hi Steve
>>> "steve.devos" <[log in to unmask]> 01/03 8:22 pm >>>
Ruth
OK - but the question of the 'nomadic distribution' should perhaps be
questioned through Badiou's suggestion that Deleuze is the great
contempory philosopher of the 'monad' , the philosopher of difference
then ends up as being the philosopher of the ONE - the proliferation of
differences returns us to the ONE... through Deleuze's profound
anti-dialectism... Further given that the plane of differences that
results is marked by their equivilance then how can meaning be assigned
to the rituals - collective, symbolic or virtual...
Ok, I don't think I have said meaning, I have said the production of signs and the question is what they do not what they mean. One of the things ritual does is create the illusion of having intrinsic meaning. You can't have it both ways, however-if you want transversality then you need nomadic distribution. If you accept Badious's thesis then, in effect, you only have sedentary distribution over the 'void' which punches holes into its systems of signs from time to time-, the simulucrum as terror and fidelity ( whose desire) go hand in hand with this view. what if i desire to be a promiscious tart ( oops that might be the betrayal of the simulacra.!
More seriously. It is quite the case that the plane of differences that (hypothetically) results from badiou's arguments is marked by equivalences but that is because he has fallen into the trap that Difference and Repeition warns against of creating a regime of purely federative differences. Similarly, Derrida makes a very similar move when, in the eassy on Differance, he relates the question of force to Saussure's linguistics ( bypasses the question of differences in kind except as expressed as differentials between force) and thus codes all the differences between signs in a whopping great big quantative overcode that allows the 'one' movement differance ( aka Nietzsche's woman' as the undecideable symtom of these purely internal relations! Stupid or what!.
Lets begin a short debunking of Badiou's claims.
1. For Badiou the 'event' subsists in a way that is logically 'pre-existent' to actual series of differences in situations and manifests itself through negation, very close to some of Kristeva's remarks on poetic revolutions here. Very good on keepin the focus on concrete political situations but has not grasped the complex ontology of Deleuze's account as sufficent cause to indeterminate articles ( which are also concrete political situations despite the difficulties, that badiou is good at pulling out of defining a Deleuzian politics) I wont go down that line at the moment, other than to say the only 'Deleuzian' politics iI buy into is a reconceptualizing of the molar in such a way as to free up flows of desire that it can assume traverses it without falling into the trap of representing the movement of movement here.
2. The reason why the event is pre-existent Badiou's mathematic arguments rely on the cantor set ( or set between all sets) to make the proposition, 'alterity is what there is'. Instead of 'difference without a concept' we have a mathematical determination of the concept and thus difference in itself becomes frozen in a mathematical mode of production, a technical determination. This closes down the potentials of intuition as method as a turn and return beyond the experientially given and ( hypothetically) leaves no room for the creation of novelty.
3. Deleuze's short book on Bergson already makes the comparison between virtual multiplicity and the Platonic one- all in Bergson but Deleuze ( more in Difference and Repetition) mediates the parts of Bergson that might support this comparison-the differences between Deleuze and Bergson are as important as the resonances between them and one of the things that Deleuze's reading does is turn around a residual desire in B for the origin of origins and through the synthesis with Nietzsche, open it to the memory of the future.
where does this then place the COMMUNITY? does a ritual utterance have
the same meaning across the G8, let alone down across the myriad of
communities ending in afghanistan?
of course not- but the point of my last post was to debunk any sense of the 'The Community', as such. i think you have misread my desire to think about nomadic distribution occuring in assembalges as interstitual 'site'-this will give a partial decentred aggregate that may well be (a) community with a political voice but is itself a function of the relations in which it subsists. Where these relations might 'stop' in so far as they are perceived to be qualitaively different is actually the more interesting question when thinking about the differences between 'fronts'.
On a practical level - a Hollywood movie produced for the G1 to G8
market place has increasingly different readings whether read in this or
that community. It's doubtful that the product placements which are one
of the driving elements in cinematic production (from Cigerettes to Coke
to Apple Macs...) - we (most of humanity) all know how to read Hollywood
editing - but the transversal reading of the cinematic utterence seems
to be being missed, assuming it is at all possible..
i do not disagree and would be interested to hear if you develop this
Ruth.C
steve
Ruth Chandler wrote:
>Steve,
>Yes-'my' point exactly!-nevertheless, Deleuze and Guattari also point out that, at the level of anthropomorphic strata or secondary utterances, one strata can often come to dominate another. Transversality is continous variation but between the utterances of Persons, there are also 'theatres' of the interstitual or what I would call the 'vague' utterance or murmurs of speech?
>
> These haeecitties occupy a strange space between virtual and actual without which a distinction between transversality and the utterance would be meaningless. For Deleuze, haeccities are that which distinguish the composite from the phylum but I am not so sure that nomadic distribution does not occur between bodies as much as 'in' the containment specific composites. So the problem of 'community' needs to be addresssed here without mistaking an interstitual aggregate for THE COMMUNITY at large.
>
>By ornamental, I mean a ritual or utternace belonging to you or me that, in a way not dissimilar to speculative space, accrues its time-values, or specific utternace by being surplus to individual need but in an interstitual relation to other strata which it may dominate or be dominated by, or, more likely both. In this peculiarly Nietzschean sense, there may be an ornamental component to all utterances but one might want to talk about degrees of ornamentality i.e speech becoming idols.
>
>This then opens onto the problem of ritual at the level of collective enunctiation. Can writing or filmmaking for a people that is missing take place without some ritual or at least the creation of symbols ? Where does the institutual in film occur? True, tranversality is collective agencement but the specific cuts, joins and assemblages of partial time/images bear no contextual relation to virtual multiplicity. Although each time image is an indeterminate article, it must, nevertheless produce some illusion of pattern, however minimal, to make sense from non-sense. At what point does one want to say a continuum in variation has passed into ossified destructive habit, a point that itself varies. Stopping to wash ones hands while the house is burning ...braving all odds for a treasured souvenir, icons of health, hygiene and community
>
>Anyhow, enough chat! Back to making a fuzzy felt semiotics...
>Ruth.C
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>>>>"steve.devos" <[log in to unmask]> 12/22 12:51 am >>>
>>>>
>Ruth/SEan
>
>Or transversality which Guattari defines as "...simply continual
>movement from one 'front' to another...The unconscious is above all a
>social agencement , the collective force of latent utterances. Only
>secondarily can these utterances be diveded into what belongs to you or
>to me..." Ritual as such being simply a specific form of utterance...
>
>s
>
>Ruth Chandler wrote:
>
>>hi sean,
>>my last post of this year-yes there are qualitative differences ( i already aplogised for lack of specificity) or we would have no differences in kind, only differences in degree betweeen two modalities. habits can become ritualized and then we are starting to talk about what i would like to think of as 'ornamentalized' habits and which will have a cultural idiom, a spatial distribution as theatre- and a politico/aesthetic economy. thats still hugely general but i'm really thinking of the distinction between, or rather the mixture of smooth and striated space in A Thousand Plateaux when i talk about ritual. rituals are always tightly striated habits or closed repetitions.
>>
>>Ruth.C
>>
>>>>>Sean Cubitt <[log in to unmask]> 12/20 9:54 pm >>>
>>>>>
>>I get nervous now, after moving to a place where ritual odf the
>>traditional variety is an integral part of life, to hear the word
>>'ritual' applied to activities which are merely habitual, or which
>>are fetishised or obsessive -- it smacks of the concept of 'taboo' so
>>roundly and throughly assassinated by Levi-Strauss.
>>
>>That is to say: there is a connection between ritual ablutions before
>>eating a sacred meal and the obsessive washing of some types of
>>paranoia, but they are not the same activity, neither is reducible to
>>the other. From where I sit, each belongs to a different media
>>formation -- the difference between sacral cleanliness and the
>>marketing of technologised hygiene (see Giedion on the history of the
>>bathroom, and jane Graves beautiful essay, inspired by Mead, on 'The
>>Kitchen as the Upside-Down Bathroom').
>>
>>I'd go so far as to say there is a qualitative difference between the
>>cleanliness protocols associated with maori feasting, the ablutions
>>performed by a catholic priest before touching the Eucharist, and the
>>habitual or paranoid washing of hands before cooking or dining in the
>>modern west. Because each takes place (and time) in a different
>>regime of sense-making, structuration and phasis, none is reducible
>>to a single general and universal category.
>>
>>If on the other hand they were thus reducible, then there is no
>>reason why the 'rituals' of reason would not be equally part of the
>>same universal form: the passing of degrees, the ritual humiliation
>>of students, the heightened language of pedagogic oratory, the
>>formalities of turn-taking. Even 'rational' hygiene in catering
>>legislation.
>>
>>Reductive, but in a way not much more so than the binarism of our
>>heading. Bataille's 'acephalic' is no more revolutionary than kantian
>>reason -- it isonly its obverse. The walls of capital do not shudder
>>because of Pulp Fiction and Linkin Park - on the contrary, they are
>>fortified by the assimilation of irrationalism.
>>
>>and a merry christmas to us all
>>
>>sean
>>
>>
>>
>>--
>>Sean Cubitt
>>Screen and Media Studies,
>>Akoranga Whakaata Pnrongo
>>University of Waikato,
>>Private Bag 3105,
>>Hamilton,
>>New Zealand
>>T: Dept: +64 (0)7 838 4543
>>T: Direct: +64 (0)7 856 2289 ext 8604
>>F: +64 (0)7 838 4767
>>http://www.waikato.ac.nz/film
>>http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/digita
>>http://www.dundee.ac.uk/people/sean/welcome.html
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