Once more I\u2019m going to check out something short, \u2018Subjectless Action\u2019 by F\u00e9lix Guattari, a psychoanalysis and semiotics conference presentation that took place in 1974. Now, you don\u2019t need to know a whole lot about his work, or the works of Gilles Deleuze or Michel Foucault, to name a few, to figure out what this presentation was all about. You can find it in one of the compilations of Guattari\u2019s works, Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics\u2019, in case you are interested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In case you don\u2019t get it, like I don\u2019t know how, knowing the title of his presentation that I just gave you, it\u2019s indeed about how action can be subjectless. If you can handle that, if the subject, you, first and foremost, is your starting point for everything, well, I guess it\u2019s better that you stop reading now. It\u2019s only likely that you\u2019ll get angry and, well, that\u2019s not very productive. You might end up smashing things, like someone who isn\u2019t in control of oneself, so let\u2019s just leave it there. Move along, find something else instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But if you get it, and if you can handle it, stick around. It\u2019ll be fun. I guarantee that, even though I haven\u2019t even read this yet, as I\u2019m writing it as I\u2019m reading it. I don\u2019t always do that, but, yeah, every now and then. It\u2019s quite refreshing really, because you anticipate things which may not crop up and it\u2019s so, so cool when they do crop up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Right, Guattari starts, or started, his presentation by noting something that Finns would approve. He (135) points out that pronouns aren\u2019t even needed: we could just replace all of them, in all their forms, whatever, with \u2018it\u2019. In Finnish, this is regularly done. There\u2019s just \u2018se\u2019, which used to be \u2018proper\u2019 only for things, like inanimate objects, but it\u2019s more common than not to use for just about anything, or anyone. Me, you, that person walking the dog and the dog, they are all \u2018se\u2019, which is the same as \u2018it\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What Guattari (135) finds particularly interesting about \u2018it\u2019 is that \u2018it\u2019 is not a subject, nor represent one. \u2018It\u2019 is just \u2018it\u2019, singularly \u2018it\u2019. Okay, we can substitute \u2018it\u2019 with a name, like, let\u2019s say Charlie, and it works the same way, singularly, in the sense that \u2018it\u2019 is not possible to specify what \u2018it\u2019 is, yet you just know what \u2018it\u2019 is, as he, sorry, \u2018it\u2019 and Deleuze (264) point out in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia\u2019. He (135) is, of course, a bit more verbose than that, what I just pointed out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201c\u2018It\u2019 represents the potential articulation of those linked elements of expression whose contents are the least formalized, and therefore the most susceptible of being rearranged to produce the maximum of occurrences.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
So, in connection to the point they (264) make in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019, a name or just \u2018it\u2019 can be just about anything, to whom it may concern. Like Charlie who? Do I know Charlie? Do you know Charlie? And even if we know Charlie, we know a different Charlie. Or, rather, it\u2019s the same Charlie, that \u2018it\u2019, but that Charlie, that \u2018it\u2019, appears to us the way it does. I might like Charlie, you might not, or the other way around, for whatever reason. \u2018It\u2019 has that singular quality to it. Anyway, he (135) continues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201c\u2018It\u2019 does not represent a subject; it diagrammatizes an agency. It does not over-encode utterances, or transcend them as do the various modalities of the subject of the utterance; it prevents their falling under the tyranny of semiological constellations whose only function is to evoke the presence of a transcendent uttering process[.]\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
This is exactly why I, sorry, \u2018it\u2019, likes the expression, sorry, \u2018it\u2019, \u2018it is what it is\u2019, because \u2018it\u2019 is such a good way to put it, in that situation. You acknowledge that \u2018it\u2019 is just the way \u2018it\u2019 is, without trying to put any labels on it. What does that expression, \u2018it is what it is\u2019, mean? Ah, but see, that is the point exactly and I keep using \u2018it\u2019. The thing is that \u2018it\u2019 could be anything, as I already pointed out, and as he (135) goes on to specify:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201c[I]t is the a-signifying semiological matrix of utterances – the subject par excellence<\/em> of the utterances \u2013 in so far as these succeed in freeing themselves from the sway of the dominant personal and sexual significations and entering into conjunction with machinic agencies of utterance.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
How is \u2018it\u2019 a-signifying<\/em>? Well, because it could be anything. When you utter \u2018it\u2019, \u2018it is what it is\u2019, without any need to clarify it. We could give \u2018it\u2019 labels, but \u2018it\u2019 would still be \u2018it\u2019, with or without the labels, just as Charlie is Charlie, to me, to you, to anyone, without us having to start explaining what Charlie looks like, what Charlie sounds like, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That said, Guattari ain\u2019t a numpty. He (135) is well aware of how people tend to think otherwise. For most people, it\u2019s all me, me and me, that \u2018I\u2019, instead of \u2018it\u2019. He (135) specifies this by noting that the \u2018I\u2019, what he also refers to as the utterer<\/em>, comes to recognize itself in the utterance<\/em>, as the \u2018I\u2019 as the utterer utters the \u2018I\u2019. This is also what he and Deleuze (130) refer to as the doubled subject in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cA strange invention: as if in one form the doubled subject were the cause of<\/em> the statements of which, in its other form, it itself is a part.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In his presentation, he (135) explains this in a bit more detail:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThis operation begins with a split in the \u2018it\u2019, the pretended discovery that \u2018it\u2019 contains a hidden cogito<\/em>, a thinking I-ego.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In other words, there\u2019s always that \u2018it\u2019, as this singularity<\/em> or multiplicity<\/em>, as this one<\/em> that is always also many<\/em>, without giving \u2018it\u2019 any labels, but, for whatever reason, perhaps thanks to Ren\u00e9 Descartes, given that this is explained in reference to cogito<\/em>, we have this tendency, this arrogance, to start from ourselves, which is the \u2018I\u2019 or, here, the \u2018I-ego\u2019. What follows from that is then exactly what he and Deleuze (130) point out in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019, as expressed by him (135) in his presentation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThe elements of expression are taken over by an uttering subject. An empty redundancy, a second-degree redundancy appears alongside all the redundancies of expression.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
This is the doubled subject<\/em>, in the sense that the subject does not need to be doubled but it is, which explains the empty redundancy. So, instead of saying \u2018it is what it is\u2019, we say \u2018I am \u2026\u2019, as he (135) goes on to point out, in a rather verbose manner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThe phonic expression no longer evokes a gestural, postural, ritual, sexual, etc. expression. It has first to turn back upon itself, cut itself off from the collective desiring production, and become arranged on separate, hierarchized semiological strata.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
He (135) then links this to what\u2019s known as double articulation<\/em>. This is also something that he and Deleuze deal with in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019, not only in reference to language and semiotics, but also to geology and biology. In that book they (142) state that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201c[D]ouble articulation \u2026 formalizes traits of expression and traits of content, each in its own right, turning matters into physically or semiotically formed substances and functions into forms of expression or content.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
So, in summary, here we have matter<\/em> turned into substance<\/em> or, rather, formed matter<\/em> and functions<\/em> get formalized<\/em>. Okay, it\u2019s a bit more complex than that, but I don\u2019t want to get tangled up on that. I\u2019ve written about that a number of times already, so it\u2019s not worth explaining in more detail here. Anyway, so, Guattari (135) connects all this to the issue with the doubled subject<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThe splitting of the I-ego is the point of origin of systems of reciprocal articulation \u2013 double articulation \u2013 between redundancies of content and redundancies of signifying expression.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Okay, so, there\u2019s the content<\/em> and the expression<\/em> that undergo certain formalization<\/em>, if you will. Oh, and it\u2019s definitely a certain formalization, not formalization in general, as it could all turn out otherwise, formalized in some other way. He (135-136) continues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThe material and semiotic fluxes are made to fit a mental world constituted by being filled with mental representations that have been rendered powerless.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The problem with this formalization is that the physical content<\/em> becomes subordinate to the semiotic expression<\/em> that is, in itself, powerless, because it is doomed to go around in circles. How so? Well, the thing about signifiers<\/em> is that rely on other signifiers, in a redundant fashion, so that you always need other signifiers to explain a signifier, as he and Deleuze (112) point out in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cAll signs are signs of signs. The question is not yet what a given sign signifies but to which other signs it refers, or which signs add themselves to it to form a network without beginning or end[.]\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Or in simpler terms used by them (112):<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201c[E]very sign refers to another sign, and only to another sign, ad infinitum.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Now, as signs only ever refer to other signs, the whole idea of semiotic sign<\/em> becomes pointless and reduced to signifier<\/em>, as explained by them (112):<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThat is why, at the limit, one can forgo the notion of the sign, for what is retained is not principally the sign\u2019s relation to a state of things it designates, or to an entity it signifies, but only the formal relation of sign to sign insofar as it defines a so-called signifying chain.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
So, what we are left with is just signification, as they (112) go on to add:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThe limitlessness of signifiance replaces the sign.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
To be clear, this doesn\u2019t mean that physical content<\/em> somehow doesn\u2019t exist, no, no, that\u2019d be absurd. It is there and it is needed, even for this to work. They (112) are pretty clear about this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201c[The] network \u2026 projects its shadow onto an amorphous atmospheric continuum. It is this amorphous continuum that for the moment plays the role of the \u2018signified,\u2019 but it continually glides beneath the signifier, for which it serves only as a medium or wall: the specific forms of all contents dissolve in it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In other words, signification<\/em> results in this grid of signifiers<\/em> that only ever refer to one another, which is why they (112) refer to it also as a network. This network then gets projected on the world, by which they hint at what Louis Hjelmslev (36) states in his \u2018Prolegomena\u2019:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201c[A]n open net casts its shadow down on an undivided surface.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The thing is, however, that the physical content<\/em> cannot ever become the signified<\/em>, which explains why they (112, 167, 170) refer to the physical content acting only as \u201ca medium or wall\u201d, a surface<\/em> on to which the signifiers<\/em> attach themselves to, but without ever actually changing the physical content. Another way of explaining this is to point out that a signifier never refers to a signified, only to other signifiers, because the contents for those expressions<\/em> are abstracted, as they (112) point out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To make more sense of that, we need to know what Ferdinand de Saussure had to say about this. So, as explained by him (66) in \u2018Course in General Linguistics\u2019 a signifier<\/em> is a sound-image <\/em>and a signified<\/em> is a concept<\/em>. In his (66) view, it\u2019s all in your head anyway, both the signifiers and the signifieds:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThe linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
He is very, very adamant about this, so he (66) goes on to make sure that you get it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThe latter is not the material sound, a purely is not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the psychological imprint of the sound, the impression that it makes on our sense. The sound-image is sensory, and if I happen to call it \u2018material,\u2019 it is only in that sense, and by way of opposing it to the other term of the association, the concept, which is generally more abstract.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
As you can see yourself, both are, in fact, abstract. Sure, you do need the material world, and even he acknowledges that here, but what matters is that in signification it\u2019s all abstract. It is we who refer to whatever it is that we are referring to as \u2026 because we\u2019ve abstract the world that way, not because it is inherently that way. That\u2019s the point Hjelmslev makes when he (36) states in his \u2018Prolegomena\u2019 that undivided surface gets divided, \u201cjust as an open net casts its shadow down\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is, of course, not all there is to language, nor to semiotics, which is what Deleuze and Guattari (112) want their readers to understand. In Peircean terms, the problem for them (112) is that we\u2019ve ended up thinking only terms of symbols<\/em> and forgot about indexes<\/em> and icons<\/em>. This is also what Guattari (136) indicates in his conference presentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He (135-136) is also troubled by the way in which signification<\/em> is utilized. It\u2019s inherently powerless, as acknowledged by him (136), or impotent, as he and Deleuze (112) put it in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019, because it\u2019s all about signifiers referring to other signifiers, so what\u2019s the problem? Well, this lack of power, or impotence, is, paradoxically, what makes it powerful. They (113) summarize this by stating that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cNothing is ever over and done with in a regime of this kind.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In other words, if you think you\u2019re done, like once and for all, like having paid your debt, nah, nah-ah, you\u2019re not, the debt is infinite, as they (113) point out. That\u2019s because the chain of signification is both infinite and circular, as noted by them (113), hence my earlier remark about how signification<\/em> is about going in circles. Okay, okay, but if that\u2019s the case, if it is just powerless and impotent, how on earth does it make it powerful? Well, according to them (114), and I agree, some of the signifiers<\/em> are given or, rather, promoted to the status of signified<\/em>, even though they are just signifiers, by which they, and I, mean that some signifiers are granted a special status, as somehow more valuable than other signifiers. In their (117) terminology, these signifiers are supreme signifiers<\/em> or despotic signifiers<\/em>. Now, of course, what matters then is that we turn our attention to who gets to define which signifiers are granted such special status, as they (114) point out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They (114) refer to these people as priests, likely in homage to Friedrich Nietzsche, and as bureaucrats. They are the ones who take it up to themselves to tell others what\u2019s what. To avoid getting more tangled up on that, let\u2019s just refer to them as the powers that be, or as \u201cthe dominant order\u201d, as done by Guattari (136) in his conference presentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What also bothers Guattari (136) about this regime is that semiotics<\/em> is reduced to semiology<\/em>. Everything is, supposedly, explainable in linguistic terms, either in speech<\/em> or writing<\/em>, which devalues other semiotic modes, as he (136) points out. In simpler terms, he doesn\u2019t like the way language is thought to represent the world, when it is, in fact, imposed on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But why is this a problem then? Well, the simple or simplified answer to that is that it\u2019s bad for me, for you, and for everybody, both individually and collectively. It\u2019s bad in two ways. Firstly, it\u2019s bad because of that infinite postponement and circularity. Secondly, it\u2019s bad because you subject yourself and others to this. This is all super bad because everyone has to constantly lie to themselves, to deceive themselves. He (137) comments on the Cartesian cogito<\/em>, which we might also call the \u2018I\u2019, the doubled subject<\/em>, noting that it fools us to think that we are the starting point, that consciousness is simply given and then it\u2019s all obvious to us, as these subjects and objects. He (137) adds to this that this is indeed super bad because that\u2019s just something that we\u2019ve made up to and once you realize that, yeah, let\u2019s just say it\u2019s not pretty:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThe process of making conscious carries desire to such a pitch of excess, \u2026 of detachment from all reference-points, that it no longer has anything to hang on to, and has to improvise whatever expedients it can to avoid being destroyed in its own nothingness.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
So, yeah, like I put it, in this regime, people constantly lie to themselves and deceive themselves, because that\u2019s what they have to do. Okay, the lesson of all this is that you don\u2019t have to do that, but I\u2019m saying that here in case you feel like you are suddenly falling apart, having realized that the way you think is based on lying to yourself and deceiving yourself, and other around you think this way as well. That\u2019s the feel-good part of this essay. You won\u2019t fall apart. You\u2019ll be fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Guattari (137-139) goes on to explain this in his usual jargon, which is fine, I dig it, but it\u2019s a bit of a tangent here, so I won\u2019t do it. I\u2019ll leave this discussion of deterritorialization and reterritorialization for another day. Instead, I\u2019ll jump to the point where he (139) further comments on how this affects the \u2018I\u2019, the doubled subject<\/em>, noting that the regime typically works with recourse to some higher power that, supposedly, makes it all work, as you might have guessed already. The signifiers<\/em> that have been given a special status as supreme signifiers<\/em> or despotic signifiers<\/em> are presented to us, by the powers that be, as somehow inherently valuable, you know, like natural or god given. One way to look at that is, of course, to think that, well, ain\u2019t that great. If something is inherently valuable, then that\u2019s worth striving for and it\u2019s all good. Another way to look at that is to think otherwise, to think that\u2019s not good at all, and not because that\u2019s not the case, because nothing is inherently valuable, but because someone else is presenting it to you as inherently valuable, because someone else is lying to you, because someone else is deceiving you, and because if you believe that someone else, you liable to make that even more believable, which means that you also end up lying to others and deceiving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, as I pointed out earlier, Guattari ain\u2019t a numpty, so, no, he (139) doesn\u2019t really think that it\u2019s enough these days that some priests say that something is valuable, because some god, supposedly says so. He (139) reckons that it\u2019d be rather quaint if that were the case. Instead, the problem is that this has become much more microscopic, by which he (139) means that it has become much more individual or individuated<\/em>. Now people do this themselves, all day, every day, with or without the priests or the bureaucrats, because they themselves are part and parcel of that dominant social order, as he and Deleuze (130) point out in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think Guattari (141) ends up summarizing this quite well, after he\u2019s done with more of what I won\u2019t cover here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cA flux of empty subjectivity streams out to the detriment of any real freedom of action[.] \u2026 It remains a freedom meaning nothing, the freedom of the empty subject, the freedom of impotence.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Now, to be positive, and to give credit to Descartes, as also done by Guattari (137), the empty subject is indeed free, because it is empty, because there is no inherent meaning to anything. The problem is, however, that people don\u2019t know what to do with that freedom and before they figure out what to do it, that freedom is taken away from them, as he (141) goes on to add:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThis emptiness is not left to chance, but carefully put in place on the ladder of power relationships: everyone is bound to be bored, to feel meaningless and powerless, but everyone must get on with life in their prescribed place.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Indeed, it\u2019s all boring, meaningless and pointless, but life goes on and we lapse into thinking that it can be exciting, meaningful and there\u2019s a point to it all if we value this and\/or that signifier<\/em>, because we are constantly told that you need to do that. In his (141) words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThe flux of empty subjectivity produced by the capitalist signifying machine crystallizes at fixed points around which nomadic bits of desire must circulate.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m changing the order here a bit, as he covers this, but a bit later than I had anticipated it. Later on, he (142) refers to this as \u201c[t]he expression\/content machine of money\/merchandise relationship\u201d that is central to capitalism, by which he means that money gets you things, which you think you need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That could be, for example, beauty and it can be achieved by using money on this and\/or that beauty product. That\u2019ll make you happy, until you realize that you need to use more money on it, or that you also need to spend more money on some other beauty product, and so on, and so forth, ad infinitum<\/em>, because, as you might have guessed it, the chain of signification<\/em> is infinite and circular. That\u2019s also how capitalism works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He (141-142) further elaborates this by stating that instead of thinking everything in terms of machines<\/em>, like he and Deleuze do in \u2018Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia\u2019, or assemblages<\/em> and abstract machines<\/em>, as they do in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019, people are empty, yet crave fulfilment that nonetheless won\u2019t ever satisfy them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cAbstract machinism has faded into the background when confronted with the powerless world of representation and a subjectivation that can only, ever, lack reality. By \u2018lacking\u2019 it, I do not mean just not having it; but lacking in an active sense, in the sense that it is continually filled with a lack.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
He and Deleuze (154) also mention this in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019. Their translator, Brian Massumi (532), indicates that this Lacanian conception of desire<\/em> as lack<\/em> leaves us in a situation in which we lack enjoyment, and thus seek it, but the only thing we ever get to enjoy is that lack. It\u2019s only fitting that he (532) exemplifies this with orgasm: people are willing to do a lot to have sex and then climax, only to want to do it again, and again, and again. Now, if you\u2019ve ever had sex, or, rather an orgasm, you should be able to get the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He (141) gets to the bottom of this, by going back to the pronouns, how \u2018it\u2019 gets personified, giving primacy to the first person, over the second person and the third person, while also privileging the sexed over the non-sexed and one of the sexes over the other sex. His (141) point really is that we privilege ourselves over others and those like ourselves over others and tend to impose this over others, which can seen in something like personal pronouns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s been pointed out already, at the very beginning of this essay, but it\u2019s worth reiterating that he (141) really, really digs \u2018it\u2019, because it is a singularity<\/em> or a multiplicity<\/em>. To use the translator\u2019s (135) example, there\u2019s the \u2018it\u2019 in something like \u2018it is raining\u2019 or \u2018it is true\u2019 that functions this way. I think Guattari would have loved Finnish in this regard, not because it also has \u2018it\u2019, as already discussed, but because you don\u2019t even need \u2018it\u2019 for something like \u2018it is raining\u2019 or \u2018it is true\u2019, because you can say \u2018sataa\u2019 or \u2018totta\u2019 and people understand that you are referring to this subjectless action<\/em>, to what he (141) also refers to as \u201ca complex abstract machine which can appear independent of any subjective tendency\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This may seem unncessarily abstract, but he’s got you covered. So, let’s not get tangled up on the specifics, like what’s a signifier <\/em>anyway, and let’s think in concrete, practical terms. He (143) summarizes this, the gist of it, by stating that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n“[W]e are all subjects – not necessarily the subjects of the signifier, but at least subject to Knowledge, Power, Money.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
So, it’s all equal, right? Well, no, absolutely not, as he (143) goes on to add:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n“But the shares in this kind of subjectivity are in fact radically different, depending on whether one is a child, a member of a primitive society, a woman, poor, mad and so on.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
So, on paper, we are all equal, or so they, the powers that be, keep saying to us, but, in reality, that’s not really the case, as he (142-143) points out just a bit earlier:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Qualitatively, everyone should in theory be equal before the flux of this subjectivity. But quantitatively, each will receive a share commensurate with the place he or she occupies where the various formations of power intersect.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yeah, so, yes, but also no. This is also more or less the end of his presentation and my essay. What did I learn from this? Well, not much that I didn’t already know. That said, it was still interesting because this is was a conference presentation that held years before the publication of ‘A Thousand Plateaus’. You’d think it would be more like how he and Deleuze explain things in ‘Anti-Oedipus’, yet it isn’t. Plus, what I like the most about it is that something as simple as focusing ‘it’ can help you understand what they mean by machines or assemblages. When you get that, that it is what it is, that all makes way, way more sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
- Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari ([1972] 1983). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia<\/em> (R. Hurley, M. Seem and H. R. Lane, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari ([1980] 1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia<\/em> (B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Guattari, F. [1974] (1984). Subjectless Action. In F. Guattari, Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics<\/em> (R. Sheed, Trans.) (pp. 135\u2013143). Harmondsworth, United Kingdom: Penguin Books.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Hjelmslev, L. ([1943] 1953). Prolegomena to a Theory of Language <\/em>(F. J. Whitfield). Baltimore, MD: Waverly Press.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- de Saussure, F. ([1916] 1959). Course in General Linguistics<\/em> (C. Bally and A. Sechehaye, Eds., W. Baskin, Trans.). New York, NY: Philosophical Library.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once more I\u2019m going to check out something short, \u2018Subjectless Action\u2019 by F\u00e9lix Guattari, a psychoanalysis and semiotics conference presentation that took place in 1974. Now, you don\u2019t need to know a whole lot about his work, or the works of Gilles Deleuze or Michel Foucault, to name a few, to figure out what this […]<\/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":[71,123,591,1130],"class_list":["post-5584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-deleuze","tag-guattari","tag-hjelmslev","tag-saussure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5584","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=5584"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5588,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5584\/revisions\/5588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}