Comments on: … is minor communism?

by: clifford duffy

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 05:52:42 +0100

I just got back and you can call me cliff or clifford or anything but nothin! I guess the best thing to do is just read Antioedipus. It’s great fun and its led me to writing all sorts of wonderful things. Long live the line of flight!

by: Nate

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 13:59:03 +0100

Thanks Glen. I read that once a long time ago. I remember liking it but I think it’d be a more productive read for me if I read it today. I quite like the title, though my understanding is that it’d be better titled “New Spaces of Liberty” based on the original title. Is that right? I’m at the library right now, I’ll see if there’s a copy here.
take care,
Nate

by: Glen

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 05:56:48 +0100

hey nate, check out negri and guattari’s _Communists Like Us_ for an interesting exposition of D&Gisms with some of Negri’s early theses.

by: Nate

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 00:36:23 +0100

hey Tzuchien,
Thanks for popping by. Are you still Xanga-ing? I’ve not read enough DandG to really know what’s at stake in these positions, either for or against. Some questions: I have a vague impression from bits of What Is Philosophy that DandG are making something like a pragmatist moves - concepts are built, not a matter of correspondence with reality, kind of like the Ranciere quote I like so much (’less a matter of verifying this truth than a matter of what we can achieve if we believe it’). Is that right? If so, the question then is, is imamence and the ontology and all that to be taken as a metaphor (or, one set of descriptions among others) or is it to be taken as the actual truth of the matter (in something like a god’s eye view, the terms in which being would describe itself if we could only speak its language and hear it talk)? In other words, at what register do these claims and assertions operate: ontological (in the sense of correspondence to the truth of being), epistemological, or something like metaphorical/fictive (a useful belief to hold)? One of the things that’s at stake in these questions of mine is whether or not there’s an implied “think and speak like I do” in the argument. I’ve met Deleuzians who seem to think that if one is not a Deleuzian then there are important things (you know, political things and whatnot) that one simply can not do, which doesn’t sit well with me as it poses Deleuze-speak as a vocabular that is special and uniquely suited to dealing with X problem, in a way that some Hegelians sometimes say that their own vocabulary is the one that everyone should have.
take care,
Nate

by: tzuchien

Sun, 18 Sep 2005 20:24:46 +0100

i think the general trajectory is that DandG argue that subjectivity is, on one level, a molar occurance while other things which get described as be “objects,” workers, proletarians, are charted paths through immanence. There is no sense in which there is anything like classical agency in these flights, but rather, themselves machinic bodies. In this way, subjectivity is everywhere and nowhere at once. Capital itself becomes the case in point for this kind of uncanny apparatus.

by: Nate

Sat, 17 Sep 2005 15:35:13 +0100

hey Cliff (or do you prefer Clifford?),
Hello yourself. My apologies if I gave any impression of being anti-Deleuzian etc. Not my intent. I don’t understand a lot of Deleuze-speak is all, so the primary preconception I have about DGers is that I don’t understand them, which may just as well be a failing on my part - not least a failing to read very much by Deleuze or Guattari. Who can tell? I don’t attribute any other qualities to them, though I’m tempted to say that in my experience they tend to have a higher quotient of slightly mussed hair (in a stylish sort of way) and great sweaters. I’ve got several friends for whom Deleuze has been an important step on the way to break bad habits, which makes him someone I keep meaning to read seriously. On the other hand, I’ve been told a few times that I can’t do the things I want to do without Deleuze, which makes me more hesitant to read him (the same reason I’ve read very little Heidegger, a sort of juvenile “you can’t tell me what to do!” response). Anyhow thanks for the comment.
take care,
Nate

by: clifford duffy

Sat, 17 Sep 2005 07:00:16 +0100

comment is just to say hello andto let you know that not all dg’er’s are .. aloof with the predications terms. cheers