Guattari, "Refrain and Existential Affects" and "Architectural Enunciation"

Last week, we discussed two short pieces by Guattari, "Refrain and Existential Affects" and "Architectural Enunciation", both from his book Schizoanalytic Cartographies. As usual, we started with some questions:

- What is the importance of non-discursive components of subjectivity? Is Guattari's account of these non-discursive components convincing, or not?

- How are we supposed to understand Guattari's claim about affect as the motor of enunciation? Is that a convincing account? What is the relationship to aesthetics here (p.204)?

- What is the distinction between sensible affect and problematic affect (206, 211)?

- Is Guattari's critique of psychoanalysis convincing? Is his critique implying the need for the reformulation of psychoanalysis, or does it suggest moving towards aesthetic-ethical paradigms (204)?

- What is Guattari's account of subjectification (208, 212)? What are existential truths beyond common sense? What is Guattari's project directing us towards, overall?

In our conversation, we paid particular attention to Guattari's understanding of psychoanalysis. We were reminded by a group member of Guattari's own background in psychoanalysis (as a student of Lacan), and the fact that he was active in creating innovative therapeutic methods beyond the traditional Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis. We discussed Guattari's redefinition of unconsciousness and his rereading of traditional psychoanalysis, which plays a crucial part in his understanding of subjectivity. The therapeutic lens seems to be central to Guattari's work overall, and his emphasis on group therapy is in accordance with his general tendency to move away from an individualist logic towards a collective one, in a therapeutic as well as in a political sense. We speculated about the implications of his critique for contemporary forms of therapy, before moving towards the question of subjectification. Overall, Guattari challenges the idea of ego, both in the psychoanalytical and in the liberal-individualist sense. What is crucial to his account is his critique of capitalism and the logic of general equivalence, which closes down the possibilities of subjectivity due to its antagonistic logic. We can go beyond such limited perspective only if we turn towards the semiotic and non-linguistic elements of subjectification. Guattari's account of affect is an attempt to take into account non-discursive elements of subjectivity and of human experience more broadly. According to this view, simple affects are based on complex ones (somewhat contrary to our everyday understanding). This view takes into account the complexity of social actions and can be fruitful for thinking about complex political decisions such as elections etc. We ended our conversation by attempting to connect Guattari's arguments in these two pieces to Deleuze's book on Foucault, which our group has discussed in the previous weeks.

 

 

Gilbert Simondon—"On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects"

Chapter Two: Evolution of Technical Reality; Element, Individual, Ensemble” The group began with questions: 1. On page 55 GS writes: “…technical object is determined by human choice”— what does this mean? 2. Why does GS think we need an account of technical objects? Is an account of individuation necessary for an account of evolution? 3. Pg. 57 and 59: what kind of work does the example of the Guimbal turbine do? What does this tell us about association milieu? i. Other examples? Perhaps more contemporary examples? What about the prison as a technical object, panopticon? 4. What does GS mean by invention? Why are living beings capable of invention? Engendering vs production distinction? (60, 71-72). 5. What does technicity mean in relation to technical progress (76)? Change of function in relation between man and machine (81)? 6. Getting clear on distinctions between individual, element, ensemble (—association with milieux). And off to discussion… —Hypertely—dependence on certain technical functions. —pg. 59: associated milieu is not special but an exchange between the technical and the environment. Associated milieu as a point of energy interaction and exchange between environment and technical. Technical object can only exist because of this interaction. (Associated milieu is self-conditioning but is determined by human choice). —pg. 55: example of the traction motor as it relates to the two milieus (geographical and technical). What is it that makes something part of the technical vs geographical milieu? Technical adaptation through tasks to material and human conditions (related to a particular task). Geography: for the environment (e.g., heat/cold, wind, etc) —When the two milieux come together we arrive at technical progress (how do we investigate technical progress?) —individual-element-ensemble distinction: how a technical object hangs together with itself in terms of its own complexity milieux is about connecting it to the worlds (technical world, geographical world, associated world. Then there’s an analytical cut, which is just the ethical object itself, which is just about self-consistency.) —Ensemble could be analogy to a factory; elements are machine parts or simple tools; individual is that larger whole, which can function on its own—correspond to machines, devices, and engines. Ensembles have much greater context and independence. [Ensembles and elements don’t have milieux]. —Is it an analytical distinction or is it an ontology? Is the distinction between these three pragmatic? Three pragmatic readings of a technical object: i. Technical object is a mere use tool [GS wants to resist this kind…there’s a human reality within a technical reality] ii. What counts as (or the way we categorize) an individual from an ensemble from an element is relevant to what we take the milieux to be. iii. What the technical objects to themselves (how they function on their own terms). —Perhaps it comes back to the principle of individuation, which involves recurrent causality within an associated milieux. —Self-conditioning of human beings (i.e., life) reappears in the technical object: “The reason the living being can invent is because it is an individual being that carries its associated milieu with it; this capacity for conditioning itself lies at the root of the capacity to produce objects that condition themselves” (60). —Living and technical are on a par, for example they are both against entropy—stabilizer of the worlds; however, machine does this without a theory of mind. [There’s a containment of the technical object] —Is GS explaining everything in terms of organization? —Is GS importing a value in his distinction between the technical being and the living being: “but the technical being has greater freedom than the living…there is thus no engendering here, no procession or direct production, but only indirect production through the constitution of elements that contain a certain degree of technical perfection” (71-72).

Deleuze's Foucault ("A New Cartographer")

 We began with questions:

• Deleuze's Foucault holds together a conception of Foucault's methodology that emphasizes the historical and empirical (or empiricist) alongside a notion of the diagrammatic and cartographic.
  
• What is Deleuze saying about what Foucault is teaching us about writing?  Why map-making as central rather than writing?  (See first sentence and last sentence of the chapter).
• How is the diagram related to power?  What is the concept of immanent cause here?  How is the immanent cause of the diagram connected to the exercise of power?
• How does Deleuze position the shift from archaeology to genealogy, from AK to DP?  What is the relation between the discursive/nondiscursive on the one hand and the idea of organizing forms on the other?
• Deleuze's discussion of the state could be read as a reductionist account of the state to power; such that the state on his account merely redirects already existing power relations?  (See p. 25.)
• Deleuze discusses "several correlative agencies": the outside, the exterior, and the forms of exteriority (43).  How do we understand this cluster of nonhuman agencies?
• How does Deleuze qualify Foucault's understanding of function (p. 24, 33)?
• Deleuze's account of technological change (pp. 42-43).  Deleuze can here be read as unpacking a notion of practice.  Relationship between techniques, assemblages, and diagrams.
• P. 40: "Technology is therefore social before it is technical" (!!!).  Discuss.
  

We then moved to discussion:

We first discussed the notion of "immanent cause" and Deleuze's claim that the diagram is an immanent cause (37).

What is the role of the diagram in Deleuze?

How do we construe Deleuze in this book as starting with difference rather than identity?

Deleuze in conversation with Simondon in developing a conception of form that is not necessarily tethered to matter?

Deleuze: "technology is therefore social before it is technical."  The term "social" here can be misleading to 21st-century anglophone ears.

Queloz, "The Normative Significance of Pragmatic Genealogies" (Chapter 9)

 We began with questions

1. How convincing do we find his response to the continuity problem? (p. 230)

2. Let's look at the four objections to pragmatic genealogy listed on the first page. Where if at all do each of us jump off? Which objection do each of us if at all find the most compelling?

3. What does he mean by “more objective” (p. 224)? Is disinterested what he means by objective here? Is a disinterested genealogy even possible

4. How does he understand history (p. 214), and how does it fit into pragmatic genealogy?

5. Is pragmatic genealogy a middle way between historical genealogy and model based genealogy?

6. Can the need-satisfaction account secure normativity without teleology?

7. How is need meant to achieve objectivity? It seems he wants to assert some kind of causal necessity (as opposed to a hypothetical objectivity). 

8. Shall we discuss his conception of the agent (p.238)? One of us has a hunch there is something valuable in the argument here, and it hinges on what he concludes about the agent. Maybe if we unpack this argument we might even have a route to understanding why Foucault himself came to return to a notion of subjectivation. Queloz and Foucault might be drawn to a similar conception of reasoning even if they have different meta conceptions of agent and subject.

 

Discussion

- The chapter is from a paper called “How pragmatic genealogies affect the space of reasons.”

- It is important that he addresses a conception of the subject (p.238) as opposed to "the subject."

- Pragmatic genealogy does not speculate on what has been. It is also not concerned with dynamic models (p. 213).

- The formation process bit is important (p. 218). So many practices depend on their own formation process for their justification!

- The point about needs being more objective seems to be a pretty innocuous one. 

- It is strange how he uses very Lamarkian language (i.e. language of purpose) but ultimately holds to more Darwinian presuppositions regarding development  (i.e. an account of needs in terms of functions).

- Pragmatic genealogies do not assume continuity in the practical demands we face precisely because they attempt to identify bases of continuity in those very demands. They are not arguments depending on continuity but arguments for it (p. 230). 

- You can establish continuity without positing universal needs (p. 233). We are less inclined to miss continuity because we start with a model where needs are more readily attributable to local contexts.

- It was surprising to see him evoke the state of nature to describe the local (p. 233). Does this local state of nature introduce the risk of relativism?

- What criteria do you need in order to have actual models, and how close do these models have to be to actual history in order to formulate them? 

- But to localize a model you need to go historical otherwise it does not have any force e.g. Rawls’ model only has force if there are historical examples where people have plural political disagreement. 

- What Fricker and Williams are doing is not local. What Queloz does is recognizes the contingency of the "we."

- The history of the present; the history of the present. It matters where you place the emphasis.