link to a spankign new blog

this is a new blog authored by the one and only Matthew Pierce. Seriously, check it out

www.struggin.blogspot.com

[3] The Subject and Enjoyment

There were at least two things in my post about the BwO that were too briefly discussed, or improperly emphasized. I'll briefly mention these things to begin this post. First, as I mentioned in our discussion, an understanding of morphogenesis is key to understanding the BwO. Manuel DeLanda defines the BwO (in the fifth section of the lecture series posted below) as "matter inhabited by pure intensities, capable without any prior organization—without any prior biological, physical, or even chemical organization—to express itself," (my emphasis added). This expression is born from the intensities that play themselves out on the surface of the body, from the the forces of repulsion and attraction; the form that the binary machines take is attributable to the analog expressive forces (such as temperature, speed, pressure, and concentration) of nature. This leads directly to the second improperly emphasized feature of my previous post: the notion of becoming. The depth of meaning in this word is at the heart of morphogenesis and Anti-Oedipus. Therefore I think it is best discussed later, and, I hope, at length.

[3] The Subject and Enjoyment

Once recorded, this sliding, rootless construct falls back on production—containing the vital energy of production of production. However, as a result of the disjunctive synthesis, the consumption phase following the recording process is now constituted by the production of recording. It is important to acknowledge the shift: consumption is now constituted in some way by the identity, not constitutive (as it was in production of production). This is the work of D&G's subject, as I understand it. A subject can be conceptualized because of the substance of its expression... constituted, how?. The subject has a face: the paranoic and miraculating machines adjacent to the amorphous flow, turned outward.

This subject, however, has a limited existence as it has thus far been described. It comes into existence only by "being born of the states that it consumes and being reborn with each new state"; it is not reified and consumable on its own, but under the influence of the signified. The attraction of a new machine shows the ambition of identity/signifier to be taken materially—on its own (the result of vital energy force in production of production being continually siphoned off and transformed). The addition of this machine to the face forms "a new alliance between desiring-machines and the body without organs so as to give birth to a new humanity or a glorious organism"; the signifier can now be taken literally. Enjoyment. The identity + celebate machine is able to pin down the signifier (Lacan, 1977), diverting more of the vital energy into reifying itself and its signifying capacity: "so it's...." The celebate machine, a.k.a. the bachelor machine, a.k.a. the spoke-maker (as I envision it) appropriates for the BwO various points of disjunction, expanding its signifying capacity to the maximum. I'll defer to D&G, page 20, to summarize this progression:

"...by means of the paranoic machine and the miraculating machine, the proportions of attraction and repulsion on the body without organs produce, starting at zero, a series of states in the celibate machine; ...the subject is born of each state in the series, is continually reborn of the following state that determines him at a given moment, consuming-consummating all these states that cause him to be born and reborn..."

An identity finishes itself in any new state not before it finishes the other. The fortuitousness of an identity, discussed on pg21, is theorized at length in "Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds" by Dorothy Holland & Friends. I'm running short of time, so perhaps somebody could pick up the baton here?

Quickly, I think it is interesting to note the differences in the applications of the word "center" and "circle" throughout section [3]. At times it contains a single machine, and at others it seems to contain all machines discussed thus far. This apparent ambiguity feeds their concept of the multiplicity, and buttresses my analogy of "movable skin."

later,
josh

The BwO

In my last post I talked about desiring machines. I had said, briefly sketched, that DMs are process that induce different types of production and are typified by a certain sort of synthesis, in this case connective synthesis (and…and then…and). The machine connects man and nature and is a node for the production of production. By the end of their analysis on DMs, D&G bring out the Body without Organs (the BwO).

(pg 8) “The full body without organs is the unproductive, the sterile, the unengendered, the unconsumable … DMs work only when they break down, and by continually breaking down … nonetheless [the BwO] is produced, at a certain place and a certain time in the connective synthesis, as the identity of producing and the product … It is a body without an image”

The BwO is related to the DM in the fact that it brings together binary opposites. This implies that you can’t have one without the other in the same way, for Christianity, you can’t have God without the Devil. This makes sense as we have seen the anus connected to the mouth. You can’t have production without consumption and its sumptuous by-products.

(pg 9) But even weirder and wilder still is the fact that the DM needs, and tries to insert itself, into the BwO. This process of repulsion is the paranoiac-machine. The way I read paranoia and persecution is through the proliferation of connections that the clinical paranoiac produces. In clinical paranoia, the patient is forever and always connecting every sign (overcoding) to everything else (“they are out to get me, they are outside my window, they have poisoned my food, etc”) and hence the DM, through its production, is trying to connect to everything everywhere and the BwO won’t allow it. The reasons for this are many.

(pg 11) But the BwO is concerned with two things as far as production is concerned: one, the recording of production and the miraculous nature of production. "The body without organs, the unproductive, the unconsumable, serves as a surface for the recording of the entire process of production of desire, so that desiring-machines seem to emanate from it in the apparent objective movement that establishes a relationship between the machines and the body without organs." What we see from this is that on the BwO, DMs code desire. Second that DMs become sectors of signification. What is really interesting, however, is that it seems as if DMs spring forth from the BwO (hence the miraculous). We know this can’t happen and hence the miraculous moment of the BwO; it is the appearance of an impossible production.

If we identify the BwO as capital (or sterile money) than the terms “socius” and “relative surplus value” all start circulating (miraculating) around the DM (or another term would be labor). In the capitalist machine, what labor does (as a desiring machine) is produce goods. The moment those goods are tinged with surplus value we end up getting more for less and hence the producer ends up losing (shutting off anus and mouth) their relation (value) to their work. Instead of the labor producing money and capital, the miracle (and in turn impossible production) is that it looks as if capital is producing money, not the labor itself! Socius, then, are all the factors that go into making capital assume its matriculating status—through paying people the same wage for more goods per hour (relative surplus value) to the recording of desire onto these goods (consumption). The value of labor/production is determined on capital (outside of economics, which is easy to visualize, how would the DM/BwO look like in other fields such as science, biology, etc…) Technology is implicated in this crude design as it speeds up labor for more production at the same pay.

What ends up happening to the BwO is that it institutes desire for things that you don’t necessarily need. The recording process is the right of those who control the relative surplus value. The BwO, as miraculous recorder, can be seen in concrete examples, through advertising. Advertising is a good example of the BwO because it lacks depth, is undifferentiated and falls under the anti-productive rubric of a BwO. Capital, as I said earlier, is another BwO. As Hardt says: “Capital is a body without organs in these two respects. First, production or labor is recorded or coded or really given value in capital, on the surface of the body without organs (the role of money will be central here). Second, while capital is unproductive, it appears to be productive as if through a miracle and thus masks the real productive processes. This second aspect of capital as the body without organs is precisely what Marx calls commodity fetishism: the fact that the production process is masked or eclipsed. "... we cannot tell from the mere taste of wheat who grew it; the product gives us no hint as to the system and the relations of production.”

Finally, the reason why the BwO is disjunctive is because of it overlaps and writes through the connective synthesis of the DM. For example, Labor is the real process of production while Capital inscribes a false writing of production: in the final analysis, we believe it is capital that created the production, not the labor. Capital can be thought of as oedipal as well as it assumes the many forms of desire. Disjunction (either/or of the tree of genealogy) has us pick between one and the other and branch out from there. Oedipus is all over that!

[2] The Body without Organs

The metaphor of machines established by D&G gets even more difficult here. This is an unfortunate consequence of the logic. We start zooming out a little bit from the vague and molecular machines of section [1] starting on the bottom of page7 with the producing/product identity. This becomes the Body without Organs (when we stop time), which interacts with other and new machines (when time runs). Each machine is potentially a BwO, and each BwO is potentially an avatar of a machine. I think D&G stick with neutral/vague conceptions for machines in section [2] for clarity sake, as impossible as that seems. Perhaps it is also possible to read this progression as a zooming-in, which necessitates the cohesion of the language. It is certain that at a certain point in their analysis, one should be able to see that any machine is a collection of other machines, and thus zoom-in and -out according to the case. However, these are our first steps, and I think reading it as a zooming-out is helpful.

The section begins with "apparent conflict [arising] between desiring-machines and the [BwO]." This conflict is the result of D&G letting time run again. Any identity desires its own reproduction, in fact, this desire is part of its code. Therefore, it should resist anything that doesn't aid its reproduction. Just when the reader might hope to get some more explanation on the BwO or machines, D&G construct an analytical barrier, making such an explanation impossible: the amorphous counter-flow or the uninterrupted flow or the undifferentiated fluid (all equal). Recall from the previous post how all flows are partial. This is true in the ACTUAL sense, but this flow exists in the MAGICAL sense (no comedy intended, I just can't think of a better word). The BwO (or machine) now resides behind an impenetrable wall—in its own center of significance. The subsequent machines attached to the periphery of this circle must supply the center with enough signifier (semiotics, already—for now, substitute your everyday notion of concept for signifier) to overcome the entropy in the system.

Ok, so the first thing that happens with time running again (BwO becomes "identity") is the repulsion of machines by the BwO. The previous sentence is equal to the following statement: the first thing that happens with time running is the attraction of paranoic-machine. This paranoic-machine is credited with the repulsion of machines. The result of the unproductive state of the BwO and the impenetrability of the center of significance is two-fold:

(1) primary repression. Denying other "identities" access to its "identity"

(2) projection. Projection creates a counter-inside and a counter-outside; the identity is figuring itself in the world against the other; the identity is establishing its "skin" or its boundary of influence.

It can now be noticed that the BwO is an avatar of a desiring machine. It is coupled to another machine, or an other. And, just like the machines by which it is constituted it is walled off by an amorphous fluid in its own center of significance. The dimensionality here is confusing but important.

If the BwO is an avatar of a desiring machine, it must hi-jack desiring production. However, it cannot do this without attracting another machine: the miraculating-machine. Therefore the BwO becomes the hub, and productive elements become the spokes. The capital example on page10 is clear on this point. Labor now seems to emanate from capital. Delirium has set in. (Also, recall our impulse-neurotransmitter model from our meeting). "[T]he essential thing is the establishment of an enchanted recording or inscribing surface that arrogates to itself all the productive forces and all the organs of production, and that acts as a quasi cause by communicating the apparent movement (the fetish) to them."

We have jumped tracks to Delirium and its new way of modeling—from production of production to production of recording, i.e. the identity reproducing itself. A move from synthesis and coupling to a disjunctive synthesis. This disjunction contains the vital energy of production of production, transformed (Numen)—"inscribing it in each and every one of its disjunctions." This is the disjunctive synthesis. Therefore, the "disjunctions are the form that the genealogy of desire assumes" (my italics). D&G ask: is that genealogy Oedipal? They answer No by explaining that the "full body without organs is produced as antiproduction, that is to say it intervenes within the process as such for the sole purpose of rejecting any attempt to impose on it any sort of triangulation implying that it was produced by parents. How could this body have been produced by parents, when by its very nature it is such eloquent witness of its own reproduction (italics mine, calling for a recollection of the entire process explained in section [1])?"

In closing, it is important to note that while organ-machines attach themselves to the BwO, the BwO does not become fixed and organized, but instead floats along the three-dimensional chain of BwOs/machines. If my analysis is right, they are not fixed because of the following four reasons (I'll use the word "identity" to refer to the tangled mess of "BwO/machine") which they extrapolate in an essay on semiotics in A Thousand Plateaus:

(1) Each identity (or links in the chain) has a different speed of deterritorialization, and thus their purviews or signifying capabilities differ.

(2) Each identity has: (a) differential relations maintaining the the distinction between other identities, (b) hierarchies of interpretation, and (c) thresholds in the identity chain.

(3) As hinted at earlier today, the distribution of thresholds and circles of significance changes according to the process.

(4) As mentioned earlier: each identity must supply its unproductive element, the BwO (the distinction between identity and BwO is important here), which resides in its own center of significance, with enough signifier (concept) to overcome the entropy in the system. The miracle of interpretation. The concept is now knowable and fashions itself its own signified (or sound-image). (See Lacan, to whom D&G are greatly indebted here).

I have to quit for today. I'm publishing this without a proofread. I'll post on section [3] tomorrow.

Cheers,
Josh

[1] Desiring-Production

The following post is more in outline form, which is might be the best way to post about section [1]—the machines start chugging...

The following are listed as rules for desiring-machines:

(1). Machines obey a binary law

(1a). One machine is always coupled with another

(2). One machine flows, one machine interrupts—in a chain.
Therefore it is impossible to speak of only one machine in reality, the minimum is two, and all machines are implied in a chain.
(Recall our neuron example from discussion. Note its binary, interconnected (and analog) qualities.)

=================
Process is analytically divided into three aspects (the linear series):

(1). as incorporating recording and consumption in within production itself.
There is an immediate fulfillment of wishes in fantasy. Hallucinations—of words, images, etc.—and dreams are the result of this process. The product is an immediate reward, but don't get stuck here, this process is in every waking moment. We are hunting and gathering, going further into the forest than ever before, and finding our way out exactly as we came. There is an evolutionary fitness to this primary process mode.

(2). Building on (1): man&nature = producer-product.
We cannot speak of a knowledge that proceeds nature. All thought is a result of nature and is grounded in our bodies apprehension of it (see also: affordances, and embodiment). Moreover, through this line of logic, industry is "no longer considered from the extrinsic point of view of utility, but rather from the point of view of its fundamental identity with nature as production of man and by man." All—man, industry, nature—are in intimate contact, (re)producing each other instantly in the process of production of production like a hallucination or a dream.

(3). The aim of any process is the completion thereof.
We have yet to reach the phase of the Body without Organs; we are in a productive phase. Therefore, the result of this productive linear series is a product or a "producing/product identity." There is a moment when a code is optimally finished. The process will transfer here from constructing the code, to reproducing it. Created is a material identity—a combination of machines that produce it.

Therefore, inherent to this production is completion. This is where Deleuze and Guattari allow us to stop the process—right at the moment the identity is produced. This is purely an analytical stoppage of time. Something has been created, the code contains the information for expression which is latent due to the arresting of time; here we have the Body without Organs, unproductive because time has stopped; undifferentiated potential because expression is inert due to the freeze of time; unknowable saliency because we are outside of its environment. It has "no mouth. No tongue. No teeth. No larynx. No esophagus. No Belly. No anus." It cannot consume. It has arrested all flows.

==========================
We must deal with the desire and flows before this post is done. They are perhaps the most inchoate of the inchoate.

Flows are what happen between machines, and desire causes the current to flow. Desire is also responsible for "coupling continuous flows that are by nature fragmentary and fragmented," which it is doing constantly. Therefore, "desire causes the current to flow, itself flows in turn, and breaks the flows."

In section [2] it becomes immediately very important to recognize that ALL actual flows are partial flows. We talked about this at length in our discussion. D&G are going to throw out something as equally impossible as machines and the arresting of time: an amorphous pure fluid.

I mean for this post to be a companion to Erik's post on section [1], which I copied and pasted earlier. I have erased Erik's posting from its initial position and pasted it again below (fittingly).

=====================
First and foremost what needs to be explored are Freud’s concept of the Ego, Id and Superego and then from there we can start diagramming what it means to be a desiring-machine (the first part of a larger project of erasing, disjoining, and displacing subjectivity). I don’t have a clear conception of those terms for Freud but I plan on trying to get a handle on them soon.

The first part of the first chapter (desiring-production) focuses on Freud’s Id. It tries to move away from the singular, subjective Id and pushes it out towards a more social flow. Desiring-machines, then, are not subjects but the process of things (for lack of a better word) to
harness energy flows for production. I can’t tell, however, whether the product is positive or negative and how we are to read and identify this product. In some respects, I take the product of the production of desire to be concepts or Art – in other words the art of living and being able to create the world that you want to be living.

The first claim to be made, then, is the ontological claim that everything
is a machine. This indicates a few things. First, that being is in the
world, a real world and then that being is One (pg. 1) Second, by positing
the unitary nature of things and then using the metaphors of ass and mouth
(two things that flow), being, and the assembly of machines from disparate
parts, is becoming (in every sense of that word – a never-ending process
of change and evolution). The third and final thing is that because of
one and two we can say that everything, everywhere is the same. In other,
simple terms, difference and repetition. In Spinozian terms, this is
conatus.

Hardt makes a great claim about this ontological fact through closely
reading the phrase “All is Machines.” Machines have traditionally been
opposed to the human and the natural. He claims, however, he posits that
is all is One (or the same) then machines are on equal footing with man
and nature. Instead of the machine being used by man for or against
nature (as a mediating force?), the machine now cojoins man and nature and
brings them into unity. Machines in this sense are not human and not
natural and hence have a negative advantage by being defined as such.
Quoting Hardt: In fact, human subjects and nature will only arise as
effects or products of machinic being. Being itself is asubjective and
unnatural, being is anonymous and artificial. But really it goes farther
than that, because machines are what demonstrate that humans and nature
are really one. "... we make no distinction between man and nature: the
human essence of nature and the natural essence of man become one within
nature in the form of production or industry" (p. 4)

The fact remains, however, how do we define Schizophrenia? Schizophrenia
is this identification with being (as defined above through the
man-machine-nature dialog). What D&G are trying to do, then, is posit an
absubjective, anonymous moment of being. The reason for this is tied to
the idea of the schizophrenic, as traditionally defined by clinicians.
The schizo is the person who is many beings in one but not one being in
many. There subjectivity, split as conclusively as science tries to prove
it is, is no subjectivity whatsoever as their personality fragments.
Furthermore, if this is the case, there is no binary opposition in the
desiring-machine as it tries to produces; the machine can cut off or away
from its assemblage and conflate and reform into some other machine (it’s
good to go back and look at term bricolage here). (pg 4-5). In these
terms, finally, with no subject or object, no inside/outside, the producer
and production are both equalized and there is no distinction between one
or the other. Production is the producer and the producer is production.
The machine has an infinite number of connections that can be made.
Process is being and being is becoming. The machine facilitates this idea
what it means to be in the world.

Secondary reading: Bataille’s “the Solar Anus” and “the Notion of
Expenditure,” Duchamp’s readymade Bicycle Wheel and Claude Levi-Strauss on
Bricolage

Restarting from Page #1 (first post in a series of posts today and tomorow)

ok, I promised to "get the ball rolling" on threads related to section3 of chapter1, where our in-person discussion abruptly ended. After the confusion that is unavoidable following a novice discussion of this text I found it nearly impossible to put together something concrete and put the ball rolling in a productive direction. Therefore, I took a couple of days off and then hit the reset button, starting from page one and working forward with all of your comments and posts and with a few new openings I had about the text itself (this is an extraordinarily time-lapsed text for me), mainly the depth of the semiotic argument it contains. In fact, as I post now, I can't imagine getting anywhere with this piece without a basic understanding of semiotics: sign, signifier, signified, idex, and icon—at least. This is pretty easy to catch up on, and I'd be happy to discuss my understanding of this stuff at our next meeting.

The metaphor of the machines is a difficult one, no doubt. Everybody has displayed a desperation to define them, and to understand them and their aspects. Of course, D&G don't allow you this at first, and force you to make some concrete findings based on very tacit understandings, unfolding as you go. What we all need to realize is that the text-as-literature is inviting this experience for a reason: our learning process mirrors the process so delicately and microscopically narrated in the body of the text. You stand so firmly on the understanding of premise, only to have it fall out from under you, back in the brambles of the tacit and sloppily assumed. This is also the story of the Body without Organs, with time running; identities gain and lose their footing, and "disjunctions are the form that the genealogy of desire assumes" (more on this quote later, however, for now note the use of the word "assume"). I'd like to conclude this first post by saying that it is true: machines are everywhere and everything. But, equally true: they are nothing. It is impossible to say exactly what they are. Try it...you are immediately in the process of abstracting, and grasping for another metaphor. Ah, the lovely experience of reading Anti-Oedipus—the text working for its own cause on another plane.

text = production of production
experience of the text = the regime of the Body without Organs
(implicit and explicit respectively)

I'll proceed by irony—forcing an organization of the body of Anti-Oedipus here in the blog. I'll post a new thread for each subsection of Chapter 1. I'm giving special attention to just supplying my understanding of the essential oils of each section. You should feel free to get angry about them and post questions.

Diagrams

I don't know how to use the "add image" thing on here, but I tried...

Anyway, here is my attempt at diagramming some of the concepts at the beginning of AO. Pardon the limits of text-only formatting. Slashes are standing in for arrows. En-dashes indicate connections, while equal signs show that something leads to something else.

One Final Post (hopefully!) for Today

I responded to the first few posts that were posted on this blog. I hope the conversation doesn't die off and I want to engage, as much as possible, with all the readers.

More Background

I thought I would provide more background about AO. AO was written in response to the May '68 riots that took place in France and the subsequent student/worker uprisings that almost demolished France as a country. As such, D&G made pointed efforts to confront the institutions that crystallized to enslave and bog down human freedom and it culminated in the critiques of a very specific period, mainly that of Freud. If we use Freud as a mitigating lens we can start to trace those moments that Freud incorporated into his theory of humanity (which in my view posited the human, as Josh pointed out, as an energy system) and also included Darwin's idea of humans as animals, Fechner's scientific psychology, Hemholtz conservation of energy and so forth.
In response to these developments, AO seeks first and foremost to tackle Freud and along the way engage Marx and Neitzche (we see this in the beginning where we keep the idea of production, industry etc from Marx and engage in the Neitzchian "doing without a doer") Odeipus, then, is any institution (family, gov't, etc) that enslaves man's will to act and posits a moment of subjugation to a higher authority. In their eyes, the only way to engage the enemy (tactics) is to desubjegate, through the power of language; essentially using the master's tools (language) to dismantle the master's house. This is what, I believe, makes AO so hard -- the signifiers keep shifting and are never fully grasped, defined or articulated. Everything is pure surface. One thing to keep in mind as we move ahead.

Clarifying Terms

Howdy,
I don't mean to be a pest about this but I am frustrated (and can't follow) the use of terms that get bandied about in the posts and comments. Could we make a concerted effort to trace terms through their usage in the pages of AO so as not to get more confused about what BwO means or any of the other terms? As I am reading the posts I think they are on to something but my thought becomes arrested through the casual encounters with words. It would help me a whole lot.

In another less confused way, maybe we should volunteer to trace the evolution of terms through AO as we encounter them? Terms like BwO and Desiring-Machine take on new meanings not only section to section but from page to page. More on the way!

Contribution from Erik

This post has been moved to the bottom half of the post labeled: [1] Desiring-Production, starting with the phrase First and foremost...

(a little housekeeping)

Is the existence of desiring-machines an illusion?

Geez, I finally reached pages that have double-digit numbers.

The instinct I've developed from studying in my field has me thinking that my first guess is going to be way off. If someone could please correct me, I'll be able to make more efficient progress. So, here's my first guess. Psychoanalysis says there is so much Oedipus and countercathexis; schizoanalysis says there is no Oedipus, there is no countercathexis, and there is only the body without organs. (Again, someone please correct my mistake.) So, why would the schizoanalyst not say that the existence of desiring-machines is an illusion?

Help! I'm lost! In physics we have this saying when a calculation is super-duper-bad. "It's not even wrong." I have a sneaking suspicion that this is the ground I'm on. --Jeff

How can everything freeze in place?

I'm looking a few lines up from the bottom of page seven. I thought I was getting things and then they throw this on the table: everything stops dead for a moment, everything freezes in place. To me, this seems inconsistent with the preceding ideas and the subsequent ideas -- particularly in light of statements like the one about the binary series being linear in every direction. Furthermore, I don't see how this (everything... place) can be the same as the interruption in a flow. The only way I'm seeing that this might fit is to act as an example of the point that there's nothing that doesn't fit. Or something like that. Anyone, please advise. Thanks. --Jeff

background on Deleuze

Check out this lecture on youtube for some great background on Deleuze. It is broken up into five sections. The link below is for the first, and it is very easy to link to the others once you are there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqisvKSuA70

see you Monday,
josh

What is the content that makes up a drive? An early step toward understanding desiring machines.

I read an article today for class that gives some good insight into Freud's ideas concerning psychic forces/energy. Deleuze and Guattari (D&G) will hammer him on these, and they surely won't write about (though they probably understood) how these concepts were very much a product of Freud's time in history and his background in scholarship: heavy on scientific method, to say the least. Therefore, I'm going to try to write something short that will be helpful in setting the historical stage upon which D&G's analysis stands. Briefly, Freud comes along at a time when the neuron is just being discovered. Its electrical properties buzz through the minds of the scientifically minded, and the possibilities of scrutinizing the mother of all neural networks—the brain—via the scientific method, flourish. In this model—which Freud eventually abandons (yet its legacy in the dominant medical model of today is still obvious)—it is envisioned that actual physical energy flows through the system of neurons that compose the nervous system. The following quote by Freud comes a little later, but the history of thinking according to his old model remains as a metaphor:

we seek not only to describe and classify phenomena, but to understand them as signs of an interplay of forces on the mind, as a manifestation of purposeful intentions working concurrently or in mutual opposition. We are concerned with a dynamic view of mental phenomena.

Professor Robert Paul points out that the words "dynamics" and "energy" (used often elsewhere) in connection to psychic life show that Freud is in the realm of metaphor when trying to explicate the detail and subtlety of these "forces." The metaphor is mixed, or confused, in interesting ways. Here I will quote Paul directly as he explains how.

At least three different theories seem to be present in the quotation [above]. There is the basis for a semiotic view, mental phenomena that are understood as "signs"; there is a physical science metaphor, in which the mind is seen having "forces"; and there is an intentional view: these "forces are also "purposeful intentions."

These all point in useful directions, but they have been refined separately from one another (and should stay that way). The concept of "forces of the mind" is indicative of the time in history—a sort of mental physics. While Freud eventually rejected the psychic apparatus as a literal model of the mind, key aspects of it remained in his analogy: a purely psychological apparatus or organ (not identical with the nervous system), in and through which conjectural psychological energy was flowing; it was to be treated as if it were like electricity or a fluid in a hydrodynamic system. Again, Paul:

Since his clinical observations revealed conflicts within the mind, in which ideas seemed to be kept out of consciousness by something like a force counter to their demand for expression in thought or action, he needed to envision psychodynamics as a conflictual system in which at least two forces opposed each other or were in some kind of tension. He stuck to this view throughout his career, although he changed his conception of the opposed forces.


The two forces or drives became 1) the libido and 2) for self-preservation or ego instincts. It is important to note that Freud, at the time of this theory, now believes that "energy" cannot be observed directly—it can only be observed through thought, speech, or action. So, what is the content that makes up a drive? If they are neither somatic nor physical, and if they are neither analogous to the dynamism of energy intake and work output, nor the chemical systems of hormones, then what are they?

For now it is enough to ask the question. Besides, I don't have a short or particularly well formed answer for you. However, D&G do have one; see: partial object flows; production of production, which is fueled by desire; etc. There biggest beef with Freud is how he commits to a duality (see 1 & 2 above). Hopefully we'll uncover a healthier way to look at things.

Hopefully this helps (a little).

Cheers,
Josh

meeting #1

June 16th
6:30 - 8:30pm
4374 Kansas Street