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"Мощь и желание". Политическая онтология Спинозы через Делеза-- Негри(*)
Решил дать выдержки, хотя бы по-англяйски,из обзорной работы шведа
Сьюнссона.
Он дает связное (в сшивке основных концептов))и краткое изложение
последних концепций "негритюда"
Методологию Делеза по отдельным позициям лучше рассмотреть используя
материалы с его семинаров в Интернете. Есть русский и вар-т англйского
перевода делезовских семинаров, выжимку материалов связанную с
терминологией, аффектами и с "физикой страстей" , разъясняемой Делезом
"сократическим методом", "на пальцах", позже дам. Это лучше чем длинные
и перегруженные тексты.
http://www.webdeleuze.com/html/index2.html
Сьюнссон его тут рассматривает только как политического философа
волюнтарно-анархистского толка. Этого недостаточно
Полностью тут
http://elwa.ilu.uu.se/jansju/spinoza.html
ВЛАСТЬ(МОЩЬ) И ЖЕЛАНИЕ В ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОЙ ОНТОЛОГИИ SPINOZA И
DELEUZE/GUATTARI
(выдержки)
POWER AND DESIRE IN THE POLITICAL ONTOLOGY OF SPINOZA AND DELEUZE/
GUATTARI
Draft by Jan Sjunnesson, Dept of philosophy, Uppsala Univ, Sweden, May
1998
"If two men unite and join forces, the together they have more power,
and consequently more right against other things in nature, than either
alone; and the more there be that unite in this way, the more right will
they collectively posses",
Baruch Spinoza
"There is only desire and the social. Nothing else ",
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
Introduction
I want to incite a discussion on the 17th century philosopher, Baruch
Spinoza, along with the contemporary French authors Gilles Deleuze's and
Fйlix Guattari's joint works , that brings forth a reflection on
ontology as political, constituted by powers and desires rather than a
reductionist apolitical naturalism. In some sense, every philosophy of
being (i.e. ontology, or the wider concpet metaphysics), has to make a
place for man and his well- being in the whole of reality.
Being as the assemblage of "composable" relationships ( of powers, of
desires, of essences, multiplicities. . . ) is the leitmotif in this
paper. The essential element for ontological constitution is Spinoza's
focus on the productivity of being. For the Spinoza - scholar and
historian of philosophy Gilles Deleuze this means ability to express
being .
Expression - the movement from power (essence) to act (existence) is the
concept Spinoza used to develop an immanent ontology, as shown in
Deleuze thesis on Spinoza's "expressionism" - written in 1968 as a
habilitations - schrift. Four years later, and with the May '68
experience behind, Deleuze transformed the Spinozist expressions to
political desires togheter with the left- wing activist and
psychoanalyst Fйlix Guattari in vol 1 of Capitalism and schizophrenia.
Ten years later, the marxist Antonio Negri wrote (while imprisoned in
Rome 1979- 81) a treatise on Spinoza's politics and metaphysics that is
strongly influenced by Deleuze, opening up an urgent and innovative
perspective on the spinozist "anomaly" that still is not surpassed but
totally updated to our age of real subsumption under capital, of late
modernity, late capitalism. It is these connections between power,
desire, knowledge and being, that I hope to introduce here.
"The only philsopher of the day who succeded in providing a coherent
theory of nature, of human passion and desire, or reason and of legal
and moral norms is Spinoza", Harris states (in Deugd ed. 1984 p. 64)
One of Spinoza's most important metaphysical, logical and moral concepts
is conatus., which we turn to now.
Conatus
No thing can be exterminated except by an eternal force, Spinoza states
, referring to the concept of conatus. (latin for "striving- to-
exist"). This "life-force", power to exist, is what the thing is, its
essence, Spinoza maintains, in his major work from 1677, the Ethics,
part III, prop 7: "The striving by which each thing strives to perserve
in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing ".
Passions, affections and sadness weaken one's power to exist, whereas
actions, active affections and joy make one more powerful, having more
essence, more conatus. There are metaphysical and logials
correspondences between essentia, conatus, potentia, vita (life),
appetitus,[desire, man's essence ) virtus (understood in the
Machiavellian sense of manly power, not humble virtue) in Spinoza's
system. What should be rememberd is that power, desire and essence are
closely related in Spinoza.
In his last unfinshed posthumous work in 1677, Political Treatise (PT),
Spinoza states that ". . . the power by which things in nature exist,
and by which they in consequence, they act can be none other than the
eternal power of God/. . . /But men are led more by blind desire than by
reason; and so their natural power, or natural right, must not be
defined in terms of reason, but must be held to cover every possible
appetite" (Ch. II).
God as understood by Spinoza is not the transcendent Father, but rather
what is real, existing as virtual essence or as actual realised essence
in existence The power to act is not in need of a divine support. It is
nothing else but the power of a certain mode itself as far it expresses
an essence. For Spinoza there is no teleology, pre- give plan, either
for men or nature or states. Rather, there is freedom to develop from a
cause within (causa sui), an endless interaction of the powers of
singular things , according to the laws of nature. There is no other
order, divine or made by humans (such as in states) but the endless
interaction of the powers (potentiae ) of singular things according to
the laws of nature. Things are different degrees of powers, but there
are no pre- established order of relations, rather he dynamizes that
order . And if the "acting powers of the indiduals are the only
resources on the human societies can draw, and if no one definetely
renounces with his /her own acting power, than government if nothing but
the disposition (potestas ) of those who govern about the acting power
potentia ) of the governed" (Walther, p 52, 55) .
"Spinoza's true politics is his metaphysics" Negri says (1992). The
political implications of his metaphysics are his definition of things
by their capacity of act (potentia agendi ). This capacity is enhanced
or diminished according to the affects or passions that encounter modes,
how they are being affected, affect others or let others, by their
passions, rule them. If there exists nothing else but the acting powers
of human individuals, it follows that the power of the state and its
government is nothing but the disposition of all the citizens' powers
together, i.e. democracy in a sense before it got its liberal
interpretation. And since powers give right, people have as much right
as they have power, contra Hobbes who saw men as giving up their powers
in a fictious contract. Spinoza states that men always retain their
powers, and never actually leave them. But do people know this ? What is
the political function of 1st order of knowledge, imaginatio, besides
2nd ratio and 3rd, beatitudo (salvation)in Spinoza's epistemological
scheme? Can imagination develop to some extent into reason, 2nd order of
knowledge ? What is the (political) place of desire in the
transformation of the people's imagination and reason ? What role does
antagonism play in the political strife of different desires, between
men and men/state? These questions remain to be solved in depth in
further research, and have been to a large extent by French contemporary
Spinoza scholars since the 1960's. Here we now consider passions in
Spinoza's theory.
Passions
Power has two equal sides, the power to exist and to be affected . Above
all we seek in all ways to become active, yes even joyful ! Production
of affects (chosen actions from self-preservation, conatus) and
sensibility to be affected. Their sum is constant (either you decide, or
someone else). This sensibility may be chosen, actively, internally
caused , or passive, externally caused. Most of our lives are filled
with passive affections, since we do not understand the real causes
behind things and events.
When my body encounters another and agree, we form a new body, with a
new power to exist Spinoza says. Our bodies meet other bodies and change
accordingly to relations of power and affects. An encounter between two
bodies, that are not fixed units according to Spinoza but may form a new
"body", a relationship of bodies/thoughts/modes, will be interpreted to
their composability or incomposability. A body of any kind is defined by
the possible relation into which it may enter. This is its power of
acting. If the bodies agree " in nature" it is a joyful passive
affection that increases the bodies' power to act. If not, sadness occur
and either body or both may be decompose the relationship , the new
"body".
The question arises immediately: How can we get as many active
affections and as little passive ones as possible ? How do we experience
as much (self-caused) joy as possible ? Most encounters are sad since
men are often subject to passions. Spinoza's pessimism may be saddening
but realistic and interpreted both in a conservative and radical fashin,
enlightments notions that do not really apply to Spinoza (nor his hero
Machiavelli whom also has both kinds of adherers). In a commonwealth, we
(hope to) organize (good) encounters, which is why we form it. But
Spinoza did not mean a mediation from above, but a building of power
from below, from the modes, which are the what constituts our (immanent)
world, what we can perceive of substance/nature/God. The term "contract"
in his Tracatus Theologico Politicus (1671, TTP) is replaced in PT with
"common consent", to which individuals renounce their rights (but not
all, more on contracts and rights later). The reason they do this is
that the extends their power to constitute the state, if that is their
goal. In order to build a community of mutual consent, free
communication must be possible between citizens, who always have the
right to think and speak, but not act unlawful while they adhere to the
state , that is Spinoza says.
Passions like fear are important to understand for the wise in order to
survive. The fear of the masses in both ways, i.e. what it fears and the
fear it induces in rulers , is very present in Spinoza (see Balibar
1994). The ruler posses right only insofar as his real force is greater
than the masses and as the masses accept to be ruled.
Natural rights
If we start explain Spinoza's doctrine of the state with natural right,
we find that political views contemporary or precedent to him, relied of
traditional concepts of natural right; Spinoza's solution is far more
naturalistic and realistic, as immanent as his ontology. For him, all
political theory must start with two basic conditions:
1) Human emotions are not contingent vices, which just can be thought
away. Rather, they are necessary, in harmony with the rest of nature,
2) Therefore they must be understood, not criticised or loathed.
Spinoza had no use for theories of people written by thinkers "as they
would like them to be". A political theory must start from the
predicament of common men, not saints. "I have therefore regarded human
passions like love, hate, anger, envy, pride, pity, and other feelings
that agitate the mind, not as vices of human nature, but as properties
which belong to it in the same way as heat, cold, storm, thunder and the
like belong to the nature of the atmosphere." ( PT, ch. I, )
If we grant men their necessary passions, we may build up a secure
state. Politicians who relies on good faith are not long-lived and would
prepare his own destruction, a Machiavellian theme, the difference is
that Machiavelli recognised a civic virtue in all men that possibly
could ground a stable state, whereas Spinoza kept the virtuous way open
only to the wise. The multitude (people,) neither could nor wanted to
walk the narrow road to higher political or theoretical interests.
Machiavelli resigned himself to the people's passions ("They should know
better!"), but Spinoza noted that they probably neither should nor could
("No, they're only natural !").
Right as power
Spinoza starts his theory of right from a state of nature, as in Hobbes,
but this right is equal to the power of the right - holder. The contract
is not an abstract entity which keeps a society stable. Rather all rules
must depend on power, i.e. Machiavellian force or Spinozist (divine)
power in all beings:
"It follows that the power by which things in nature exist, and by
which, in consequence, they act, can be none other than the eternal
power of God. / . . ./Now from the fact that the power of things in
nature to exist and act is really the power of God, we can easily see
what the right of nature is. For since God has the right to do
everything, and God's right is simply God's power conceived as
completely free, it follows that each thing in nature has as much right
from nature as it has power to exist and act.; since the power by which
it exists and acts is nothing but the completely free power of God "
(PT, ch. II, Spinoza's italics).
Passions lead the multitude to use its power by natural right. If people
are in bondage by their passions it follows that they may use it in a
wrong or good way. To strive to exist, conatus, is the base whatever
means one chooses. The multitude use passions, the wise reason. Both
ways have the same natural right to do it. Non- utopian politics may
just use the first way, the passions of the multitude. "The natural
right of the passions, and therewith the rule, founded in natural right,
of conflict, hatred, anger and so on is against reason in respect to our
[the wise] nature, but not against reason in respect of the laws of
nature as a whole "( Strauss , p. 232).
Rights as external norms are not to be taken seriously, when judging
acts according to Spinoza's theory of causality. Less if they are
"freely chosen", as Spinoza does not believe in a simple form of human
freedom of choice . Power gives rights as in "To be able to exist is
power " ( Ethics, part I, prop 11, 3rd proof). Power is the essence of
substance, as the concept of conatus showed. We should not confuse
Spinoza's concept of right as power with cynicisms as "might as right",
"the right of the stronger" etc in an elitist fashion. "He is not only
the first modern thinker to defend democracy as such, but to do so on
the principle that might makes right" (Smith, p. 376). Weak men have as
much power as the strong in absolute terms, but is somehow separated
from what his powers, his essence, can attain. To attain as much as we
can, we must increase our actions and increase our active affections,
joys and lessen what makes us sad and powerless.
"When considering right as a natural ability, including the ability of
reasoning, Spinoza never leaves to any degree the 'naturalistic' level.
Whatever one does is 'right' in his concept of right, because one can do
it and must do it", historian Geismann notes (p. 44). Spinoza bases his
doctrine of natural right not on humanity but on God or the one
substance where all participate as part of nature.
Each being in its essence is a result or an element in God, so all
beings are comparable in that they express God in different degrees,
i.e. that they are to different degrees. " Man is only a particle of
nature. But this particle of nature which is man must, in an eminent
sense, be nature, be power" ( Strauss , p. 239). The right to exist is
greater in beings that "exists" in a higher degree. The power of the
multitude has greater power and therefore right than the wise men, if
they not quantitatively change that balance (with technical and
ideological means for example, as shown below ).
If we conceive power as the power of a body, we get closer to Spinoza's
concept of power. We do not know what a body can do, he says, but we
know that it will exercise its natural powers, its rights, if not
blocked as in "anti- production ( see last Part III in this paper).
"Pushing to the utmost what one can do is the properly ethical task. It
is here that the Ethics take the body as a model; for every body extends
its power as fast as it can. In a sense every being, each moment, pushes
to the utmost what it can do " (Deleuze 1990, p. 269). This model
applies to states too, and people's ability to conceive new states, or
abolish states altogether as the radical interpretation by Hardt:
"Spinoza's conception of natural right, then, poses freedom from order,
the freedom of multiplicity, the freedom of society in anarchy" ( 1993,
p. 109) .x
The contract theory as in Hobbes, Locke or Rousseau does not have the
same value in Spinoza, although he mentions "pactum" in TTP for men in
order to live in security beyond the reach of fear. Men must obey their
rulers, not subvert or overtake the state. Unreasonable laws shall be
exposed in public but all citizens must submit to their power, although
they do not agree. But this contract does not mean that men give up all
their power to a sovereign ( whether monarch, noble or democratic
council).
"Nobody can so completely transfer to another all his right, and
consequently all his power, as to cease to be a human being/. . ./It
must therefore be granted that the individual reserves to himself a
considerable part of his right, which therefore depends on nobody's
decision but his own" (TTP, ch.17).
The "void" left by the absence of contracts, and State authority, is
filled by the practices and powers of the masses, in Negri's (1992,
1994a) and Hardt's (1996) radical democratic interpretations which we
turn to at the end of this part.
TTP states fully that right (Jus) must rely on and is the same as power
(potentia) (Montag 1995 and Balibar in Montag ed. 1997). If right as a
subjective right is identical to the power to act, it follows that the
laws as rules of politics own their force, in the last instance, to the
acceptance of the governed themselves, i.e. their collective power to
agree. If Hobbesian individuals would gain all natural and contractual
rights without full power, they would be in a powerless and
contradictory position visavi the state. Now, individual powers are less
isolated than taken together, which is what rulers know. From what the
ruler fears, the mass (multitudo) can know. "If it is true that we can
know the people only from he view of the prince [ as Machiavelli
stated], it is equally true that we can know the people only from the
point of view of the Prince" (Montag 1995, p 101).
Democracy
....
The urge to exist, conatus, teaches man that life in common is better
than solitary life in a state of naure. Better in the sense of useful to
oneself, to one's advantage. Spinoza lets the "satirists" laugh at human
affairs, the "theologicians" curse them, and "melancholiacs" praise
lower animals and disdain mankind - all are mislead by not taking man's
own desire for his advantage, his conatus, , as his real cause for
building society (ibid). Democracy is to be preferred, being the most
natural government of men. A democracy is better since there is less
danger of a government behaving unreasonably, for it is practically
impossible for the majority of a single assembly, to agree on the same
piece of folly. But Spinoza views democracy also as an effective means
to rule. Tyranny might arise, but they do not last long . Spinoza notes
( as Seneca) that despotic regimes never lasts long,whereas moderate
ones do. The state is usually superior to the individual by its united
strength of many citizens, that power is the state's " right". Spinoza
asserts that
" . . . Since the right of the commonwealth is determined by the
collective power of a people, the greater the number of the subjects
given cause by a commonwealth to join in conspiracy against it, the more
must its power and right be diminished. . . The right of the state is
nothing more than a natural right, limited not by the power of the
individual , but by that of the multitude, which is guided by one mind"
(PT, ch.3).
The balance of powers are important: "The reason of the state lies not
in the governing nor in the governed, but in the capacity of the ruler
to rule, and in the capacity of the ruled to be ruled " (Strauss , p.
240). A state ruled by force is weaker than ruled by a free multitude.
Therefore the state must secure that the citizens get freedom and
security, out of adhering to the state . "The state proves its own
reason against the irrationality of men not by an appeal to reason of
its citizens, but by the realization of self - preservation [conatus]
according to the principles expounded in the ontology. This is realized
by a power that force the masses. ", Bartuschat says in Deugd, ed. p.
35.
Contracts, ideology and religion
The state must rely on a balancing of collective powers, rather than
individual rights, obligations and contracts. Since it is not
individuals who counters the state's Power, but the united mind of the
multitude, the conclusion is that this mind of its own has a certain
existence, essence and power. History becomes a history of mass
struggle, not of relationships between individuals and states (Balibar
1994 and Negri 1992).
Spinoza rejected in PT the juridical and transcendental apparatus of
contracts, obligation and rights since he saw where the real power was,
in the multitude. Individual power were never as strong as collective
material forces. Hobbes started from pure individuality in the origins
of the state, where Spinoza could speak of a "body" being composed of
several individuals, with one nature as we've seen. The multitude is not
reducible to anything but itself, a new body of (former) individuals. It
has then attained a state when its passions have been transformed to
actions.
The multitude is hard to govern, since "whoever has experienced the
inconstant temperament of the multitude will be brought to despair by
it. For it is governed not by reason but by the affects alone" (TTP, ch
17). The state must combine affective means ( piety, patriotism,
superstition) with rational ( utility, private wealth). The "affections
of reason" are outside the scope of the free community's mutual consent,
since they are useful, at least in the long run, to the community. "Men
should really be governed in such a way that they do not regard
themselves as being governed, but as following their own bent and their
own free choice / . . / they are restrained only by love of freedom"
(PT, ch. x)
Religion can degenerate to superstition Spinoza showed. But other
ideological means are just as efficient and lead to obedience and
destructive stupidity. A central question if men strive for self-
preservation is why do men fight for their own repression, in wars, in
fights for fascism, despots? The answer is that inadequate but useful
ideas for a short brutal life, hold us down with power from material
strength. The reasons why the mass obeys its rulers are not just pure
power, but foremost ideology in a Marxist sense. Spinoza's analysis of
17th century ideology, i.e. religion, degenerated to superstition and
dominating theories, have Norris 1991 and all of and on Althusser). And
free communcation of individuals, humans, states, modes of all kinds,
are to be a political (and ontological) question, as Etienne Balibar
concludes:
"If we admit with Spinoza /. . . / that communication is structured by
relations of ignorance and of knowledge, of superstition, of ideological
antagonism, in which are invested human desire and which expresses an
activity of bodies, we must also admit with him that knowledge is a
practice, and that the struggle for knowledge (philosophy) is a
political practice. In the absence of this practice, the tendentially
democratic processes of decision described by the PT would remain
unintelligible. We understand thereby why the essential aspect of
Spinozist democracy is from the outset liberty of communication. We
understand also how the theory of the 'body politic' is neither a simple
physics of power, nor a psychology of the submission of the masses, nor
the means of formalising a juridical order, but the search for a
strategy of collective liberation, for which the password is: to be the
greatest number possible to think the most possible (thoughts)"(p. 118
in Balibar 1985, my transl).
Spinoza the proto- marxist
Negri goes much further than Balibar in his summary: "Spinoza's
innovation [of the genealogy of the power of the multitude] is in fact a
philosophy of communism; Spinozian ontology is nothing but a genealogy
of communism"(Negri 1994a, p. 139). His interpretation of Spinoza is
very decisive to any reflection on Spinoza's political philosophy, Marx
and Deleuze/ Guattari, although I can only turn to it briefly here (see
Surin for in depth analysis).
Negri views Spinoza as an "anomalous thinker", situated between the
crisis of the renaisance humanist utopia and the change from mercantile
to industrial capitalism. The bourgeois utopia of the market underpinned
his aspiration towards a fuller and richer humanity. Just as Spinoza
came after an era of hope and meditated (although only as a
metaphysician) on its crisis, the contemporary crisis of the revolutions
of 1917 and 1968 has a similar experience, a lapse in time, in post -
modernity just as Spinoza was pre - modern (or "L'anti- modernit'e de
Spinoza" as in Negri's essay in 1994, ch. 6). The crisis of Keynesianism
and the brutal transition to its susseccor, Integrated World Capitalism
(Guattari & Negri), is what motivates Negri to read Spinoza through Marx
' eyes, as Surin notes so well:
" he [Negri].... has turned to Spinoza in his quest for an ontological
foundation for the new revolutionary subjectivity that has emegerged
since 1968" (Surin, p. 13).
Negri takes Marx' notions of formal and real subsumption (see Hardt 1995
for the marxist notions) to deal with what has happend in 20 th century
capitalism. In formal subsumption, there exist still pre- or
noncapitalist modes of production, of pre - bourgeois values etc, but in
real subsumption, all of society is dominated by the command of capital
(and what is left of non - capitalism is fully integrated. This move
spreads the antagonism between capital and labour (and its allies) to
all of the planet and all beings in its entirety. The sites of struggle
become fluid, generalized and diffused, just as the student rebellions,
the sudden presence of marginalized groups, were in the 60's and early
70's, especially in southern Europe. There is no way to establish the
old corporate order in such a flow of desires and productions, but rule
through postmodern fragmentatization by a postfordist capitalist
ideology and command by political measures (fiscal crisis e.g.), which
creates new protests and so on.
Negri's other reason for using Spinoza now, is his position against the
concept in political philosophy from Hobbes, Rousseau to Hegel,
especially in the contractarian tradition, to pose a dialectic between
powerless individual men and a powerful state. In the state, individuals
subsume their power (which they give over in Hobbes' as well as in
Rousseau, and get aufgehoben in Hegel), to the potestas of government.
In the age of real subsumption, it is impossible to rule as before ( e
noted above), it possesses no power of it own, but is a site for
capitalist command and labour struggles. "In this society -state complex
there cannot be a 'vertical' resolution of the manifold contradictory
individual wills (as maintained in the Hobbes - Rousseau - Hegel
tradition [the" democratic soup" Negri calls them], because in an
integrated world - capitalism which is essentially 'paranational' in
form, there is no state. No 'new state' into which the contradictions of
civil society can be sublimated by negative power", (Surin, p 14 ,
referring to Hardt 1995 on civil society).
In Spinoza's time there was no possibility for his "physics of the power
of the multitude" to develop, but now, in late 2nd millenium, late
capitalism, late modernity, we finally have a politics that needs this
kind of open surfaces that immanence provides.
" . . Spinoza needs new real conditions to be given: Only teh revolution
poses these conditions. The completion of the Political Treatise [see
Negri 1997], the development of the chapter on democracy [which never
got started as Spinoza died 1677], or better, on the absolute,
intellectual and corporeal form of the government of the masses, bcomes
a real problem only within and after the revolution. Within this
actuality of the revolution, the power of Spinoza's thought gains a
universal significance " (Negri 1992, p. 210.) The only comparable work
to Spinoza's are Deleuze/ Guattari's, Negri maintains (in Negri 1995),
to which we now turn.
(выдержки)
PART II: Deleuze and Guattari
In this part, I will express some aspects of Deleuze/Guattari's
philosophy and politics, with emphasis on their conception of desire as
a part of a politics and ontology. Deleuze/Guattari's political and
social thought is less a critical theory of capitalism and conformism,
than an effort to create effects, practical and theoretical for change.
Their books must be used, rather than read as theory claiming the truth
of society, the world, mankind. The relation between theory and society
that interests them, is not a question of represention, models or
reference, but of the genetic (biological, social and historical)
relations by which society produces theory. The question of truth of any
theory is less important than what political and desiring intersts it
expresses, in products, effects of all kinds. This anti-
representationalist strategy is uncommon in political theory, but has a
theoretical tradition in anarchist and libertarian socialist thought
Their politics has more to do with 19th century French utopian -
socialists like Charles Fourier than scientific socialists like Karl
Marx, more with alternatives than deconstruction (Derrida only
deconstructs, never constructs). Too much energy gets wasted in critique
of the establishment (reactive thought in Nietzsche's sense) , better to
build the new (create values "beyond good and evil"). Artists are better
creators than most political theorists they claim, which is why authors
of all kinds, painters, film directors, musicians etc abound in their
books rather than political philosophers.
First, their overall picture of society. Deleuze and Guattari argue that
capitalism is a schizophrenic system. Because it is interested only in
the individual and his profit it must subvert or deterritorialize (as
they name a down- mantling process, of leaving land) all territorial
groupings such as the church, the family, the group, indeed any social
arrangement who occupies a practical or theoretical "territory". But at
the same time, since capitalism requires social groupings in order to
function (for work and sell goods to), it must allow for
reterritorializations (taking back land), new social groupings, new
forms of the state, the family, or the group. These events happen at the
same time. The life of any culture is always both collapsing and being
restructured. We turn to Deleuze/Guattari's general theory, their
"philosophy of desire", a unique mixture of Freud, Marx, Nietzsche,
avantgarde art, French structualist - semiotics, and a good sense of
humour.
Deleuze and Guattari argued for a "productive desire" which rejected the
Marxian notion that desire belonged to ideology. It also rejected the
Freudian notion of an unconscious and hence, except in dreams,
unproductive desire. Desire is something else than lack, want, instinct,
wish, interets, need etc, which are produced within a certain fixed
social status and metaphysics. It is unconscious desire that produces
interests, wishes etc, which may act against conscious wishes, interests
etc. Desire may be repressed by another desire when its immanent
production is blocked. The politics of desire aims to break down the
dichotomy between desire and interest, so that people can begin to
desire, think and act in their own interests, and become interested in
their own desires.
The productive desire of Deleuze and Guattari's analysis is, in fact,
another form of Nietzsche's will-to-power, or better, Spinoza's conatus
(as analyzed by Spindler 1995). This will-to-power/conatus of productive
desire is balanced by a reactive desire for repression, the slave
mentality. The controllers (priests, gurus, bosses, intellectuals) turn
the active strength of productive desire against itself and create guilt
which accompanies any active expression of the will, when bound. For
Deleuze and Guattari, schizophrenia is the model for the production of a
human being capable of expressing productive desire, but it is an active
schizophrenia as a process and not a medical schizophrenia to which they
refer. We will not dwell on this uncommon interpretation, though.
Deleuze himself was not a Marxist, evn though Guattari was in a loose
libertarian sense. There is no class struggle because there is only one
class, the class of slaves, some of whom dominate others. Almost no
desiring individuals can ever fulfil their desires, as Spinoza also
concluded his Ethics:
"For if salvation were at hand, and could be found without great effort,
how could nearly everyone neglect it ? But all things excellent are as
difficult as they are rare".
...
Part III: End notes
We do not know the relations of bodies, their forces, not in society nor
the world. There is no vantage point to start with, but multiple. All
one must to is experiment with was is, to create the new. In a "proper"
production of desire there is no unrealized capacities, whereas in anti-
production (of desire), such as in normal capitalist production or state
government, there is not sufficient energy, power, desire, to create
change to something new, but only repetition of old forms of
representation, models, identities, standards, habits etc. What is
immanent, and present, is not as important (in anti- production, where
"bodies" is hindered from what they can do) as what "we always do here".
Desire on the other hand, is everywhere, a part of infrastructure and
society, and crosses all limits which is why is must be repressed by
established orders and the so- called "reality". But it is historically
coded and thus made to change when capitalism and states change, as
individuals and bodies must do too.
Spinoza enables us to regard our governments and their ideological
apparatus with fresh eyes, with adequate ideas. As all things are
explained be their acts, and capacities for affecting and being
affected, man and his collective efforts will be judged by of what they
are capable of. What are we capable of ? What are states capable of ?
What makes us and political initiatives joyful or sad, effective or
powerless ? Spinoza and Deleuze & Guattari, helps us posing new
questions in politics and ontology. To use our powers and release our
desires in politics as well as everywhere else.
REFERENCES:
...
De Deugd, C, ed. Spinoza's political and theological thought , Amsterdam
1984
Deleuze, G , Spinoza: practical philosophy, San Fransisco, 1988 [French
org. 1981)
* " - , Expressionism in philosophy: Spinoza, New York, 1990 [ French
org 1968]
* " - , Difference and repetition, London 1994 [French org 1968]
* " -, with Guattari, Capitalism and schizophrenia vol 1 - 2 , London,
1984- 87 , [French org 1972- 80]
* " -, What is philosophy ? London 1994 |French org 1991]
....
Negri, A, The savage anomaly. The power of Spinoza's politics and
metaphysics,(trans by M Hardt)Minneapolis 1992
* " -, Spinoza subversif, Paris, 1994a
* "-, Dйmocratie et eternite, in Spinoza: Puissance et ontologie, ed
Revault d'Allons Paris, 1994b
* " -, "On Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari's A thousand plateaus[Cap &
Sch, vol 2]" in Graduate F aculty Philosophy journal", vol 18, # 1, 1995
* " -, "Reliqua desiderantur: A concept of democray in the final
Spinoza", in Montag ed 1997
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