[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.)

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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.

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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).

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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