I\u2019ve been reading a bit of this and a bit of that, mainly some Proust, but I\u2019ve also been wondering what to write on. There are a couple of essays that are somewhere there, halfway done, but I wanted to do something short for a change. So, I landed on \u2018Instincts and Institutions\u2019 by Gilles Deleuze, as included in \u2018Desert Islands and Other Texts: 1953\u20131974\u2019. It was first published as the introduction of \u2018Instincts et institutions\u2019, a collection of texts presented by Deleuze. It\u2019s only some 80 pages, and the introduction is only three pages, so this ought to remain aptly short.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The way I read this is that this is an early account of some of the stuff he discusses with F\u00e9lix Guattari in, for example, \u2018Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia\u2019 and \u2018A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia\u2019. So if some this, what will be covered in this essay, seems familiar to you, having read his later works, with or without Guattari, it\u2019s because some of the stuff was already being worked on by him decades earlier. For example, milieu<\/em> crops up quite a bit in this text, in the same way that he and Guattari (50-51) also discuss it in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019 as a matter of interiority<\/em>, exteriority<\/em> and association<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Deleuze (19) starts by stating that there are instincts<\/em> and institutions<\/em>, which both function to \u201cdesignate procedures of satisfaction.\u201d To make sense of instincts<\/em>, he (19) clarifies that they pertain to how \u201can organism reacts instinctively to external stimuli\u201d in order to take what it needs from it\u2019s surroundings, to \u201csatisfy its tendencies and needs[.]\u201d What\u2019s important here is that \u201cextracting from the external world the elements which will satisfy its tendencies and needs\u201d results in creating a world that is specific to that organism. So, each organism, of course, has different instincts, as he (19) points out. To simplify this, each animal has different tendencies or needs (he uses these sort of interchangeably in this text) that it seeks to satisfy, which also results in a world specific to that animal. In other words, each organism reacts to certain elements in its surroundings. This is all instinctual, what one might be tempted to call natural. It just happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To make sense of institutions<\/em>, he (19) clarifies they have to do with the process of \u201cinstitut[ing] an original world between its tendencies and the external milieu, developing artificial means of satisfaction.\u201d He (19) states that the subject<\/em> institutes this, but I\u2019d say that\u2019s this is actually the moment that the tendencies and the external milieu give rise to it. Then again, that\u2019s just my take. Anyway, he (19) adds that these artificial means transform the organism, liberating it from its existing tendencies and needs, not necessarily whole sale, not from all of them, but to some extent nonetheless, by transforming them, by \u201cintroducing them into a new milieu.\u201d Of course, if we think that a transformation always results in replacing what was, then, well, I guess you could say that they are all replaced. Then again, that\u2019s debatable. I guess it depends on how substantial the transformations are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To make more sense of how instincts and institutions function, he (19) exemplifies them with hunger and money. So, an organism, let\u2019s say you, is hungry. It needs to satisfy that hunger. There are, of course, many ways to satisfy that hunger. It doesn\u2019t matter what route one takes, as long as that problem is solved by some means. As an animal, you eat. It\u2019s as simple as that. Now, of course, in the world of instincts, hunger is a recurring problem and solving it takes considerable effort. Introduce money (and all that comes from it, really, as that\u2019s what I think he means by money) and you no longer have to feel hungry. You are liberated from it! Hurrah! The instinctual problem seems to be solved, once and for all, true, but it is solved and remains solved only inasmuch you have money, as he (19) goes on to add. Your problem now really isn\u2019t hunger, as such. It\u2019s money. You no longer need to hunt for food, quite literally, but do you need to make money. If this doesn\u2019t convince you, he (19) provides another example, sexuality and marriage. You seek a partner, which is, of course, a task that is by no means easy as people come and go and there\u2019s also competition. Marriage fixes that by introducing fixity to that arrangement. People no longer come and go when they are fixed to one another. There\u2019s also less competition that way. It\u2019s a solution to a problem, which, of course, leads to other problems, which he doesn\u2019t specify. Simply put, the solutions to existing problems have introduced new problems that need to be solved. In summary, he (19) states that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[E]very individual experience presupposes, as an a priori<\/em>, the existence of a milieu in which that experience is conducted, a species-specific milieu or an institution milieu. Instinct and institution are the two organized form of a possible satisfaction.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This configuration is, however, a bit simplistic, as one is presented as taking place or being in place before the other, the institutional being considered secondary to the instinctual. He (19) acknowledges this by noting that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[Institutions] already presuppose institutionalized behaviors, recalling a derived utility that is properly social.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In other words, while he retains that institutions are secondary to instincts, institutions feed into behavior, conditioning it, hence the earlier point he makes about something that liberates you from something else comes to subject you to other tasks. I reckon the point he is making or trying to make is that you cannot neatly separate one from the other, to argue that people are like this or that by nature, considering that people owe themselves to others who have inscribed in them all kinds of institutionalized behaviors. You can distinguish one from the other, as he (19) clearly does in this early text, yet we can\u2019t even talk about instinctual behavior without being inscribed with institutionalized behaviors, i.e. without being properly social. He (21) emphasizes this aspect on the last page of this short text, arguing that, in fact, \u201chumans have no instincts\u201d as \u201cthey build institutions\u201d; \u201c[t]he human is an animal that decimating its species\u201d, that is to say that it\u2019s species specific to the human species to replace its instincts with institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The clearest distinction between two is to be found in how a need or a tendency is satisfied. In his (20) view, if a need or a tendency is satisfied directly, it\u2019s instinctual, and if it is satisfied indirectly, it\u2019s institutional. So, if we are dealing with instinct, it always direct utility, with no prohibitions or coercions, only repugnancies, as he (20) goes on to add. He (20-21) clarifies instinct as a matter of \u201cdouble causality\u201d involving individual psychological factors and species specific factors that pertain to the bodily constitution of this or that species. It\u2019s not about \u201cof reflex, of tropism, of habit and intelligence\u201d, even though it sort of is, nor about \u201cthe framework of an advantage to the species\u201d, even though it sort of is as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He (21) doesn\u2019t go into detail about this, where to draw the line between instincts and institutions, which it a bit hard for me to say much about this. The way he (21) puts it is about whether something is a mere reflex, a trope, a habit or about intelligence, how first three are already instinctually \u201cperfect\u201d, done without hesitation, albeit to lesser and lesser degree and thus less perfect or more imperfect, I guess, whereas the fourth, intelligence, is thus the most perfectible or \u201cimperfect\u201d, done with a great deal of hesitation. I guess another way of explaining that would be like a slider between the unconscious and the conscious. He (21) states that the more perfect ones are more species specific, whereas intelligence is non-species specific and thus appears individual. That said, he (21) reckons that intelligence is always social, i.e. that consciousness is always social, presupposing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, be as it may, as already pointed out, he (21) does reckon that humans do not, no longer have instincts, as such, because such direct instinctual behavior is always replaced by indirect institutionalized behavior. So, as I also already pointed out, we can\u2019t even say much about that because to talk about that, in itself, involves institutionalized behavior. We can, however, infer that animals or, more broadly speaking, other organisms appear to exhibit instinctual species specific behavior and we can also transform some of their behavior, by, for example, domesticating them, which allows us to observe this distinction between the two, as he (21) goes on to point out. Then again, I don\u2019t know what to think of certain animal behavior, such as hunting in packs. Isn\u2019t that a socially instituted way of addressing hunger? Wouldn\u2019t it be more direct to just go after the prey on your own?<\/p>\n\n\n\n He (19) moves on to distinguish institution<\/em> from law<\/em>. For him (19), an institution is \u201ca positive model for action\u201d, whereas a law is a negative model for action. In other words, an institution is what seeks to make you do this and\/or that, whereas a law is what seeks to prevent you from doing this and\/or that. So, when something is institutional, institutionalized or an institution, it functions \u201cas an organized systems of means\u201d, to achieve this or that, as he (19) points out. To use the example of sexuality and marriage, the latter is an institution, because it is what he (19) calls \u201can organized system of means\u201d to addressing the former. It\u2019s a<\/em> positive solution to an existing problem, albeit not the<\/em> positive solution to an existing problem, as indicated by him (20) later on. It\u2019s one among many of society\u2019s positive and inventive ways of fixing a problem, to satisfy certain tendencies or needs, as he (19-20) goes on to point out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, he (19) argues that in this view of institutions are seen as positive. In stark contrast, the opposing view designates the positive outside the social, so that, conversely, the social is always the negative, the contractual limitation to the positive natural rights, as he (19) goes on to add. In short, when it comes to solving problems, he (19) views institutions as positive means and laws as negative means. The former seeks to push people to do this and\/or that, whereas the latter seeks to limit people from doing this and\/or that. The opposing view presents everything as given, as naturally and universally applicable law, and institutions as what set limits to it all in some ways. I guess it\u2019s not that one starts from the positive in that view, but that what is seen as negative comes to present what\u2019s already taken for granted (rather underhandedly if you ask me) as positive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He (20) moves on to emphasize that tendencies or needs are not necessarily satisfied by only this or that institution. In other words, as aptly put by him (2), \u201cthe institution is not explained by tendencies.\u201d This is because an institution is only a<\/em> means to an end, not the<\/em> means to an end. To exemplify this with what was mentioned earlier on already, marriage is only a specific solution to a specific problem, which could also be solved in other ways, through other means. So, as he (20) points out, \u201c[t]he same sexual needs will never explain the multiple possible forms of marriage\u201d or, should I say, arrangements that seek to satisfy those needs as marriage itself can be seen as a form of arrangement, although I do acknowledge that marriage can and does take many forms, which, in turn, may result in different kinds of other problems that need to be solved, one way or another. This lack of telos<\/em>, of inherent purpose, can be quite confusing, which he (20) acknowledges:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is the paradox of society: we are always talking about institutions, but we are in fact confronted by procedures of satisfaction \u2013 and the tendencies satisfied by such procedures neither trigger nor determine the procedures. Tendencies are satisfied by means that do not depend on them. Therefore, no tendency exists which is not at the same time constrained or harassed, and thus transformed, sublimated \u2013 to such an extent that neurosis is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It can indeed be confusing, to the point that you lose your shit, or so to speak, because, well, the sudden realization of this having no inherent connection to that, that is to say there being no necessity of it, only contingency, can result in quite the headache. He (20) further clarifies this lack of dependency between the two by adding that not all institutions satisfy the tendencies or needs of everyone as we are not all alike. In other words, as he (20) goes on to emphasize, it\u2019s very important to investigate institutions because they may seek to satisfy the tendencies or needs of some people, but not all people, while possibly also appearing as if they served to satisfy the tendencies or needs of everyone or, at least, more people than they actually do. In his (20) words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[O]ne must still ask the question: useful for whom? For all those who have needs? Or just for a few (privileged class)? Or only for those who control the institution (the bureaucracy)?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Simply put, don\u2019t just ask what<\/em>, nor where<\/em> and when<\/em>, but also who<\/em>, for whom <\/em>and to whom<\/em>, as those help us to figure out why<\/em>. To go back a bit, it\u2019s worth keeping in mind that he argues that institutions are always positive. That said, now ask yourself, to whom they are positive? Does this and\/or that institution exist to satisfy the needs of the people, or just some people? Does the institution even benefit the people or does it sort of exist for the sake of existing, for itself, for the bureaucrats, for the functionaries whose current livelihood depends on it, on selling the idea that the institution that they are linked to is absolutely necessary even though that\u2019s simply not the case. To exemplify this, in the previous essay I covered how a political party can make it itself appear as an absolute necessity, as the only way to achieve a positive change in society, while, in fact, it only serves the interest of the party members or, more likely, a select few central party members, the vanguard<\/em>, the party elite, the privileged class who also control it. In his (20) words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of the most profound sociological problems thus consists in seeking out the nature of this other instance, on which the social forms of the satisfaction of tendencies depend.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n To link this to an earlier essay that I wrote on dispositive analysis<\/em> or, as I would call it, diagrammatics<\/em>, this is also what fascinates Michel Foucault, as discussed by him in an interview between him and a number of psychoanalysts, subsequently published as \u2018The Confession of the Flesh\u2019. I won\u2019t go through all of that as that\u2019s what I did in that essay, but, I\u2019ll briefly cover the main points. So, as I pointed out in that essay, for Foucault (198), institutions<\/em> are non-discursive formations<\/em> because, according to a dictionary, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, they involve the act of instituting, establishing, founding or ordaining something, to introducing it and bringing it to use or practice (OED, s.v. \u201cinstitute\u201d, v.), that is to say giving it visible form. That said, as acknowledged by him (198), to make sense of the non-discursive formations, i.e. institutions, one also needs to take into account the discursive formations, as one cannot be defined without the other, as they are in reciprocal presupposition. He (198) exemplifies this with a specific military school, the building being the non-discursive formation, i.e. the institution, and the architectural plans being the discursive formation (albeit the actual plans for it, drawn on actual paper are, of course, yet another non-discursive formation, an institution, in the sense that paper also needs to have been instituted, formed into being as that thing, as paper). These are, of course, linked to other discursive and non-discursive formations as well. So, to make sense of a military school, one also needs to have knowledge of military and architecture and what roles the play in a certain society, at a certain point in time, which, in turn, may require one to know a lot more about other words and things (and so on, and so on, and so on).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, institutions interest Foucault (198) for the same reason as they interest Deleuze (20), because the institutions are supposed to have a certain function, to satisfy certain this and\/or that tendency or needs, yet there may well be a mismatch between the two. As Foucault (198) points out, when one deals with dispositives<\/em> or diagrams<\/em>, the discursive and the non-discursive are supposed to be aligned (yet distinct), but they might also not be aligned and it\u2019s then when things get interesting, when things are supposed to be like this, yet, in actuality, they are like that, having been instituted in a way that results in a mismatch. So, for him (198), a military school is not that interesting if the building conforms to the architectural plans and serves the function it was built for, for training the military the way the military intended it. It\u2019s like yes, okay, what about it? There\u2019s hardly anything surprising about that. It functions as means to a certain end, as a solution to a problem, for training the untrained, and as a building, it functions to create a regulatable indoor environment, solving the problem of being outdoors. It\u2019s as simple as that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It gets interesting if there are other discursive formations at play, let\u2019s say homosexuality or delinquency that, for some reason, come to manifest themselves in the military school, as homosexual or delinquent soldiers. It\u2019s not intended to be that way, for it to be like a gay bar or a shop for stolen goods, where you\u2019d expect homosexuals or petty criminals to appear, but if it functions like that, then that\u2019s interesting. It would also be interesting if the building itself didn\u2019t conform to its plans, if changes had been made to it, for whatever reasons not intended by the architect(s). This is what you find in Foucault\u2019s work (no, not homosexuality or delinquency in the military, as I just made those up), how an institution may have been instituted to satisfy certain tendencies or needs, to fix this and\/or that problem, which may have worked, at least to a certain extent, but it may also have had unintended consequences, feeding into the creation of new discursive and non-discursive formations. For example, the way madness is understood right now is not how it used to be understood in the past, which probably doesn\u2019t surprise anyone, really, but it\u2019s not that it just involved a gradual change in discourse, that new, more accurate, knowledge was produced, which, unlike before, then allowed knowledgeable people to recognize the mentally ill. Instead, it\u2019s that when certain people were grouped together and locked up in the same place, in the same building, they ended up appearing to others in a certain light, as if highlighting how different they are from others, which wasn\u2019t the case when they were allowed to live among everyone else, just like everyone else. In other words, while mental illness is a discursive formation, a systematic set of statements, no doubt about it, the non-discursive formations, the institutions that functioned to confine people in order to treat them, to cure them, came to inform how madness came to be (re)defined as mental illness. That\u2019s exactly what\u2019s so fascinating about institutions (not that I necessarily agree with how they function though).<\/p>\n\n\n\n None this, what I\u2019ve added from my previous discussions of Foucault\u2019s work, in a summary form, takes away from what Deleuze has to say about institutions. It adds to it. One must still ask why<\/em> this and\/or that institution exists, what<\/em> purpose it serves, who<\/em> controls it and whose<\/em> interests it serves. Institutions may also have been created for a certain purpose, only to end up functioning in another way. An example of this is how prisons were supposed to function as the <\/em>solution to crime, like a silver bullet, yet, as you can gather by reading Foucault\u2019s work, namely \u2018Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison\u2019 in which he (264-268) clearly points this out, or by watching some prison documentaries, prisons ended up creating more of it, by confining people as part of their punishment, lumping them together so that, inadvertently, a prison becomes more like a school of crime than anything else. So, instead of dealing with just petty crime, confining people into an institution known as the prison for various minor offenses tends to result in turning these people into hardened career criminals, which is the exact opposite of what you\u2019d want as a result from a punishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, it was interesting to go through something so old, yet so familiar. That said, I\u2019d still rather check out Deleuze\u2019s later texts, with or without Guattari, or, alternatively, read some Foucault, as the stuff that\u2019s covered \u2018Instincts and Institutions\u2019 does leave you hanging a bit if you aren\u2019t already familiar with what it deals with. It\u2019s still totally worth reading though, considering it\u2019s only three pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve been reading a bit of this and a bit of that, mainly some Proust, but I\u2019ve also been wondering what to write on. There are a couple of essays that are somewhere there, halfway done, but I wanted to do something short for a change. So, I landed on \u2018Instincts and Institutions\u2019 by Gilles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3554,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[71,48,123],"class_list":["post-2181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-deleuze","tag-foucault","tag-guattari"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3554"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2181"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5239,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181\/revisions\/5239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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References<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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