I wanted to write something different from the last three essays that focus on politics. I chose a random book chapter, which can be found in \u2018Molecular Revolution in Brazil\u2019 by F\u00e9lix Guattari and Suely Rolnik. Its title is \u2018Emotion, Energy, Body, Sex\u2019. It\u2019s short, what, ten pages or so that it should be a quick read, if you are interested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Right, so, the premise of this, what Guattari and a few others will go on to talk about, is that what he and Gilles Deleuze refer to as nomadism<\/em> in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia\u2019 should not be taken as inherently better than sedentarism<\/em>. To put that in other words, fluidity is not inherently better than solidity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, in these little conversations between Guattari and a number of others, someone (403) asks him to clarify this distinction, like what to do if you are stuck and what to do if you are swept away by the current, or so to speak. He (404) replies by stating that they are not promoting some idea of going on a journey, or a trip, like, let\u2019s say, road trip, or some drug induced trip, to find yourself. Okay, you can understand what they promote in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019 as a journey or a trip, sure, but, as he (404) points, it\u2019s not about going from one place, like from birth, to another place, to death, with there being these intermediary points on a path, like one\u2019s lifepath. It\u2019s not like that, at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what is that nomadism<\/em> about then? Why are they so against sedentarism<\/em>? Well, first, if you are sedentary, you are stuck in place. Okay, you not strictly speaking immobile, but rather relatively speaking immobile. It\u2019s not like you are stuck living in the same country, province, region, city or neighborhood. You may well be making all these trips elsewhere, yet still be stuck in a certain place. Why? Because you make those trips only to return. That said, you could also be physically stuck in one place, like let\u2019s say your neighborhood, or your home, what have you, yet be very nomadic. How so? Well, you can also be nomadic in your thought. You can go to places, without going anywhere, or so to speak, just by reading a book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Guattari (404), it\u2019s all about the process<\/em>. So, instead of thinking that you are here, wherever you may be at the moment, like stuck in that place, or seeking to escape from being stuck in place, going on a trip, for example, you take both, being, here and now, and that trip, going from one place to another, as the same. It\u2019s, as he and Deleuze keep insisting in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019, that you are always in the middle, both spatially and temporally. There\u2019s always something around you and there\u2019s really no start, nor finish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is also the case with subjectivity<\/em> as he (404) points out. There is no subject<\/em>, no me, no I, no self, that isn\u2019t a process. It\u2019s also important to understand, as he (404) puts it, that subjectivity is always, always highly differentiated, by which he wishes to emphasize that it\u2019s not that there is a separate process that is the subject, like a processual subject, but rather that the subject or subjectivity is part of a process or processes, as well as a result of that process or processes. Simply put, none of us exists in isolation from what else is there. It\u2019s like you owe your existence to existence itself, yet you are part of that existence to which everything owes its existence to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why does he (404) want to emphasize that it\u2019s all about a process? Well, because, if we think in terms of trips, or journeys, like going from here to there, we end up thinking that any deviation from that path is going astray, as he (404) points out. He (404) uses the example of domesticity:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTwo people are involved in a process of love, and that process eventually leads to a closing of territory, which neutralizes each and every possibility of richness (including sexual desire), every opening.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n To be clear, that domesticity is a process. That\u2019s not a problem. A relationship is not, in itself, a problem, no matter how heterosexual, conjugal or familial it is. It\u2019s rather the idea that it\u2019s the end all and be all in life that is the problem. So, what he (404) is pointing out here is that by fixating on love as this journey from one point, falling in love another person, to another point, until death separates you two, is the problem. Again, it\u2019s like you have just this one path that you end up taking, even though you could take another path, even though you could just go off the path or paths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, this does not mean that the path you\u2019ve taken is, by any means, inherently wrong. It might be a good path. If it is, it is. No problem. It\u2019s just that it often isn\u2019t, as noted by him (404).<\/p>\n\n\n\n He (404-405) isn\u2019t saying like, whatever, it\u2019s all the same, feel free to improvise, just enjoy and what not. No, no. It\u2019s not about being whimsical. He (405) provides some examples, of which the first one, the specific Italian feminist movement, I won\u2019t comment, because I honestly lack familiarity with what happened with that, but the second one makes sense to so, I\u2019ll comment on that. Right, so, reading \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019 or \u2018Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia\u2019, you might get this feeling like that it\u2019s all about experimentation, like that\u2019s the way you should live your life, like to the max, just seeing what happens, which may tempt you to think that they\u2019re totally fine with people doing drugs. That\u2019s, however, not what they are saying, as specified by him (405):<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s true that LSD\u2014or drugs in general\u2014can develop perceptual processes, enriching semiotic processes, when they are assembled with a personality such as Henri Michaux. Unfortunately, the Henri Michaux assemblages are not very common, and we can easily find phenomena of implosion, neutralization, impotentialization, or quite simply phenomena of black holes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Now, to unpack that, you don\u2019t need to know all the terms, nor who Henri Michaux is, although, of course, you can simply look it up, like right now. What matters here is that he (405) telling you not to take drugs for the sake of taking drugs, nor in hopes of, somehow, making your life better, because it is so, so easy for things go wrong if you do any of that. So, while they can have a positive impact on people, they can also have a negative impact on people. Instead of allowing you to stray from the path, like to make you think unlike you otherwise would, they can take you on a very difficult path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In another conversation, someone (405) asks Guattari what he thinks of emotion<\/em>? He (405-406) replies to that by asking us to think what we mean by emotion and whether it\u2019s different from affect<\/em>. That said, as that\u2019s a bit abstract, he (405) first responds by acknowledging that white, western people are, indeed, often thought to be lacking in emotion or even emotionless, only to attribute it to how subjectivity is produced under capitalism. Now, that may seem like he wants white, western people be more emotional, but he (405-406) reckons that it\u2019s foolish to think that people can, somehow, become more emotional, by like regaining their humanity or something like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, I reckon that he, nor Deleuze, wants to talk about emotions<\/em>, because it presupposes that there is that subject that has this range of emotions. He (405-406) doesn\u2019t say it, so this is just my take, as it always is, but he clearly doesn\u2019t like this western idea where every white person in the west has, somehow, lost their connection to nature or the universe and that they must then go on some spiritual journey, backpacking and sleeping in a hammock, often in some economically poor, yet spiritually rich country, just so that they can find that connection again and reveal to themselves who they truly are and what their position in the universe is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, to unpack what he (405-406) means by affect<\/em>, it\u2019s really about what something does to something else, and so on, and so forth. That\u2019s basically Baruch Spinoza\u2019s affect, rather than thinking about emotions<\/em>, like how one may have this or that feeling. His interlocutors are a bit puzzled by this, but he (406) is indeed saying that something like listening to music, on the go, on your headphones can, of course, be understood as a way of producing subjects<\/em> that then come listen to certain kinds of music, namely pop music, over and over again, while also acknowledging that it can also change the way we engage with music, while that music also changes how we engage with what else is there. For me, that\u2019s like the difference between listening to music at home and listening to it when I\u2019m jogging. They are very similar to one another, sure, but they are different or, rather, as he\u2019d (404) put it, differentiated<\/em>. To give you a more common example, I guess that\u2019s also how it is with listening to music and dancing to music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I try to explain this at times, albeit to no avail. This is not about emotions<\/em>, like how you feel, right here, right now. It\u2019s rather about what something does to you, or to anyone or anything else, for that matter, and what you, or anyone or anything else, does to others. It\u2019s action, yes, but it\u2019s more like interaction, like where all actions come to constitute future actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh, and this is not my idea, nor Guattari\u2019s idea. It\u2019s definitely Spinoza\u2019s idea. It\u2019s how he (215) conceives what\u2019s good or bad for a body in his \u2018Ethics\u2019. So, for him (215), there\u2019s the good:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhatsoever disposes the human body, so as to render it capable of being affected in an increased number of ways, or of affecting external bodies in an increased number of ways, is useful[.]<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n And then, in his (215) there\u2019s also the bad:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[C]ontrariwise, whatsoever renders the body less capable in this respect is hurtful[.]\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s basically your dual capacity, your capacity to act and be acted upon or, as Deleuze (27) explains it in \u2018Spinoza: Practical Philosophy\u2019, your \u201cpower of acting<\/em>\u201d and \u201cpower of being acted upon<\/em>\u201d. So, you have that capacity to act, what Deleuze (27) refers to as having to do with:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAn individual is first of all a singular essence, which is to say, a degree of power.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In other words, an individual, me, you, anyone, anything, is simply a degree of power, what it is that I, you, anyone or anything can do. Therefore, an individual is defined according to its capacity to act, as in what it can do others, as in what affects it is capable of. Now, as nothing is simply given, that capacity to act is defined by one\u2019s capacity to be acted upon, or, as Deleuze (27) puts it, by one\u2019s \u201ccapacity for being affected\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA characteristic relation corresponds to this essence, and a certain capacity for being affected corresponds to this degree of power.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In other words, your capacity to act depends on other acts, as well as your capacity to be acted upon. That means that what you can do depends on how you\u2019ve been constituted or constructed, both mentally and physically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A good example of this would be exercising. If you know what to eat and you exercise, without injuring yourself, your physical capacity to act will increase. Of course, it doesn\u2019t increase in general. If you just lift a ton weights, okay, you\u2019ll be strong, but you might not be, no longer very agile, which may decrease your capacity to act. It all really depends on what kinds of acts, or affects, we are talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s the same with thinking. If you hone your thinking, by speaking, listening, reading and writing, or watching, filming, what have, you, your mental capacity will increase. Now, of course, that won\u2019t increase in general. It\u2019s going to be likewise specific to the task you are dealing with. It can also decrease your mental capacity if you become very narrow minded, or if you think too highly of yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, if you understand how that works, like how that Spinozist way of thinking works, you\u2019ll see the world very differently. In fact, you\u2019ll see it so differently that a lot of things that many other people, even very educated people, like academics, struggle to comprehend or accomplish become really easy for you. It\u2019s like if you understand that general process, of how it all comes together, how it\u2019s all conditioned, yet also conditioning, at all times, yeah, you\u2019ll start to understand the world, intuitively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This matches Spinoza\u2019s (113) third kind of knowledge<\/em> that\u2019s based on intuition<\/em>. It\u2019s not at all like his (113) first kind of knowledge, which is based opinion<\/em> or imagination<\/em>, nor his second kind of knowledge, which is based on reason<\/em>. Most academics are capable of gaining and producing the second kind of knowledge, the kind of knowledge that is based on reason. In Spinoza\u2019s (113-114) view, that\u2019s pretty good as that kind of knowledge is adequate<\/em>, whereas the first kind of knowledge is inadequate<\/em>. In his (109, 113), the second kind of knowledge is superior to the first kind of knowledge because what matters more than the particulars is what\u2019s common to those particulars. That said, he (93, 113) also reckons that while gain much from this second kind of knowledge, it\u2019s not particularly useful to us as it ends up losing all that particularity. The third kind of knowledge is vastly superior to the first and the second kinds of knowledge, because, through intuition, it deals with essences, which, by the way, for Spinoza, are definable as the dual capacity to act and be acted upon, as explained by Deleuze (27).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second kind of knowledge, what we might also call scientific knowledge, tells us that, for example, humans are mammals, as in they have tits, or that they are primates, as in related to apes. It\u2019s not whimsical, like the first kind of knowledge that is based on opinion<\/em> or imagination<\/em>, but, in the end, it\u2019s all very static and generic. So, to return that human example again, think of identical twins, as mentioned by Deleuze (1) in \u2018Difference and Repetition\u2019. They are, supposedly, identical, as in the same, yet they are not. While this second kind of knowledge is very, very useful, it is, in the end, rather useless, because it cannot provide an answer to how that can be. Only the third kind of knowledge can do that, because it doesn\u2019t rely on static notions. Instead, it asks us to assess each of the twins on the basis of their capacity to act and be acted upon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is also exactly what Deleuze and Guattari mean when they (257) state in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019 that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn the same way that we avoided defining a body by its organs and functions, we will avoid defining it by Species or Genus characteristics; instead we will seek to count its affects.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This is also explicitly a Spinozist way of understanding the world, as acknowledged by them (257):<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis kind of study is called ethology, and this is the sense in which Spinoza wrote a true Ethics.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Now, if you fail to grasp what they mean by that, you are in luck as they (257) provide a helpful example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA racehorse is more different from a workhorse than a workhorse is from an ox.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n How so? Aren\u2019t they both horses? Yes, they are both horses. You got me there. That said, a workhorse is not at all like a racehorse and more like an ox, because its essence, its capacity to act and be acted upon is very similar to an ox and very different from a racehorse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, as you can see, we are dealing with very different kinds of knowledge, one that is hellbent on determining what everything is<\/em>, and what it consists of, as in what they are<\/em>, and another one that isn\u2019t at all interested in what something is, but rather in what it does<\/em>, as in what it can<\/em> do. In their (257) words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe know nothing about a body until we know what it can do, in other words, what its affects are, how they can or cannot enter into composition with other affects, with the affects of another body, either to destroy that body or to be destroyed by it, either to exchange actions and passions with it or to join with it in composing a more powerful body.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n So, instead of saying that a human is an animal, a primate, a mammal, that has two legs and two arms, which is why a human acts the way a human does, a Spinozist is going to say the exact opposite, that no, what we call a human, that is this animal, this primate, this mammal, that has two legs and two arms, because that\u2019s what a human does, because that\u2019s what we call a human is capable of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right, so, I\u2019m often perplexed by this. Whenever I apply for grant money for some project, as you do in academics, there\u2019s basically zero chance that I\u2019ll get it. Why? Well, I can\u2019t know for sure, because you are rarely told why you don\u2019t get it, but I\u2019d say it\u2019s because I come across as really bad at planning. Am I? No, not really. It\u2019s just that I manage my projects as processes. There\u2019s no clear beginning, nor an end. I\u2019m always in the middle of it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You might ask me how can I do something? Easily. That\u2019s how I can do something. I\u2019m capable of doing it. I wouldn\u2019t do it otherwise. That\u2019s what I call intuition<\/em>. It\u2019s also Henri Bergson\u2019s approach, as explained by him (58) in \u2018The Creative Mind\u2019:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[I]t is a question of finding the problem and consequently of positing it, even more than of solving it. For a speculative problem is solved as soon as it is properly stated.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n So, you have a problem, whatever it may be, and you seek a solution to it. People like to think that research is difficult, but, frankly, it isn\u2019t. It\u2019s all about finding solutions to problems that you encounter. Once you have that problem, know what it is, that problem will lend itself to helping you to come up with a solution to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just think of it in the form of a question. If you ask a how question something can be done, you can only answer it by explaining that it can be done in this and\/or that way, whatever it is. If you ask a why something is the way it is, you can only answer it by explain that it is because this and\/or that. Not very difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only difficulty you have is coming up with the problems, finding them and inventing them in the process of positing them, as stated by Bergson (58). You\u2019ll find a solution, that answer to your question, once you\u2019ve done that. Like I just pointed out, this is not very difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In my view, the reason people aren\u2019t very good at this is because we\u2019ve been led to believe that what Bergson and Spinoza refer to as intuition<\/em> is somehow irrational. Deleuze comments on this in his book on Bergson, titled \u2018Bergsonism\u2019. He (15) notes that we are told that problems are pre-existing, like just waiting for us or, rather, our brightest minds to find them and then solve them, but this is just a way to keep us \u201cin a kind of slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Deleuze (16) reckons that Bergson\u2019s explanation of this, quoted in length, might elude you, so explains this through how Karl Marx\u2019s would formulate that. He (16) notes that we can only come up with problems that we are capable of solving and that we only come up with solutions that our problems deserve. That\u2019s what I mean when I state that you can only answer a question in a certain way. If you answer it in another way, you aren\u2019t giving it an answer it deserves. The answer might still be an answer to a question, yes, but it is an answer to a different question, one that deserves that answer, if you will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We also get an example of how this applies to everything for Bergson. In Deleuze\u2019s (16) view, Bergson presents life itself as this game of addressing problems that we encounter and then solving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, enough of Bergson. How do you find the way solve a problem then? Well, firstly, as Deleuze (16) points out, we can only come up with a solution that the problem deserves, and we can only present both with the terms we happen to have. This emphasizes the importance of knowledge, not in the sense that we just produce it for the sake of producing it, or accumulate it for the sake of accumulating it, as if we were on a quest to find all pieces of the puzzle, no, but in the sense that the very terms we have, those concepts that we, me, you and others, whoever they may be, have created, allow us to think of it all in the first place. Secondly, you\u2019ll come up with a solution to a problem, that answer to your question, if it is important enough to you. I think Friedrich Nietzsche (6) summarizes this perfectly in his \u2018Epigrams and Arrows\u2019, as included in \u2018Twilight of the Idols\u2019:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you have your why<\/em> for life, you can get by with almost any how<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n That is so true. If you can\u2019t solve something, it is possible that you simply lack the tools to solve it, fair enough, as Deleuze (16) might point out, but, even then, it\u2019s rather an indication that what you are dealing with just isn\u2019t important enough to you. I mean, if it is important enough to you, it\u2019s like the only thing on your mind and nothing else matters until you\u2019ve solve that problem, until you\u2019ve provided that answer to your question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m definitely like that. I find it very, very difficult to not put in the hours to get something done, and even more difficult to understand how others are like, well, I might want to research this and\/or that. You might want to? What? That\u2019s no motivation. If you don\u2019t want to get it done, right now, right here, you aren\u2019t interested in that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, you might counter that by stating that you need to figure out this and\/or that first. Yes, of course, but if that\u2019s the thing, what is preventing you from doing that, right now, right here? I\u2019d say it\u2019s your lack of motivation. You aren\u2019t really interested in that. You have other interests. Oh, and that\u2019s fine. Everyone has other interests. It\u2019s rather that I\u2019m not convinced by anyone who says something like that. In that case those other interests are simply more important to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is connected to how I hate coming up with research plans. It\u2019s some made up stuff about how this and\/or that\u2019s maybe going to happen. If you really were proposing something interesting, some worthwhile, something that\u2019ll get done, you’d already be doing it. I find it laughable when people explain that they\u2019ll be doing this and then that, followed by whatever it is. I\u2019m like no, no and no. Just no. Stop planning what it is that you want to do and start doing it instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Doing research, conditionally, like that has gotta be the dumbest and the most dishonest thing among academics. Who has a great idea, like maybe the best ever, and is like, nah, I\u2019ll keep doing whatever it is that I\u2019m doing until, maybe, one day, someone might approve of it and give me funding for it? That\u2019s not a great idea, probably not even a good one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Okay, okay, if your situation is precarious, like if you are doing your doctorate and you can\u2019t start doing other stuff, because otherwise you won\u2019t get your degree, fair enough. I\u2019m not blaming you. Like I postponed my nightscape research because of that. Then again, yeah, I did a lot of the groundwork, a lot of the necessary reading and trials for nighttime photography way before I officially started that project after getting my degree. It was just so compelling that I had to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right, back to Guattari. Pepe Escobar (406) asks him to explain how people can express themselves affectively, rather than merely linguistically. Well, had he asked me, I would have answered that we are always expressing ourselves affectively, even when we are expressing ourselves linguistically. That\u2019s the gist of speech act theory. Anyway, so, but Guattari\u2019s (407-408) answer is slightly different. To summarize it, he points out to others that we tend to have a strange, somewhat luddite relationship to technology, whereas the younger generations don\u2019t have such. Now, he reckons that we are also tempted to think that they are then, somehow, corrupted by the technology and that we, the older folks, are smart not to share their enthusiasm. To be clear, it\u2019s not that he is saying whatever, it\u2019s all good, that there\u2019s nothing about technology. What he is saying that by refusing to use technology, we are missing out on a lot of opportunities. Oh, and no, this is not some tech-bro thing that he is saying. No, not at all. It\u2019s really all about how you use that technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you ask me, his (407-408) views remind me a lot of open-source software development. He is clear all for technology, inasmuch as it can be used in an open-ended way. What he doesn\u2019t like is, oddly enough, what has largely happened instead:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs for me, machines don\u2019t frighten me, because they broaden the perception and simplify human behavior. What frightens me is when they are reduced to the level of human foolishness.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n I bet he\u2019d be really up in arms about smartphones, not because there isn\u2019t this great potential to them, but because they\u2019ve been reduced to serving and fueling that human foolishness. I\u2019d say that he\u2019d think of them more of like as a television than an actual computer, in the sense that it is the device that acts on you, much more, instead of you acting on the device, except in ways that then facilitate that device acting on you again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also like the way he (408) points out that, well, once you have that technology, once it spreads, it\u2019s pointless to fight against it, because \u201cwe have to admit that technoscientific expansion has an irreversible character.\u201d Indeed, there\u2019s no going back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Okay, to be clear, he\u2019s not saying that you should embrace whatever, like the latest fads. It\u2019s rather that he wants to be productive. He wants us to think what we could do with that technology. It\u2019s like instead of relying on giant tech corporations to provide us some generic, streamlined user experience, he wants us to think what else we could do with those smartphones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh, and to candid, I also now own a smartphone. It\u2019s just, let\u2019s say, a very, very different kind of, highly customized smartphone. It\u2019s exactly the kind of smartphone that Guattari would approve of. Instead of being a tool for it, it\u2019s a tool for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think he would also have been supportive of what\u2019ve come to refer to as social media, albeit I\u2019d say that he would have preferred the earlier versions, the ones in which only a small minority of the world population participated in before they turned into these majority platforms, where one is not actually a user, but rather used by the platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right, moving on. Rose Murano (410) tells him that, in Brazil, there are all these differences between the different social classes. What\u2019s interesting here is that he (410-411) rejects this way of addressing social issues only relation to class. This is not to say that he rejects class as a sociological category. No, that\u2019s not what he\u2019s saying. It\u2019s rather that he (411) wants any sociological analysis to include much, much more categories and their variables. I totally agree. Things only ever get interesting once you have all that data, with all those categories and variables. It\u2019s very interesting to address such data, through a number of variables. It can be very, very rich, and offer very, very good insight into a society, no matter how much people object to its quantitative nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there\u2019s the final question. Escobar (412) wants to know what Guattari thinks of sexual liberation or, what used to be called sexual liberation. I guess we\u2019d use the term queer<\/em> these days. Guattari (412) provides a very concise answer to this. He (412) acknowledges that, okay, sure, that has happened and that it challenges the normativity view of sexuality in contemporary societies, only to add that it has become compromised and taken over by capitalism. How so? Well, I mean, you gotta give to him, like how he foresaw what would happen, like way back, already in the early 1980s. What do I mean? Okay, so, I\u2019m all for the rainbows. The more, the merrier. That\u2019s not the issue. It\u2019s rather that the rainbows have been turned into a commodity, i.e., a product or a subscription, and a marketing tool that is, you guessed it, to sell you something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wanted to write something different from the last three essays that focus on politics. I chose a random book chapter, which can be found in \u2018Molecular Revolution in Brazil\u2019 by F\u00e9lix Guattari and Suely Rolnik. Its title is \u2018Emotion, Energy, Body, Sex\u2019. It\u2019s short, what, ten pages or so that it should be a […]<\/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":[1104,71,123,318,171],"class_list":["post-5561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-bergson","tag-deleuze","tag-guattari","tag-nietzsche","tag-spinoza"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5561","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=5561"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5576,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5561\/revisions\/5576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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