Title
L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze (“Gilles Deleuze’s alphabet book”) is a French television program produced by Pierre-André Boutang in 1988–1989, consisting of an eight-hour series of interviews between Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet.
L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze: I for Idea (Duration 15:50)
Massumi, Brian. “Introduction: Concrete Is as Concrete Doesn’t” pp. 1-21 In Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002.
10/09/20 11:15 AM
Massumi, Brian. “Introduction: Concrete Is as Concrete Doesn’t” pp. 1-21 In Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002.
PRE-READ SUMMARY:
This essay explores the relationship between sciences and the humanities. Makes arguments for how a concept’s context as a “scientific concept,” rather than semantic content, creates creative tension, continual motion and enables rearticulation of affects when used in the humanities. It also makes an argument for the title of the book (In Parables for the Virtual: Movement, affect, sensation), outlining scientific concepts and applying them to humanities.
QUESTIONS:
What is meant by movement, affect, sensation? What is the “why” of doing things in a discipline called, do sciences have to do it? What does “affect” mean in this context? Why is this (and similar) readings the first readings for these courses?
READING NOTES:
- Cultural theory, introduction to exploring implications of body(movement/sensation)-change. Previously cultural theory looked at movement/sensation, this makes argument that body/change is what is central. Literality of movement, “naive realism/naive subjectivism,” culture was in gap between matter and systematic change, mediation. Everyday not a place of revolt but resistance/subversion, “reading,” “decoding,” counter to power. “Discursive” body makes sense, but doesn’t “sense.” Sensation is redudant or destructive because it is unmediated.
- Science and humanities. A concept can be seperated from system of connections and put into new/open environment. Concepts are connectible to other concepts, concept is defined not by content but by connections between it and other concepts, how it flows into other concepts. When a concept is removed from context it retains its connectibility to other concepts. It maintains relations of motion and rest, affect. Scientific concepts carry scientific affects. This carrying of affect produces conceptual struggle and creative tension.
- Positionality model. The body, extrinsic: positionality, systematic structurings, used to ground practices of resistance, signifying subject formation, coding, positioning on grid, spectrum ex male vs female, body corresponds to “site” on grid and overlapping terms from pairs. Link body-sites to “geography” of culture. “Is the body as linked to particular subject position anything more than a local emobodiment of ideology? What about potential for change?” Positionality subtracts movement. Postioning a determinig first, movement a problematic second. Normative progressions (adult to child) coded in, body definition. Movement is subordinate to positions it connects. displacement not transformation. Matter (body) is only present indirectly, mediated. No presence of matter, movement, body, sensation.
- This project is a response to these issues, attempt to make qualities of material experience (sensing) culturally-theoreticlly thinkable w/o naive realism, subjectivism, or contradicting postructural theories of experience and power. Challenge of finding semiotics to build on accomplisments of theory and cultural studies, attempt to discover vocabulary from existing sources.
- “In motion, a body is an immediate, unfolding relation to its own nonpresent potential to vary.” Deleuze, relation is real but abstract. Alterntive to positionality grid, does not prexist and not related to mediation. Ideology is mediating, real-abstract not ideological. Abstract means, never present in position, only ever in passing. Transitional immediacy of a real relation of a body to its own indeterminancy / openness to an else-where other than where it is, in any here and now). Charge of indeterminancy is always carried by body.
- Project is not about concreteness, but accepting paradox of incorpreal dimension of the body. Of it, but not it (concrete is as concrete doesn’t).
- Real-material-but-incorpreal is to body (positioned thing) as energy is to matter. Energy and matter mutually converted modes of same reality. Incorpreal phase-shift of body, but always accompanying.
- Deleuze – problem w/ dominant models in cultural theory is not too abstract to grasp concreteness of real, but not abstract to grasp the real incorpreality of the concrete.
- Henri Bergson – zeno’s paradox – continuity of movement is of an order of reality other than the measurable space object crossed. Points of position appear retrospectively. Space itself is a restrospective construct, when think of space as measurable, as possible positions that objects may occupy, we are stopping in thought at those positions, thinking away continuity of movements, looking at only one dimension of reality. A thing is when it isn’t doing.
- Bergson (Bergansonian revolution) – fluidity – issues 1) if interested in change, distinction between extensive and intensive over literal and figural. Extensive is the retrospective from endpoint, intensive is the movement that enables the retrospective. (???) Leibniz – all the predicates that can be of a stated thing are of its nature. If so nature changes at slightest move, concept of nature concerns modifcation not essence. 2) emphasis on process before signification or coding, true and real but stop-operations. Sphere of applicability of models is limited, issue is to demarcate sphere of applicaility, limitations revives wonder. 3) Position is secondary to movement and dervied from it. The problem is to explain the wonder that there can be stasis given primacy of process. 4) positionality is an emergent quality of movement. Statis and motion is not binary, modes by which realities pass into one another (passing into, emerging). Requires logi that is abstract enough to grasp coincidence of thing’s immediacy to its own variation. 5) process concepts must be ontogenic, equal to emergence. 6) If movement is primary in relation to position, then process of indeterminancy is primary in relation to social determinism (change and freeze-framing go together, inseperable). This is a statement of ontological priority rather than time sequence. The constitute the field of emergence while positionings are what emerge. In field of emergence indeterminacy (change) has ontological priority over determinism (freeze frame), therefore comes “before” but not necessarily “first” in time sequence. 7) Gilbert Simondon, difference between social determination and sociality. No seperation between social and presocial, between culture and “raw” nature or experience. There is a becoming of culture and social of which determinate forms of culture and socialability is the result. The challenge is to think of this process as formation, for which you need a notion of taking-form, the field of emergence. Not presocial, but open-endedly social, social prior-to positioning individuals on a grid. Dimension of emergence is prior to distinction between individual and collective and any model of their interaction. Not assuming interaction entails finding concept for interaction-in-the-making, ie relation. 8) Possible vs potential, possibility is retrospective from potential’s unfolding. Possibility feeds back, but potential only feeds forward. Possibility is a variation implicit in (coding) what a thing can be, potential is the immanence(process) of a thing to its still indeterminant variation. Implication is a code word, immanence is process. 9) The distinction between potential and possibility is a; distinction between conditions of emergence and re-conditionings of the emerged is a; distinction between becoming and the normative operations that set the parameters of history (the possible interactions of determinate individuals and groups). History is ontogenetically different from becoming. Conditions of emergence change, emergence emerges, changing changes. If history has a becoming from which it is ontogenetically different then becoming has a history. (feedback). 10) Backformation of a path is not only a restrospection but a “retroduction,” a production, by feedback, of new movements. Space is a retroduction by means of standardization of measurement, before measurement there was air and ground but not space as we know it. Air is not empty and ground is not stable, measurement stops the movement in thought, making space understood as a grid of determinate positions. It emptys air of weather and makes ground foundation for technological change. Not simply cultural construction but a becoming-cultural of nature. Natural and cultural feed forward and back into one another, requiring nature-culture continuum. Nature and culture are in mutual movement into and through each other. Difficult to sustain distinction between artifact and thing, body and object, thought and matter. These relay in reciprocal becomings, ally in process, are tinged in event. 11) natural law, the normative self-regulation of nature, and naturalization of cultural laws makes a problem of being onesided, concept of habit helps. Habit is an acquired automatic self-regulation. Resides in flesh/matter, is acquired therefore cultural, is automatic therefore natural. Difference between law and habit and distributing in nature-culture continuum is promising direction of inquiry. (related to empiricism). 12) Ian Hacking – codings, gender, race, orientation are “interactive kinds,” logical categories that feed back to transform the reality they describe. Bracketing of nature of process misses becoming of culture, misses continuum of feedback/feedforward by which movements capture and convert each other. The world is a condition of constant qualitative growth. William James, reality snowballs… Productivism vs constritionism vs inventionism vs evolution… constructiveist evolutionism? evolutionary constructivism? 13) Thinking of producitivism requires allowance for own logical efforts feeding back and adding to reality even in small way, accept activities dedicated to thought and writing are inventive. Critiques of critical thinking for considering itself as being descriptive and justifying, not complicit, without unmediated processual involvement, justifably oppositional. Emergence field requires less negative critique and more affirmative methods, techiniques that embrace own inventiveness and acceptance of making additions to reality. Feels haughty, as an academic writer, to suggest academic writing is inventing but the impact of the additions to reality are so minor it would be silly to make a big deal about it. Even enjoying writing is adding positive experience to the world. Consider how much you want to critique and debunk versus how much you want to affirm, augment, and foster. Consider timing and proportion. 14) Vague concepts, and concepts of vagueness, are a good time. 15) Using paradox as if it were a well-formed logical operator is a good way to put vagueness in play (ex incorpreality of body), if done right the paradox becomes a well-formed logical operator.
- Above 15 points are some of the directions that intergrating movement gets going.
- Sensation presents a direclty disjunctive self-coinciding. Sensation is always doubled by the feeling of having a feeling, self referential not self reflexive. Resonation, interference pattern, like an echo. Best word for a complicating immediacy of self relation is intensity.
- In body, “walls” for an echo are the sensory surfaces, the intensity is experience. The in-betweeness filled by experience (intensity) is the incorporeal dimension of the body. Conversion of the materiality of the body into an event, a relay between corporeal and incorporeal dimensions, not yet a subject but the conditions for the emergence of a subject, a “self-“. Consiture distributing self-reflexivity, self-referential, self-relation along nature-culture continuum.
- Leibniz, feeling of having a feeling, “perception of perception,” consider memory, sensation, and perception occuring w/o characters (properties), w/o determinate form or content. Memory without content as pure pastness, as in, the condition of emergence for determinate memory. Pure tendency, futureness, pure futurity.
- Feedback and feedforward, or recursivity, in addition to converting distance into intensity, folds the dimensions of time into each other. The field of emergence of expereince thought of as space-time continuum, as an ontogenetic dimension prior to the separating-out of space and time (same approach as with nature-culture). Linear time, like position-gridded space, would be emergent qualities of the event of the world’s self relating.
- Leibniz allusion to tendency, Spinoza link between movement and sensation. Spinoza defines body in terms of relations of movement and rest, referring to body’s capacity to enter relations of movement and rest. Power (potential) to affect or be affective. Issue after sensation, perception, memory, is affect. Spinozist problematic of affect, weave together conepts of movement, tendency, intensity, in what sense the body coincides with its own transitions(relation between movement and rest) and transitioning with its potential. Variation in intensity is felt, the feeling of transition by nature stretches between phases of a continuing movement.
- William James… if incorpreal materialism is an empiricism it is summed up by formula: the felt reality of relation. Feeling of relation may not be large enough to register consiously, may be “small perception” or microperception… nonconcious. Whereas feeling of the relation may be to small to enter perception (infraempirical) the relation it registers is too large to fit into a perception since it envelops a multiplicity of potential variations (superempircal). Actualization affectively joins the infraempircal to the superempirical.
- Affect, sensation, perception, movement, intensity, tendency, habit, law, chaos, recursion, relation, immanence, the “feedback of higher forms.” Emergence, becoming, history, space, time, space-time, space and time as emergences. Nature-culture, matter, feeling, matter feeling. Even, capture, possible, potential, power.
- Ch. 1, The Autonomy of Affect, follows engagement with work of Deleuze, Guattari, and Deleuze/Guattari, back to their inspirations, Bergson, Spinoza, Simodon. In essay “Too-Blue: Color-Patch for and Expanded Empiricism,” incorpreal materialism meets up with radical empiricism. Then William James, A.N. Whitehead and Isabelle Stengers.
- Constant reconstellation of concepts differences in their casting when they make repeat apperances is that Massumi is trying to seriously demonstrate that writing in the humanities can be affirmative or inventive, which requires experimentation. If there are methods of writing in institional humanities considered experimental then they would be inventing/reinventing concepts and connections between concepts. In experimenting 1) dont apply concepts or systems of connection, this changes the material it is being applied to not the concept 2) aim is to add “more to the world” not “more of the same,” maintain focus on invention not mastery and control. 3) avoid application with exemplary method: Giorgio Agamben ” it holds for all cases of the same type, and, at the same time, is included in tese. It is one singularity among others, which, however, stands for each of them and serves for all.” Example is not general (system of concepts) nor particular (material that the system is applied). Exemplification activates detail, every detail is essential, each detail is like another example embedded in it, a microexample. 4) accept risk of deviancy, invite it, take joy in digressions. If you know where you will end up when you begin, nothing has happened in the meantime. Allow yourself to surprise yourself. Examples requires using inattention as a tool, get lost in flow. Be willing to affirm your own stupidity. 5) goal is not negating systems but to set systems in motion. Find concepts in other disciplines, apply them to examples in a different system of concepts, allow the concept to deviate even if violently, and reconncet it to other concepts from other system until a new system starts to form. repeat. follow the growth. let them be buds. they are problems for your readers to explore, this is a gift for research and experimentation. if it is compelling, it is a creative contagion.
- Massumi uses scientific and mathematical models / systems of concepts, science as a discipline thinks this is wrong. Good. Advocate for taking from science but maintaining scientific affect to create conceptual struggle and creative tension. Advocate for making the humanities continually renegotiate relations with sciences and rearticulate what affects they (humanities) can transmit and answer what is unique about humanities.
- In Parables for the Virutal: Movement, affect, sensation. Logical form of the example: parable, real but abstract: virtual, an insensibile body is a truly continuous body: paradox of dynamic unity and sensation. Virtual recede from becoming creates a void.
INTERESTING CITATIONS AND DEFINITIONS
Suggested reading: Deleuze, Gilles. The Conditions of the Question: What Is Philosophy? In Critical Inquiry; Spring 1991; 17, 3; pg. 471-478
People: Scylla, Charybdis, Saussarian, CS Peirce, Foucault (incopreal materialism), Henri Bergson (Zeno’s paradox), solidify (3), Leibniz, Gilbert Simondon, Spinoza, William James, A.N. Whitehead, Isabelle Stengers.
Definitions: coextensiveness, incorpreal, ontological, Bergansonian revolution, ontogenic, field of emergence, immance,nature-culture continuum, elide, empiricism,
POST-READ
This took me a long time I am tired and my butt is tired. It feels like eating spaghetti you can only eat with your hands but you’re polite so you start with a fork and spoon (even though you never eat spaghetti with a spoon you see people doing it in a restaurant sometime) and then you’re in the midst of the Bergsonian Revolution and you look up and realize its all over your face and the noodles are all between your fingers and not only is it more fun, not only does it taste better, but you feel like you’ve joined a secret club, no napkins necessary. Like, okay cool you passed the test, here’s whats really going on. You thought you’d sneak through by looking at the back entrance? Nah that’s just a trap for the scientists, to make them think we think they’re snooty, you’re cool though I’ll tell you how to get real fucked up.
10/08/20 3:31 PM