Abstract

While the activity of capital in modernity has long been documented as diverging markedly away from the ideological suppositions that discursively support it, the profoundly networked nature of this activity has yet to be fully articulated. The late-2000s financial crisis exposed the extent to which the public/private divide has been transgressed, and, in turn, demands new descriptions of how institutional economic relations are constituted in late capitalism. Public subsidies for industries and commodities, regulatory capture, corporate financing of political campaigns, corporate lobbying, and corporate influence in higher education curriculum are part of an ecosystem of public and private relations whose processes are inextricably bound up in one another.

Drawing on critical theory and a number of rhetorical and communication theorists, I demonstrate through the case study of Goldman Sachs’ role in the late 2000s financial crisis, how corporate financial institutions’ activities can be understood as net-work, or complex assemblages that require new models of analysis to effectively understand. In particular, my research demonstrates that Goldman Sachs’ activity cannot be effectively understood in a vacuum from the assemblage of public and private institutions whose activities contributed to an ecosystem—perhaps what Deleuze & Guattari call a ‘multiplicitous unity’—of economic struggle. Goldman Sachs activities in the crisis functioned in direct opposition to other institutions’ financial success; complex financial instruments wielded by Goldman Sachs—especially credit default swaps—spliced their success (capital gains) onto the processes of failure (insolvency) in other American and European institutions.

Theorizing Spinuzzi: Spliced Institutional Networks and Ideo-logic

Reflecting on Spinuzzi's work, I was frustrated with his conclusion which hoped to see knowledge workers better armed to cope with the changing demands of an increasingly technological and globalized economy. More specifically, my frustration was with the seemingly limited scope of his theoretical framework - that the "splicing" of net-work(s) was applied only to techno-rhetorical situations within workplaces, not among and between larger institutional net-work(s). Perhaps Spinuzzi isn't interested in this sort of analysis but after his initial articualtion of actor-network theory, I was eagerly anticipating some sort of application to larger, primarily corporate, structures.

Spinuzzi's work and actor-network theory in general I find fascinating because of their potential to provide understandings of how capital has accommodated and incorporated technology, not only into its material processes, but also into its ideological ones (if that's the right word).

Capital's modern functioning is characterized by activities that run very much counter to its ideological suppositions, with a primary one being that competition is the impetus (and result) of corporate activity. As Spinuzzi explains, technology has enabled corporate institutions to splice themselves onto larger net-work(s), both among private institutions and between public ones, essentially circumventing the "ideo-logic" (if that's a word) of competition. As Spinuzzi's history of Bell Telephone Company provides, the ideo-logic of competition has long since failed to explain corporate activity in modernity as technology has transformed the nature of inter-corporate relationships. In the interest of capital accumulation, cooperation simply makes more sense, as centralized corporate structures (this centralization itself enabled by technology) wield more power via organizational, communicative, and financial techno-knowledges. Corporate structures have also spliced themselves onto public/government net-works, creating elegant connections to individual actors (legislators through campaign financing, agency actors through "agency capture") and even sub-networks (subsidy and tax structures, privatization of social programs). Actor-network theory opens up some serious discursive space about capitalism and its ideo-logics, technology and corporate net-work, and democracy's net-work as well.

Splicing I find to be the best description of corporate activity in modernity, that is, the history of modern capitalism is one of accretion and accumulation: corporate organizations purchasing others, in a way, "purifying" the activity of capital through centralization of power in the interest of capital accumulation. Perhaps I'm taking actor-network theory's applicability too far, but "brands" (the ideological construct) also seem akin to "genres", that is, "brands" could be understood as typified responses to recurring market situations.

I don't want to maunder on, but I was excited by Spinuzzi's work (if not the text itself) - his dialogical approach and interrogation of activity theory and actor-network theory proved illuminating to my interests which initially seemed too disparate to be relevant.

Normative and Nowhere to Go

I found this week's readings to be the most difficult of the semester thus far, not only because the material was quite unfamiliar to me but also because it is much more research focused, rather than theory-based. In particular, the case-study methodology is alien to me and, as such, I found it difficult to work through.

In my academic pursuits thus far, I have not had to perform any "hard" research nor even read much research conducted by political scientists. Material for class has been primarily theoretical and this is the space where I've grown comfortable.

It seems in theoretical writing, the "player-agents" (as described in Moeller's and Christensen's System Mapping) and normative assumptions of the authors are much more apparent, even overt. I have a more difficult time grasping a text when the "should" is couched beneath the descriptive - research appears to move at a glacial pace, moving the dialectic (dialogic?) in a steady direction, while theory has the potential to change thinking in a much more disruptive way. Of course, this understanding over-compartmentalizes "theory" and "research", as the two are much more interconnected, perhaps even "interwoven" (as per Spinuzzi), then my characterization allows. I come to the table "normative and ready to go", so to speak, with my truths plain on my sleeve which is definitely problematic for a number of reasons. However, when doing these readings, I couldn't quite understand the implications of the research - what does contributing to research methodologies for genre-field analysis do? I understand the problem with the "seed" conceptualization via action theory - that the abstracted germ obscures the means by which ideas/production occur - but I'm not a researcher and I don't know how to contribute to the network through splicing or interweaving. By this I mean that I'm not a player-agent (I don't have a stake in the outcome of the interactions being discussed [National Science Foundation Grants]) and I'm certainly not a genre-agent as I'm not in a position to contribute knowledge to the dialectic (dialogic?) on networks. I guess what I'm struggling with is application of the material, but in a broader sense. I need a prior question to be addressed and a genealogy to be performed - what is "good" about network theory / genre field analysis? What things does it presuppose? Ultimately, I guess these questions just reflect my lack of knowledge in rhetorical/ technical communication theory...

I don't mean this post to be read as a critique of researchers or be a really silly post lamenting my some odd-man-out feeling that I would have as an undergraduate political science student ; I'm sincerely wondering what I can do. Is the inability for old-school marxism to provide an understanding of how labor-networks are evolving/becoming-spliced symptomatic of the broader phenomenon of globalization? Is the increasingly rhizomatic-ized nature of labor networks a better description of globalization? Should workers resist incorporation into rhizomatic-labor networks? Should the state be called upon to reinvigorate the boundaries of (perhaps now antiquated notions of) divisions of labor? Is technology the cause of the integration of labor networks? Ahhhh, I'm normative and have nowhere to go.

Encountering the Blair Witch: The Effacement of Media (redeux)

I watched The Blair Witch Project with my friends this Saturday with our text, Remediation, fresh on my mind. To be perfectly honest, I was terrified: I've seen the film several times, and at least one other time within the past year, yet the specter of the unknown, unseen Blair Witch haunted my dreams and kept me curled up next to my girlfriend at night. What made this particular antagonist so terrifying - was it my imagination, filling in the empty signifier "witch" with the most horrible, gruesome monster that my mind could conjure up? No: upon interrogation, it was precisely the absence of the witch - what perhaps Bolter and Grusin would call the "self-effacement" of the experience of media offered by the film - that plagued my nighttime thoughts. Indeed, it was the very reality of the film that haunted me. The characters' experience, seemingly unfiltered by Hollywood, commanded the power of authenticity, yea, even the aura that Benjamin spoke of. As Ryan asked: What would Benjamin say - that the experience technology offers belies the absence of media, of mediation: it obscures the means of its own production. The Blair Witch's absence belies the absence of intention, of mediation - of capital. When the characters, lost in the woods, flee from their tent upon having their campsite disturbed by an unknown force, we flee with them; however, we aren't running away from the witch, we are chasing her, immersing ourselves even further in the Hyperreal, fully invigorated by our encounter with the horror of Reality.

What is interesting about the Blair Witch Project is that it actually requires no imagination, even though the film seems to demand it: never do we actually need to imagine the figure of the witch to be terrified. Rather, we need only dare let ourselves not imagine, let ourselves accept that the "unknown" is our relationship with this radical alterity (the Blair Witch, the Supernatural). Otherness is terrifying, but, an Other that we can never encounter: that is Hitchcockian, baby. The Witch is an Other so possessed of Otherness that we can never encounter her - she is forever off-screen, always in the periphery. We can never reconcile ourselves with her. From a Marxist perspective, what this amounts to is alienation - we long to encounter the witch, to have power over that which never manifests itself. Perhaps, as Foucault would say, we desire to subject her to a field of visibility so that we may subordinate her to particular strategy or a tactic, in a way, disciplining her and making her a better subject to power?

But I digress...

In reading Remediation, I couldn't help but recall several questions that came to mind during last Monday's class with Dr. Moberly: what is the point of critically interrogating media? Why did we spend time deconstructing James Cameron's Avatar only to come to understandings already evident with readings of Marx and Dyers-Witheford? Perhaps a better question would be: what's the point of understanding theory through film, or, for that matter, any other particular form of media? What's to be gained through interpreting Avatar via particular critical lenses: Dr. Moberly explains that there are two different iterations of capitalism battling themselves out in the film, simultaneously exposing but effacing themselves through their very articulation. But what the hell does this mean?

Actually, what does any of this MEAN: why do we bother interpreting film and other media through the critical lenses offered by Benjamin, Zizek and Bolter and Grusin? Why is coming to understand the nature of media's mediation-function important? What is the ideological function of media and how powerful is it? Does watching Avatar make us more susceptible to the ideology of capital? Do we gain something through the exegesis-izing that we wouldn't get through reading Marx proper? Are we merely being uncomtemplative in our understandings of our own socio-economic stations? Is the conclusion that we should just turn off our TVs and read instead of acquiring information via the immediacy of cable news and video? If so, then ok – sounds good to me.

I don't ask these questions superfluously; these are some very serious thoughts that come to mind - I have a basic understanding of Marx, but what does this application grant me? Why spend 2.5 hours learning about Marx via Avatar rather than discussing actual readings of Marx?

My own attempt at critically interpreting The Blair Witch project seems to me a genuflection to Hollywood, granting them even greater authority as the purveyors of truth. They are now even more genius and/or sinister than before: are they the evil agents of capitalism, inserting near-subliminal messages into media in order to dupe us further and anesthetize our revolutionary desire; or, are they simply reproducing the discourses that expose us to the processes of capital and labor-value that doom us all to certain extinction?

When we perform an exegesis of Avatar or The Blair Witch Project aren't we presupposing the existence of some central truth that only we, via our superior critical lenses, can uncover. And this is precisely the criticism D&G offer of Freud and why they titled their first book Anti-Oedipus – texts are machines of production, producing desire and do not have to be understood as static works that only yield their ghosts upon being properly psychoanalyzed. Why can't we just let media be desire-production machines? Why can't we continue to pursue the Blair Witch as a supernatural spell-caster then go demand better working conditions for workers and better pay and better environmental regulation and, x and y and z.

Is criticism all we need or do we need to make sure it penetrates every aspect of culture?

Encountering the Blair Witch: the Effacement of Mediation

I watched The Blair Witch Project with my friends this Saturday with our text, Remediation, fresh on my mind. To be perfectly honest, I was terrified: I've seen the film several times, and at least one other time within the past year, yet the specter of the unknown, unseen Blair Witch haunted my dreams and kept me curled up next to my girlfriend at night. What made this particular antagonist so terrifying - was it my imagination, filling in the empty signifier "witch" with the most horrible, gruesome monster that my mind could conjure up? No: upon interrogation, it was precisely the absence of the witch - what perhaps Bolter and Grusin would call the "self-effacement" of the experience of media offered by the film - that plagued my nighttime thoughts. Indeed, it was the very reality of the film that haunted me. The characters' experience, seemingly unfiltered by Hollywood, commanded the power of authenticity, yea, even the aura that Benjamin spoke of. As Ryan asked: What would Benjamin say - that the experience technology offers belies the absence of media, of mediation: it obscures the means of its own production. The Blair Witch's absence belies the absence of intention, of mediation - of capital. When the characters, lost in the woods, flee from their tent upon having their campsite disturbed by an unknown force, we flee with them; however, we aren't running away from the witch, we are chasing her, immersing ourselves even further in the Hyperreal, fully invigorated by our encounter with the horror of Reality.

What is interesting about the Blair Witch Project is that it actually requires no imagination, even though the film seems to demand it: never do we actually need to imagine the figure of the witch to be terrified. Rather, we need only dare let ourselves not imagine, let ourselves accept that the "unknown" is our relationship with this radical alterity (the Blair Witch, the Supernatural). Otherness is terrifying, but, an Other that we can never encounter: that is Hitchcockian, baby. The Witch is an Other so possessed of Otherness that we can never encounter her - she is forever off-screen, always in the periphery. We can never reconcile ourselves with her. From a Marxist perspective, what this amounts to is alienation - we long to encounter the witch, to have power over that which never manifests itself. Perhaps, as Foucault would say, we desire to subject her to a field of visibility so that we may subordinate her to a strategy or a tactic

This text owes much to Jean Baudrillard and the authors make note of it. The implications of the

But what does any of this MEAN: why do we bother interpreting film and other media through the critical lenses offered by Benjamin, Zizek and Bolter and Grusin?

In reading Remediation, I couldn't help but recall several questions that came to mind during last Monday's class with Dr. Moberly: what is the point of critically interrogating media? Why did we spend time deconstructing James Cameron's Avatar only to come to understands already evident with readings of Marx and Dyers-Witheford? Perhaps a better question would be: what's the point of understanding theory through film, or, for that matter, any other particular form of media? What's to be gained through interpreting Avatar via particular critical lenses: Dr. Moberly explains that there are two different iterations of capitalism battling themselves out in the film, simultaneously exposing but effacing themselves through their very articulation. But what the hell does this mean?

I don't ask these questions superfluously, these are some very serious thoughts that come to mind - I know Marx, but does the application grant me? Why spend 2.5 hours learning about Marx via Avatar rather than discussing actual readings of Marx?

Mediation begs a number of questions:

I wonder if the text understated how much it owes to Jean Baudrillard. Hypermediacy is, at least it seems to me, an extrapolation on his notion of the simulacrum: the hyperreal, or in other words, a reality more real than our immediate sensory experience.

Perhaps my question is directed at the political or, in other words, the relationship between

"Marx Beyond Marx": incongruous marxisms and the liberatory potential of technology

Dyer-Witheford's book was a breath of fresh air, simultaneously granting me identification with someone who is interesting in articulating clear, finite "demands" and alternatives to capitalism whilst still challenging my present conceptualizations of various Marxisms, revolutions, and political strategies. In particular, I've come to take for granted the centrality of worker struggle and the wage-labor relation to criticisms of the status quo, and by this I mean that I tend to assume that leftist intellectuals are already in some form of agreement as to capitalism's role as the primary antagonist of leftist intellectuals and its threat to our collective survival. As the author points out, a great aspect of identifying oneself as a Marxist is that you aren't (necessarily) subordinated to a totalizing structure or body of understanding - rather, Marxism connects (but does unify) many seemingly disparate criticisms of capitalism whose commonality is their location in Marx's oeuvre. I think the point I'm trying to make is that this realization that I've "taken for granted" the importance of identifying capitalism as the central problem facing politics is that, in so doing, I've demanded a totalized, ideologically pure commitment to anti-capitalism. This is the over-coding of Marx, etc. (insert D&G) and fractures communities that, otherwise, could unify in their "immiseration" beneath the structure of production. Communities need to be bridged, not atomized through delineation and categorization. As the author explains, capital needs to "decompose" unions and fracture alliances in order to expose individuals to the processes of labor-value and commodity. Furthermore, inconsistency and contradiction are present within every system of thought - to demand congruity and consistency of Marxism would deny its flexibility and potentiality to embark on new lines flight that could bring about the liberation so desired by leftist thinkers.

The particular solutions offered by Dyer-Witheford (guaranteed annual income, public ownership of satellite networks, etc.) are not of particular interest for the purposes of this post but are incredibly important and must be reckoned with; however, I am interested in his arguments concerning the relevance of Marx in our day. In particular, I'm interested in the relevance of Marx to our class and its focus on technology.

As the author points out, Marx was not optimistic about technology, but rather saw it as an essential sustaining force behind capital's wage-labor relation and the attendant impoverishment of workers. Dyer-Witheford, however, sees the potential for technology to disrupt the circuit of capital and introduce breaks that allow for alternatives to be realized. In particular, the author sees the potential for technology to break the "moment" of exchange that is essential to the cycle of commodification - the instantaneous speed of communication provided by digital technology and the internet makes the commodity process untenable. Goods are not "consumable" in the sense that they are infinitely replicateable via digital mediums (computers, etc.) and, consequently, cannot be reduced to a value.

I find this point to be effectively illustrated today by the availability of "pirated" media and software via bittorrent and other peer-to-peer networks. While these modes of disseminating goods outside of the market have not gone unchallenged by public and corporate institutions, the fact that they have endured and remain viable today is indicative, to me, of the potential for technologies to short-circuit the commodity cycle and "free" the products of labor from its subordinated status as commodity.

I also find compelling the implicit point raised by the author's optimism about technology, more specifically that technology offers some hope for creating sites of resistance to capital instead of being necessarily constitutive of the commodity cycle and its impoverishment of workers. The Occupy Wall Street protests hold promise, however not as the result of technology's liberatory potential, but rather the onslaught of capitalism that has left so many without work and income that they are forced to the streets in protest. I'm a bit torn, however; how does one realize change with Marx's criticism of the state in the back of your mind; more specifically, should we demand of the state changes within the structure of our economy even though, as Marx says, the state is the instrument of the bourgeoisie (as the bailouts have proved)? Should our demands be clear and finite, or infinite and abstracted?

Mimic the strata: deterritorializing the self

I wonder why we still follow the rules. So many criticisms later, I've come to understand many of the institutions, organizations and practices that have always been a part of our society; every "good" seems to belie its malevolent origin. The flow of capital co-opts every effort at revolution - every reform seems to perpetuate inequality. Despite China's "cultural revolutions" they ended up with perhaps the most closely perfected iteration of capitalism yet.
D&G compel us to "mimic the strata":

You have to keep enough of the organism for it to reform each dawn; and you have to keep small supplies of significance and subjectification, if only to turn them against their own systems when the circumstances demand it, when things, persons, even situations force you to; and you have to keep small rations of subjectivity in sufficient quantity to enable you to respond to the dominant reality. Mimic the strata. You don't reach the BwO, and its plane of consistency, by wildly destratifying. […] Connect, conjugate, continue: a whole "diagram," as opposed to still signifying and subjective programs. We are in a social formation; first see how it is stratified for us and in us and at the place where we are; then descend from the strata to the deeper assemblage within which we are held; gently tip the assemblage, making it pass over to the side of the plane of consistency. It is only there that the BwO reveals itself for what it is: connection of desires, conjunction of flows, continuum of intensities. You have constructed your own little machine, ready when needed to be plugged into other collective machines. (160-161)

I think this passage (and the omitted content in between) best captures why Capitalism and Schizophrenia is generally understood as a "game changing" work. Both Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus are, themselves, the body without organs: pure potentiality. This potentiality manifests itself in their deterritorialization - the ideas do not resist appropriation, rather, they can help create "lines of flight" - new possibilities and planes of potentiality on which we can do something. I'm not sure what that something is, but perhaps that's the point.

This quote is illustrative of two things for me: (1) the importance of resisting the tendency to automatically defer to "poles", to binaries, dichotomies, antagonism and war; and (2) the importance of resisting being generically avant-garde: the nihilism of so many "revolutions" today has ceded the political to those who can wield it against people. Sure, it might be fun to go to Disneyland ironically and silently mock Cinderella's castle - but you still bought a ticket.
The BwO reminds me of Schrodinger's Cat in the sense that observation affects the object. The BwO is not striated space - it possesses no end - and thus, cannot be observed, for when one sees the BwO it has already taken flight in a new direction. And that's the epiphany: that ends are fascist, that privilegings of knowledge spur inquisitions and holocausts, and that our compartmentalizations are really confinements.

A quote from Anti-Oedipus I think is appropriate here:

All writing is so much pig shit - that is to say, any literature that takes itself as an end or sets ends for itself, instead of being a process that "ploughs the crap of being and its language," transports the weak, the aphasiacs, the illiterate. At least spare us sublimation. Every writer is a sellout. The only literature is that which places an explosive device in its package, fabricating a counterfeit currency, causing the superego and its form of expression to explode, as well as the market value of its form of content.

The fact that Ryan had us read ATP in the order he did is not only to assist the learning process but to demonstrate just another way that D&G have deterritorialized their text. The territory of the text - to be read cover to cover - can itself be challenged; flows are not left to right.

Foucault's introduction to Anti-Oedipus sums up my thoughts perfectly:

Last but not least, the major enemy, the strategic adversary is fascism (whereas Anti- Oedipus' opposition to the others is more of a tactical engagement). And not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini - which was able to mobilize and use the desire of the masses so effectively - but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us. I would say that Anti-Oedipus (may its authors forgive me) is a book of ethics, the first book of ethics to be written in France in quite a long time (perhaps that explains why its success was not limited to a particular "readership" : being anti-oedipal has become a life style, a way of thinking and living). How does one keep from being fascist, even (especially) when one believes oneself to be a revolutionary militant? How do we rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and our pleasures, of fascism? How do we ferret out the fascism that is ingrained in our behavior? The Christian moralists sought out the traces of the flesh lodged deep within the soul. Deleuze and Guattari, for their part, pursue the slightest traces of fascism in the body.

Paying a modest tribute to Saint Francis de Sales, * {*A seventeenth-century priest and Bishop of Geneva, known for his Introduction to the Devout Life} one might say that Anti-Oedipus is an Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life.

This art of living counter to all forms of fascism, whether already present or impending, carries with it a certain number of essential principles which I would summarize as follows if I were to make this great book into a manual or guide to everyday life:

Free political action from all unitary and totalizing paranoia.

Develop action, thought, and desires by proliferation, juxtaposition, and disjunction, and not by subdivision and pyramidal hierarchization.

Withdraw allegiance from the old categories of the Negative (law, limit, castration, lack, lacuna), which Western thought has so long held sacred as a form of power and an access to reality. Prefer what is positive and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic.

Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable. It is the connection of desire to reality (and not its retreat into the forms of representation) that possesses revolutionary force. Do not use thought to ground a political practice in Truth; nor political action to discredit, as mere speculation, a line of thought. Use political practice as an intensifier of thought, and analysis as a multiplier of the forms and domains for the intervention of political action. Do not demand of politics that it restore the "rights" of the individual, as philosophy has defined them. The individual is the product of power. What is needed is to "de-individualize" by means of multiplication and displacement, diverse combinations. The group must not be the organic bond uniting hierarchized individuals, but a constant generator of de-individualization. Do not become enamored of power.

Mimic the strata: deterritorializing the self

I wonder why we still follow the rules. So many criticisms later, I've come to understand many of the institutions, organizations and practices that have always been a part of our society; every "good" seems to belie its malevolent origin. The flow of capital co-opts every effort at revolution - every reform seems to perpetuate inequality. Despite China's "cultural revolutions" they ended up with perhaps the most closely perfected iteration of capitalism yet.

D&G compel us to "mimic the strata":

You have to keep enough of the organism for it to reform each dawn; and you have to keep small supplies of significance and subjectification, if only to turn them against their own systems when the circumstances demand it, when things, persons, even situations force you to; and you have to keep small rations of subjectivity in sufficient quantity to enable you to respond to the dominant reality. Mimic the strata. You don't reach the BwO, and its plane of consistency, by wildly destratifying.

[…]

Connect, conjugate, continue: a whole "diagram," as opposed to still signifying and subjective programs. We are in a social formation; first see how it is stratified for us and in us and at the place where we are; then descend from the strata to the deeper assemblage within which we are held; gently tip the assemblage, making it pass over to the side of the plane of consistency. It is only there that the BwO reveals itself for what it is: connection of desires, conjunction of flows, continuum of intensities. You have constructed your own little machine, ready when needed to be plugged into other collective machines. (160-161)

I think this passage (and the omitted content in between) best captures why Capitalism and Schizophrenia is generally understood as a "game changing" work. Both Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus are, themselves, the body without organs: pure potentiality. This potentiality manifests itself in their deterritorialization - the ideas do not resist appropriation, rather, they can help create "lines of flight" - new possibilities and planes of potentiality on which we can do something. I'm not sure what that something is, but perhaps that's the point.

This quote is illustrative of two things for me: (1) the importance of resisting the tendency to automatically defer to "poles", to binaries, dichotomies, antagonism and war; and (2) the importance of resisting being generically avant-garde: the nihilism of so many "revolutions" today has ceded the political to those who can wield it against people. Sure, it might be fun to go to Disneyland ironically and silently mock Cinderella's castle - but you still bought a ticket.

The BwO reminds me of Schrodinger's Cat in the sense that observation affects the object. The BwO is not striated space - it possesses no end - and thus, cannot be observed, for when one sees the BwO it has already taken flight in a new direction. And that's the epiphany: that ends are fascist, that privilegings of knowledge spur inquisitions and holocausts, and that our compartmentalizations are really confinements.

A quote from Anti-Oedipus I think is appropriate here:

All writing is so much pig shit - that is to say, any literature that takes itself as an end or sets ends for itself, instead of being a process that "ploughs the crap of being and its language," transports the weak, the aphasiacs, the illiterate. At least spare us sublimation. Every writer is a sellout. The only literature is that which places an explosive device in its package, fabricating a counterfeit currency, causing the superego and its form of expression to explode, as well as the market value of its form of content.

The fact that Ryan had us read ATP in the order he did is not only to assist the learning process but to demonstrate just another way that D&G have deterritorialized their text. The territory of the text - to be read cover to cover - can itself be challenged; flows are not left to right.

Foucault's introduction to Anti-Oedipus sums up my thoughts perfectly:

The major enemy, the strategic adversary is fascism (whereas Anti-Oedipus' opposition to the others is more of a tactical engagement). And not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini - which was able to mobilize and use the desire of the masses so effectively - but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.

I would say that Anti-Oedipus (may its authors forgive me) is a book of ethics, the first book of ethics to be written in France in quite a long time (perhaps that explains why its success was not limited to a particular "readership" : being anti-oedipal has become a life style, a way of thinking and living). How does one keep from being fascist, even (especially) when one believes oneself to be a revolutionary militant? How do we rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and our pleasures, of fascism? How do we ferret out the fascism that is ingrained in our behavior? The Christian moralists sought out the traces of the flesh lodged deep within the soul. Deleuze and Guattari, for their part, pursue the slightest traces of fascism in the body.

Paying a modest tribute to Saint Francis de Sales, * {*A seventeenth-century priest and Bishop of Geneva, known for his Introduction to the Devout Life} one might say that Anti-Oedipus is an Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life.

This art of living counter to all forms of fascism, whether already present or impending, carries with it a certain number of essential principles which I would summarize as follows if I were to make this great book into a manual or guide to everyday life:

Free political action from all unitary and totalizing paranoia.

Develop action, thought, and desires by proliferation, juxtaposition, and disjunction, and not by subdivision and pyramidal hierarchization.

Withdraw allegiance from the old categories of the Negative (law, limit, castration, lack, lacuna), which Western thought has so long held sacred as a form of power and an access to reality. Prefer what is positive and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic.

Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable. It is the connection of desire to reality (and not its retreat into the forms of representation) that possesses revolutionary force.

Do not use thought to ground a political practice in Truth; nor political action to discredit, as mere speculation, a line of thought. Use political practice as an intensifier of thought, and analysis as a multiplier of the forms and domains for the intervention of political action.

Do not demand of politics that it restore the "rights" of the individual, as philosophy has defined them. The individual is the product of power. What is needed is to "de-individualize" by means of multiplication and displacement, diverse combinations. The group must not be the organic bond uniting hierarchized individuals, but a constant generator of de-individualization.

Do not become enamored of power.

Annotated Bibliography: Deleuze & Guattari

Lambert, G. (2010). The war-machine and "a people who revolt". Theory & Event, 13(3),http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v013/13.3.lambert.html

Note* Project Muse does not have page numbers for this journal**

Lambert's work focuses on the "war-machine" and on the inherent contradictions that occur within the exercise of state police/war functions. Lambert describes how the violence of the state to remedy illegal behavior puts the state in a conflict with its own conservative identity- the state must enact violence upon its people as a way of preserving the non-violence of society: thus the "exteriority" of the war-machine/police violence apparatuses of the state. Lambert postulates that this exteriority is also present with "the people" - another abstraction of political discourse. "The people"'s exteriority can be understood as the product of a similar structural transformation as identified in Habermas' work, namely the privatized function of the state to serve particular interests of a few private individuals. This exteriority also gives birth to an understanding of revolt and how "the people" can appropriate the violence of the state (the war-machine) to enact revolutionary politics.

Ringrose, J. (2010). Beyond discourse? using deleuze and guattari's schizoanalysis to explore affective assemblages, heterosexually striated space, and lines of flight online and at school. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(6), 598-618. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2009.00601.x

This article discusses applications of Deleuze and Guatarri’s theories concerning “assemblages” within the context of social networking technologies and their impact on education systems. The author concludes that school communities and online social networking communities can be understood as “assemblages”, that is, multiplicitous entities which form a body through also-multiplicitous interactions. Ringrose examines the possibility of educational spaces becoming striated via their interactions with online social networking communities. More specifically, the author attempts to explain how gendered and heteronormative discourse is intensified through its articulation via instant messaging, Facebook, Bebo, etc. where there exist structural limits to how students can express their attachments and relationships. “Relationship statuses” and other iterations of classifying relationships striate these spaces in terms of heteronormativity and its normative assumptions concerning gender and sexual orientation.

Tamboukou, M. (2008). Machinic assemblages: women, art education and space. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education,29(3), 359-375. DOI: 10.1080/01596300802259129

Tamboukou’s article is an excellent introduction to A Thousand Plateaus - the particular subject matter (art education, educational spaces) is secondary, for our purposes, to her brilliant explanations of D&G’s terminology. Specifically, the author is interested in “lines of flight” or the “direction” in which deterritorialization proceeds. Within the context of narrative theory, narratives can be understood as a sort of deterritorialization of the self, where the “territory” of the self is emptied through the process of interpretation, and reconstituted by new signs and associations. Tamboukou also posits that the self can be understood as an unstable structure (perhaps “smooth” space) that is in a constant flux of deterritorialization and reterritorialization (via discourse). The self, then, is “multiplicitous” – a body acting and being acted upon – through the various internal and external interactions of desire.

Marzec, R. (2000). The war machine and capitalism: notes towards a nomadology of the imperceptible. Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, 1(3), Retrieved from http://rhizomes.net/issue3/marzec/UntitledFrameset-14.html

This article provides another excellent introduction to a few of the key ideas in A Thousand Plateaus. The author discusses deterritorialization and the rhizome within a context that illuminates the possibility of their plain meaning: international relations. The “war machine” is “decoded” to make more evident particular meanings within the context of inter-state warfare; “war machines” are everywhere, within our social imaginary as vampires, zombies – the infirm. The ideological presence of images of “warriors” helps propel the organization of multiplicities and the channeling of their desire into “the economy of war”.

Sussman, H. (2000). Deterritorializing the text: flow-theory and deconstruction. MLN,115(5), 974-996. DOI: 10.1353/mln.2000.0077

Sussman's article provides an excellent introduction to A Thousand Plateaus not only by providing tips at how to read the book, but also by describing how to read the text in terms of its own vocabulary. Sussman contextualizes many of the ideas D&G posit (Nomadology, the Rhizome) with earlier thought on semiotics as part of an attempt to elucidate how their form (of writing) took shape. Sussman extracts from A Thousand Plateaus "flow-theory", or his name for the methodology of D&G, which is itself an attempt to escape the "incestuous" reslationship (nomadic despotism) of thinkers to source material located in (particular senses of) past texts (pp.973-5).

Achieving our "discipline": on the possibility of panoptic counter-hegemonic knowledge-production (or the silliest title ever)

I begin with the confession, another technique of truth production scrutinized by Foucault in conjunction with his analyses of the Panopticon and disciplinary power. In the confession Foucault finds the utmost expression of internalized self-discipline - the confessor acts upon herself through the confession, becoming both prisoner and prison guard. Foucault explains how the confession has become interwoven into almost every aspect of society: medicine, psychology, criminal justice all have come to rely on the confession as the mode of ascertaining the hidden secret within each of us.

I bring up confessions as I wonder if our blogs and exegeses could be understood as confessional in some way. Certainly, many blogs are confessional in that they disclose intimate/personal information as a way of achieving catharsis, but do our interpretations of these texts not also disclose information/produce knowledge that contain elements of our tucked away "secrets"? Is our mode of revealing (and the content of the revelation) mediated by disciplinary technologies, by panopticism? And would this knowledge not immediately enter into a panopticonal discursive economy where it dialectically informs how to order docile bodies? Basically, I wonder how panopticism manifests itself in our classroom and our online conversations and what role we play in the reproduction of panopticonal modalities.

What is the role of our respective disciplines - to produce knowledge for the fostering of docility, for the efficient ordering of bodies? But as Foucault's project proves, knowledge production can reveal power and its functionings and, perhaps, organize resistance to particular instances of panopticonal power. The panopticonal presence in our classroom - Utah State University, the rankings and competition within the educational system - compels the acquisition (perhaps production) of knowledge on the subject of panopticism and, in particular, its "evils".

Disciplinary technology is constituent of our society today and, perhaps, is the logical conclusion of western metaphysics. My question is whether or not panopticism can be used counter-hegemonically or is the docil-ization of bodies, itself, necessarily a bad thing. I read the docility-making function of panopticism to be inevitable - the particular ways that knowledge is appropriated panoptically, perhaps, could be challenged. But, Foucault's point seems to be something about freedom and how the acting-upon of man by panopticism leaves him unable to resist "bad" exercises of power. How do we identify what goals are worth achieving, or is power, itself, something that we must mitigate?

At this point, I can't help but be reminded of Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology", more specifically his description of how technology calls nature into Standing Reserve, a status where it can be acted upon as an object and utility-value can be derived from it. Knowledge, similarly, seems to be called upon "panoptically", that is, its status becomes prescriptive and is meant to inform the organization of docile bodies, hence the term "discipline" carrying a stronger denotation of "area of inquiry". Returning to my question: can panopticism be abolished? Should we refuse to participate in our respective disciplines to avoid participating in panopticism? Can panopticism be a good thing?

Mechanical Reproduction and Art: an (anesthetic) for the masses?

Concerning Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, I found his explanation of authenticity within the context of technology not only illuminating but compelling (given the normative assumptions that seem to be interwoven within his text). In particular, his tracing of the degradation of the “aura” as the source of both micro and macro level fascism was interesting as it seemed to highlight an argument I have already encountered in the work of Jurgen Habermas, another thinker considered to be a part of the Frankfurt School. Habermas argues that the public sphere has been transformed from a place for public discourse informed by inter-subjective reason to a closed space used for the negotiation of private interests, usually at the expense of the broader public. Habermas explains that within capitalism the public sphere is now modeled after consumption, where people “participate” in politics by expressing aestheticized political/cultural ideologies. This happens via consumption: if you identify as a “liberal” in the United States, you participate politically by consuming “liberal” political products, i.e. watching MSNBC News instead of Fox News, buying organic food and fair trade products. Instead of achieving the enlightenment model where citizens participate in inter-subjective political discourse, capitalism presents us with an illusionary model where individuals achieve participation passively via uninformed consumption. Not unlike Benjamin’s explanation of how film depicts the world as a place achievable for the common man whilst omitting the technical complexities required to actually realize the depiction, Habermas argues that capitalism depicts itself as “flat” and the provider of equal opportunity to the masses while disguising the social conditions that preclude many from ever realizing “the Dream”.

Benjamin’s description of the aestheticization of the political is, I think, the most important point to extract from his text: when the political becomes aestheticized it enables fascist organizational processes to begin to mobilize increasingly inattentive masses to achieve imperial, neoliberal goals. I see this aestheticization process as triggering two effects (for lack of a better word): (1) the organization of masses, themselves, via the ideological function of film media, and (2) the displacement of inter-subjective discourse as the model for political participation. To elucidate the second point, when participation becomes a matter of expressing mere opinion rather than holding one another to account, dialectically, for the ideas which we espouse, then these masses are easily organized in ways that would seemingly improve social conditions but, in reality, leave the structures of capitalist exploitation intact. I think the state of political discourse in the United States today (see: the “Tea Party” movement) is excellent evidence of this theory’s explanatory potential.

Horkheimer and Adorno’s opening explanation of how culture industries foster aestheticized, hierarchical consumer identities resonates particularly well with Benjamin’s and Habermas’ criticisms. That individuals identify themselves with illusory categories of people I think can be read as symptomatic of a culture that, at a very basic level of understanding, is completely inattentive and uninformed. In fact, when boiled down, the implication of all three authors’ descriptions seems to be that the state of art and culture in the west is such that people are left anesthetized and so over sensitized by the mechanical processes of art/culture industries that they cannot possibly think rationally. I may be treading a fine line when I talk about “rationally”, but I think it remains useful in the sense of its inter-subjective manifestation, not necessarily an appeal to some platonic, universal form of logic or reason that was dismissed by Nietzsche long ago.

One frustration I have with Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s piece is my inability to understand what specific apparatuses compose “the culture industry”. Of course, this is a common complaint with theoretical works (“I can’t understand their application”) but it is particularly problematic in this instance because I can’t envision exactly just how pervasive the “culture industry” is. I often have doubts when encountering arguments such as Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s primarily because they are so “gloom and doom” – their indictment seems to penetrate into every aspect of western society. Is there anything redeeming, anything left to reclaim? Are the forces of capital so inhuman as to be unstoppable even by those who are in positions of incredible power? Is there a meeting of conspirators in some remote location overtly working to preserve the structures of capitalism, to perpetuate the ideological conditions that will allow their continued exploitation of everyday people? I think this is the real challenge posed by critical theory: coming to realize that the battle is waged against the discursive forces which are reproduced in our everyday interactions, not just faraway in a court room or on the floor of the Senate. The ideological conditions in which we live are combatable - we just have to be willing to fight.

I may be paranoid, but no android: an autobiography

Before launching into a narrative of my first memories with technology, I think it’s important to explain how my young mind first began to conceive of the idea of technology. Looking back, the word “technology” immediately evokes fond memories of video game cartridges and trips to “Computer Warehouse” to find new upgrades to the family personal computer; however, the word “technology” encompasses far more than mere electronic gadgetry and toys. But this is how I first came to know “technology”, as something distinctly new, electronic and fun to play with and enjoy. This understanding neglects the otherwise vital implications “technology” had for my young life even as early as birth. As a sickly infant, I required the aid of sophisticated medical technologies to give my lungs time to develop and grow; engineering technologies made possible the opportunity to live in a comfortable home that remained warm even in the harshest of Idaho winters; and, telecommunication technologies kept me in contact with friends and relatives all over the world. But, still, “technology” only manifested itself to me in the Nintendo Entertainment System and personal computer, not in the walls of my home or the bus that drove me to school each day.

The youngest of four children, my initial encounters with technology were mediated by my siblings, in particular my two older brothers who instilled in me a love for the newest and best technology that the market had to offer. My brothers were the “gatekeepers” of technology in that not only were they the disseminators of electronic technology and gadgetry (by this I mean that they were the source of my parents’ information about what technology to buy), but whatever was their conception of technology eventually became my own.

While my brothers were away at school during the day, my half-day Kindergarten afforded me a few hours to experiment with my brothers’ technology on my own, primarily their video game systems, including the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and an IBM PC. Both required learning new “languages” in order to interface with the video game capabilities each possessed: the NES needed to be “hooked up” to the television via a coaxial cable to see the images contained on the game cartridge while the DOS operating system on the PC could only be navigated via a command-line interface that used an unfamiliar combination of English characters to find and execute programs. Mastering the process of setting up video game consoles and “cracking” the “c:/whatever.exe” language of DOS constituted my first solo encounters with technology without the paternal influence of my siblings. I use the word “language” because technology’s tendency to become more or less sophisticated seems to depend on the ability of the user to contextualize particular pieces of technology with their previous encounters with older or different forms of technology. These experiences seem to weave together and form a sort-of language that, itself, evolves with each new piece of technology.

My introduction to technology at such a young age is likely the result of a natural curiosity with electronics. This inclination to experiment made me proficient with technology early on and many of my friends and family came to understand me as a tech “whiz”. When a new PC or modem was brought into our home, I became the go-to guy for installing the equipment not only because of my ability to quickly understand new technology but also because my slender size allowed me access to the small spaces through which wiring was often run. My brothers came to call me “MacGyver” for this very reason.

Later in my life technology has been vital to developing my current obsession with independent music: in secondary education, the cost of purchasing CDs and MP3s proved prohibitive but upon discovering the world of “peer-to-peer” file sharing in college, I found it possible to immerse myself in all types of music. I never had before devoted much time listening to music, but the incredible access that peer-to-peer networks provide to music changed this completely, creating a completely new niche in my life. Moral concerns about file-sharing aside, this technology introduced a new aesthetic experience for me to which I never would have had access without it.

My technological literacy has waned over the years, partially due to a resistance to participate in new social media, but also because my interest in technology began to plateau as broadband made the internet more accessible and efficient at providing information. My interest in technology earlier in life was due in large part to the fact that I could encounter it on my own: technology was a solo affair, something that I could come to understand without other people. Thus the increasingly “social” nature of new media and technology has held little allure to me as, again, I prefer the isolation that technology seemed to previously afford. New technology, today, seems to be oriented around globalizing the experience of technology, or, at least, making it possible to play/use with more people, both in your own home and with others around the globe.

The Nintendo Wii and the Xbox 360 video game consoles I think are emblematic of this: the Wii eschewed the obsession with graphical improvement and, instead, focused on changing the video game experience to be more interactive and accessible to the non-video gaming consumer; the Xbox 360 is marketed for its multiplayer connectivity through its “Xbox Live” platform. I think this sort of “web 2.0” phenomenon will likely characterize the future of technology, at least in the short term.

I am a bit paranoid about the future. While technology has proved instrumental in several positive populist movements (Egypt, Tunisia, perhaps limited success in Iran and Syria), Bentham’s/Foucault’s panopticon seems to be a looming specter. Both public and private institutions are increasingly relying on forms of technological surveillance that make me worry about the future possibility of organizing resistance to neoliberalism and capitalism.