From: "I Am Bobo" <boboii-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: D&G/Habermas
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 02:03:37 GMT


Let's open this up, perhaps, into a discussion on what exactly D&G want to 
"move towards".  Habermas wants to finish the enlightenment so that rational 
purposive action is in harmony with social exchange . . . what does this 
mean?  Habermas doesn't answer, he sees rpa as a faculty that we need only 
be taught to use, right?  He's Kantian, after all.  But Paul is right to 
point to the Foucault/Habermas debate because Foucault says rationality 
comes about by power relations, an abstract machine.  D&G propose a social 
machinics, plugging things up here and there, drawing forth assemblages, 
which presupposes a pragmatic rationality, which would be the subjectivity 
of the mecanosphere.  The important part is that this pragmatic rationality 
is entirely different from Habermas's rationality, because all the former 
needs to know is how make connections, a simple mechanic-ego-subjectivity, 
nothing to do with moral faculties and such which constitute Habermas's 
rationality.  There's no need for moral self-legislation which Habermas 
wants, because D&G propose that in creating the mecanosphere, we create an 
id-subjectivity populated by unconscious desires which are not criminal, 
therefore there is no need for self-legislation at all, we just go with the 
non-criminal flow.  So D&G propose a moral criteria for collectively 
creating the mecanospere by way of local assemblages which hook up, but this 
is a "transition rationality", a tool that we can leave aside later.  My 
thoughts are fuzzy, I need comments to work them out.

Bobo :)


>Dear Paul,
>
>Can I just bring up what you said about Habermas being not useful re:
>becomings.
>
>I think you are right in that H. wants to *finish the Enlightenment*[sic] 
>as
>he says. So everyone would participate in the *public space* req. of true
>democracy because we are all *men* (human beings) and (if we want to be 
>free
>[not slaves]) government should concern us. The public space is the 
>becoming
>*dignity of man* of society? That is the creation of an absolute molarity.
>
>But can I go over some aspects of this model that gel with D&G?
>
>1. The molarity of *humanity* in H. is the creation of a context that could
>enable all becomings, but would oppose only those becomings that were
>*criminal* (opp. the Social Contract). H. is not putting up a model of a
>"man". He is designing a spece of political freedom. Perhaps this means 
>that
>only the criminal becoming is possible (criminal/social contract block of
>becoming)? I don't think so. There could be all sorts of passional and
>infrasocial becomings - all sorts of blocks. Becoming need not just be
>parasitic (a negation of the thesis of the public space).
>
>2. The question of what is enlightened. The public space is also the 
>machine
>for creating enlightened beings - not just the zone that enlightened beings
>can join upon their enlightenment.
>
>3. The public space is a subject grouping not a subjected grouping.
>
>4. The public space would enable us to modulate the direction of society -
>civil & techno-scientific. it would enable us to keep the
>technocrats/designers/executive/legislature/judiciary as one set of
>*formations* among others (all formations being distributed horizontally).
>It is more open to the rhizomic than one might think?
>
>5. At the moment there is a opp. between:
>i/ Codes, affects, cultures - Social Exchange [SE]
>ii/ Capitalism, science - Rational Purposive Action [RPA]
>The public space would allow us to modulate RPA by way of SE and to
>rationalize SE by way of RPA. That's the Enlightenment. It is also the only
>way I can see of making a rational technological society where there are
>affects, passions (and some *equity*) - a society good to live in.
>
>What I want to say is that from a diff. angle, D&G are imagining a v.
>similar *society of the future* to that promoted by H.
>
>The diff is that D&G do not OPENLY espouse rationality whereas H. makes
>rationality do a lot of work.
>
>It is not clear that rationality in H. leads to depassionality/social
>sterility/molarity of SE (although the public space - just one set of zones
>horizontally distributed - would require some molarization and *rules* as
>mentioned in 1.above). On the contrary it is how to stop RPA heading in 
>that
>way.
>
>It is not clear that D&G are simply contemptuous of RPA, for e.g. they like
>Capitalism's  "decoding" aspect? That is RPA vs. SE. They see that as 
>having
>some good & some bad fallouts. SE is not just ballet - it is also racism,
>etc.
>
>More to the point, what D&G do is try to productively combine the RPA of
>philosophy with the SE of philosophy - to produce an enlightened mind
>replete with passion and intensity?
>
>H.'s quasi-molar public spaces could well turn out to be the launch pads of
>all sorts of molecularizations? H. is writing of a becoming rational (homo
>sapeiens) because we are not yet homo sapeiens. But this becoming homo
>sapiens (what you rightly say is impossible in the defacto understanding
>that we are already *men*) is possible because we are not men (maybe we are
>devo)? And maybe man is devo? Can man rationally understand himself as 
>devo?
>Will it be the case that RPA will expose the utility of irrational SE? D&G
>are racing ahead of H. here, I think.
>
>6/ One last thing - the Public Space is an an assemblage. H. does not begin
>with *subjectivity*. He designs a social machine (a universal - even
>Trotskyesque? - assembly). Regardless of our subjectivity (which may as 
>well
>be a black box) we *become (maybe without limit) rational* in interface 
>with
>this assembly, in subject-participation (not so much subjected
>participation) - and the assembly becomes a subject group through the
>becoming rational of us? This is full-on Hegel? Yes? becoming man = the
>becoming of the spirit - the unkown, unnamed divinity - do we signifiate
>this with our rational and passional faculties modulating? This is full on
>Marx, no? The modulation of SE by RPA and vice versa, the horizontal
>society? Thios may even be a way of making Nietzche's *anarchy*?
>
>But there is that *stopping point* - what are the RULES of the public 
>space?
>They are the rules of the Social Contract - to maximise the general good
>req. submission of all to the contract [sic] - Rousseau. No sovereignty? Is
>this how we make sovereign subjects/ Rousseau thought so. So did Hegel,
>Marx, [Nietzche(?)]. I think D&G aggree - no sovereign subject > freedom.
>
>So the question - how far can H. dispose of the state/organism? Well he
>can't. he can only perfect that organism by way of a kind of paradox - the
>freedom of some articulations makes the organic function of the state
>perfect. D&G part company here, as you (I think) implied.
>
>But i just wanted to write so as to alleviate some of the general hatred of
>the Enlightenment (Habermas) tradition (Rousseau, Voltaire, Hegel, Adorno 
>et
>al, Habermas). In just bagging out the Enlightenment from a re-empted
>'antihumanist' angle (it failed - it only leads to more oppression, etc) we
>remain more humanist than we know? And begin, in fact, to sound like thise
>who now, as if it were self-apparent, must triumphantly tell us that
>"Communism is dead".
>
>:) Chris
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