From: Chris Jones <ccjones-AT-turboweb.net.au>
Subject: Re: Deleuze and Guattari's senescence
Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 13:58:00 +1100


Hi Chris Michael et al

I am happy to respond to Chris's suggestion. chris wrote:

I think it might be interesting to ask "why should it be good that
there be more consumption [or desiring production]?"

I think this is what Michael was addressing and I don't think the
quote Michael gave earlier necessarily argues more consumption is
in all cases good. The quote was:

>What we say, in fact, is that there's never anything like enough 
>consumption, never anything like enough contrivance: people's
>interests  >will never turn in favour of revolution until lines of
>desire reach the  >point where desire and machine become
>indistinguishable, where desire and  >contrivance are the same
thing, >turning against the so-called natural  >principles of, for
example, >capitalist society ('Negotiations', pp.19-20)

Chris's question is political. the first part;  "that  there's never
anything like enough  consumption, never anything like enough
contrivance" is a material reality. A link to Marx and a link to
Hegel. Hegel's ideal of the Absolute for history and production
and consumption is a limit; enough production. Marx and D&G say there
is never enough, never an Absolute. From Hegel (groan) to Lacan (groan
groan) are more connections and Lacan's sad schema of desire. A
schema where the father desires the son and the son desires the
father and the mother desires a homosexual son and this is called
heterosexuality. Straights are homosexual and gays are heterosexual
yet the inversion is said to be the case. Gays get bracketted into
Lacan's third register, the real, to try to save the argument. Desire
gets hidden in the Absolute to attempt to save it's white heterosexual
masculine ideal. Only men can reproduce in this ideal sadness. Very
sad if you think about it for too long.

Women and gays become desire, a line of flight out of this double
impossibility. Lines of desire reach for the point where desire and
machines become indistinguishable, where desire and contrivance are
the same thing. For men a becoming woman. Material interests turn away
from the so-called natural laws of capitalism. Perhaps there can be
too much consumption of the means of production by those who, by
nature, own the means of production. Lines of desire where the means
of production, production and consumption become indistinguishable
from the people, in material reality. That would be a revolution. The
academies of the state apparatus call for caution, at least some
must, that is their role, lest they be abolished. They are
frightened. Be careful. We don't want a revolution ( at least, for
now.) Critical reading, first some critical readings, goes the
frightened pleas.

Funny how D refusing to bugger Hegel forces a violent confrontation
with the ideals of Lacan and other Heglian like commonsense defenders
of patriarchal capital's eternity. A sad lot, very sad indeed. Faced
with sadness one is forced to think, to defend the body, following
Spinoza's emotional ethics. To understand what is so sad. Writers
should be forced to think and good writers, even popular genre
novelist, should think well. That is what is so joyful about Chris
forcing me to think about anti-romanticism. A sort of rehersal for
writing. A joyous gift.

best wishes,
Chris Jones.

ps. In preparing for revolution one can never be careful enough, lest
the state war machine destroys the people. There is already a
declaration of civil war against the people by the state aparatus in
the USA called "The War on Drugs." The state is marketing illicit
drugs, making heroin one of the big guns, first with a war against
the people waged in Vietnam and brought home for a civil war. Divide
and rule, the Prince's old political strategy.


On Sun, 03 Sep 2000, you wrote:
> Sorry Michael, I just don't get it. I was just saying that the idea of the 
> *romantic* might not be worth pursuing. I'd rather be writing about 
> something else rather than is D&G "romantic", "antiromantic", etc. 
> Everything I wrote re: antiromantic sprang from that quote where they are 
> embracing *contrivance*. That strikes me as quite different from the usual 
> romantic project of hostility towards contrivance. All I said was I am happy 
> to drop that whole line of thought here.
> 
> :) Chris