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Ode to Man
Tho’ many are the terrors,
not one more terrible than man goes.
This one beyond the grizzled sea
in winter storming to the south
He crosses, all-engulfed,
cutting through, up from under swells.
& of the gods She the Eldest, Earth
un-withering, un-toiling, is worn down,
As the Twisting Plough’s year
into Twisting Plough’s year,
Through the breeding of horse, he turns.
& the lighthearted race of birds
all-snaring he drives them
& savage beasts, their clan, & of the sea,
marine in kind
With tightly-wound meshes spun
from all-seeing is Man.
Yet too, he masters by means of pastoral
beast, mountain-trodding,
The unruly-maned horse holding fast,
‘round the neck yoked,
& the mountain’s
ceaseless bull.
& the voice & wind-fast thought
& the passion for civic ways
He has taught, so from crag’s poor court
from under the ether’s hard-tossed arrows
To flee, this all-crossing one. Blocked, he comes
upon nothing so fated.
From Hades alone escape he’ll not bring.
Tho’ from sickness impossible
Flight he has pondered.
A skilled one, devising of arts beyond hope,
Holding at times an evil,
But then to the noble he crawls,
honoring the laws of the Earth, &
Of gods the oath so just,
high-citied.
Citiless is the one who with the un-beautiful
dwells, boldly in grace.
Never for me a hearth-mate
may he have been, never equal in mind
He who offers this.
Ode to Man
A BwO is made in such a way that it can be occupied, populated only by intensities. Only intensities pass and circulate. Still, the BwO is not a scene, a place, or even a support upon which something comes to pass. It has nothing to do with phantasy, there is nothing to interpret. The BwO causes intensities to pass; it produces and distributes them in a spatium that is itself intensive, lacking extension. It is not space, nor is it in space; it is matter that occupies space to a given degree—to the degree corresponding to
the intensities produced. It is nonstratified, unformed, intense matter, the matrix of intensity, intensity = 0; but there is nothing negative about that zero, there are no negative or opposite intensities. Matter equals energy. Production of the real as an intensive magnitude starting at zero. That is why we treat the BwO as the full egg before the extension of the organism and the organization of the organs, before the formation of the strata; as the intense egg defined by axes and vectors, gradients and thresholds, by dynamic tendencies involving energy transformation and kinematic movements involving group displacement, by migrations: all independent
of accessory forms because the organs appear and function here only as pure intensities. The organ changes when it crosses a threshold, when it
changes gradient. "No organ is constant as regards either function or position, . . . sex organs sprout anywhere,... rectums open, defecate and close, . . . the entire organism changes color and consistency in split-second adjustments." The tantric egg. After all, is not Spinoza's Ethics the great book of the BwO?
Ode to Man
But human power is extremely limited, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes; we have not, therefore, an absolute power of shaping to our use those things which are without us. Nevertheless, we shall bear with an equal mind all that happens to us in contravention to the claims of our own advantage, so long as we are conscious, that we have done our duty, and that the power which we possess is not sufficient to enable us to protect ourselves completely; remembering that we are a part of universal nature, and that we follow her order. If we have a clear and distinct understanding of this, that part of our nature which is defined by intelligence, in other words the better part of ourselves, will assuredly acquiesce in what befalls us, and in such acquiescence will endeavour to persist. For, in so far as we are intelligent beings, we cannot desire anything save that which is necessary, nor yield absolute acquiescence to anything, save to that which is true: wherefore, in so far as we have a right understanding of these things, the endeavour of the better part of ourselves is in harmony with the order of nature as a whole.
At the accursed share blog-
http://accursedshare.blogspot.com/2009/05/order-and-chaos-in-society.html
Thanks Eric, its wonder I could not find it. Even Google under the “blog” subcategory wouldn’t yeild it. Correction to source made.
So in simple Spinozan terms, ANT takes the actant (and its relations within the network) as the locus of power, while ignoring the power of the imagination (ideology) and ultimately of the affects. Is this how you see it?
But, how are concrete political stratifications seperate from networks?
I don’t know much about ANT, so I guess I better read Latour’s ‘On Network Theory: a few clarifications’. I also look forward to reading your other Latour/Spinoza posts.
(I apologize for posting this comment already in another post)
There are several answers here. There is the one that Bousquet offers which is that it is the pattern itself which produces the chaoplexic relation. One, if one really wanted to push certain categories, claim that this edge-of-chaos pattern is the network, but it seems that we loose something of a power of a description, because a “network” for Latour is simply a trial of strength of interdependent re-alliances. Clearly here a chaoplexic relation is something more than merely this.
Secondly though, the very resilience of the supposed network here, the way that fragmentation does not destroy the combinative relations, speaks to other causal factors which for me include a certain body of affects, imaginary relations and historical facts spread across domains. If indeed a statement of mission such as:
“to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate al-Aqsa Mosque and the Holy Mosque (Mecca) from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.” (World Islamic Front Statement, 1998).
…is to have lasting organizational abilities, it seems to me that there are wide-spread circumstances of loose potential affinities that allow the idea of such resistance to spread and maintain itself. It is not to say that the capacity of the network is reduced to such a potentiality, but rather also, it cannot be reduced to merely the trail-of-strength of bin Laden himself, as actant, and a resultant array of related alliances and trials. In a certain sense, the ANT hill, and the earth itself is missing from the ANTS.
As to whether concrete political stratifications are networks, they certainly can yield to network descriptions, in the sense that ANT theory thinks EVERYTHING can yield to such. But what is more interesting is the way in which these stratifications extend across domains in such a way that Actants are not so atomized. Let us take for instance the idea that with Capitalized conceptions of free choice in the market, and the identities that purchase-power forms, DID NOT come democratic forms of governance to approximate this, let’s say Western notion of subject. Here we have a swathe of real, historical differentials across nations that is best not seen as merely alliances between actants. Instead, imaginary relations help constitute the very disparity and potentiality that produces chaoplexic network capacities, or so it seems.
Yes, so the common cultural/historical and affective ‘background’ of the actants plays a role in the recursivity of there actions. It is not just the endeavour towards a common cause, or the pattern of organization, or the information in the system which causes the actants to make alliances. So is Spinoza, then a really a theorist of the network at all? Perhaps only in the broadest sense, in that all things are expressions of one and the same substance?
Eric: “So is Spinoza, then a really a theorist of the network at all?”
Kvond: Well, this is the thing. If you consider Latour a theoriest of the network, Spinoza is, as I tried to express in my post on Spinoza and Latour. All of Latour fits nicely within Spinoza, like a Russian Doll, there is more to the story.
The primary connection between Spinoza and Latour is that actants can be regarded as Spinosist “bodies”, of which anything and everything is composed, in relations. Trials of strength are for Spinoza not unexplained happenstance of contingent victories. Yes, there are contingent clashes and evolutions, but also there are rational, ideational advantages between actants. And moving from imaginary relations to causal ones involves genuine changes in power. One can never be completely rational, or even primarily rational, but rationality is primarily a process of body building. Processes of agreement, whether they be of imaginary or rational basis, are the productions of “bodies”, and hence networks. A network is a body.
But if you mean “network” as Bousquet means it, an edge of chaos organization, this is a very interesting question, and one which I wish I had time to pursue. There are aspects of Spinoza which are closely related to the “closed organization” of cybernetic, computational model (and Autopoiesis on the biological side) which Bousquet argues preceded the Network historically. Much of his advice is towards the internally directed clarification of relations, gaining clearer ideas, etc. But one can also see that if indeed such system thinking is negative feedback oriented (the steering towards homeostasis), there are also distinguished ways in which Spinoza favors the Postitive Feedback, edge of chaos thinkings that mark out Networks. Any of our internal system, closed model improvements only work because they are joined already to what is external, and ultimately it is “Love” and “Joy” which as a positive feedback accelerator which leads us to combine with other bodies in more fruitful ways. What he seems to prescribe is a combination of Positive and Negative feedback loops which, as Bousquet cites may indeed describe the biology of adaptive evolution, such that positive accelerations are then contrained by a sobriety of internal redistribution, or what is commonly called “learning”. In this sense, at least off the top of my head, it would seem that Spinoza indeed is a theorist of the Network in the more literal sense, the production of real, edge of chaos relations as a mode of body building and freedom making.
Sorry if my timing is off, I have been away from the computer off and on constantly today.
I meant “network” in the edge-of-chaos sense and you nailed it for me.
It is very interesting to think about these moments in the evolution of ideas (and there counterparts in warfare, business, biologiy, etc.)and see if Spinoza isn’t extremely helpful in their guidance.
What is interesting about applying Bousquet’s four stage historical development is that Descartes was determinatively a clock-work thinker (perhaps not entirely so, as he also seems to have a strong naturalized, semiotic strain of thought as well…it was this semiosis that I believe that Spinoza took up). Automata fascinated Descartes. Christiaan Huygens Spinoza’s associate and neighbor actually invented the pendulum clock. Spinoza embraces this automata in a a certain way, as for instance he calls us all “spiritual automata” but it is not so much parts put into closed mechanistic relation. So the question is, to what degree does Spinoza represent a departure from the “clock-work” of 17th century Dutch thinking?
What is very interesting to me is the way that Spinoza relates to the closed systems of cybernetics, which are a kind of second-wave clock-work thinking. Autopoiesis perhaps the best point of comparision, as it attempts to model life itself on closed organizational models. I have not thought it through, but as I suggested in my respose, there is a sense in which Spinoza speaks of both the closed and the open aspects of social organization. I wish I could say/think more on this.
I can see how choaplexity is latent in ‘nomadology’, and the network in ‘the rhizome’… I wonder if Guattari gets much attention from ANtheorists. Probably not.
I saw this too, as chaoplexity in many of the description of the books is essentially a theory of “becoming”, just the kind of thing that G and D love to favor. There seem like two modes of descrption here. One is that chaoplexity is a careful balance between extremes of stagnant order, and turbulant chaos, such that there is a kind of positive feedback pursuit of this line of balance, as if surfing a wave, trying to stay in the tube so to speak. This seems very much in keeping with the G and D praxix and prescription.
But then there is also the sense of oscillation, that is, instead of precarious balance wherein one never really dips into either order or chaos, but that balance itself is composed of alternate phasal passings into one and then the other, which is perhaps even more interesting.
The nomadology seems to be more of the first kind, the pursuit of a kind of aesthetic ideal, Whereas the second kind might be even more descriptively significant.
I haven’t read the book or much of anything relavant so I don’t have anything to add. But I very much look forward to any more posts down this avenue of thought. The Bousquet book is very high on my to read list, because it really looks right down my alley. The clockmindedness of the 17th century, and what Spinoza may have replaced this model with, is a very intriguing thing for me, thank you for bringing that to my attention. By the way, you critique of Heidegger in the post about how he misconstrued the word ‘aletheia’ was extremely helpful for me.
I’m glad to have positive feedback on the Heidegger post, as I’ve only has harsh reactions from Heideggerians thus far. How Heidegger viewed and interpreted Greek texts is a very important point.
When you do read the Bousquet book do let me know any thoughts that arise. The first two device headings, clock and engine were pretty disappointing for me, so if it bogs down for you, press onto the last two which are much more full-fleshed.
Thanks for the warning. I will stick to it and return back here with comments.
When you said that this is “right up your alley” I’m not sure what alley you meant, “warfare” or “complexity” or some other thing. But you might want to check out the addendum I put at the end of my post, which cites a Nation Defense blog which has several articles in this genre, including a review of the book, and an article which I link. Hopefully some of this is of interest for you as well.
Ooh, yes the OODA loops is something that I have thought about often. Thanks, for the link. I am interested in structures in warfare, as you know, these forms of organization leak into bureaucracies,technology, science then all the way into daily life. Why is it that these structural changes appear first in warfare? Something I have yet to really grasp. Well, they actually originate with philosophers don’t they, but war is were they have been most significantly cashed out it seems, first.
Ah good. Then you can perhaps offer some help in response, as I’m hoping to post on OODA loops soon. Bousquet devotes a sub-chapter to it, and for some reason it really took to my imagination. But there seems very little written on it in the sense that I am thinking about it, it seems (and very little written at all). We’ll see what I can come up with.
As to the military being the first with these things, I don’t know if that is historically true. But as many of these organizational features come straight out of technological invention and deploy, (Bousquet does a very good job with this in terms of the computer), and as the military has both the pressure of an arm’s race and a great deal of money to be spent, it makes very good sense that at least recently organizational changes are going to happen there. You loose a war and there have to be changes.
well, isn’t te OODA loop a provide a good model for our judgments of things?
We observe (our interaction with the environment unfolding), we orient (genealogy, previous experience, beliefs, cultural environment) we decide (if we are thinking rationally then we have the option of disbelief) and then we cash out these decisions in our actions. This is one way in which the OODA loop strikes me as useful. Somewhere along the line, we are fed back a glimpse of intuition about the nature of just what we are and what we observe.
As to the were these things appear historically, I am aware that the money makes the technology available, and the loss of a war makes the spending necessary. But it just seems to me like on level of strategic ideas, not just technologies but programs of thought and order, the military is where these organizational structures come from. The example I have in mind was pointed out first, perhaps, by Max Weber when he wrote about how the fixed functions and positions within the military influenced the way things are in society, the militarization of society. Bureaucratization in the nineteenth century. This is obviously a limited analyis, which only really dates back to the emergence of industrialized capitalism, but my grasp of history before that too limited to know what kind of relation military society had to civil society, and to ideas in general.
Yes Eric [been away from the comp.], the OODA is an interesing model, but I am much less compelled by the “loop” aspect (which I believe Boyd himself tried to de-emphasize), and more interested in the “Orientation” phase itself, in the so called loop. Very little has been written on this, except for Boyd’s thoughts on something like abduction. I hope to post on my thinking here soon.
Somewhere, I saw a chart comparing the difference between orientation and decision in relation to consciousness, functionality, and evolution. It seemed to basically all follow from the fact that th ‘orientation’ stage is unconscious while the ‘decision’ stage is conscious. So, orientation is implicit, and automatic, rapid-fire. Decision is slower and thought out. Orientation is a default process while ‘decision’ is deliberate. Orientation is a response to a specificity, it is contextualized. Decision is abstracted, logical, rational. And orientation is non-linguistic in contrast to decision, which is a verbal process. Also, orientation is universal, operating outside of any one individuals memory, or skill set, while decision is particular and based on the individuals past experiences and conditioning. We are all born with the capicity for ‘orientation’ while decision is specific to our genus.
Stengers’ Power and Invention:situating science’ does have a number of essays that are relevant to these concerns. ‘Time and Representation,’Complexity a fad,’ ‘The Reenchantment of the world.’
I recently stumbled across a french website:
http://intercession.over-blog.org/categorie-10385566.html
that has many vids (some in English – such as the Rorty, Haraway, Stengers) – enuf for a lifetime.
Thanks Paul, will look at them soon.
Thank you for the link, Paul. I enjoyed the Latour video ‘What is Organization?’.
Anyway, I just started the book and it reminded me of another instance in which the preeminent site of thought re-organization was the military- Greek mathematics.
Do the post-structuralists attempt to move beyond any rererence to a technology? Have D&G succesfully transcended any ‘device’ with the BWO?
Eric: “Have D&G succesfully transcended any ‘device’ with the BWO?”
Kvond: I think that the BWO is a human praxis framework. But in a sense the BWO combines with all technologies, cybernetically…
BTW, sorry if my questions and comments are distracting anduninteresting. As Latour said at the end of his speech, I am just at the bottom of my learning curve.
I like your questions and comments quite a bit. I go through periods when I’m not near the computer, and then when I am near it quite a bit.
Evocative post and discussion. Do you guys know anything about Eyal Weizman’s Hollow Land? Weizman, an architect, analyzes the Israeli occupation of Palestine in Deleuzian terms. I’ve not read the book, but in an interview Weizman describes the Israeli army’s thorough deterritorialization of Palestinian space, tunneling into individual houses and apartment units just like in Brazil (the movie, not the country).
Historically, it seems that (one of) the reason(s) a military fails in war is because they’ve skipped orientation and remained isolated. In this way, they are constantly surprised by the enemy attacks. Your going to lose the ‘strategy game’ if you’re not interacting. So, really, the point of the orientation stage, strategically, is to understand the nature of the enemies system, which you cannot do from within. So the idea is to open yourself to their system, act faster than your enemy, and in so doing, fold your enemies up into themselves. So, really, the strategic point of the OODA loop is orientation, which shapes the way we observe and act. What makes this theory chaoplexic, as I undertand it, is that it takes you and the opponent to be adaptive networks.
But, there is more inter-connectivity than the name ‘loop’ implies. And the process is based in more than just networks themselves, which was you original point. So it is very simplistic, to thnk of it as a completed loop, wich indeed undermines the conception of the edge-of-chaos, because if it is looped it is all order and no chaos. This is basically the extent of my knowledge on the OODA loop. But, yes, clearly the loop isn’t so strong of a thing altogether, orientation is the interesting idea.
John Doyle, I have heard of the Israelian tunneling in Pakistan, but never by Deleuzian terms. That sounds like a frightening read.
Oops, should have put that lasy bit in response to the respective comment. Sorry, I keep on starting needlessly starting new threads instead of replying to the right ones.
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