinking and what not is better, so I'm sticking to it. It's not "mine"
exactly, but it's not D and G, that's for sure.

When I try to indicate the "ground thing", again I'm given to a kind of
analogy: I see the person and the person-grounds as a kind of gaseous semi
morphous body thing. I see this as having phases and colors, and varieties
of solidity and gaseousness. Strictly an analogy. But anyhow, generally, I
prefer a very wide chromatic range, whereas the range I find in DG is
rather narrow. I don't know why access to this "gas" thing (being,
perhaps?) is so closed off. To do so, one has to go back to like 6th grade
and work through a bunch of stuff, I think, particularly
masculine/feminine, in part, also violence, and some other things, I
guess. Otherwise, you still have the basic operating grounds and then
these baroque developments which keep this other side of things closed
off. Opening it up does not mean, however, merely an alternative
chromatics, but radical paradigmatic shift, I think, that entails the
inclusion of the business of the chromatics, as it were, as part of the
progression. Perhaps this all already takes in D and G. I doubt it. But I
read poorly because I'm starving, which is interesting.

I guess your notion of critique would try to view this "opening of the
chromaticism" (in which resides, probably, unleash's notion of "empathy",
for example, and a fine one it would be in this problematic) simply as a
"making room": the chromatic ground (as I'm enterming it here) would stay
the same, while the baroque structure is critiqued and "room" is
supposedly made. But what I'm about here is this relation to grounds and
the "fundamental moods" (with Heideguerrian and anti-Heideggerian
resonances) and chromaticism or chromatic range in a manner that enters
the whole problematic into the progression, which is part of why I
problematize your view of "critique" as such, which, as I think of it
here, gives me to a strong sense of a movement of *retention* that
operates on the surface of the chromatic predecision, that is already
quite set up. That in fact would appear to account for a lot of what goes
on on this list, I guess. When I see you pushing "critique" in the way you
are, I get a *strong* feeling that the main idea is to preserve the
grounding condition as a setting-up that is especially comfortable with
one range of goals, which links up with the whole machinic language and
the D/G metaphysics, which is ok, I guess. Or not, depending.

I'm not dismissing critique, by any means, of course, and I assume you
realize that, even as you will most likely be marshalling the forces for
war and painting banners to the tune of being "against ethics" and
"against nonviolence". Hehe. Boo hoo. I'm being very incendiary, here,
though. This is strictly due to my experience concerning these issues on
this list and so forth in general, and, I may be completely wrong about
your next "move". I deliberately am anticipating them for the simple reason
of explains where I am, but not to really assume that that is what you are
about. On the other hand, part of the issue of chromatic stability and
limitation is the business of dreary repetition.

To better clarify where I'm at, returning to the computer example: we open
the menu bar, look under file, get in a discussion concerning the semantic
cache of "options", and variously understand where and how the cache is
important. I make a more general reference to the DOS system operating
under Windows. You may think that is what I am trying to be about (right
or wrong, good or bad, etc.), i.e., "The DOS needs to be expanded". But in
fact, I'm about "our" relationship, the computer, the room, etc.,
inclusive of the other problematics, my relationship with others, family
members, etc. This is tricky. I mean it as a rigorous analogy. Now, you
might tell me, "yes, critique opens up that way". I don't buy it, but
perhaps you can convince me. Nor do I mean to suggest that you are "not
about people" or that you don't have relationships or think about them,
etc. I just mean: if we go back to the "menu" example, the movement and
scene I described describes how I feel I am in relation to where you
appear to be and what D and G *in my poor reading* are about. The poverty
of my reading is not at all without substantive cache itself in this
matter.

I'm always about sending out a kind of rhizome at a juncture like this.
But *my* rhizomes are *definitely* not of the D and G kind. They are very
small, relatively "humble". The are very different, very direct. I do
not agree with the predominant notion that there is only one kind of
capital R Rhizome, and when push comes to shove, I, in wretched poverty,
stand my ground, and I think I am damn right to do so.

I'm not mad at you, btw, and your responses here have been truly cordial,
well reasoned, balanced, intelligent, and so forth. They're on par, for
example, with Nathan Widder's usual well balanced and admirable
scholarship and thinking. I hope you won't take this post the wrong way.
The reason I am leaving it as is is because, believe it or not, it is
actually what I think in conjunction with this problematic, in this
setting, etc.

This rhizome grows out of, precipitates out of nothing. The limitations I
indicate in this difficult response to you here concern such a "nothing".
The hiddenness of nonviolence and the business of the chromatic range of
thought pertain to a genocide that is taking place today. The capacity for
"thinkers", "philosophers", people who value critique, etc., is too
truncated. That truncation is tokening out in the death through
starvation of 1.5 million people. The linkage between this discussion and
the embargo/genocide is in a certain way bad form or barely admissible.
The embargo is *taken as nothing*, but it is something. The linkage I make
here would seem to be ill founded, founded, that is, on nothing. This
rhizome grows out of a nothing that is something, just as the linkage I
make here between subarchitectures and chromatic limitations in general (I
see this in, for example: Foucault, D and G, Heidegger, Sartre and
Derrida, just vis a vis this discussion) to the embargo is a nothing that
is something, and just as the embargo is a nothing, a "not happening" that
in fact is not a nothing, to the tune of 1.5 million whose cache is heard
hear in this act, here, now, at the time of this writing, in these words,
in our conversation. This is a rhizome of nonviolence, which is always
founded on a nothing: a *non* that accomplishes when something *doesn't*
happen (specifically: violence). You will be far too clever to get this
rhizome, imagine. This is of the earth. Down and dirty. Well, not
really...

Regards,

TMB (being a bit more radical than I was in the mood for this evening)