DNG Answers

West debate 11-121 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches War Machine 2AC – Deleuze Bad – General/Must-Read ( ) Deleuze himself wrote that the only relevant objection to a philosopher is that they do not pose the right questions – unfortunately for them, Deleuze‘s questions are themselves not worth pursuing. Their affirmation of lines of flight and deterritorialization makes a communal ethic impossible. Their stark distinction between state and war machine replicates the dualisms they criticize and deters focus from the very real, material ways exploitation plays out across the world. Peter Hallward, Professor in the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University, London, 2006, Out of This World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation, p. 161-162 Now Deleuze understands perfectly well why ‗most of the objections raised against the gre at philosophers are empty‘. Indignant readers say to them: ‗things are not like that […]. But, in fact, it is not a matter of knowing whether things are like that or not; it is a matter of knowing whether the question which presents things in such a light is good or not, rigorous or not‘ (ES, 106). Rather than test its accuracy according to the criteria of representation, ‗the genius of a philosophy must first be measured by the new distribution which it imposes on beings and concepts‘ (LS, 6). In reality t hen, Deleuze concludes, ‗only one kind of objection is worthwhile: the objection which shows that the question raised by a philosopher is not a good question‘, that it ‗does not force the nature of things enough‘ (ES, 107; cC WP, 82). Deleuze certainly forces the nature of things into conformity with his own question. Just as certainly however, his question inhibits any consequential engagement with the constraints of our actual world. For readers who remain concerned with these constraints and their consequences, Deleuze‘s question is not the best available question. Rather than try to refute Deleuze, this book has tried to sho w how his system works and to draw attention to what should now he the obvious (and perfectly explicit) limitations of this philosophy of unlimited affirmation. First of all, since it acknowledges only a unilateral relation between virtual and actual, there is no place in Deleuze‘s philosophy for any notion of change, time or history that is mediated by actuality In the end, Deleuze offers few resources for thinking the consequences of what happens within the actually existing world as such . Unlike Darwin or Marx, for instance, the adamantly virtual orientation of Deleuze‘s ‗constructivism‘ does not allow him to account for cumulative transformation or novelty in terms of actual materials and tendencies . No doubt few contemporary philosophers have had as an acute a sense of the internal dynamic of capitalism — but equally, few have proposed so elusive a response as the virtual ‗war mac hine‘ that roams through the pages of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Like the nomads who invented it, this abstract machine operates at an ‗absolute speed, by being ―synonymous with speed‖‘, as the incarnation of ‗a pure and immeasurable multiplicity; an irruption of the ephemeral and of the power of metamorphosis‘ (TP, 336, 352). Like any creating, a war machine consists and ‗exists only in its own metamorphoses‘ (T~ 360). By posing the question of politics in the starkly dualistic terms of war machine or state — by posing it, in the end, in the apocalyptic terms of a new people and a new earth or else no people and no earth — the political aspect of Deleuze‘s philosophy amounts to little more than utopian distraction . Although no small number of enthusiasts continue to devote much energy and ingenuity to the task, the truth is that Deleuze‘s work is essentially indifferent to the politics of this world. A philosophy based on deterritorialisation, dissipation and flight can offer only the most immaterial and evanescent grip on the mechanisms of exploitation and domination that continue to condition so much of what happens in our world . Deleuze‘s philosophical war remains ‗absolute‘ and ‗abstract‘ , precisely, rather than directed or ‗waged‘ [menee]. Once ‗a social field is defined less by its conflicts and contradictions than by the lines of flight running through it‘, any distinctive space for political action can only be subsumed within the more general dynamics of creation or life. And since these dynamics are themselves anti-dialectical if not anti-relational, there can be little room in Deleuze‘s philosophy for relations of conflict or solidarity, i.e. relations that are genuinely between rather than external to individuals , classes, or principles. West debate 11-12 2 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches War Machine 2AC – Reject War Machines – Comparative/Conclusive ( ) Our first political priority should be to REJECT the call of the negative‘s war machine and align ourselves with a more committed, principled, and modest political engagement. The 1ACis incompatible with Deleuze‘s nomadism, and this incompatibility is decidedly NOT a virtue of their politics. Those who desire to make the world a better place must look elsewhere than their rhizomatic war machine. Peter Hallward, Professor in the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University, London, 2006, Out of This World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation, p. 162-164 Deleuze writes a philosophy of (virtual) difference without (actual) others . He intuits a purely internal or self-differing difference, a difference that excludes any constitutive mediation between the differed. Such a philosophy precludes a distinctively relational conception of politics as a matter of course. The politics of the future are likely to depend less on virtual mobility than on more resilient forms of cohesion, on more principled forms of commitment, on more integrated forms of coordination, on more resistant forms of defence. Rather than align ourselves with the nomadic war machine, our first task should be to develop appropriate ways of responding to the newly aggressive techniques of invasion, penetration and occupation which serve to police the embattled margins of empire . In a perverse twist of fate, it may be that today in places like Palestine, Haiti and Iraq, the agents of imperialism have more to learn from Deleuzian rhizomatics than do their opponents. As we have repeatedly seen, the second corollary of Deleuze‘s disqualification of actuality concerns the paralysis of the subject or actor. Sinc e what powers Deleuze‘s cosmology is the immediate differentiation of creation through the infinite proliferation of virtual creatings, the creatures that actualise these creatings are confined to a derivative if not limiting role. A creature‘s own interests, actions or decisions are of minimal or preliminary significance at best: the renewal of creation always requires the paralysis and dissolution of the creature per se. The notion of a constrained or situated freedom, the notion that a subject‘s own dec isions might have genuine consequences -the whole notion, in short, of strategy - is thoroughly foreign to Deleuze‘s conception of thought . Deleuze obliges us, in other words, to make an absolute distinction between what a subject does or decides and what is done or decided through the subject. By rendering this distinction absolute he abandons the category of the subject altogether. He abandons the decisive subject in favour of our more immediate subjection to the imperatives of creative life or thought. Deprived of any strategic apparatus, Deleuze‘s philosophy thus combines the self-grounding sufficiency of pure force or infinite perfection with our symmetrical limitation to pure contemplation or in-action. On the one hand, Deleuze always maintains that ‗there are never any criteria other than the tenor of existence, the inten sification of life‘. Absolute life or creation tolerates no norm external to itself. The creative movement that orients us out of the world does not depend on a transcendent value beyond the world. After Spinoza, after Nietzsche, Deleuze rejects all forms of moral evaluation or strategic judgement. Every instance of decision, every confrontation with the question ‗what should we do?‘, is to be resolved exclusively in terms of what w e can do. An individual‘s power or capacity is also its ‗natural right‘, and the answer to the question of what an individual or body should do is again simplicity itself — it should go and will always go ‗as far as it can‘ (WI~ 74; EP, 258). But on the other band, we know that an individual can only do this because its power is not that of the individual itself. By doing what it can, an individual only provides a vessel for the power that works through it, and which alone acts — or rather, which alone is. What impels us to ‗persevere in our being‘ has nothing to do with us as such. So when, in the conclusion of their last joint project, Del euze and Guattari observe that ‗vitalism has always bad two possible interpretations‘, it is not surprising that they s hould opt for the resolutely inactive interpretation. Vitalism, they explain, can be conceived either in terms of ‗an Idea that acts but is not, and that acts therefore only from the point of view of an external cerebral knowledge; or of a force that is but does not act, and which is therefore a pure internal Feeling [sentir]‘. Deleuze and Guattari embrace this second interpretation, they choose Leibnizian being over Kantian act, pr ecisely because it disables action in favour of contemplation. It suspends any relation between a living and the lived, between a knowing and the known, between a creating and the created. They embrace it because what feeling ‗presents is always in a state of detachment in relation to action and even to movement, and appears as a pure contemplation without knowledge‘.‘8 As Deleuze understands it, living contemplation proceeds at an immeasurable distance from what is merely lived, known or decided. Life lives and creation creates on a virtual plane that leads forever out of our actual world. Few philosophers have been as inspiring as Deleuze. But those of us who still seek to change our world and to empower its inhabitants will need to look for our inspiration elsewhere. West debate 11-12 3 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches War Machine 2AC – AT: That’s Not Our Deleuze ( ) They can‘t simply say ‗that‘s not our Deleuze‘ to get out of our offense – Deleuze‘s thought is fundamentally driven by an overarching concern with creativity and the abolition of constraints. This desire to become rhizomatic and break down constraints relinquishes the task of shaping society and history to those that currently occupy power. Deleuze‘s alternative is literally a prescription to throw up our hands at the world and retreat into our own self-obsession. Peter Hallward, Professor in the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University, London, 2006, Out of This World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation, p. 7 To insist in this way on the logic of creation as the primary if not exclusive focus of Deleuze‘s work is undeniably to simplify aspects of his thought. My goal in this hook is not to engage in the detailed analysis of particular sequences or problems in Deleuze‘s texts, but to characterise the dominant movement of his philosophy as a whole. For the sake of clarity and economy this characterization will pay little attention to the complexities of context or the occasional inconsistencies that must accompany the development of so large and wide-ranging a body of work. Despite these shortcomings, I think it‘s fair to say that this approach remains broadly in line with Deleuze‘s own way of reading other philosophers . Like Leibniz or Bergson, Deleuze assumes that every philosopher is animated by just one fundamental problem, and that to read a work of philosophy ‗does not consist in concluding from the idea of a preceding condition the idea of the following condition, but in grasping the effort or tendency by which the following condition itself ensues from the preceding ―by means of a natural force‖‘)7 Every ‗philosophy‘s powe r is measured by the concepts it creates‘, ‗concepts that impose a new set of divisions on things and actions‘. On the basis of the concepts they create, philosophers ‗subordinate and submit things to a question in such a way that , in this forced and constrained submission, things reveal to us an essence, a nature. The main virtue of the question to which Deleuze‘s project will itself be submitted in the following pages may be to reveal in a somewhat unexpected way the degree to which his work, far from engaging in a description or transformation of the world, instead seeks to escape it . The Deleuze that has long fascinated and troubled me is neither a worldly nor even a ‗relational‘ thinker. If (after Marx and Darwin) materialism involves acceptance of the fact that actual or worldly processes inflect the course of both natural and human history then Deleuze may not be a materialist thinker either. As Deleuze presents it, the destiny of thought will not be fundamentally affected by the mediation of society, history or the world; although Delenze equates being with the activity of creation, he orients this activity towards a contemplative and immaterial abstraction. More than a hundred and fifty years after Marx urged us to change rather than contemplate the world, Deleuze, like so many of his philosophical contemporaries, effectively recommends instead that we settle for the alternative choice . The real preoccupation of this book concerns the value of this advice. West debate 11-12 4 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches War Machine 2AC – Authority Over Lines of Flight Bad ( ) Their constant answer to our indicts of lines of flight will be ―that‘s not our Deleuze‖ or ―that‘s not our line of flight‖ – this is the fundamental problem with their politics. Their insistence that only they know the true nature of their line of flight sets them up as a hierarchical authority over the ‗true‘ knowledge of lines of flight. That replicates the worst aspects of what they criticize, and warrants the abandonment of their politics. Christopher R. Miller, Associate Professor of English at Yale University, 2003, Research in African Literatures, Vol. 34, No. 3, p. 134-135 It is thus only as an act of authoritative assertion (and not reasoned argument) that one can maintain statements like those that Holland makes: "He [Miller] claims it is representational; they [Deleuze and Guattari] insist it is not"; "Deleuze and Guattari do not make 'anthropological statements of their own'" (H 163, 164); or again, "the last traces of humanism and anthropocentrism have disappeared " (H2 59). Who is empowered to decide what is representational and what is not? When A Thousand Plateaus refers us to "studies on leopard-man societies, etc., in Black Africa," in a footnote that relies exclusively on a colonizer's account of the phenomenon (539 n11/297n), are we really supposed to take the leopard-men as purely virtual, philosophical concepts that sprang from the heads of Deleuze and Guattari without representation? To banish all thoughts about Belgian colonialism in the Congo (see M 193-96)? Only an act of willful blindness permits such a reading. Based on what criteria (other than obedience to the word of the masters) would one read the leopard-men and the thousands of other people discussed in A Thousand Plateaus as purely virtual? Holland is silent on this. When Deleuze and Guattari assert that their philosophy is not representational, Holland dutifully intones: "not representational!" (H 170 n10). Because Deleuze and Guattari are "categorical" (H 163) in their insistence that their concepts are not scientific, Holland expects us to take that disclaimer at face value and abandon all critical inquiry into the possible traces of "science" in their "concepts." His method consists of applying the precepts of Deleuze and Guattari's thought to all readings of their works; that is for him the only true form of "understanding." I call that orthodoxy, not understanding. Only an "authority literally and explicitly beyond discussion, beyond appeal" 14 (a Deleuzian authority )—and beyond the kind of critique I offered in "Beyond Identity"—can make all this happen. This certainly runs counter to the famously antiauthoritarian, unorthodox, "open" reputation of Deleuze and Guattari's work. 15 I made clear at the beginning of "Beyond Identity" that my approach would be deliberately unorthodox, that I would read against the grain of nomad thought, hopefully in the interest of shedding some light. I acknowledged that my entire reading of A Thousand Plateaus would be illegitimate "if one takes nomadology as an orthodoxy—precisely what it is not supposed [End Page 134] to be—and claims that it can be judged only by its own criteria and read only through the grid of its own self-defined vocabulary" (M 175). That definition of orthodoxy is an accurate description of Holland's approach; he might as well have stopped reading at that point (and in a sense he did), because it is precisely at that point that we part company. For Holland, A Thousand Plateaus may not, must not be read by terms other than those approved by its authors. To me, it seems evident that we must, before anything else, seek to understand any thinker on his/her own terms—that is an obligation, but we are not, pace Holland, required to stop there. I believe that we are free to think outside and beyond the bounds that writers set for us (even when those bounds consist of a phony claim that there are no bounds). But authority is not nomadologically correct, so it has to be finessed . The wall of "philosophy" is Holland's device for this. As I wrote in my essay, the internal contradictions in A Thousand Plateaus—the unresolved tension between the virtual and the real—would not be such a problem if they were more openly and honestly avowed; but the vehemence of Holland's reaction shows that, within the supposedly free and "open" world of nomadology, dogma is not to be called into question. "Meaning," Holland wrote in 1991, "is forever open to subjective interpretation," but apparently only in "postsignifying regimes" (HD 59), and only a Deleuzian can tell you if you have passed that mystical threshold. The (non-)concepts of A Thousand Plateaus, Holland explained in that same essay, "are strategically 'under-determined' so that their understanding and extension to other domains [like anthropology, Holland will assert later in the same essay] requires the invention of novel connections rather than the mere application of a pre-established rule" (HD 56; emphasis added). But in 2003, "rule" is re-established, and the meaning of A Thousand Plateaus is closely controlled. The rhizome has become a straitjacket. The reading of A Thousand Plateaus is "rule-bound" (HD 64 n4) (just what it is not supposed to be), and closed off to genuinely heterogeneous reading. By heterogeneous I mean an interpretation that might, if necessary, resist or test the assumptions of the text, of its author(s), and of its self-appointed guardians. If meaning is "forever open," is it open only to interpretations that are certified to be in conformity with the author's views? The implications of such a stance are frightening. This is, in part, how nomadology has constructed for itself what Peter Hallward so accurately calls "a world without others." You aren‘t watching a bunch of men you don‘t know halfway around the world beating on each other live by satellite with a two-minute delay‖ (Ibid.. 134). be it molar or molecular. and in this sense Fight Club is a Deleuzian ―war machine‖. no privile ged zones and forms: ―a chaos so perfect. or even better. to disorganize the social bond. and strategies of subversion. 1997b. The complete and right -away destruction of civilization.. it grows like a rhizome. we slid through tunnels and galleries‖ (Palahniuk 1997: 20). Take part in th e destruction of the existing world… Fight for the decomposition … of all communities…‖ (Bataille 1997: 121).‖ (Palahniuk 1997: 125). it sa ys. 417). too. connection rather than conjugation. a universal tendency co -existing with exchange and production.pdf. seeks ―a prematurely induced dark age¼. Fight Club does not have a fixed spatiality. with Deleuze and Guattari ―antiproduction‖. and Carsten Bagge Laustsen. Fight Club wants to ―go back to zero‖. Lines rather than points. online: http://www. War is simply ―a social state that wards off the State‖ (Ibid. 123). continues Bataille‘s Programme (1997: 121). In his imagination. Its lines of flight are attempts to escape segmentarity. Bülent Diken. . rigidly segmented social space. 52). They start out as Fight Club but turn into Project Mayhem. so war is against the State. not necessarily its object.D. constructs a nomadic social space without zones.. 2004 Fight Club is constructed along a line of flight in the Deleuzian sense. urban anarchism. September 2001. Fight Club proliferates in. 50. We have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves‖ (Palahniuk 1997: 70. is a smooth social space. ―Realize … the irony of the animal world‖. In this sense. In this respect ―war‖.ac. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else‖ (Palahniuk 1997: 125.comp. the undifferentiated reality‖ (Callinicos 1982: 95). and makes it impossible‖ (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 357). Department of Political Sciences. It is no coincidence that the social space. so pure. including self-destruction‖ (Palahniuk 1997: 49). all articulations are effaced. violence is Fight Club‘s supplement. With Bataille its principle is ―expenditure‖. a permanent address. especially the Situationist manifesto. ―The answer is not improvement but destruction. ―Fight club isn‘t about words … Fight club is not football on television. Project Mayhem: a) A politics of lines of flight inevitably restratifies and turns into what it opposes – their transcendence of boundaries can‘t happen without tons of violence. the zero-degree of symbolic difference. Ph. you‘re going to have to kill someone¼. It is crucial in this context that Deleuze and Guattari recognize a war machine as an assemblage that has as its object not war — war is only ―the supplement‖ of the war machine—but the constitution of a creative line of flight. so complete that in it all differences. Jack walks up the entrance of a cave and out comes a penguin. ―Without any effort. student at the University of Copenhagen. Fight Club seeks to attain a Body without Organs. And temporally. and unties the social bond (codes) in multiplicity (mass-phenomena).lancs. an undifferentiated body with no face. it consists of flows (speed). centres.West debate 11-12 5 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Tyler Durden Disad (1/3) Turn. ―Assume the function of destruction and decomposition…. Fight Club wants the whole world to ―hit the bottom‖ (Ibid. In his P rogramme from 1936 and his analysis of fascism. No excuses and no lies¼. lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster University. it especially attacks the society of spectacle. it ―exists only in the hours between when fight club starts and when fight club ends‖ (Palahniuk 1997: 48). thorough discontinuous jumps. It is ―only after you lose everything … that you‘re free to do anything.uk/sociology/papers/Diken-Laustsen-Enjoy-Your-Fight. and Fight Club. Complete destratification. ―Slide‖. It is that which cannot be contained in the striated. Echoing the French nouveaux philosophes. operates in a smooth space. again. a smooth space. or ―fight‖. Bataille had argued that it is necessary to affirm the ―value of violence‖ and ―to take upon oneself perversion and crime‖ (1997: 121). in which one can ―slide‖ through connections: ―and‖ … ―and‖ … ―and‖. accessed August 24. smiling. Losing the social bond is freedom. a free assemblage oriented along a line of flight out of the repressive social machinery. Pure chaos. Fight Club. is the surest mechanism against social organization: ―just as Hobbes saw clearly that the State was against war. Sørensen 2001). Bataille concludes that there is much the Left can learn from the organizational forms of fascism (Bataille 1997. Fight Club is about street fights. 51). in which Jack/penguin ―slides‖. Fight Club is above all a social state that wards off ―society‖. violently lifts the curse: ―yes. segments: a flattened space. rising and falling‘. not physical and not explicable according to ‗spatiotemporal coordinates‘ (Deleuze and Guattari. William Rasch. Nevertheless. ‗were the first to conceive of a strict immanence of Order to a cosmic milieu that sections chaos in the form of a plane. can only be described by way of evocative similes and metaphors. Kant and Husserl (Deleuze and Guattari. And from within. of course. the true philosopher. and advertising. The world is. the foundation on which it creates its concepts‘ (Deleuze and Guattari. 104-107 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari offer a similar invitation.West debate 11-12 6 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Tyler Durden Disad (2/3) b) The impact to this arg is huge – the desire to achieve a plane of pure immanence cannot be brought into being without a massively violent clearing away of all remnants of transcendence. From without. in all its evil disguises. in this case. the first philosophers are those who institute a plane of immanence like a sieve stretched over the chaos‘. and Transcendence. the linguist. It is the philosopher. far from breaking up the One-All of the plane of immanence. p 37). 1994. . 1994. despite these philosophic Quislings. but the plane is the horizon of event s. If. finally. its earth or deterritorialization. and the modern invention and development of the transcendental subject by Descartes. portrayed. defines ontology as such. none can demonstrate its own accuracy. 1994. That plane. 1994. and now. to overcome the time honored but world-distorting distinction between transcendence and immanence. . ‗The Greeks‘. to think the functional equivalent of transcendence in the transcendental. there comes the ‗most shameful moment‘. to repeat. however. unlimited absolute... and the logician. All these images can be elucidated intelligently. The plane is. And it was Spinoza (with Nietzsche‘s help) who showed us that the plane of immanence is ‗surrounded by illusions‘. ‗thought‘s mirages‘. there is the priest. In short. or they can at least provoke further evocations that can make a powerful claim on our philosophical imagination. formless and fragmentary. philosophy‘s task — is. but the political world they imply or the political positions explicitly derived from them. closest to home. This last. 1994. the ‗illusion of the eternal‘. if ‗concepts are the archipelago or skeletal frame‘. Deleuze and Guattari write. which can include Philosophy (at its worst). 2004. design. independent of its observers. unadulterated (‗the plane of immanence is always single. 1994. like a gigantic shuttle. . there is the desire ‗to think transcendence within the immanent‘. each folded in the others. the object of an infinite specification so that it seems to be a One-All only in cases specified by the selection of movement‘ [Deleuze and Guattari. And again: ‗Concepts are events. all the disciplines of communication‘ (Deleuze and Guattari. Thus the world. who can institute the infinite plane of immanence we are to inhabit. This philosophic fall from grace (punctuated only by the above mentioned protests of a Spinoza or a Nietzsche) follows a fairly consistent trajectory marked by Plato. Yet. independent of any observer. p 41). the ‗illusion of universals‘. the reservoir or reserve of purely conceptual events: not the relative horizon that functions as a limit.. but the absolute horizon. p 39]). is not the validity of these ontological claims. Nor should that be demanded of them. which makes the event as concept independent of a visible state of affairs in which it is brought about‘ (Deleuze and Guattari.39]). then ‗the plane of immanence is the single wave that rolls them up and unrolls them‘. once and for all. Or. for example. Of interest to us in the context of this study. from within a rather Manichean philosophy of history. ‗concepts are like multiple waves. whereas the plane is the formless. pp 49—50). they constitute its variable curvature. 1994. its fractal nature as it were.. which changes with an observer and encloses observable states of affairs. therefore. like the ‗illusion of transcendence‘. or the sociologist. pp 38. the psychoanalyst. played by Philosophy (at its best). the world-historical battle is essentially conducted by Philosophy and Religion. p 36]). Nor is it unusual that the plane of immanence and what it grounds are described as absolute (‗Concepts are absolute surfaces or volumes. such true philosophy has its enemies. its concavities and convexities. or. Diverse movements of the infinite are so mixed in with each other that. and the ‗illusion of discursiveness‘ (Deleuze and Guattari. p 10). The call for philosophy to constitute an infinite plane of immanence as a radically new ontology is made from within a particular narrative — in the case of Deleuze and Guattari. by The Priestly Caste.. neither surface nor volume but always fractal‘ [Deleuze and Guattari.. Sovereignty and Its Discontents. which is. then ‗the plane is the breath that suffuses the separate parts‘. marketing. the plane of immanence. of course. ‗constitutes the absolute ground of philosophy. Christianity. 1994. p. being itself pure variation‘ IDeleuze and Guattari. and only the philosopher. The . so that the return of one instantaneously relaunches another in such a way that the plane of immanence is ceaselessly being woven. for instance. p 36). and infinite (‗That is why there are always many infinite movements caught within each other. The characters in this world drama are Immanence. But alas. there is the epistemologist. the moment of ‗computer science. 1994. Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Indiana. pp 44—48). and even within philosophy its false friends. and none can be demonstrated to be logically correct or empirically accurate . Our task— which is to say. Indeed.. Thus the elimination of transcendental sovereignty will introduce a new social order that is precisely not an order. Empire. liberal individualism. or must that desire always express itself as a quasi-theological longing for a post-political state. even if the revolution in question is ‗bloodless‘. if only true philosophy can institute immanence. then philosophy. or. but must be put in place by revolutionary warfare. The post-revolutionary state is one in which the enemies of immanence have been defeated and in which all traces of the Gulag have been made to disappear.. in addition to Agamben. would be forever rendered invisible and ineffective. and whereas liberal theorists from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries. the beast remains the same. To maintain. how is order nevertheless possible? . of course. there is religion. Thus. and there is Philosophy whenever there is immanence.West debate 11-12 7 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches CONTINUED… Tyler Durden Disad (3/3) RASCH CONTINUED… religious sage conceives of ‗the institution of an always transcendent order imposed from outside by a great despot or by one god higher than the others. p 43). the chiliastic spirit of the overly hopeful has its chilling moments as well. do not excoriate it in the name of liberalism. in the clearing away of these idols. the old dragon slayers have become the new dragons. which. John Stuart Mill and Harold Lash. for as it turns out. by instituting again a proper hierarchical relationship in which philosophy reigns supreme.. Thus. what friends are for. as was done in the previous chapter. or rather. after all. 1994. the human sciences and social engineering. include Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Whereas the proto-liberal John Locke in the 17th century denounced monarchical absolutism in the name of parliamentary power. theorists like Wilhelm von Humboldt. after all. it is not new. perhaps in the personified guise of a Philosopher-King or. undesired and hierarchical political distinction is the feared and maligned notion of sovereignty . can only be achieved by radically eliminating competing spheres of belief and knowledge. the new critics of sovereignty. but particular modes of state sovereignty that characterized modern Europe up through the 19th century. If the enemy of pure immanence is transcendence. must wage war against its enemies. That is. assumes from the outset a positive answer to the question of whether such self-organization is possible. what liberalism replaced was not sovereignty as such. the question Hardt and Negri ask is whether and how the modem. Can one desire. at any rate. in other words. then within immanence the transcendental symbol of this impure. transcendental logic of sovereignty can now. the paradox of sovereignty itself cannot be sublated. we are told. correct ontology and the new. If philosophy and only philosophy . even if it leaves us little with which to answer the question of how such a transformation is to come about. To challenge their initial supposition —that pure immanence can exist without its constitutive other — may indeed indicate to the prophets of a new ontology that one is still mired in the nihilistic swamp of metaphysics. only. ironically. those usurpers of its role coming from the realms of religion. be supplanted by a universally benign immanence in which transcendently imposed order is replaced by egalitarian self-organization. or whether its expulsion must ultimately also assume the expulsion of the political altogether.. Radical immanence. The question that the concept of sovereignty answers and that therefore we must confront reads: In a world. more romantically. it seems. a New Jerusalem? My tentative answer to that question is: Though the ‗solution‘ to the paradox of immanence that we call sovereignty — precisely because it is no solution — may take varied forms and can be re-fashioned in an incalculable number of ways. for this ‗clearing‘ is anything but friendly. Nevertheless. the overcoming of sovereignty from within the political. infinite plane of immanence that that ontology allows cannot wait for the withering away of the state of transcendence. or. the new ontology would presuppose that sovereignty and the transcendental dominance it stands for causes the negative effects of social life. Have not. Whenever there is transcendence. Their book. in which order is not divinely ordained. It is a state which friends and only friends can call home. Though this attempt to delete sovereignty from political actuality has emerged with a vengeance in recent years. The irony — or is it tragedy? — of this radical immanence lies. finally. and most importantly the division of power supplanted the arbitrary willfulness of the absolute sovereign? Alas. it was thought that the task had been successfully completed. the institution of a new. Only friends can set out a plane of immanence as a ground from which idols have been cleared‘ (Deleuze and Guattari. Accordingly. though it now wears new clothes. While the old metaphysics posits the primacy of violence (‗original sin‘) and thus calls sovereignty into being as a kind of lightning rod. imperial State in the sky or on earth. denounced state supremacy in the name of the individual and the pluralism that would allow this individual to flourish. vertical Being. but rather condemn liberalism itself as the new form of sovereignty. the logical paradox that sovereignty contingently and imperfectly solves is the logical paradox that radical immanence itself imposes on the modern structure of the political. a Philosopher-Revolutionary. some more desirable than others. . . the question I propose to address here asks whether the logic of sovereignty can be expelled from the realm of the political. pluralism. that sovereignty is the consequence of unavoidable logical paradox would seemingly confirm the putative poverty of Western metaphysics and thus the need for a radically new ontology (and ‗a completely new politics‘) in which such paradox could never arise. but a benevolent self-organization of all productive human endeavors. West debate 11-12 8 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches . In other words. complete destratification. In fact. The point at which escape becomes a line of death is the point at which war (destruction) becomes the main object of the war machine rather than its supplement. 2004 Interestingly. transforming into Project Mayhem. Department of Political Sciences. Fight Club is the molecular face of fascism. Fight Club .West debate 11-12 9 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Tyler Durden Disad 2NC – Lines of Death Impact ( ) This argument turns and outweighs their business – war machines against the state turn lines of flight into lines of death. 230). its microfascist aspects) escape its ironic perspective. . fascism is the result of an intense line of flight that becomes a line of death. Its microfascism can be understood best as a transgressive delirium. is as dangerous as society.D.comp. getting out of the black holes. and assemblages‖ (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 270). the regression to the undifferentiated or complete disorganization is as dangereous as transcendence and organization. turning to destruction. a test. but instead of connecting with other lines and each time augmenting its valence. wanting self-destruction and ―death through the death of others‖ (Ibid. for it is a mass movement‖. A line of flight that desires its own repression. The test of desire is not denouncing false desires but distinguishing between that which pertains to the strata. a proliferation of molecular interactions. 165). ―skipping from point to point. Let‘s qualify this point by investigating the way the logic of the cut works in the film. student at the University of Copenhagen. the alluring and charismatic.ac. If there are two dangers. It is in this context remarkable that Fight Club operates as a deterritorialized line of flight . whereas the movie clearly makes a self-reflexive mockery of Project Mayhem in the context of the first danger (macrofascism). It seems as if the movie assumes that power predominantly pertains to molar lines. a minimal subject from which to extract materials. before beginning to resonate together in the National Socialist State‖ (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 214-5). is whether it is not ―necessary to retain a minimum of strata. September 2001. which Fight Club does not pass (Ibid. ―What makes fascism dangerous is its molecular or micropolitical power. the passion for abolition‖ (1987: 229). If Project Mayhem is the ridiculous Nazi-type organization with unreflexive skinheads who just repeat Tyler‘s orders.uk/sociology/papers/Diken-Laustsen-Enjoy-Your-Fight. Fight Club fights only the first. Tyler. and that which pertains to line of flight. lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster University. suicide. the aspects of Fight Club that do not resonate in Project Mayhem (that is. affects. Therefore a relevant question. of complete destratification. abolition pure and simple. The third danger: a line of flight can lose its creative potentials and become a line of death. and Carsten Bagge Laustsen. accessed August 24. as a war machine that is violently opposed to the state. the strata and complete destratification. a minimum of forms and functions.lancs. never asked by microfascists. its members are not merely the Oedipalized paranoiacs of the capitalist state order. But lines of flight are not exempted from power relations. becomes an instrument of pure destruction and violence. the free-wheeling pervert of Fight Club. Bülent Diken.pdf. and there is a microfascism in Fight Club that cannot be confined to Project Mayhem. a war machine that has war as its object . online: http://www. This is precisely what happens in Fight Club : ―the line of flight crossing the wall. Ph. to invent new territorializations . interpretation. ―you have to trust Tyler‖.West debate 11-12 10 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Tyler Durden Disad 2NC – Impact Calculus ( ) They will inevitably say ‗that‘s not our line of flight‘ or ‗lines of flight are still good‘. massifies. the group with the leader. accessed August 24. and show them courage by frightening them‖ (Ibid. Project Mayhem. with all the identifications of the individual with the group. Becoming a ―bureaucracy of anarchy‖ (Palahniuk 1997: 119). 149). student at the University of Copenhagen. September 2001. institution. Project Mayhem is the point at which Fight Club reterritorializes as ―the paranoid position of the mass subject. Fight Club was a gang. however. Whenever a line of flight is stopped by an organization. 2004 The first danger is that a line of flight can become re-stratified: in the fear of complete destratification . Project Mayhem is centralised around Jack/Tyler who gives the multiplicity of lines of escape a resonance. and Carsten Bagge Laustsen. Ph. a ―reterritorialization‖ takes place.comp.pdf. Department of Political Sciences.lancs.ac. its line of flight is followed by reterritorialization. The new rules are: ―you don‘t ask questions‖. Methods change too: ―We have to show these men and women freedom by enslaving them. . Fight Club produces a microcosm of the affections of the rigid: it deterritorializes.uk/sociology/papers/Diken-Laustsen-Enjoy-Your-Fight. In comparison with Fight Club. In spite of the fact that Fight Club makes a mockery of an ―illusion of safety‖ in the beginning. a black hole. online: http://www. and so on (Ibid. Bülent Diken.D. 125). It evolves into a project. etc.. but only in order to stop deterritorialization. and the leader with the group‖ (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 34). lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster University. Project Mayhem is more like an army. rigid segmentation and segregation may seem attractive. you should assess the impact of our disad as bigger than whatever impact they‘ve got – lines of flight turning into lines of death removes any of the benefit of the original line of flight. the void is filled with either ersatz authorities (e. ―is short-term and rapidly shifting. and even more rigid.g. flexibility. The source of anxiety in this open.g. the obscene supplement to the public sphere of freedom and equality‖ (Žižek 1999: 345). Rather. of flows. The problem of authority today is not that of the symbolic authority that forbids enjoyment but that of the superego. to realize one‘s creative potential. The symptom of control society is the collapse of the institutional walls: not that discipline ends with the deterritorialization of institutions. in which the subject is always in a state of becoming. the paradigmatic mode of subjectivity is the ―polymorphously perverse‖ subject that follows the command to enjoy. without an end. the rugs—were me. the universe of capitalism is immanent. the demise of the symbolic authority does in no way imply the demise of authority as such. The television was me‖. forms of control. anonymity and contingent identities. axiomatic logic of capital. living in it is like living in ―The IBM Stellar Sphere. in which power goes nomadic. trying to fill the void behind the mask by shifting between idiosyncratic hobbies (Žižek 1999: 373). Capitalism does no longer function according to the discourse of the master (Žižek 1999: 373). changing from mask to mask. In other words. a n experience of a smooth space without symbolic hierarchies. on the contrary. smooth space is of course the space of contemporary capitalism. Extreme individuality reverts to its opposite. This ―friction-free‖. speed. but at the same time continuous and unbounded. he says. Planet Starbucks‖. which corresponds to the immanent. the standard situation of the disciplinary subject is reversed: ―we no longer have the public Order of hier archy. now freer than ever from territorial constraints. that is. passionate attachments to violent rituals. place-bounded discipline forcing people to overtake given subject positions. where the ‗passionate attachment‘ to some extreme form of strictly regulated domination and submission becomes the secret transgressive source of libidinal satisfaction . freedom to consume. Deleuze claims that capitalism is no longer characterized by panoptic. subverted by the secret acts of liberating transgression . the feeling of the inauthenticity of all acts. . if less visible. Thus. that is. In control society subjectivity is ―produced simultaneously by numerous institutions in different combinations and doses‖. ―Control‖. Control is not given by castration. whereas discipline was long-term. Hence one desperately searches for a true identity. If the geography of discipline worked in terms of fixed points or positions. and a market for the extreme and the perverted is growing. not because they are forbidden but because they are not.pdf. e. online: http://www. Thus. has become more immanent to the social field (Hardt & Negri 2000). ―we are a generation of men raised by women‖. infinite. ―I loved my life. ―[T]he anxiety generated by the risk society is that of a superego: what characterizes the superego is precisely the absence of a ‗proper measure‘—one obeys its commands not enough / or too much. too much pseudo-freedom. results in the exact opposite . The paradox of postmodern individuality: the injunction to be oneself. no commodity is really it . by a restriction of the subject‘s ability to move and to act. we have public social relations among free and equal individuals. increasingly reflexive individuals no longer have ready-made symbolic authorities. ethical committees) or authorities that make transgression or perversion of the Law a rule in the service of enjoyment. of the obscene authority that enjoins one to enjoy. the result is wrong and one is guilty. lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster University. That was my whole life. What is often overlooked is that in this social space fantasies are violated. in terms of ―the whatever‖ (Hardt 1998: 32). insane outside the asylum—all at the same time. hence social space tends to lose its delimitation: one ―is factory worker outside the factory. 22 -23). permitted enjoyment— You may!—turns into the prescriptive enjoyment—You must!—(Žižek 2000: 133). control operates in terms of mobility. tries to find an objective correlate to being. only a ruse of signs. Today fantasies are subsumed under capital. the subject is free to consume and move wherever it wants. whatever one does. In a world of flows and lines of flight. I loved my condo. but this freedom is accompanied by nightly. Bülent Diken.. infinite and discontinuous‖ (Deleuze 1995: 181). because identity is no longer a matter of occupying an already given subject position. A place no longer determined by the law and tradition or by the solidity of a habitus. inmate outside prison.D. the chairs. No act. This unfinished. its blindness to the (re)emerging non-symbolic forms of authority. and Carsten Bagge Laustsen. discipline. the symbolic f ather of the uncompromising ―No!‖ is in retreat.lancs. It pertains to flows. is illuminating here. constantly mutating status of everything does not bring with it freedom. rather. 2004 The de-traditionalized. in the reflexive society. Ph. The distinction between societies of discipline and societies of control. The dishes were me. In the social space within which Fight Club emerges there is no father. As Fight Club says. causing the subject experience to be uncertain and faceless. September 2001. and herein lies the paradox of the theory of reflexivity. smooth space is not lack of being. I loved every stick of furniture .. accessed August 24. but by a permanent movement.West debate 11-12 11 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Tyler Durden Disad 2NC – Lines of Flight Bad ( ) Deleuzo-Guattarian nomadic politics are not liberatory and instead only lead to new. The plants were me. student at the University of Copenhagen. repression and severe regulation. My ―inner being‖ is not expressed that way. He never ―knew his father‖ (Palahniuk 1997: 49). as does Tyler in Fight Club. Everything—the lamps. stude nt outside the school. and they complain. no longer the Oedipal subject integrated into the symbolic order through castration (Žižek 1999: 248).uk/sociology/papers/Diken-Laustsen-Enjoy-Your-Fight. In our post-Oedipal era. by a limitation in being.comp. The problem with the superego is that it can never be translated into a positive rule to be followed‖ (Žižek 1999: 394). What follows is the burden of reflexivity as one has to choose one‘s place in the social. authority structures. Department of Political Sciences. If. either (Ibid.ac. but control. The Philip Morris Galaxy. It belongs to no identity and all of them—outside the institutions but even more intensely ruled by their disciplinary logics‖ (Hardt & Negri 2000: 331 -2). This is a scenario in which transgression does not result in freedom but in new. West debate 11-12 12 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches . it is the exact passage of that which is under way. no ontological dualism between here and there. mental correctives are necessary to undo the dualisms we had no wish to construct but through which we pass. then fine and good: for there is no dualism. anexact expressions are utterly unavoidable. aerial roots. The problem of writing: in order to designate something exactly. still less of this or that category of thought. or of a given moment in history . it begins to look like tree roots. The important point is that the roottree and canal-rhizome are not two opposed models: the first operates as a transcendent model and tracing. There are knots of arborescence in rhizomes. while the tracing of their alternative contains its own despotism. or because one can only advance by approximations: anexactitude is in no way an approximation. this is not a new or different dualism. tree structures and grass. No. Moreover.West debate 11-12 13 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Deleuze and Guattari Perm Solvency ( ) If you look at a small sample of tree-roots. there are despotic formations of immanence and channelization specific to rhizomes. just as there are anarchic deformations in the transcendent system of trees. breaking off and starting up again . It is not a question of this or that place on earth. We invoke one dualism only in order to challenge another. etc. Each time. Arrive at the magic formula we all seek – PLURALISM = MONISM – via all the dualisms that are the enemy. An impasse. even if it gives rise to a despotic channel. are not two opposed models. no axiological dualism between good and bad. and subterranean stems. and Felix Guattari. Maps and tracings. the so-called hierarchical models of knowledge they criticize contain within them their own lines of flight and liberation. on the contrary. and if you zoom out on a picture of a rhizome. We employ a dualism of models only in order to arrive at a process that challenges all models . p. A Thousand Plateaus. we are on the wrong track with all these geographical distributions. and of a process that is perpetually prolonging itself. If it is a question of showing that rhizomes also have their own. Rather. even if it engenders its own escapes. 1987. they look like a rhizome. It is a question of a model that is perpetually in construction or collapsing. . an entirely necessary enemy. despotism and hierarchy. Gilles Delezue. the furniture we are forever rearranging . Not at all because it is a necessary step. even more rigid. 20-21 At the same time. and rhizomatic offshoots in roots. psychoanalyst at Le Borde Clinic. So much the better. the second operates as an immanent process that overturns the model and outlines a map. There is no inconsistency in invoking one dualism only to challenge another. no blend or American synthesis. Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VII. even if it constitutes its own hierarchies. in the form of a haecceity. living labour eludes definitive capture by capital. subject.West debate 11-12 14 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Perm Solves Immanence ( ) Their alternative seeks a plane of pure immanence away from the stratifications and territorializations endemic to Western thought. Living labour cannot constitute itself as a subject. Instead. In this sense. This radical and constitutive powerlessness. the difference which endows life with all of its force. p. it will always take capital by surprise. Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of California-Irvine. living labour will never appear as such. a political planomenon must be constructed that would respect its secrecy . Rather. The effects of living labour are unpredictable. In this sense. the political agency of living labour does not operate on the level of the subject. which gives its effects the appearance of contingency. 2003. it is continually submitted to a process of subjectivisation through its reduction to labour power. this force expresses itself in the form of an event or. No. ―There is a mode of individuation very different from that of a person. the invisibility of living labour. Again. 4. a community of hospitality remains to be formed that would safeguard the space of alterity . there are actions that can be taken which would preserve the space of its emergence . We reserve the name haecceity for it. 2. It would be but a figure of impossibility. Jeffrey Atteberry. No demands. including those for ‗adequate consciousness‘. Vol. Deleuze and Guattari write.‖83 The individuation of a haecceity differs fro m that of a subject insofar as the former takes place as a singular event on the plane of immanence while the latter is the product of a command that structures the plane of transcendence. yet. living labour is strictly speaking impossible. Its actions cannot be programmed. the trace of its force is continually recorded on the face of capital. thing. As that force which overwhelms any effort at self-constitution. Consequently. In short. 219-20 The reformulation of power found in Deleuze and Derrida may provide a lens then for perceiving the political force and agency of living labour in terms that would not reduce living labour to a form of subjectivity that bears within itself all the structural traces of the labour power which serves capital in its capture. It is powerless to seize itself in any immediate or autonomous fashion. either to itself or to capital. as if this were possible. The political agency of living labour. As a haecceity or event. would be the ultimate source of its excessive power. In more mundane terms. ‗living labour‘ would be but a name for life‘s irreducible difference from itself. a civil society remains to be organised according to ethical principles that respect and acknowledge the limits of power. A politics of hospitality that gives space to alterity is the best way to open onto a future of immanence. therefore. In short. . In A Thousand Plateaus. as Deleuze would say. This is its freedom. the creation of such a space is a political task through-and-through. the political community needs to find ways to respect. Life is the pure immanence of this differential force that is made possible by its very impossibility. Critical Horizons. which is to say the powerlessness which is actually constitutive of any community. the construction of a plane of immanence remains as a political task. At the limit. Nevertheless. there is not even an ‗itself‘ properly understood there to be seized. or substance. should be made on living labour as condition for its action. On account of this incapacity to seize itself. however. Nevertheless. cannot be actively willed. human societies would not exist and human existence itself would be in question. we have to use prediction-it‘s key to survival Nicholas Rescher. . forecasting has met with such outstanding failures as Karl Marx‘s vision of the inexorable victory of the proletariat and the earlier doomsayers who saw England taking a ―shooting Niagara‖ plunge into political disaster with the passage of the nineteenth -century voting reform bills. Our predictive capacity may be severely limited. Life as we know it demands those stabilities and continuities that make possible a vast amount of prediction over the near term ( ) Despite its limits.West debate 11-12 15 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches AT: Prediction Bad ( ) Life requires prediction Nicholas Rescher. Predicting the Future. For if we were not as good at prediction as we actually are—at any rate in the commonplace matters that affect our daily lives—and if we did not inhabit a natural environment that made this extensively possible for us. as with Dr. As Rousseau wisely observed.‖ Nevertheless. 1998. etc?) Only by assessing and classifying other people in point of predictable responses can we make plausible decisions about our own conduct. p. Professor or Philosophy at University of Pittsburgh. seeing that there is good reason of general principle for thinking that a substantial proportion of human interaction must be predictable. it could be said that what is sur prising is not that it should be done well but that it should be done at all. the evolutionary deliberations of chapter 1 also have to be kept in mind. Since people in general live in circumstances where successful interaction with one another it is essential to our well being—indeed to our very survival—the outcome of such interactions must be in general foreseeable. 156 It might seem that the obstacles to successful prediction are so numerous in variety and so extensive in scope that here. Predicting the Future. 1998. We humans must attune our actions to those of other and must make our decisions with reference to the sorts of people we are dealing with in point of their actions and reactions (Are they trustworthy. rational. notwithstanding. ―The ability to foresee that some things cannot be foreseen is a very necessary capacity. Yet repeated failures. but it is not—and in the circumstances cannot be—too radically impoverished. then we just would not be here to tell the tale. risk aversive. and habits. Johnson‘s dancing dog. Professor or Philosophy at University of Pittsburgh. routines. 199-200 In the sphere of social and political developments. the enterprise of social prediction is not totally without promise. If it were not for the prediction-supportive impetus of human customs. between the rhizome and the tree. are neither good nor bad in themselves.uk/sociology/papers/Diken-Laustsen-Enjoy-Your-Fight. Department of Political Sciences. between the strata and lines of flight. and Carsten Bagge Laustsen. 2004 Lines of flight. they are open-ended processes. online: http://www.West debate 11-12 16 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches AT: But Lines of Flight Are Sweet ( ) Lines of flight are not good or bad in themselves – that means you should default to our args because we‘re the only ones reading evidence about how the plan‘s particular lines of flight would go down. There is not a dichotomy between schizophrenia and paranoia.comp. accessed August 24. September 2001. emphasise Deleuze and Guattari. Ph.pdf. student at the University of Copenhagen. lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster University.D.lancs. Preference our evidence over their uber-generic D and G junk Bülent Diken.ac. Lines of flight have their own dangers. . to oppose the strata (organization) and the lines of flight (becoming body without organs) to one another. which are interesting in relation to Fight Club. And then it is not enough to be against the strata. In this respect.uk/sociology/papers/Diken-Laustsen-Enjoy-Your-Fight. we‘re not just selling the movie Fight Club. We‘re selling the idea of fight clubs. bec ause we are trained to want what we want. the aesthetic critique has dissolved into a post-Fordist normative regime of justification. student at the University of Copenhagen. ‗You know.‘‖ (Palahniuk quoted in Sult 1999). Subversion or liberation can only be related to taking control of the production of mobility and statis (Hardt & Negri 2000: 156). which is constantly confronted with the danger of becoming dysfunctional. quoted in Guilhot 2000: 360). Power has already evacuated the bastion Fight Club is attacking and it can effortlessly support Fight Club‘s assault on sedentariness. Since the 1970s capitalism has found new forms of legitimation in the artist critique. if not cynical. but as we tried to show there are reasons why it is so. Yes. But many of the concepts romanticised by Palahniuk‘s Fight Club find a correspondence in the network capitalism and its aesthetic Mecca. Neither mobility nor immobility are liberatory in themselves. the notion of creativity is re-coded in terms of flexibility.comp. Consequently. In a way it‘s funnier than the movie itself‖ (CNN 1999). Department of Political Sciences. it contributes to capitalist innovations that assimilate critique .lancs.D. As Deleuze and Guattari repeatedly emphasized.pdf. Bülent Diken. indeed.ac. Thus Fight Club is hardly an ―anti -institutional‖ response to contemporary capitalism. Asked by CNN if he is amused by the irony that Hollywood decided to make a violent movie about anti-consumerism by spending millions of dollars. rather. online: http://www. Fight Club‘s aesthetic critique sounds. and Carsten Bagge Laustsen. Chuck. today. accessed August 24. What Palahniuk enjoys the luxury of overseeing here is precisely that such strategies are emancipatory only in so far as power poses hierarchy exclusively through essentialism and stable binary divisions. despite all the cultural training that‘s been our entire existence? It‘s about doing the things that are completely forbidden. which resulted in a ―transfer of competencies from leftist radicalism toward management‖ (Boltanski & Chiapello. This is perhaps nowhere more visible than in the production process of the movie Fight Club itself as an aesthetic commodity: ―David [Fincher] said to me. Ph. just as creativity. that we are trained not to want to do‖ (quoted in Jenkins 1999). lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster University. September 2001. Palahniuk says: ―We really have no freedom about creating our identities. What is it going to take to break out and establish some modicum of freedom. 2004 The development of the contemporary society confirms that critique is not a peripheral activity.West debate 11-12 17 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches AT: But We Critique Stuff ( ) Your criticism changes nothing – nomadic politics as a basis for criticism is already incorporated within the logic of territorialization and state-capitalism. perversion or transgression are not necessarily emancipatory today . Palahniuk answers that ―it seems like the ultimate absurd joke. naïve. Hollywood. smooth space and nomadism do not have an irresistable revolutionary calling but change meaning drastically depending on the context (see 1987: 387). Capitalism had received mainly two forms of critique until the 1970s: the social critique from the Marxist camp (exploitation) and the aesthetic critique from the new French philosophy (nomadism). . and difference is commercialized. The smooth space.ac. transforming them into objects of desire. which is indeed. ‖surplus enjoyment‖. really exist in the network society? No. being against is not enough. objet petit a (see Žižek 2000: 19. Waste produced by Fight Club itself is thus the melancholy of capitalism in so far as melancholy defines the subject‘s relation to objects that are deprived of their aura. the main production of contemporary capitalism. totally decommodified and de-sublimated object.comp. The new terrain of political struggle is mobility (Ibid. The masses in the contemporary society are driven by a desire for mobility: desertion.. Palahniuk argues that ―Tyler plays the devil‘s advocate against society…. a virtual place. Indeed. transforming the earth into a gigantic waste land. a spectacle. the virtual center of which can be accessed immediately from any point across the surface‖. 386). and so on. Does the domain outside exchange. is the new ―spectre‖ that haunts today‘s reticular world (Ibid. desperately searching for a non-consumerist domain outside capitalist exchange. . The paradox of Fight Club is that i t makes an excess of sacrifice.West debate 11-12 18 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches AT: D and G Args About Capitalism ( ) The idea that we can transcend capitalist production and get to a pure space of immanence away from capitalism IS the ideology of capitalism par excellance – their attempt to get outside merely replicates the structures they criticize Bülent Diken. battles through subtraction. and Fight Club is obsessed by the desire to escape from the lure of the commodity form. 188-9). some Other. But Fight Club is in many respects typical of contemporary social movements. the problem of the network society is. ―There is no more outside‖ (Hardt & Negri 2000: 187). Herein lies also Fight Club‘s mistake: the idea that use-value could be sustained without surplus-value production. the migration of the masses. Therefore Fight Club‘s ―sacrifice‖ is not subversive but supportive of capitalist desire. is no longer an obvious notion. in the contemporary era of control. rather. Waste is a sign of the growing significance of desublimation in contemporary capitalism. Fight Club‘s secret is then the culmination of the fetish character of the commodity.. Which means that. Perhaps there is no topological contradiction between the outopia of the network society and the utopia of Fight Club. has come to an end. Yet. which is created by Fight Club. In so far as capital extends its networks. concealing the fact that capitalism without surplus-value production (and without surplus-enjoyment based on sublimation) is impossible. In this sense. Department of Political Sciences. according to Jacques-Alain Miller. 54-55). If avoidance of excess itself generates an excess. even if it does not grant what I want (see Žižek 2001: 64 -5).uk/sociology/papers/Diken-Laustsen-Enjoy-Your-Fight. that objects of desire would remain without their fetish value. the desire to be against. accessed August 24. heading toward a total anti-production. exodus and nomadism. Yet. that is desire par excellence‖ (Žižek 2001: 41). or the symptom. contemporary political struggles proliferate in an age of communication but they are ―incommunicable‖. student at the University of Copenhagen. Ph. The ultimate aim of all this is the destruction of capitalism. for immanent struggles au milieu. When the object is delivered from the sublime objet petit a. resistance takes the form of desertion (flight. ―The opaque character of the object a i n the imaginary fantasy determines it in its most pronounced forms as the pole of perverse desire‖ (Lacan. which is at once diffuse and unified (Ibid. which is a permanent feature of the capitalist drive (see Žižek 2000: 40-41). With the ―real subsumption‖ of society under capital. it becomes waste. The dialectic between ―society‖ and ―nature‖. that is. singular points of revolt tend to become more powerful: ―Empire presents a superficial world.pdf. what Lacan calls the ―temptation of sacrifice‖ is to ascertain that there is some s ymbolic authority. is this desire for anti-production not the other side of the very capitalist fantasy? The reverse case of commodity fetishism is waste: the object devoid of its fetish-value. Again. quoted in Žižek 2001: 42). as is the case with Fight Club. It invests sacrifice itself with desire. Tyler‘s motivation is perhaps to be against something. What we have in the contemporary society is ―a non -place of politics‖. September 2001. Whereas resistance took the form of sabotage (direct/dialectical opposition) in the disciplinary era. Capitalism survives by sublimating commodities.D. 21). of the reticular world. duration and communicability. is in a sense also the space of the network society and its powers to be . anything‖ (in CNN 1999). But what they tend to loose regarding extension. a potlach. the very anti-desire. 213 -3). the ―public‖ and the ―private‖. ―capital has become a world. Enter Fight Club: ―getting God‘s attention for being bad was better than getting no attention at all … God‘s hate is better than His indifference‖ (Palahniuk 1997: 141). they gain regarding intensity. 214). lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster University. ―They are forced to leap vertic ally and touch immediately on the global level‖ (Ibid. Fight Club‘s social critique is trapped in the framework of the symbolic order. the ―mind‖ and the ―drives‖. Use value and all the other references to values and processes of valorization that were conceived to be outside the capitalist mode of production have progressively vanished‖ (Ibid. the mobility of the multitude. 2004 The second strategy Fight Club adopts is. as is the case with Fight Club.lancs. the ―modern‖ and the ―primitive‖. Fight Club is the truth. or disobedience to authorities. 58). terrorizing the food industry. his moving into Tyler‘s dilapidated mansion on the edge of a toxic-waste dump. which Fight Club seeks to find. ―And it is only t his desire. The destruction of Jack‘s perfectly appointed condo. Yet. in the depthless. spectacle-ised society every point is potentially a center (Ibid. defection). What makes Fight Club postmodern is precisely the realization that all consumption artefacts will become obsolete before being used and end as waste. ―how to determine the enemy against which to rebel‖ (Hardt & Negri 2000: 211). blowing up the financial buildings to sabotage the credit-card society. online: http://www. and Carsten Bagge Laustsen. Fight Club‘s anti-consumerism is in this sense capitalism‘s inherent fantasy. The desire for non-distinction. as the first book of the Bible tells us. The distinction between transcendence and immanence that the idea of the fatherland was said to overcome is thus reintroduced as the distinction between lesser and greater perfection. early Christianity was forced to institute a realm of absolute transcendence. It is only in time out of mind. Religion introduces a distinction between immanence and transcendence. p 118). transcendent solutions. the monotheistic religions all ‗seem to have a common underlying element.‘ That is: ‗The natural impulse of man . and the projection of infinite perfectibility on that infinite plane. to plant and to cultivate the eternal in the temporal . Fichte tells us. to steal the Deleuzean phrase used so often by Hardt and Negri. ‗this earthly life itself is intended to be truly life. This is the form in which the distinction between immanence and transcendence is made manifest‘ (Luhmann. for example. so too is the self-perfection of the people and the fatherland eternally under construction. namely a salvation perspective. this distinction between distinction and non-distinction can be made only from the mundane world of distinction itself. William Rasch. 107-08 According to Nikias Luhmann. p 150). as the saying goes.. . 1968. 113). Within history and on earth. between a realm of distinctions and a realm of pure indistinction. by definition. is a false separation. that the perfect state of indistinction can be achieved. Sovereignty and Its Discontents. 1968. then.. The desire for perfect indistinction can express itself only in the imperfect form of a discrete distinction. the world opened up. Yet. transcendence of distinctions is. a nd to endow his daily work on earth with permanence and eternity. They propose that every distinction can be sublated in a realm beyond all distinctions. then. This rigid separation of immanence and transcendence. is precisely how Fichte formulates it in his eighth lecture to the German nation. Because of unique historical circumstances. Thus the nation-state becomes both the desired goal and the site of an eternally unfinished project of self-improvement. impossible. of course. the after-life or at the end of history. is to find heaven on this earth. in which eternal life could be found.. A politics wishing to pattern itself on this religious desire would not be content with a-historical. outside of terrestrial time and space. an improper and proper expression of its spirit . For Fichte. A theologically oriented politics. The political project Fichte imagines. 2000. Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Indiana. its originary moment. a secular paradise that at least in its formal aspects would neutralize the malignancy of distinction. distinction. ‗People and fatherland‘. is one of paradox. 2004. ‗sinful‘ world of distinctions. To live in space and time is to be forced to live in the profane. and the spirit that imbues this island with eternal life is the love of the fatherland expressed by the self-constituting Volk. ‗In the regular order of things. This. therefore. or worse.‘ Fichte writes. would seek to establish on earth the functional equivalent of paradise. pp 112. in other words. p. But just as the moral individual is infinitely perfectible and never complete. can do nothing but replicate what it wishes to transcend. between an improper and a proper constitution of a Volk. which proves their alternative isn‘t immanent at all. are the ‗support and guarantee of eternity on earth‘ (Fichte. They thereby contemplate access to transcendence as a corrective for the suffering from distinctions.West debate 11-12 19 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches AT: Transcendence/Immanence Links this presumes we‘re aff – retag/change if we‘re negside ( ) Their answers to the permutation will prove our arguments – they‘ll say that the 1NC is immanent and that it can‘t just be permuted – this ability to make distinctions between transcendence and immanence itself relies on an Archimedean. then. however. transcendent point of reference from which they can decide what is transcendent and what is immanent. The essence of religion. namely. the island of indistinction in th e sea of difference is called the Vaterland. is both the constitution of a plane of radical immanence. however. in order to express the desire to transcend all distinctions. in the beyond. to establish a paradise on earth. It would attempt . by the knowledge of the difference between good and evil.. in a fashion visible to the mortal eye itself‘ (Fichte. but would attempt to actualize the realm of indistinction within history. Deleuze and Guattari‘s own rhetorical practice.‖ Derrida would most likely not be too quick to charge Deleuze with being entirely complicit with the metaphysics of presence. Deleuze‘s conception of immanence does not articulate itself within the closure of the metaphysics of presence. 210-11 Given that philosophy is a process of metaphorisation. If anything. Given what Derrida refers to as their ‗near total affinity‘ on such fundamental concerns as the liberation within philosophical thought of a ―difference that is not reducible to dialectical opposition. Derrida‘s concern with rhetorical strategy. Derrida‘s reservations concerning Deleuze‘s rhetoric speak to the danger and ease of its ideological misappropriation. As mentioned already. Hardt and Negri‘s reception and use of Deleuze‘s rhetoric would seem to bear witness to an arrogant carelessness in face of the continued force of the most established philosophisms of the Western tradition . Nevertheless. In Empire. to bear in mind Althusser‘s famous dictum that ―those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology. In fact. Despite the sophistication of their work and its importance for our times. then. Their rejection of metaphor functions as a disavowal of the controlled difference that the philosophical metaphor has always put to work in view of liberating a deterritorialising difference that would not be reducible to the sets of determined oppositions that govern the philosophical use of metaphor. They do not hide their own arrogance in this regard. every metaphysical tradition is now entirely worn out. however. and as Derrida mentions in ―I‘ll have to wander all alone. Critical Horizons. In their collaborative projects such as Empire. both men make extensive use of a markedly Deleuzean rhetoric. . their appropriation of Deleuze‘s rhetoric often seems to take place through a brutal literalisation of his terminology. Derrida is deeply concerned with the rhetorical strategies and gestures that are at work within any thought. more than anyone. No. its white mythology. even the most powerful ones. but with how his rhetorical practices will determine its reception. on the way it will be interpreted. and the value it will assume in the process of exchange. I would like to take a brief look at the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. one finds the stunning declaration that their ontology ―does not risk repeating the old models of the metaphysical tradition. As an example of why Derrida might have reason for his concerns. As I hope to have shown.‖41 Rather than making such rash declarations. 4. the rhetorical equivocity of ‗immanence‘ would seem to expose him to a dangerous recuperation within a metaphysics of presence.West debate 11-12 20 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Deleuze’s Alternative Gets Co-Opted ( ) There‘s a danger in their alternative – the rhetorical trappings of immanence and an approach to knowledge centered around tracing can easily be appropriated and used for malicious ends. Rather. 2003. Of course. would seem to legitimate such a practice. Jeffrey Atteberry. for instance. although Derrida would be the first to stress the degree to which all philosophical thinking remains caught within its closure. and strategies.40 Deleuze and Guattari may well have their own strategic reasons for making such claims. 2. Derrida‘s reservations are not with the content of Deleuze‘s own thought. those of their ‗generation‘. Derrida would surely recognise that Deleuze was among those philosophers. gestures. p. By the same token. Vol. has continually reminded us of the continued ideological force of Western metaphysics. The rhetorical choices made by philosophers have a profound effect on how philosophical thought is received . his reservations seem to address the question of rhetorical practices. who most rigorously and trenchantly worked through such a closure. Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of California-Irvine. seems addressed to the process of reception and appropriation. they would do well. a difference ‗more profound‘ than a contradiction. This force stems from the controlled difference at work within the philosophical metaphor and continues to dictate how Hardt and Negri appropriate Deleuze‘s terminology. along with their continual declarations that their thought is not metaphorical. good Marxists that they are. In other words.‖42 Derrida.‖ Derrida is not concerned with any particular ‗theses‘. Finally. and democracy. Deleuze and Guattari distinguish between absolute and relative deterritorialisation such that relative deterritorialisation concerns only movements within the actual. a becoming in which the movement is infinite and therefore imperceptible.‖40 In its pure form. they argue that in relation to the masculine standard of European cultural and political normality. Vol. deterritorialisation is defined as the complex movement or process by which something escapes or departs from a given territory. Critical Horizons. like a transparency. 2. rights. this process of deterritorialisation. 4. Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales. They may be ordered in various ways: for example. as opposed to the actual. Deleuze and Guattari‘s ‗becoming‘ amounts to something very similar to what Derrida calls an iteration. A Thousand Plateaus. These different becomings are all related to their concept of minority or becoming-minor. Paul Patton. 169-171 The concepts created in Deleuze and Guattari‘s major work. However. as opposed to the virtual. No. It is nevertheless the condition of all forms of actual or relative deterritorialisation: ―There is a perpetual immanence of absolute deterritorialisation within relative . but nevertheless we should strive to take small-scale. these concepts always describe contingent and conditioned versions of such events: this form of capture. each escape from Guantanamo. it remains an unrealisable or impossible figure. may be read as the expression of pure events of incorporeal transformation. As a pure event. By contrast. is potentially accompanied by reterritorializations. contingent lower-case-e ethical actions. In the concluding statement of rules governing certain key concepts. becoming. even though it may still fail to connect with other deterritorialised elements or enter into a new assemblage. It is. The plan is an affirmation of a more open future. social or affective — and on their account such systems are always inhabited by ‗vectors of deterritorialisation. Deleuze and Guattari refer to this as ‗becoming imperceptible‘ or becoming.e. Relative deterritorialisation is negative when the deterritorialised element is immediately subjected to forms of reterritorialisation. which takes place in the virtual. which should be combined with their affirmation of deterritorialization to new forms of justice. absolute deterritorialisation refers to a pure event. an absolute becoming. linguistic. this particular expression of the order-word function of language. Consider the concept of becoming which they define as ―the action by which something or someone continues to become other (while continuing to be what it is). in effect. order of things. manifest only in and through relative deterritorialisation. but rather refers to the ways in which deterritorialised elements recombine and enter into new relations in the constitution of a new assemblage or the modification of the old. capture and so on. becoming-child. becoming-woman and becomingimperceptible. consider the concept of deterritorialisation that lies at the heart of the political ethic elaborated in Deleuze and Guattari‘s mature work. for example by becominganimal. pure flows. In A Thousand Plateaus. as something that never ACTUALLY exists but nevertheless informs the way we understand particular deterritorializations.‖42 This is a paradoxical form of becoming in which everything changes whil e appearing to remain the same. deterritorialisation is always ―inseparable from correlative reterritorialisations. p. order of things. they proceed to describe a series of more specific ways in which something or someone becomes other. with nothing ever stratifying them.‖41 In another series. deterritorialisation. ―all becom ings begin with and pass through becoming-woman. This is like how the 1AC uses ethics – we recognize that a transcendent and universal scheme of capital-E Ethics is impossible.‖ 44 Reterritorialisation does not mean returning to the original territory. i.43 A territory can be a system of any kind — conceptual.West debate 11-12 21 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches AT: Deleuze and Guattari – Ethics (1/2) ( ) The concept of deterritorialization is much like the way the 1AC uses the concept of ethics and liberation from Guanatamo– Deleuze and Guattari conceive of an absolute deterritorialization.world. in their application to particular historical phenomena. It is positive when the line of flight prevails over secondary reterritorialisations. This is a becoming in which an individual is reduced to an abstract line that can connect or conjugate with other lines thereby making ―a world that can overlay the first one. which refers to the manner in which elements of a given majority deviate from the standard or norm. which enclose or obstruct its line of flight. one form of becoming stands apart as the pure form or ‗immanent end‘ of all becomings. 2003. Each deterritorialization – for example.‘ In addition. At one point.‘ what they mean is that the practice of creating concepts serves the overriding aim of opening up the possibility of transforming existing forms of thought and practice . willy-nilly.49 Concepts such as becoming. they argue. they insist that it is the combination of absolute with relative deterritorialisation that ―carries the movements of relative deterritorialisation to infinity.West debate 11-12 22 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches deterritorialisation. I suggested earlier that what motivates deconstruction CONTINUED – NO TEXT REMOVED… AT: Deleuze and Guattari – Ethics (2/2) PATTON CONTINUED – NO TEXT REMOVED… in its aporetic analysis of concepts is the relation which emerges in each case to something beyond. For Deleuze and Guattari.‖47 In their redescription of the nature and task of philosophy in What is Philosophy? Deleuze and Guattari transpose this commitment to an open future onto philosophy itself.‖45 At this point we can see how Deleuze and Guattari‘s practice of philosophy shares a common political orientation with that of Derrida. Philosophy . rights. For this reason. there is a sense in which their ethic of deterritorialisation is oriented towards the permanent possibility of something other. when Deleuze and Guattari suggest that ‗the concept is the contour.‖48 To think philosophically about the present is to diagnose the processes whose outcome is not yet determined. but it is counter-effectuated whenever it is abstracted from states of affairs so as to isolate its concept. It is to countereffectuate the pure events that animate the everyday events and processes unfolding around us. the configuration. To describe current events in terms of such philosophical concepts is to relate them back to the pure event or problem of which they appear only as one particular determination or solution . the constellation of an event to come. capture and deterrritorialisation are not meant as substitutes for existing concepts of justice. identical to the earth itself. as the manner in which philosophy engages with the present. is a vector of deterritorialisation to the extent that it creates concepts that break with established or self-evident forms of understanding and description.‘ This is apparent in the role played by the concept of absolute deterritorialisation in the ontology of assemblages outlined in A Thousand Plateaus: absolute deterritorialisation is the underlying principle. by transforming them. In other words. which ensures that the future will be different from the past. too. towards a perpetually open future or ‗to -come. They call the process of inventing concepts which extract new events from existing states of affairs the ‗counter-effectuation‘ of those concepts: ―the event is actualised or effectuated whenever it is inserted. new rights or novel forms of democracy and freedom. . . pushes them to the absolute. into a state of affairs. Herein lies the utopian vocation of philosophy . For this reason. we attain and express the sense of what is happening. . In counter-effectuating the event. thereby dissociating the pure event from the particular determinate form in which it has been actualised and pointing to the possibility of other determinate actualisations. Deleuze and Guattari describe it as ―the deeper movement . which they redefine even as they admit this is not a good concept. even though in itself it is an impossible or ‗unliveable‘ state.‖46 It is like a reserve of freedom or movement in reality that is activated whenever relative deterritorialisation takes place . democracy or freedom. but they only serve the pragmatic goal of philosophy to the extent that they assist in bringing about another justice. absolute deterritorialisation is the condition of poss ibility of real change or transformation within a given territory or system. this is because the speculative elimination of transcendence does not necessarily lead to its practical elimination. while for Deleuze. 2003. It seems to me that it is at this level — at the practical and not merely speculative level — that the relative merits of philosophies of immanence and transcendence need to be assessed and decided. transcendence is what prevents ethics. For Deleuze. it is perhaps the difference between Deleuze and Levinas that presents this contrast most starkly. For Levinas. p. But more importantly. it is because it is at the ethical level that the difference between transcendence and immanence appears in its most acute and consequential form. the difference between the two philosophical trajectories of immanence and transcendence must be assessed and evaluated. ethics precedes ontology because it is derived from an element of transcendence (the Other) that is necessarily ‗otherwise‘ than Being (and hence privileges concepts like absolute responsibility and duty). Smith. 63 In short. ethics is ontology because it is derived from the immanent relation of beings to Being at the level of their existence (and hence privileges concepts such as puissance (power or capacity) and affectivity). ethics is derived from transcendence. Between Deleuze and Derrida.24 . In part. for Levinas. as one can see already in Kant.West debate 11-12 23 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Assess Transcendence/Immanence Distinctions Ethically ( ) You should evaluate all the arguments about transcendence or immanence in this debate from an ethico-political perspective – that‘s the most important site for combining the transcendent and the immanent Daniel W. but in the ethico-political domain. On this score. Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University. Put summarily. This is why Spinoza entitled his pure ontology an Ethics rather than an Ontology: his speculative propositions concerning the univocity of Being can only be judged practically at the level of the ethics they envelop or imply. not simply in the theoretical domain. Our politics founded on an ethic of responsibility to the Other reinvigorates philosophy Jeffrey Atteberry. thought encounters the unthought at every moment in which it can be said to truly think. ―the form of recognition has never sanctioned anything but the recognizable and the recognized. and the particular one it confronts at a given time is an accidental matter. however. which is to say through the lens of power. in other words— switching back to Derrida‘s discourse— the democracy to come shall only be possible once thought has opened itself to an ―other possibility of the possibility . The politics of recognition. between that which is not seen and that which sees. Everywhere that Derrida touches on phenomenology. The philosopher needs a new pair of glasses.‖ 57 The politics of recognition never leaves room for anything other than that which is visible or capable of becoming visible. secretly opens the zone of politics itself. one could say. And this powerful lens. as that impossibility of thinking which doubles or hollows out the outside. Vol. only in the guise of labour-power. politics may be said to take place there where the invisible becomes visible. 214-16 This brief detour through Hardt and Negri leads me to the political dimensions of Deleuze and Derrida‘s philosophical work insofar as it entails a reconfiguration of the ontology of power. a difference ‗more profound‘ than a contradiction. to quote Deleuze. In the Grundrisse.‖61 This power of a new politics entails a revolution in the philosophical thought of power. Politics. a rearticulation of the logic of dunamis. respectively. perhaps more than any others. Marx tells us that capital abstracts living labour from its singularity and posits labour as its negation. p. as Derrida and Deleuze have taught us. As we know. ―the power of a new politics which would overturn the image of thought. In slightly more transparent and conventional terms. Critical Horizons. it seems to me that Derrida slyly introduces the word ‗secret‘ here precisely because it is under the sign of ‗immanence‘ and ‗secret‘.‘ In short. all philosophy is immanently political. however. In Difference and Repetition. 2003. it is precisely at this point where thought encounters its limit that philosophy enters into a zone or a territory that we could qualify as ‗political‘. he has already entered into the domain of politics. then. Living labour becomes visible to capital. Marx says that capital ―confronts the totality of all labours dunamei. the political struggle is always the struggle for recognition. Through this lens. Moreover. and yet all power acts in secret. Having both started from what Derrida calls this shared thesis of ―a difference that is not reducible to dialectical opposition. . and the image of thought which sustains it.‖59 In brief. in exceeding all possible play of visibility and invisibility.‖60 Or. capital perceives living labour only through an Aristotelian lens of the dunamis. Both Derrida and Deleuze. we should recall Deleuze‘s statement that ―the unthought is not external to thought but lies at its very heart.‖ both Derrida and Deleuze have moved towards a reform of power. forms an integral part of the apparatus of capture known as ontology. have felt the need for philosophy to approach that which it cannot think through another thought of difference . No. Deleuze had already isolated the ‗model of recognition‘ as the ‗dogmatic image of thought‘ from which thought must be liberated if thought were to begin to think.58 Nothing is more terrifying to the exercise of power than secrecy.West debate 11-12 24 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches AT: Politics Bad ( ) All philosophy is bound to the realm of the political whether it wants to be or not – the argument that philosophy should retreat from the political is nothing more than a symptom of philosophy needing a new pair of glasses through which to view the world. With my far too cursory discussion of Marx. that Deleuze and Derrida think thought‘s essential relation to that which it cannot think. it appears to capital. Derrida has most visibly undertaken this work under the sign of the ‗impossible‘ whereas a similar labour can be found in Deleuze‘s engagement with Spinoza.56 As De leuze says. that this political zone would be a region separable from philosophy. Only in rethinking its relationship to the other of thought will philosophy inaugurate . philosophy relates to that which it cannot think by reducing the difference between thought and its outside to that of a contradiction. leaves no room for what Derrida calls ‗the absolute secret‘ that.‖55 In other words. consists in the infinite series of negotiations that take place between the visible and the invisible. In this sense. Philosophy needs a new prescription. Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of California-Irvine. In the barest structural terms. 4. there is also nothing more politically neutralising and dangerous than political recognition itself. Lest we imagine. I have merely wished to unfold Derrida‘s statement that Deleuze would have said something that ‗still remains secret to us‘ with his insistence on the word ‗immanence. And here is the political force of their thinking which remains for us to unfold in the future. 2. comes at a time when agendas that the very idea of politics as a source of public ideals and visions. poverty. Los Angeles.‖ Deleuze and Politics pg 71. By diluting the life of common involvements. Theory and Society. technological displacement of workers) cannot be understood outside the larger social and global context of internationalized markets. The shrinkage of politics hardly means that corporate colonization will be less of a reality.proxy. As this ideological quagmire worsens. December. Number 6. Far from it: the space abdicated by a broad citizenry. could be the prelude to a powerful Leviathan designed to impose order in the face of disunity and atomized retreat. be reduced to impotence. urban decay. the widespread retreat from politics. Many ideological currents scrutinized here – localism. This last point demands further elaboration. and civic violence that have been so much a part of the American landscape. The false sense of empowerment that comes with such mesmerizing impulses is accompanied by a loss of public engagement. b) Extinction Boggs. an erosion of citizenship and a depleted capacity of individuals in large groups to work for social change. we negate the fate of the world hangs in the balance. the state would likely become what Hobbes anticipated: the embodiment of those universal. http://www. it is the vagaries of political power that will continue to decide the fate of human societies. they remain very much alive in the 1990s.emory. can in fact be filled by authoritarian and reactionary elites – an already familiar dynamic in many unyielding truth is that. Despite their different outlooks and trajectories. ―The great retreat: Decline of the public sphere in late twentieth-century America‖.com. well-informed and ready to participate at many levels. Deep Ecology – intersect with and reinforce each other. In this way the eclipse of politics might set the stage for a reassertion of politics in more virulent guise – or it might help further rationalize the existing power structure. But that does not mean that political analysis or even a political perspective can be found in a strictly defined way in his work. dml) The political dimension of Deleuze’s work is. French philosopher. And such problems (ecological crisis. The fragmentation and chaos of a Hobbesian world. therefore. 97 (Carl. finance. spread of infectious diseases. they all share one thing in common: a depoliticized expression of struggles to combat and overcome alienation. 74 In the meantime. While these currents have deep origins in popular movements of the 1960s and 1970s. or that gigantic state and military structures will lose their hold over people’s lives. ignore or sidestep these global realities will.springerlink. Paradoxically. as that which never ceases to haunt philosophy and also to escape it. And the paradoxical feeling that his thought does have a specifically political contemporary relevance perhaps stems from the fact that what was in the process of disappearing when he wrote his work is. often inspired by localist sentiment. post-modernism. more than ever. precisely. Wolin refers to the increasing sublimation and dilution of politics. not very far removed from the rampant individualism. Volume 26.edu/content/m7254768m63h16r0/fulltext. real. National University. even lesser-developed countries.library. that social hierarchies will somehow disappear. metaphysics.West debate 11-12 25 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Cede the Political a) Even if a political strategy can form from the alt its immediate adoption destroys the chance for politics to occur Garo 8 (Isabelle. and communications. 75 . collective interests that had vanished from civil society. the very idea of politics dissolves and is redefined. The as the ethos of anti-politics becomes more compelling and even fashionable in the United States. In either case. in the process of re-emerging today: in both cases a figure becomes blurred and persists at the same time. In his commentary on the state of citizenship today. spontaneism.pdf) The decline of the public sphere in late twentieth-century America poses a series of great dilemmas and challenges. social Darwinism. ―Molecular Revolutions: The Paradox of Politics in the Work of Gilles Deleuze. urgent problems that are destroying the fabric of American society will go unsolved – perhaps even unrecognized – only to fester more ominously in the future. as larger numbers of people turn away from public concerns toward private ones. experiment with the opportunities it offers. You don't reach the BwO. the worst that can happen is if you throw the strata is demented or suicidal collapse. even situations. crossing thresholds). becoming-molecular. in fact. continue: a whole "diagram. becoming-animal. philosophers and rhizomes. For the BwO is all of that: necessarily a Place. or what remains of me. or one produces it more or less. then descend from the strata to the deeper assemblage within which we are held. have a small plot of new land at all times. It is only there that the BwO reveals itself for what it is: connection of desires. gently tip the assemblage. If you free it with too violent an action." and then gradually to give up interpretation. for it is not "my" body without organs. Mimic the strata." as opposed to still signifying and subjective programs. . or even dragged toward catastrophe. and its plane of consistency. try out continuums of intensities segment by segment." already a difficult operation. plants. tools.organized.West debate 11-12 26 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Perm Perm do both – it’s key – the alt radically throws away State-based politics which always fails and can only stifle the chance for change to actually occur Deleuze and Guattari 80 (Gilles and Felix. subjected-. when things. Staying stratified-. force you to. necessarily a Collectivity (assembling elements. find an advantageous place on it. causing conjugated flows to pass and escape and bringing forth continuous intensities for a BwO. conjugate. things. This is how it should be done: Lodge yourself on a stratum. by wildly destratifying. ready when needed to be plugged into other collective machines. produce flow conjunctions here and there. if only to turn them against their own systems when the circumstances demand it. continuum of intensities. then to find "allies. persons. We are in a social formation. That is why we encountered the paradox of those emptied and dreary bodies at the very beginning: they had emptied themselves of their organs instead of looking for the point at which they could patiently and momentarily dismantle the organization of the organs we call the organism. unalterable and changing in form. powers. conjunction of flows. then instead of drawing the plane you will be killed. and fragments of all of these. experience them. find potential movements of deterritorializations. intensities do not pass or are blocked. animals. It is through a meticulous relation with the strata that one succeeds in freeing lines of flight. people. and you have to keep small supplies of significance and subjectification. first see how it is stratified for us and in us and at the place where we are. to construct flow by flow and segment by segment lines of experimentation. You have constructed your own little machine. instead the "me" (moi) is on it. making it pass over to the side of the plane of consistency. This is because the BwO is always swinging between the surfaces that stratify it and the plane that sets it free. A Thousand Plateaus pg 160-161. but nothing is produced on it. plunged into a black hole. several ways of botching the BwO: either one fails to produce it.is not the worst that can happen. which brings them down on us heavier then ever. Castaneda describes a long process of experimentation (it makes little difference whether it is with peyote or other things): let us recall for the moment how the Indian forces him first to find a "place. and you have to keep small rations of subjectivity in sufficient quantity to enable you to respond to the dominant reality. etc. dml) You have to keep enough of the organism for it to reform each dawn. Connect. signified. There are. if you blow apart the strata without taking precautions. possible lines of flight. necessarily a Plane. With enough intensity of effort. Feeling so isolated.<21> Yet. Deleuze and Guattari never escaped from this fundamental contradiction of revolutionary politics. Deleuzoguattarian anarcho-communism even included the censorship of music. While the nomadic fantasies of A Thousand Plateaus were being composed. one revolutionary movement actually did carry out Deleuze and Guattari's dream of destroying the city. the two philosophers never really abandoned Stalinism in theory. language and psychoanalysis. the 'deterritorialisation' of urban society was the solution to the contradiction between participatory democracy and revolutionary elitism haunting the New Left. During the 1917 Russian revolution. anarcho-communism was not the 'end of history': the material result of a long epoch of social development. Brainwashed by the semiotic 'machinic assemblages' of the family. anyone could overcome their hierarchical brainwashing to become a fully-liberated individual: the holy fool. the two philosophers believed that only the vanguard of intellectuals had the right to lead the masses . Lenin had advocated direct democracy while simultaneously instituting the totalitarian rule of the Bolsheviks.without any formal consent from them .html) Techno-nomad TJs are attracted by the uncompromising theoretical radicalism expressed by Deleuze and Guattari. According to Deleuze and Guattari. the Khmer Rouge overthrew an oppressive regime installed by the Americans. Barbrook 98 (Richard. the revolution would create mass participation in running society. http://amsterdam. coordinator of the Hypermedia Research Centre at the University of Westminster. By adopting an Althusserian analysis. media. this elitist theory was updated through the addition of Lacanian structuralism by Louis Althusser. As in other social movements. Just like their Stalinist elders. The absence of the Leninist party did not prevent the continuation of vanguard politics . they believed that society could only be changed by a revolutionary vanguard composed of themselves and their comrades.html) Deleuze and Guattari enthusiastically joined this attack against the concept of historical progress. Because of their very different life experiences. as the rappers who wanted to make a show for Frequence Libre discovered.<15> In Deleuze and Guattari's writings. If the centralised city could be broken down into 'molecular rhizomes'. direct democracy and the gift economy would reappear as people formed themselves into small nomadic bands. However.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9808/msg00091. On the contrary.<17> For Deleuze and Guattari. This elitism was no accident. Robespierre had argued that the democratic republic could only be created by a revolutionary dictatorship. Fr=E9quence Libre was dominated by a few charismatic individuals: the holy prophets of the anarcho-communist revolution. Above all. As their 'free radio' experience showed. 8/27. Led by a vanguard of Paris-educated intellectuals. However. the regime embarked on ever more .<14> The New Left militants were reliving an old problem in a new form. this rhetoric of unlimited freedom contained a deep desire for ideological control by the New Left vanguard. Pol Pot and his organisation instead tried to construct a rural utopia. First. Back in the 1790s. Unwilling to connect abstract theory with its practical application. This is why many young radicals simultaneously believed in two contradictory concepts. the liberation of desire from semiotic oppression was a perpetual promise: an ethical stance which could be equally lived by nomads in ancient times or social movements in the present. Second. the chief philosopher of the French Communist party. Rejecting the 'grand narrative' of economic progress.nettime. Despite rejecting its 'wooden language'. Barbrook 98 (Richard. far from succumbing to an outside conspiracy. most people supposedly desired fascism rather than anarcho-communism. Deleuze and Guattari were tacitly privileging their own role as intellectuals: the producers of semiotic systems.nettime.<16> During the sixties. This authoritarian methodology clearly contradicted the libertarian rhetoric within Deleuze and Guattari's writings. when the economy subsequently imploded. Frequence Libre imploded because of the particular New Left politics which inspired A Thousand Plateaus and the other sacred texts. this deep authoritarianism found its theoretical expression in their methodology: semiotic structuralism. For them. they retained its most fundamental premise: the minds of the majority of the population were controlled by bourgeois ideologies.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9808/msg00091. the revolution could only be organised by a committed minority. many young people in the sixties experienced a pronounced 'generation gap' between themselves and their parents.West debate 11-12 27 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches 2AC: Authoritarianism Turn Deleuze and Guattari’s alternative fails and leads to authoritarian oppression. Yet.in the fight against capitalism. http://amsterdam. coordinator of the Hypermedia Research Centre at the University of Westminster. Deleuze and Guattari’s radical liberation plays out as a historical disaster—Pol Pot is an example of the alternative. the techno-nomads cannot see how Deleuze and Guattari's celebration of direct democracy was simultaneously a justification for intellectual elitism. 8/27. Althusser had explained why only a revolutionary minority supported the New Left. as the experience of Frequence Libre proved. The 'line of flight' from Stalin had led to Pol Pot. coordinator of the Hypermedia Research Centre at the University of Westminster. Following this elitist custom.could never openly support the free market fundamentalism of the Californian ideology. Once again. the avant-garde supported totalitarian tendancies within the Left. Yet. radical intellectuals have adopted dissident politics. http://amsterdam. In both the Californian ideology and Deleuzoguattarian discourse. avant-garde intellectuals fantasised about themselves as an artistic aristocracy ruling the philistine masses. 8/27. Nowadays. as TJs cut 'n' mix. the revolution is the ethical-aesthetic illumination of a minority rather than the social liberation of all people.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9808/msg00091. . The European avant-garde - and its imitators . the distinctions between right and left libertarianism are blurring.html) This elitism is a hallowed tradition of the European avant-garde. Deleuze and Guattari had claimed that the destruction of the city would create direct democracy and libidinal ecstasy. the Deleuzoguattarians believe that this new elite consists of cool TJs and hip artists who release subversive 'assemblages of enunciation' into the Net. the Californian ideologues claim that a heroic minority of cyber-entrepreneurs is emerging from the fierce competition of the electronic marketplace. For decades. Despite their revolutionary rhetoric. the application of such anti-modernism in practice resulted in tyranny and genocide. On the one hand. The alternative is elitist and bound to end in a totalitarian state Barbrook 98 (Richard. this dream of an artistic aristocracy sometimes evolved into fascism. the Deleuzoguattarians champion nomadic minorities from the 'non-guaranteed' social movements against the stupified majority from the 'guaranteed'sector. aesthetics and morals to separate themselves from the majority of 'herd animals' whose minds were controlled by bourgeois ideologies. primitivism and futurism are combined to produce the apotheosis of individualism: the cyborg Nietzschean Superman. Earlier in this century.nettime. Instead. On the other hand. More often. cultural elitism can easily turn into implicit sympathy with neo-liberalism.West debate 11-12 28 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches ferocious purges until the country was rescued by an invasion by neighbouring Vietnam. but in kinds of minority questions—linguistic. dml) All this constitutes what can be called a right to desire. in every place. Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic and mother of three. ―front to front. ―Toward Freedom. It is not surprising that all ethnic. or youth—resurge not only as archaisms. back to front…. and this is exactly why it is done. back to back. regional. up-to-date revolutionary form which call once more into question in an entirely immanent manner both the global economy of the machine and the assemblages of national States. Everything is played in uncertain games. insofar as it is asked. are combined and trace out a plane of consistence which undermines the plane of organization of the world and the States? For. to impede the question of the revolutionary-becoming of people. Instead of gambling on the eternal impossibility of the revolution and on the fascist return of a war-machine in general.‖ The question of the revolution is a bad question because. and that all kinds of mutating. living machines conduct wars. at every level. the world and its States are no more masters of their plan than revolutionaries are condemned to the deformation of theirs. .West debate 11-12 29 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches 2AC: Understanding Turn Turn – their type of revolution is committed precisely to stop the becoming-other of the disadvantaged – they can never understand the situation of the people they try to liberate – their author Deleuze 93 (Gilles. why not think that a new type of revolution is in the course of becoming possible. there are so many people who do not become. once again. about sex.‖ The Deleuze Reader pg 255-56. " ..West debate 11-12 30 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Alt Doesn’t Assume Technology Deleuze and Guattari’s passion for anarcho-communism fails – the technology they celebrate will be controlled by elites. anarcho-communism exists in a compromised form on the Net. Far from having any belief in the revolutionary ideals of May '68. Bored with the emotional emptiness of post-modernism. as Net access grows. Because the dogmatic communism of Deleuze and Guattari has dated badly. the techno-nomads are entranced by the uncompromising fervour of Deleuze and Guattari. Contrary to the ethical-aesthetic vision of the New Left.nettime. There could be no compromise between the authenticity of the potlatch and the alienation of the market. Within the mixed economy of the Net. State intervention will be needed to ensure everyone can access the Net. software and telecommunications. The profits of commercial net companies depend upon increasing numbers of people participating within the hi-tech gift economy. the overwhelming majority of people participate within the hi-tech gift economy for entirely pragmatic reasons.. including lobbying their political representatives. The free circulation of information between users relies upon the capitalist production of computers. However. coordinator of the Hypermedia Research Centre at the University of Westminster. However.html) The New Left anticipated the emergence of the hi-tech gift economy. the development of products for the shareware Linux operating system has become a top priority. the antinomies of the avant-garde can no longer be avoided. Netscape is now trying to realise the opportunities opened up by such interdependence. The theory of the artistic aristocracy cannot be based on the everyday activities of 'herd animals'. Barbrook 98 (Richard. The purity of the digital DIY culture is also compromised by the political system. 8/27. However. the gift economy and the commercial sector can only expand through mutual collaboration within cyberspace. their disciples instead emphasise their uncompromising anarchism. People could collaborate with each other without needing either markets or states. Lacking the resources to beat its monopolistic rival. Many people use the Net for political purposes. Under threat from Microsoft. Anarcho-communism is now sponsored by corporate capital. In the late nineties. Fr=E9quence Libre preserved its principles to the point of bankruptcy. The ethical-aesthetic committment of anarcho-communism can only be lived by the artistic aristocracy.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9808/msg00091. the boundaries between the different methods of working are not morally precise. more and more ordinary people are circulating free information across the Net. the New Left had a purist vision of DIY culture. The ideological passion of anarcho-communism is dulled by the banality of giving gifts within cyberspace. Above all. the state isn't just the potential censor and regulator of the Net. The cult of Deleuze and Guattari is threatened by the miscegenation of the hi-tech gift economy with the private and public sectors. Anarchocommunism symbolised moral integrity: the romance of artistic 'delirium' undermining the 'machinic assemblages' of bourgeois conformity. However. as shown by Frequence Libre. the rhetoric of mass participation often hides the rule of the enlightened few. digital anarchocommunism is being built by hackers like Eric Raymond: "a self-described neo-pagan [right-wing] libertarian who enjoys shooting semi-automatic weapons. http://amsterdam. Yet. means that he makes them function as yet another expression of the becoming of being. because it is. However.26 But he does not answer them. philosophy. requires establishes points along lines—otherwise. "We will not ask therefore what is the sense of the event: the event is sense itself" (LS 22). if only temporarily? This is not just a rhetorical. In Deleuze's philosophy. But what is the epistemological price to pay for thinking along the infinite lines of Deleuze's a third-person observer who draws distinctions and smooth ontology instead of reflecting upon finite points whose function is to arrest this movement. Issue 4. but also a pragmatic question with actual consequences attached to it. and the translator of Boris Groys' Under Suspicion: A Phenomenology of the Media (forthcoming 2011. one always returns to this problem. beyond human control. Biologists and sociologists in particular would ask: who or what is it that generates concepts in the first place—if not a living organism with a highly developed nervous system and a big brain? They would also ask: what exactly is the concrete thing or scientific process that corresponds to "whiteness" or "the sensible" as such? One can hardly argue that "whiteness in itself" is a self-organizing. 2003).. so we may begin to think and express every thing in relation to everything else. "whiteness in itself" does not exist. Deleuze. becoming minor. Deleuze's sense of sense is unscientific. Deleuze essentially treats epistemological questions like he treats everything else: he ontologizes them. too. This. Again. ―Epistemological Reflections on Minor Points in Deleuze‖. To do so. things make no sense to us. We may begin to sketch a preliminary answer by looking at some of theepistemological effects of Deleuze's thought. etc). and intellectual history and is currently completing a book project on The Aesthetics of New Media. of course. dml) The same is true of epistemology. he either rejected them as "common sense" or retreated into quasi-religious mysticism: "At the heart of the logic of sense. if not entirely. whenever he confronted questions about agency and third-person observation. is why Deleuze calls upon human becoming (becoming animal. un-observable. autopoietic process similar to what sustains living organisms or social structures. Theory and Event Volume 13. He has also published numerous essays on culture. this immaculate conception. was well aware of this epistemological tension between his vitalist philosophy and modern science. to secure our footing along the way.West debate 11-12 31 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Alt Fails Deleuze’s alt is epistemologically bankrupt and ensures the continuation of material oppression – also scientists prove he is wrong Strathausen 10 (Carsten Strathausen is Associate Professor of German and English at the University of Missouri. Carsten is the editor of A Leftist Ontology (University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze literally lets epistemological questions "be"—which. It. . this is the reason why DeLanda disregards sense in favor of isomorphism. by definition. of course. using a series of theses as steppingstones. 2009). being the passage from sterility to genesis" (LS 97). It only exists virtually in the sense of a self-referential concept that expresses (the sense of) its own object. meaning that most scientists today would undoubtedly reject his understanding of self-referential concepts as a non-sensical idea. the event of sense becomes inexplicable and unforeseeable—a mystery largely. Scientifically speaking. we must work our way back from the virtual being of paradox to the actual being of individuals. so to speak. His first book was The Look of Things: Poetry and Vision around 1900 (University of North Carolina Press. Columbia University Press). of course. the stupid-critical underground is the curved space in which this opposition turns back on itself. 95 (Professor of English at Pomona. plateaus and deterritorializations. . delirious. in the sort of dialectical operation Deleuze most despised. lines of flight. Nomadology and rhizomatics conceive such a "space" (if one only had the proverbial nickel for every time that word is used as a critical metaphor.. Project MUSE) Intellectual economics guarantees that even the most powerful and challenging work cannot protect itself from the order of fashion. but one can always pretend otherwise). The work of Deleuze and Guattari is evidence that. this very narcissistic wish to see oneself projected past the frontier into new spaces. To pursue nomadology or rhizomatics as such is already to have lost the game. are at one and the same time theoretical-political devices of the highest critical order and merely fantasmatic. In the strictest sense. not as a fixed site determined strictly by its relation or opposition to some more or less hegemonic formation. any given work from the stupid underground's critical apparatus is liable to be tricked out with smooth spaces. stupid philosophy. the stupid underground would be mapped not as a margin surrounding a fixed point. Claudel's recuperation of him as a proper Catholic). planes of consistency. of infinite fractal lines occupying finite social space. Paul. whatever Deleuze and Guattari intended for him. becoming-commodity. often retrievable by one or another techno-metaphorical zoning (e. of multiple simultaneous accesses and exits. By now. The problem is in part that rhizomes. that abandons one to this economy. It is this very fantasy. but as an intensive. Such instant. to a position opposite the State. n-dimensional intersection of rhizomatic plateaus. It is perhaps true that Deleuze and Guattari did not adequately protect their thought from this dialectical reconfiguration (one is reminded of Breton's indictment against Rimbaud for not having prevented. entirely reterritorialized in advance. smooth spaces.g. in real time.1s. ―Stupid Undergrounds. he is reduced to being a romantic outlaw.‖ PostModern Culture 5:3. becoming-ruin. that seals these spaces within an order of critical fantasy that has long since been overdeveloped. indeed retroactive ruins. and thus perhaps an instance of the all-too-proper blurring of the distinction between criticism and fantasy. strewn about like tattoos on the stupid body without organs. And the rhizome is becoming just another stupid subterranean figure.West debate 11-12 32 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Nomad Alt Fails Alternative fails—treating the nomad as a complete outsider is narcissistic and impossible. etc. In Deleuze-speak. war-machines. Nomad thought is prosthetic. Mann. is not only the topological verisimilitude of the model but the fantastic possibility of nonlinear passage. Nothing is more crucial to philosophy than escaping the dialectic and no project is more hopeless. colloidal suspension. n . Becoming-fashion. the experience of virtual exhilaration in modalities already mapped and dominated by nomad. in advance. but no vigilance would have sufficed in any case. narcissistic models for writing. are the virtual landscape of the stupid underground. "cyberspace"). virtual models and maps close off the very exits they indicate.. rhizomatic capital (the political philosophy of the stupid underground: capital is more radical than any of its critiques. without the slightest reflection on what might be involved in rendering the conceptual in spatial terms) as a liquid. What is at stake. BwOs. The exits and lines of flight pursued by Deleuze and Guattari are being shut down and rerouted by the very people who would take them most seriously. however. The nomad is already succumbing to the rousseauism and orientalism that were always invested in his figure. West debate 11-12 33 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches A2 DG affs . in other words. this radical dissymmetry has been covered up by being coded as devalorized difference. For Deleuze.3] In so far as the male/female dichotomy has become the prototype of Western individualism. women would be revolutionary if. As an artist put it recently: ‗ironic mimesis is not a critique. rather. This idea is expressed in figurations like: ‗polysexuality‘. Deleuze proceeds as if there were clear equivalence in the speaking positions of the two sexes: he misses and consequently fails to take into account the central point of the feminist assertion of sexual difference. to put it differently. 1988). Such a dissymmetry functions as a re-vindication of radical difference at the psychic.West debate 11-12 34 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches 1NC – Link Deleuze and Guattari bury sexual difference in order to construct a metaphysical theory of change—the price they pay for being able to account for revolution in the abstract is the assumption of the sameness of speech between Man and Woman. dissolving ‗woman‘ into the forces which structure her. not dialectical. teleological sense of time. which cannot be dissolved easily without causing psychic and social damage. Deleuze‘s critique of dualism acts as if sexual differentiation or gender dichotomies did not have as the most immediate and pernicious consequence the positioning of the two sexes in an asymmetrical power relationship to each other. it is the mentality of a slave‘ (ICA Inventory. they contributed both socially and theoretically to constructing a non-Oedipal woman. Culture. and in a constant flux. multiple. 1991) that one cannot deconstruct a subjectivity one has never been fully granted control over. History as we have come to know it is the master discourse of the white. Or. not fixed. Such an alleged symmetry between the sexes is challenged most radically by Irigaray. The nomadic or intensive horizon is a subjectivity ‗beyond gender‘ in the sense of being dispersed. Clearly. 1999). which results in attributing the same psychic. or rather un-Oedipal subject of becoming. the process of decolonizing the subject from this dualistic grip requires as its starting point the dissolution of all sexed identities based on the gendered opposition. This position is for me problematic theoretically. The generalized becoming-woman is the necessary starting-point for the deconstruction of phallogocentric identities precisely because sexual dualism and its corollary – the positioning of Woman as figure of Otherness – are constitutive of Western thought. which is both one of many possible becomings. In other words. can be revolutionary subjects only to the extent that they develop a consciousness that is not specifically feminine. More significant still for feminist theory is Deleuze‘s next step: Deleuze‘s ultimate aim with respect to sexual difference is to move towards its final overcoming. feminists have a slave-morality. A theory of difference which does not acknowledge sexual difference leaves me as a feminist critic in a state of sceptical perplexity. He gets stuck on a fundamental ambivalence about the position of sexual difference within his own project of ‗becoming-woman‘. property-owning subject. structural difference. This amounts to perpetuating reactive. one cannot diffuse a sexuality which has historically been defined as dark and mysterious. hegemonic. Braidotti 2003 [Rosi. Ultimately. . an exacerbation of the sexual dichotomy. to whic h Deleuze‘s de-Phallic style actively contributes. conceptual but also at the political level. I concluded that Deleuze becomes caught in the contradiction of postulating a general ‗becoming woman‘ which fails to take into account the historical and epistemological specificity of the female feminist standpoint. I have argued (Braidotti. not dualistic. Sexuality being the dominant discourse of power in the West. In this framework. one must first have gained the right to speak as one. conceptual and deconstructive itineraries to both. and the ability to posit an ontological difference between sexes. not binary. 1981. Society 20. are constitutive of Western subject-positions. the historically specific experiences of women. masculine. Thus. by freeing the multiple possibilities of desire meant as positivity and affirmation. In order to announce the death of the subject. the ‗molecular woman‘ and the ‗bodies without organs‘. the becoming-woman is necessarily the starting point in so far as the over-emphasis on masculine sexuality. This perspective is determined by Irigaray‘s acute sense of the historicity of women‘s struggles. is explicitly opposed to what Deleuze constructs as the feminist configuration of a new universal based on extreme sexualization or. ―Becoming Woman: Or Sexual Difference Revisited. This new general configuration of the feminine as the post-. because it suggests a symmetry between the sexes. who posits his consciousness as synonymous with a universal knowing subject and markets a series of ‗others‘ as his ontological props. Women. which it claims to have repossessed dialectically. ‗becoming-woman‘ triggers off the deconstruction of Phallic identity through a set of deconstructive steps that retrace backwards different stages of the historical construction of this and other differences so as to undo them. as Foucault taught us (Foucault. molar or majority-thinking: in Nietzsche‘s scale of values. 1979. for whom sexual difference is a founding.‖ Theory. sexual polarizations and gender-dichotomy are rejected as the prototype of the dualistic reduction of difference to a sub-category of Being. It has been made to rest on a linear. 1986. the persistence of sexual dualism and the positioning of woman as the privileged figure of otherness. in their becoming. what Deleuze finds objectionable in feminist theory is that it perpetuates flat repetitions of dominant values or identities. namely the idea that there is no symmetry between the sexes. interconnected. Developing this insight further.1 it requires special critical analysis. this is the mode of denial. in a feminist perspective based on sexual difference. Deleuze argues for the dissolution of all identities based on the Phallus. that Deleuze does not have excellent reasons for doing so. when Deleuze contemplates the possibility of the crucial conceptual character in philosophy being a woman: ‗What might happen if woman herself becomes a philosopher? ‘ (Deleuze and Guattari. A similar naïveté about sexual difference is expressed in What is Philosophy?. even the feminine as the eternal other of this system. It is the position of ‗yes. but .West debate 11-12 35 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches and the one through which all other becomings are possible: it is both foundational and accessory. Quite to the contrary. to be taken into account whenever the otherwise politically naive question : ‗What happens when women start thinking for themselves?‘ actually gets asked. women have been raising exactly this question. therefore. he proceeds rather in a contradictory manner about it. is a systematic deconstruction of the institution of sexuality and sexed identities such as our culture has constructed them. as stated earlier. which expresses a structural and systematic indecision. . Moreover. the critique of psychoanalytic discourse. I do not mean to suggest. Nevertheless. Deleuze is not consistent in thinking through the problem of the ‗becoming -woman‘. May I be so bold as to venture that only a nonwoman would contemplate this possibility as a great novelty. They have enacted a collectively driven repossession of the subject-positions by and for politically motivated women. but .‘. of course. originary and accidental. 1994: 71). It is. ‗I know what you mean. . which he shared with Guattari. and especially in Frenchlanguage cultures. . an unprecedented event or a catastrophe internal to the philosophical order and capable of subverting it? Since the 1970s. the problems remain. which I see as a real symbolic capital of female feminist intelligence. .‘. . no wonder that in his theory of the becoming-minority. I would expect this rather large corpus of work and experience. that is to say of wilful disavowal. corporeal threshold it has crossed to come to life. mouth. Or so the argument went. Still dirty with blood and mucus. nose. Carnal threshold. Mary Douglas reminds us. saliva. the abject physically inhabits those areas of the body which will become erotogenic zones. the risk ."one of those violent. so smiling and. It was unheimlich. Because they are secretions. Because it was being used for commercial ends.nay. for mercenary purposes.West debate 11-12 36 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches 1NC – Internal Link Deleuze and Guattari retreat to the metaphysics of becoming because sexual difference. dark revolts of being" (Kristeva 1982: 1) . What that image signified was birth in its "improper" physical reality. so that the traces of that body still show on its little body. genitals. yet inevitably present and forever to be kept at bay. but the spontaneous recoiling in disgust was sincere. and referring to anthropological research. Images of Damnation and Salvation in Early Modern Europe. so clean! A further criticism (perhaps not spelled out exactly in these terms. Eyes. 13). 1991: 12). where the phantasma of the great collective body of humanity. is abject. blood. a pregnant death. and. and in the focus on birth. con/fusion: elements which. It was an indecent image which exposed a secret everybody knows. which "by simply issuing forth have traversed the boundary of the body" (Douglas 1966: 121). Like abjection. for those reproachable commercial ends . "all margins are dangerous. The abject is the space between. whence it comes. the wet stickiness of the carnal threshold. especially Mary Douglas' on purity and contamination. really just born. Bono 2005 [Paola. The reasons given for it may strike one as hypocritical. the moment of birth. But then those babies are so pretty.‖ at http://arts. in the awareness of belonging to the cycle of being. the sense of continuity in death-life re-emerged. pregnancy and the pre-natal period are borderline phenomena.as the horror of not knowing the borders of the self. Forever threatened by the frailty of a boundary built on the originary void of loss and on the impossible refusal of corporeality. human being itself is the expelled and expeller: our nightmares and fantasies of bondage and freedom are inscribe on the maternal body itself. the secret of an event everybody has experienced. its face screwed up in the effort. Building upon Freud's notion of the uncanny as taboo. woman herself. expelled. where he explores and analyzes the figurations of hell in art and literature. naked and crying. While childhood and exploitation would seem to have nothing to do with those babies who appear in numberless ads for diapers and babyfood. [So that] we should expect the orifices of the body to symbolyse its especially vulnerable points". The hidden shadow of the one belonging to the many reappeared. which it left in order to be. mucus. Continuity is not a reason for hope.living matter on its way to being. as did the sense of a fatal.au/cclcs/research/papers/] A new-born baby. the nursemaid of new life. in Kristeva's term. As though in "horrendous excremental drains" (Camporesi. And here I think is a crucial point. and it marks the continual struggle of the subject to undergo a rite of passage from object-hood to agency.especially . a truth at the core of those scandalized reactions: in the concept of the sacred. which some years ago did in fact provoke scandalized reactions. However. the umbilical cord not yet cut. Mucus. Space-time which both confuses and produces one and another identity. repressed. And their secretions. showing its traces on the baby's body dirty of the con/fusion with the mother's body. marks of its passage through the physical. monash. they are a space-time of con/fusion. Thus. the archaic belief in a fertile death. Tears. obscene site of a promiscuous and chaotic carnality. urina. at the same time preparing their separation and distinction. the subject experiences in the feeling of abjection the uncertainty of its identity. at least in Italy. an uninterrupted pendulum between life and death. in the "oafish underworld" of Belli's sonnets . marginal areas.a most important and sacred moment. on . anus.edu. sperm. vagina of the mother's body. cyclical rotation. bodily co-existence (coincidence) of identities which it links in a vital and deadly relation. as Pietro Camporesi shows in The Fear of Hell. babyhood. because they are inscribed in a borderline area: between the outside and the inside of the body. uncanny in its familiarity and in its bringing to conscious attention what was and should have remained buried in the unconscious.of falling back into that space-time where it grew. menstrual blood. questioning that subject/object demarcation on which the delusive stability of the self is founded. we could recognize as belonging to the category of the abject. there has never been such an outcry in those cases.marks the female/maternal body. a primary uncanny originated in the fertility and generative power of the mother's body. Kristeva in Powers of Horror identifies abjection . Rejected.fear and desire .this vision becomes "almost a Tartarean version of birth ex-putri" (Camporesi 1991: 12. vomit. faeces. Some of you might remember this image : one of Benetton's "scandalous" ads. a vision which lasts until the 19th century. in whose womb it has grown . ―The Abjection of the Female Body: Hell as a Metaphor for Birth. Our reaction to abjection is most generally a form of disgust and demands that we purge the mother from the subjective landscape of being.he argues . most important. Borderline. but certainly this was its meaning) maintained that the ad violated again. between decomposition and rebirth (Camporesi 1991: 13-14). because it exploited childhood . in that tension and coincidence between attraction and revulsion which also . between the undefined self and other of the pre-natal dyad. in counter-Reformation Catholic culture these bodily secretions characterize the post-Tridentine hell. red. metaphorization of lack and fear so that the self can come to life again in signs (see Kristeva 1982: 38). Paola Cabibbo underlines this ―coincidence of opposing processes and notions [which] characterizes the peculiar unity of liminality.] called abjection".[which] amounts to retracing the fragile limits of the speaking being. it is not-life and not-death. from so called primitive religions to Jewish monotheism to Christianity: exclusion and taboo. confusion: abjection. abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger. for instance . dreaded hell and longed for Nirvana which in this longing is inhabited by the death drive. a condition of imperfect and improper not-being-anymore. the abject is written" .so the sacred" (Kristeva 1982: 19) is the title of a passage where she briefly looks at the modes of purification in religion.West debate 11-12 37 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches the contrary. With the interdictions against the danger of its contamination. Their condition is one of ambiguity and paradox. in the unbearable instability of the boundary between subject and object. the abject lays at the roots of the sacred. in the secretions which crossing its boundaries exceed it. where the danger and pleasure of the loss of self are intertwined.maintaining that night in which the outline of the signified vanishes and where only the imponderable affect is carried out (Kristeva 1982: 9-10). Sites of expulsion and . this limen is ambiguously connoted. Imperfect and improper like the not-yet-being of the prenatal period. Kristeva writes: We may call it a border: abjection is above all ambiguity. it engenders horror for the corrupting. orifices. which must necessarily be crossed to come into the world. in order to be. the subjects of a rite of passage "are neither living nor dead from one aspect. is according to Kristeva "the crying-out theme of suffering-horror" (Kristeva 1982: 140-41). Rituals: because the abject borders upon . which in many cultures is expressed and contained through rituals of purification. and death (Kristeva 1982: 15). And she goes on to argue that the abject is the violence of mourning for an 'object' that has always already been lost . of abjection. in literature as well the feeling of abjection often becomes embodied in the female/maternal body.signify both the maternal womb and the tomb.of incorporation. it is neither this nor that. writing becomes "a cache for suffering". drive.coincides with. on the contrary. "Outside of the sacred. But in a socially and culturally created rite of passage there is no return to the limen between the before and after of initiation.. Already signified in religions and myths. borderline sites of horror and pleasure. But also. Ambiguity. Because. and yet it is both this and that ‖ (Cabibbo 1993: 13). talking of ―the aesthetic task . threatening sensation of an incurable instability of the self. in the immemorial violence with which the body becomes separated from another body in order to be . While stressing the positive value attributed by Turner to the transitional liminal phase as a field of open potentialities. of condemnation and yearning. closest to its dawn. of signs and drives. the mother and the maternal are the privileged figure of the inextricable proximity of life and death at the centre of the symbolic construction. its linearity is shattered up to the scream of a language which resembles violence and obscenity. Abjection.she maintains. In a century marked by the process of secularization.then to suggest that in our culture the abject finds expression and containment in writing. spent in the closed.huts and tunnels. Literature can thus be seen as an exploration of the abject. Or. is the recurring. it is the radical and repeated questioning of the integrity of the subject. The womb is a liminal space. as in a rite of passage. revisited by psychoanalysis. It finds expression in the body. pulsating space of the mother's womb: suffocation and protection. [.a descent into the foundations of the symbolic construct . once the subject has been re-defined and re-demarcated in a new social and subjective space. in its hollows.on the contrary. "the narrative is what is challenged first". In the fear and desire of being overwhelmed by that lost body is a form of the feeling of abjection. coinciding "with the incandescent states of a boundary-subjectivity [. thus the same symbols . Abjection preserves what existed in the archaism of pre-objectal relationship. sin . destructive confusion of the self.] It takes the ego back to its source on the abominable limits from which.. . Analysing the liminal phase of rites of passage. the ego has broken away . transgression. and both living and dead from another.it assigns it a source in the non-ego. to the bottomless 'primacy' constituted by primal repression‖ (Kristeva 1982: 18). to use Turner's own words again. while releasing a hold. a confusion of all the customary categories" (Turner 1967: 97).the sacred. "As abjection . catabolism" and "processes of gestation and parturition" (Turner 1967: 96). abjection itself is a compromise of judgment and affect... decomposition. where life and death meet. but also traversed by a renewed need of the sacred. In the journey towards the origins. The descents into hell of Céline's and Lispector's writing are the collapsing of narration into that crying-out theme which. crevices.for example in the case of food . says Kristeva . it does not radically cut off the subject from what threatens it . Victor Turner remarks that its symbolism draws upon both "the biology of death. Northern Irish writing has often been posited as a purifying. (4) To follow this argument. this defilement. a site upon which we can read political violence. whose scattered materiality still demands our attachment even as it provokes loathing. metamorphosed. It is something rejected from which one does not part. redemptive force. (1) Yet. and the corpse's abject status is exemplary of this ambivalence: These body fluids. and much of its language colludes with. animal. no matter what its socio-historical conditions might be. etc. In the very process of excluding filth and pollution. ―Rites of defilement: abjection and the body politic in Northern Irish poetry. for Julia Kristeva. to treat it as shock and incommunicability. the dead body sustains and flagrantly denies our corporeal integrity . A thing of nothing. and the brute fact of sudden death and dispersed bodies is shaped into metanarrative. It is death infecting life. pp. seen without God and outside of science. heterogenous. and the work of catharsis exceeds religion in its ability to perform the 'rite of defilement and pollution' (Powers of Horror.. hardly and with difficulty. We can identify other tropes: Northern poetry. or to view it as contamination. and fascination. The shattering of corporeal integrity can be interpreted and accommodated within ideological critique. disgust. all literature is probably a version of the apocalypse that seems to me rooted. able to 'hold a plea' with the rage of conflict and crisis. violence is ascribed a telos. and given the abject‘s ambiguous nature. p. it beckons us and ends up engulfing us (Powers of Horror. .3-4). on the fragile border .. Tom Herron observes that much of the horror generated by the encounter between viewer/poet and brutalized dead bodies in Northern poetry is bound up 'in the abjected nature of dispersal'. For Herron. abjection is enshrined at the centre of culture: the taboo object provokes fear. anything will be done to secure the sanctity of the Subject. have tended either to turn the act of murder and its physical aftermath into narrative. it is literature that carries the full power of abjection into effect. and to questions of origin and the maternal. and yet such a narrative construction merely compounds or doubles that pain by aestheticizing sudden death--a 'poetry' of violence epitomized by the 'terrible beauty' of Yeats's 'Easter 1916'. 'encoded narratives' about identity politics and 'legitimate' violence.1). on the part of death . Imaginary uncanniness and real threat.17). a body politic sustained and racked by anomalous and permeable partition--has been in the condition of abjection since its foundation . sanctifying the dead body through acts of ritual. Kristeva characterizes the experience of abjection as 'a vortex of summons and repulsion' (Powers of Horror. it will suffer the slings and arrows of the Subject‘s quest for security.) do not exist or only barely so--double. or reinforces. The corpse.West debate 11-12 38 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches 1NC – Impact The abject becomes the site of violence. (3) He identifies three predominant and interrelated modes of dealing with the violently fragmented body: displaying the body as spectacle or image. these approaches are complicit with the atrocity they represent. Abject. fuzzy. Brewster 2005 [Scott. A Thing of Nothing: The Violated Body Kristeva observes that the artistic experience is 'rooted in the abject it utters and by the same token purifies'. to a degraded polity. (2) This essay traces how Northern poetry has given effect to the power of abjection over the last thirty years. altered. this shit are what life withstands... from which one does not protect oneself as from an object. Northern Irish poetry performs such a rite of defilement when it surveys the violated body. Against this disorder. p. conveying a sense of immediacy and intimacy through witness and elegy.‖ Irish University Review: a journal of Irish Studies Autumn-Winter 2005] It might be argued that Northern Ireland--a territorial and signifying space whose meanings and boundaries have been so violently contested. Peter McDonald has argued that Northern poetry cannot be innocent. and literary criticism. where identities (subject/object. abject. in terms of its response to the physical and affective impact of violence. is the utmost of abjection. meets the non-existence of the big Other. outside or against the phallic function are doomed to fail. This brings us back to the deadlock of the sexual relationship – to Lacan‘s thesis that ‗every relationship between the sexes can take place only against the background of a fundamental impossibility‘ (Z ˇizˇek. dropping the very allusion to some external point of reference which eludes the Symbolic (Z ˇizˇek. would be to stick to the Lacanian insight that woman stages the ontological limit of the subject. that of the peculiar combination of the Symbolic and the Real.The analysis of the specific nature of sexual failure allows us to make further ground on the question of the rapport between the Symbolic and the Real. Or. As previously discussed. as such. he argues. quite differently. in his analysis of sexual difference Z ˇizˇek emphasises the anti -humanistic equation subject-void as well the non-existence of the big Other qua ideological fantasy. 159–60). What we should not forget is that the status of this Other accessible to woman is. through an elusive/fantasmatic obstacle that allows for some kind of disavowed anchoring. ‗masculine‘ and ‗feminine‘ should not be regarded as two opposite parts of a whole. Woman is the Symbolic become itself. rather than the epistemological one. in his latest works Z ˇizˇek has moved more and more resolutely towards conceptualising the Real as a dimension which is fully consubstantial with the symbolic order: the Real is not external to the Symbolic: the Real is the Symbolic itself in the modality of not-all. That is to say: while the ‗beyond‘ of man is structured as a plausible and transgressive fiction ( objet a ). this also means that all feminist attempts to define a ‗feminine discourse‘ beyond. more pointedly: In so far as sexual difference is a Real that resists symbolization.). emotion. the line of separation between the Symbolic and the Real is not only a symbolic gesture par excellence. precisely through its elusiveness. secretly supports its functioning. 3 Unquestionably. on the contrary.West debate 11-12 39 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches 1NC – Alternative Rather than think the space of the world in the abstract metaphysical terms of Deleuze and Guattari. Z ˇizˇek claims that each mascu -line definition of femininity is to be regarded as a patriarchal strata-gem aimed at establishing and underpinning the domain of the phallus. Z ˇizˇek maintains that ‗the subject is no longer the Light of Reason opposed to the non-transparent. the gesture which opens up the space for the Light of Logos. but instead two asymmetrical or uncoordinated ways in which the subject fails in his or her bid for identity. On this account. is a Thing. 1994a. an ‗inhuman partner‘. the pure formal essence of fictionality that can only be rendered as a connection with void. we propose an account of the world in terms of sexual difference. Zizek Beyond Foucault. We ‗make sense‘ by secretly relying on an excessive element that needs to be repressed if sense is to emerge. since they inexorably endup validating the masculine logic of the exception. in its deepest connotation. However. one that substantiates his insight that the Real can only be expressed in the form of the very voidexperience generated by the radically fragmented character of our symbolic existence . 205-207] On the strength of this argument. 145). In a manner which proves to be consistent with his overall project. the sexual relationship is condemned to remain an asymmetrical non-relationship in which the Other. In this precise sense. his very kernel. 1994a. 69–70). pp. Much more productive. Woman stages the ontological limit of the subject: the very gesture which opens up the space for the subject‘s symbolization is absolute negativity. and woman occupies this space because the Real can only be expressed in the form of the very void-experienced generated by the broken character of Symbolic existence. our partner. reason vs. Meaning operates. the ‗beyond‘ of woman is ‗a fiction of the fiction‘ (Hegel‘s appearance qua appearance). Hence the prominence accorded to the Lacanian Real as the traumatic point of absolute freedom where the subject. this is one of the most accurate definitions of the Real delivered by Z ˇizˇek. throwing oneself into the abyss of the chaotic Real. prior to being a subject. the sexual relations hip cannot be transposed into a symmetrical relation-ship between pure subjects (Z ˇizˇek. Feldner and Vighi 2007 [Helko and Fabio. 1994a. ‗supernumerary‘ element that eludes the logic of the signifying system and yet. impenetrable Stuff (of Nature. literally. by converse.e. 108–9). 155). To recapitulate the argument so far: every symbolic order produces an excessive. i. in its negativity. And this void is none other than the kernel of the symbolic order. passive. they express two completely unrelated failures to attain this whole (see Z ˇizˇek. Tradition…). but the very founding gesture of the Symbolic and to step into the Real does not entail abandoning language. but. we hang on to meaning by excluding a disturbing sur-plus of . Choosing as distinguished allies both Hegel and Lacan. 2003b. the traumatic break in the causal link on account of which ‗the big Other does not exist‘ . 2 His resolve in bringing the question of femininity back into the equation is therefore functional to his political attempt to theorise a break with the crucial philosophical presupposition of the Enlightenment. 1994a.The point to re-emphasise is that the terms ‗masculine‘ and ‗femi-nine‘ do not designate two positive sets of properties (active vs. etc. is absolute negativity qua ‗night of the world‘ (Z ˇizˇek. lacking an external Limit/Dimension. then. force the Symbolic to fully become itself . adopting the feminine position.e. The feminine Real (the radical inconsistency of woman‘s desire) is the Symbolic in the guise of ‗not -all‘.West debate 11-12 40 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches meaning. do we encounter the Real? From the privileged viewpoint of Lacan‘s formulas of sexuation. i. Mean-ing dissolves into the Real the moment our symbolic existence in thought. . to overlap with its traumatic structuring deadlock. When. language and communication extends over to the uncon-scious structuring kernel of our being. precisely the moment we dissolve the masculine logic of the exception and. We. on the other hand. Their only reaction to abject is not to embrace it or cope with it but rather to purge it.West debate 11-12 41 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches 2NC – OV Our argument is that Deleuze and Guattari‘s politics of the rhizome bury sexual difference. affirm a politics of sexual difference which can recognize the situation of bodies in their historical embededdness. they make the body of woman abject and demand it be purged from the theoretical apparatus of revolutionary philosophy. This outweighs the aff because the purification of abjection is how we sanctify violence and give violence a telos. The impact is unending violence—abjection is inevitable because embodiment is inevitable. bringing violence to those who genuinely desire the family structure as a way of making their way in the world meaningful. This turns the case because the ―family‖ becomes just another site of abjection. They demand that the revolutionary woman leave everything specifically feminine about her behind—in other words. . they misread D+G because their account of the subject as libidinal forecloses the affirmative‘s understanding of free will and volition: there is no choice in the face of desire. fecund. and the real point of Deleuze and Guattari‘s writings is to change desire. Our second link is SEX.West debate 11-12 42 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches 2NC – Links Our first link is METAPHYSICS. arboresence. and anything else that falls on the wrong side of their metaphysical dividing line into the dirty. our argument is that their claim that we need to do the plan. They make the family. Deleuze and Guattari posit a multiplicity of sexes in order to overcome the dualistic tendencies of modernity. which strips the objects of their philosophy of their historical embeddedness and embodiment. Our Braidotti evidence indicates that this strips women of everything specifically feminine about their bodies in order to make them into revolutionary subjects. . Our Braidotti evidence indicates that Deleuze and Guattari try to account for change and revolution in metaphysical terms. filthy. putrid. That is. even experimentally. Our fourth link is to the PLAN. Even if they don‘t ascribe any sort of meaning to the plan. and unclean. They radically divorce us from our real revolutionary potential because they demand that we become something that we are not in order to achieve something most of us don‘t genuinely desire. is problematic because we are already revolutionary subjects because we embody sexual difference. sexual difference. not change politics. This reinscribes the very hierarchies that a rhizomatic politics would attempt to align itself against. Our third link is ABJECTION. the alternative is to become what we are rather than to affirm something.West debate 11-12 43 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches 2NC – Alternative The alternative to their ―affirmation of the politics of the rhizome‖ is rather to be the politics of the rhizome. So. whereas our Felder and Vighi evidence indicates that we are always already rhizomatic insofar that we are always already incomplete Subjects because we embody sexual difference. . That is. draws a metaphysical distinction between itself and the world it encounters in order to condemn the latter. the affirmative declares itself as over and against the status quo. Deleuze‘s work displays a great empathy with the feminist assumption that sexual difference is the primary axis of differentiation and therefore must be given priority. 1987: 242). Society 20. Deleuzian becomings emphasize the generative powers of complex and multiple states of transition between the metaphysical anchoring points that are the masculine and feminine. on the other.West debate 11-12 44 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Link – Becoming-Woman = Metaphysics Deleuze and Guattari‘s conception of becoming-woman dilutes their commitment to metaphysical difference into a multiple and undifferentiated becoming. On the other hand.‖ Theory. but rather on a multiplicity of sexed subject positions. I have often argued that there is an unresolved knot in Deleuze‘s relation to the becoming-woman and the feminine. On the one hand. . It is a vision of the subject as being endowed with multiple sexualities (Deleuze and Guattari. It has to do with a double pull that Deleuze never solved and which is closely tied to his interaction with Guattari‘s work on molecular subjectivity. empowering a generalized ‗becoming-woman‘ as the prerequisite for all other becomings and. Deleuze‘s work does not rest upon a dichotomous opposition of masculine and feminine subject positions. in a web of rhizomatic connections. ―Becoming Woman: Or Sexual Difference Revisited. the becomingminority/ Nomad/molecular/bodies-without-organs/woman is based on the feminine. he also displays the tendency to dilute metaphysical difference into a multiple and undifferentiated becoming. on the other hand it is posited as the general figuration for the kind of subjectivity which Deleuze advocates. calling for its dismissal. Culture. The differences in degree between them mark different lines of becoming.3] Juxtaposed to and compared with feminist discussions of sexual difference. In the next section I will explore this tension further. It is a tension between on the one hand. Braidotti 2003 [Rosi. But they do not quite solve the issue of their interaction. transversality and schizoanalysis. suffrage.3] Deleuze states that all the lines of deterritorialization necessarily go through the stage of ‗becoming woman‘. like Der rida and other post-structuralists. . but some were more eq ual than others. According to them. however. On the affirmative side. their own subjectivity [. That woman occupies a troubled area in the radical critique of phallocentrism is a well-known tenet of feminist philosophies: in so far as woman is positioned dualistically as the other of this system. The reference to ‗woman‘ in the process of ‗becoming -woman‘. however.]. (Deleuze and Guattari. does not refer to empirical females. Deleuze proposes the molecular or nomadic woman as process of becoming. From these assumptions. But it is dangerous to confine oneself to such a subject. of course.West debate 11-12 45 DG sucks balls Unabomber State bitches Link – Becoming-Woman = Dis-embedded Deleuze and Guattari‘s rejection of molar politics means that women have to turn their backs on the advances of the civil rights movement. opposes to the ‗majority/sedentary/ molar‘ vision of woman as the structura l operator of the phallogocentric system the woman as ‗becoming/minority/molecular/nomadic‘. but rather to socio-symbolic constructions. with human and citizenship rights. At this point his relationship to Irigaray becomes quite paradoxical because Deleuze clearly supports a feminist position: It is. In the next few sections I will explore this notion further and attempt an assessment. . which is not just any other form of becoming minority. ―Becoming Woman: Or Sexual Difference Revisited. she is also annexed to the Phallus. rhizomatic consciousness. the becoming-woman is the marker for a general process of transformation: it affirms positive forces and levels of nomadic. degrees and levels of intensity. topological positions. indispensable for women to conduct a molar politics. 1987: 276) In spite of such evident support for women‘s uphill struggle towards achieving full subjectivity. As against the molar or sedentary vision of woman as an operator of the phallogocentric system. nothing about the political can be specifically feminine if it is to be revolutionary. he draws damning conclusions for feminist philosophy.‖ Theory. but rather is the key: the pre-condition and the necessary startingpoint for the whole process. . which does not function without drying up a spring or stopping a flow . Braidotti 2003 [Rosi. Culture. affective states. albeit by negation. Society 20. their own history. Deleuze – not uncharacteristically ignorant of the basic feminist epistemological distinction between Woman as representation and women as concrete agents of experience – ends up making analogous distinctions internal to the category of woman herself. Deleuze argues that all becomings are equal. with a view to winning back their own organism. Deleuze. and so forth. equal protection.