File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2001/heidegger.0105, message 19


Date: 14 May 2001 07:11:48 -0000
From: "Nate Goralnik" <rhizome85-AT-lovemail.com>
Subject: Heidegger and D&G


Hi~

    As I was reading "The Question Concerning Technology" the other day, I came across what seemed to be a way in which D&G could be linked to Heidegger. About halfway through the piece, Heidegger discusses the way in which the world is revealed as standing reserve (Bestand) in such a way that all objects are revealed such that they are subordinated to orderability. He says:

"The forester who, in the wood, measures the felled timber and to all appearances walks the same forest path in the same way as did his grandfather is today commanded by profit-making in the lumber industry, whether he knows it or not. He is made subordinate to the orderability of
cellulose, which for its part is challenged forth by the need for paper, which is then delivered to newspapers and illustrated magazines" (QCT 18).

    "Orderability" seems, here, to function in Heidegger's thought as desire functions in D&G's thought. The forester is the (and you might take issue with how I label each machine in this example) axe-machine which is
connected from one end to the wood-machine and on the other end to the paper-machine, which in turn is connected to the media-machine, etc. This seems like a fair association to make between Heidegger and D&G. But, for the purposes of D&G, what of "technology"? Certainly in D&G it is not technology as a way of revealing that sets up the connections between desiring machines, but these connections disclose objects as "machines" who
interrupt and channel flows on the basis of desire/"orderability." What to do with this?

    I must admit I have some reservations about "technology" in general - the fact that, in Heidegger's first example of the bringing-forth of the
silver chalice out its material, form, telos, and the agent that catalyzes the bringing forth, these four "causes" are disclosed as subordinate to the bringing-forth of the silver chalice doesn't really seem to raise the question of technology as a problematic. The sense in which the silver chalice is "brought forth" is different from the sense in which the four causes are "brought forth" as causes of the silver chalice's bringing-forth. It seems that Heidegger leaps from one understanding of "bringing-forth" to another without really establishing the link that he attempts to establish.

~Nate

--

"The living body is a loving body, and the loving
 body is a speaking body. Without love we are nothing
 but walking corpses. Love is essential to the living
 body, and it is essential in bringing the living
 body to life in language."  ~Kelly Oliver

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