Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 17:39:43 +0100
Subject: Re: Lyotard and Empire


Eric
Following on from this - I've checked and unfortunately my copy of 'Adorno as the
Devil' (Adorno come diavolo) from Des Dispositifs Pulsionnels (1973) has gone
missing.  I had two versions and both have gone...(tragic). For what its worth has
anyone got a copy of Tels  from Spring 1974 I think it was issue 19. This had a
copy of Robert Hurley's translation of  'Adorno as the Devil'.

As said earlier I'll be able to send an electronic version of EC prerhaps
tomorrow..

regards

steve

Mary Murphy&Salstrand wrote:

> steve:
>
> Let me openly acknowledge one handicap here.  I can't read French.
> Therefore, I am limited to those works of Lyotard that have been
> translated into English.
>
> Unfortunately, much of Lyotard's writings from the eary seventies is
> simply unavailable. There was a text entitled "Driftworks", but it has
> been out of print for years and I can't find reasonably priced copies at
> the used book stores.  I keep waiting like Godot for Discours/Figure to
> be translated, but to no avail. I would love to read Lyotard's essay on
> Adorno, but don't know where to look for it. I also would like to see
> 'Energumen Capitalism', but haven't.
>
> Are these things more widely available in the UK?
>
> just ranting,
>
> eric
>
> >
> > Eric and co,
> >
> > To what extent can elements of Lyotards discussion of Anti-Oedipus in his
> > reveiw essay 'Energumen Capitalism' (EC) be rethought as a reading of
> > 'Empire'. In more than one sense AO is one of the texts that the Empire work
> > is founded on. I'd even go as far as to suggest that in some ways Empire is
> > like a further volume of D&G's Capitalism and Schzophrenia opus...  However
> > Lyotard's reading of the AO is that the text "subverts most profoundly what
> > it does not criticise: Marxism..."  But what is engaged in within the EC is
> > to point out what it is that is extracted from Marxism and buried is no
> > less  important that what is burnt at the stake from Freudian psychoanalysis
> > - actually the latter is less successful than the former because the model
> > of the human subject that AO defines is plainly unworkable but never mind.
> > What remains of marxism after the AO and EO is more or less what remains in
> > Empire...
> >
> > What remains of capitalism is one step prior to the definition postmodern
> > capitalism we live in today - fluidity, fluxes and flows.
> >
> > "Marxism says: there is a frontier, a limit past which the organisation of
> > flows called capital (capitalist relations of production) comes apart, and
> > the corrospondences between money and commodities, capital and labor force,
> > as well as other paramters, go haywire. And it is the very growth of
> > production capacities in modern capitalism which reaching this limit, will
> > cause the whole system of production and circulation to wobble. Furthermore
> > this growth will not fail to allow the passage of even more energy flows,
> > and to unleash and disperse their 'regulation' system within capital, that
> > is within their relations of production... All marxist politics is built
> > thereon, seeking in this frontier, this limit, this chain, a cornerstone
> > seeking to crumble, or a weak link, or ne considered so pertinent as to
> > bring down the whole structure, the strongest link...All this is a politics
> > of law and negativity..." Lyotard (1972) Energumen Capitalism.
> >
> > (Lyotard goes on to criticise the and examine what '...destroys bourgious
> > society...'  His critique of marxism is founded on his conflation on the
> > despotic failings of the 1917 revolution, the refusal of the strategy of the
> > party...)
> >
> > "What fascinates Marx is quite recognisable in the configuration of Capital
> > proposed by D & G the capitalist perversion, the subversion of codes,
> > religions, decency, trades, education, cookery, speech, gender, the
> > levelling of all 'established' differences into the one and only difference:
> > being worth..., exchangeable for.... Indifferent difference. Mors
> > Immortalis, in his words..." These words which were written by Lyotard and
> > AO are also one of the finest statings of why all the people discussed above
> > remain important.
> >
> > Actually I've been wrong about Lyotard on Marx - I've been misreading him,
> > which the past few days has corrected, it is not marx and the theory he is
> > writing against but the despotic failings of 1917 - the question becomes how
> > do you do something about it... How to completely eradicate the negativity
> > and guilt which has haunted us since the utopian dreams turned into
> > nightmares... (sorry Jean-Francios)
> >
> > I agree in other words that Empire is so close to the work of the
> > philosophers of desire - D&G below but also Lyotard from the same period...
> > It's easy to forget the passion and anger that drips from the 1970s texts of
> > lyotard.
> >
> > regards
> >
> > sdv
> >
> > Mary Murphy&Salstrand wrote:
> >
> > > Steve
> > >
> > > No problem if you are over the top. Keep in mind, my own agenda is the
> > > following. Keep open a different reception of Lyotard from the cliches
> > > found in the lit-crit anthologies.  From my POV, Lyotard never lapses
> > > into nostalgia, and therefore, it isn't fair to call him a pessimist.
> > > IMHO he always pushed for resistance, refusal and passive rebellion even
> > > when there seemed no other way out. The keynote in late LyoTARD is
> > > ambiguity, not despair.
> > >
> > > The question remains, how does Empire complexify Lyotard's own
> > > conception of complexity, as this is found in his later works. N&H don't
> > > seem to be denying  the condition as much as saying it allows for
> > > certain unforeseen transformations. Perhaps.
> > >
> > > You asked me for my take on multitudes.  I see it as deriving both from
> > > Deleuze and Guattari and Spinoza.
> > >
> > > Here is some background from 1,000 plateaus - as you will see, it is
> > > central to the main conceptions of this book!
> > >
> > > Rhizomatics=Schizoanalysis=Stratoanalysis=Pragmatics=Micropolitics.
> > > These words are concepts, but concepts are lines, which is to say,
> > > number systems attached to a particular dimension of the multiplicities
> > > (strata, molecular chains, lines of flight or rupture, circles of
> > > convergence, etc.)
> > >
> > > All we know are assemblages.  And the only assemblages are machinic
> > > assemblages of desire and collective assemblages of enunciation...
> > > An assemblage, in its multiplicity, necessarily acts on semiotic flows,
> > > material flows and social flows simultaneously.
> > >
> > > A body without organs is not an empty body stripped of organs, but a
> > > body upon which that which serves as organs (wolves, wolf eyes, wolf
> > > jaw?) is distributed according to crowd phenomena, in Brownian motion,
> > > in the form of molecular multiciplicities.  The desert is populous.
> > >
> > > People say, After all, schizophrenics have a mother and a father, don't
> > > they?  Sorry, no none as such. They only have a desert with tribes
> > > inhabiting it, a full body clinging with multiplicities.
> > >
> > > This brings us to the second factor, the nature of these multiplicities
> > > and their elements, RHIZOME.
> > >
> > > Lines of flight or deterritorialization, becoming wolf, becoming
> > > inhuman, deterritorialized intensities: that is what multiplicity is.
> > >
> > > Thus we find in the work of the mathematician and physicist Riemann a
> > > distinction between discreet multiplicities and continuous
> > > multiplicities.
> > >
> > > We are doing approximately the same thing when we distinguish between
> > > arborescent multiplicities and rhizomatic multiplicities.  Between
> > > macro- and micromultiplicities.
> > >
> > > The elements of this second kind of multiplicity are particles: their
> > > relations are distances, their movements are Brownian: the quantities
> > > are intensities, difference in intensity.
> > >
> > > Among the characteristics of a pack are small or restricted numbers,
> > > dispersion, noncomposable variable distances, qualitative metamorphoses,
> > > inequalities as remainders or crossings, impossibility of a fixed
> > > totalization or hierarchization, a Brownian variability in direction,
> > > lines of deterritorialization, and projection of particles.
> > >
> > > In a pack each member is alone even in the company of others...each
> > > takes care of himself at the same time as participating in the band...he
> > > may be in the center, and then immediately afterwards, at the edge
> > > again; at the edge and then back in the center.
> > >
> > > Now here is how Negri sees multiplicity is Spinoza:
> > >
> > > This new quality of the subject, that is, opens up to the sense of the
> > > multiplicity of subjects and to the constructive power that emanates
> > > from their dignity, understood as totality.
> > >
> > > Spinoza republican thought contains three elements:
> > >
> > > 1. A conception of the State that radically denies its transcendence -
> > > that is, a demystification of politics;
> > > 2. A determination of Power (potestas) as a function subordinated to the
> > > social power (potentia) of the multitudo and, therefore,
> > > constitutionally organized;
> > > 3. A conception of constitution, in other words, of constitutional
> > > organization, which necessarily starts from the antagonism of subjects.
> > >
> > > In Empire, N&H are simply extrapolating from these previous conceptions.
> > >
> > > eric