Deterritorializing Totalization - Or Assemblages?

I want to return to Yusef’s reflections on Totalization (and quote him correctly this time :))

"I don’t want to break away from the elements of Carl’s theory, (Totalization being one such element,) I want to separate these elements and then reassemble them somehow, with the reassembly being determined by which way accomplishes a reactivation of philosophical ethos."

This is, of course, commendable, but there arise problems in the philosophical consequences of this activity. There is a demolition and a re-creation of the elements at the same time, coupled with a hope of somehow giving birth to a new philosophical ethos.

Are we talking about deterritorializing, followed by reterritorializing?

Or can we escape the totalization of Totalization?

There is still the matter of what exactly is Totalization?

Of course, it isn’t the ”end of all endings”, but yet it holds in its concept an absolutism, does it not?

Instead I posit that we move beyond fixed structures and enter the fluid, inter-dependent assemblages of the present.

When we are writing under the ”subversive” The Enlightenment Underground title we are also digging tunnels (as in Gaza) and deterritorializing the ground we are walking on.

The Enlightenment was absolutist in its rejection of superstition and ”darkness”, but that was over 200 years ago and now we must deal with philosophy in the present, a much more inter-woven patchwork of assemblages and flowing definitions, in the constant creation of ”soft intellectual power”.

But can we reach this far when ”God is in the grammar” (Nietzsche) or when Wittgenstein writes,

You often hear – time and again - that philosophy never makes any progress, that the same philosophical problems that concern us are the same that the Greeks were preoccupied with. But those who say so, don’t understand the reason why this must necessarily be so: The reason is that our language remains the same and always seduces us to ask the same questions. As long as there is a verb ”to be” that seems to function as as ”to eat” and ”to drink”, as long as there are adjectives like ”identical”, ”true”, ”false”, ”possible”, as long as there is talk about ”the ebb and flow of time”, the ”limits of the universe”, etc. –human beings will again and again confront the enigmatic difficulties , and they will be staring at something that no explanation seems to do away with.

By the way, this also satisfies the longing for the transcedental, since by seeming to think they see ”the limit of human reason” – they, of course, believe they are able to look beyond it.

So, isn’t it time to philosophize in the present?

Deconstructing (Conciliatorily!) Totalization

Let me address Yusef’s never-ending series on Totalization (we are now entering its 13th imcarnation!): It contains an almost impossible negation of its title: Totalization can by definition only occur once. Yet it is apparently infinite. How does this come to pass? Can death be repeated incessantly? Is there an element of psychotic compulsion at play here? Or are we dealing with the Deleuzian concept of repetition as essential change?

Yusef writes, I want to separate these elements (of Totalization ) and then reassemble them somehow, with the reassembly being determined by which way accomplishes a reactivation of philosophical ethos.

Isn’t this basically insisting on a refusal to accept finality and hope for eternal renewal? Why posit closure when you desire openings? Here we have the hedonistic teenager talking, I want to change the world, but I want my mom to make my bed and cook my food.

How can you be absolutic about absolutism?

Further, Totalization one way or other means "thinking is over," finished. Totalization means this, but more importantly, Totalization does this.

So, the text digs a tunnel under itself. Thinking (and writing) about "thinking is over" tries like a mole to find a way back up to the surface. But wait, there’s more, Totalization does this. In other words, we are into speech-acts: by just writing – and thinking Totalization, you execute Totalization.

Shouldn’t that be the end of the post?

And yet, Totalization acts on reactivation, it doesn’t eradicate, eliminate, or completely destroy reactivation, and might facilitate reactivation in certain ways if those ways can be determined.

If Totalization acts on reactivation it isn’t Totalization. It’s something else: Is THAT what the secret desire is? All the posts about Totalization are in fact anti- totalizating. The texts break down under their own weight and point towards liberation: Flying out of the cage.

This is further emphasized in, Together, these considerations help to prevent me from entering into the fatal trap of having my overcoming (overcoming used as a first approximation for what I am attempting--I apologize because this first approximation is somewhat misleading) of Totalization becoming a Totalization. They help my own thinking from being over.

So, you want to overcomeTotalization in order that your own thinking (posts) will still be relevant as intellectual and philosophical exercises.

But your text is totalizing, in its effort, to become un-totalizing. There’s a tension here. In fact there is an internal deconstruction going on: Your post is engaged in a discussion with itself which threatens to undermine its stated objective: it is almost necrophilia = desiring the death of thinking by caressing it. But you don’t quite give in: there’s still some wiggle room:

Together, these considerations help to prevent me from entering into the fatal trap of having my overcoming (overcoming used as a first approximation for what I am attempting--I apologize because this first approximation is somewhat misleading) of Totalization becoming a Totalization. They help my own thinking from being over.

You don’t want to die. Or rather, you don’t want your thinking to die in the apocalypse.

Coming back (always an impossible task!) from Dante’s Hell you save yourself: Totalization is not YOUR Totalization. It’s somebody’s else’s. You don’t suffer – from your 13th posts on Totalization!

Should we? The shadows of it.

The Totalization of Shadows, Part XIII

I’m reflecting on the way I have retained the concept of Totalization, in part a continuing tribute to Carl’s original theory of the Enlightenment, the exact formulation from which I am breaking away.

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t want to break away from the elements of Carl’s theory, (Totalization being one such element,) I want to separate these elements and then reassemble them somehow, with the reassembly being determined by which way accomplishes a reactivation of philosophical ethos.

I am almost certain Totalization is a feature in a landscape or field of features which bear upon the problems at hand. Totalization one way or other means "thinking is over," finished. Totalization means this, but more importantly, Totalization does this. (I have to return to this distinction, which in certain ways is a false one--false AND important.)

There are only three things I wish to mention in this regard:1) it’s not the only feature;2) its way of acting on reactivation are multiple; 3) its actions on reactivation must not be understood as negative, negating. (By this I mean to say however Totalization acts on reactivation, it doesn’t eradicate, eliminate, or completely destroy reactivation, and might facilitate reactivation in certain ways if those ways can be determined.)

Together, these considerations help to prevent me from entering into the fatal trap of having my overcoming (overcoming used as a first approximation for what I am attempting--I apologize because this first approximation is somewhat misleading) of Totalization becoming a Totalization. They help my own thinking from being over.

Irruption from Totalization

I state my problem as being to determine a non-metaphorical way of achieving a reactivation of a philosophical ethos. Alternatively, I could say my intention is to determine the material conditions of this reactivation.

In Orla’s last post, it appeared to me at first as if what I call a metaphorical or idealistic reactivation is what he calls an “image of thought.” I also previously thought when Orla spoke of the “image of thought” he meant it derisively, as something which must be overcome, discarded, or somehow otherwise negated. I think I have some textual support for this interpretation of Orla, for example in his posts on Noology or “Thought without Image”. Isn’t reasonable to conclude a proponent of a Noology, understood as thought without image, is in favor of somehow or other getting rid of image (image of thought)?

Therefore, I took some of what Orla said in his last post as a continuing recommendation to me that if I wished to accomplish what I want to accomplish, I need to cast off the image of thought.

I have assumed Orla takes Deleuze and Guattari to have discovered a way to succeed over an image of thought, but is this correct? Is this what Deleuze and Guattari hoped to achieve? (Or did achieve?)

Rather than going back over Deleuze and Guattari to answer this question, I am merely going to take a look at two quotes Orla has recently used to support his ideas.

First, look at this,

“Precisely because the plane of immanence is prephilosophical and does not immediately take effect with concepts, it implies a sort of groping experimentation and its layout resorts to measures that are not very respectable, rational, or reasonable. These measures belong to the order of dreams, of pathological processes, esoteric experiences, drunkenness and excess. We head for the horizon, on the plane of immanence, and we return with bloodshot eyes, yet they are the eyes of the mind.” D&G, What is Philosophy, page 41, quoted by Orla on September 7, 2008.

We head for the horizon, on the plane of immanence, and we return with bloodshot eyes. We’ve seen something—an image? I think we have seen an image, although it must be an image which is in excess of what our eyes could have visualized or accommodated prior to our heading for the horizon. I admit this is a strange kind of image…However I protest saying what happened to us and our eyes on the horizon is without image—if without image, it was unnecessary and misleading for Deleuze and Guattari to have invoked eyes, especially to have invoked “eyes of the mind.”

Secondly, this quote,

Thought demands “only” movement that can be carried to infinity. What thought claims by right, what it selects, is infinite movement or the movement of the infinite. It is this that constitutes the image of thought. D&G: What Is Philosophy?, p. 37, quoted by Orla on January 25, 2009.

Note here that Deleuze and Guattari not only retain the image of thought, they are bold enough to tell us how it is constituted. I don’t see any evidence they do this to ridicule or degrade the notion of an image of thought.

Deleuze and Guattari are discovered to not reject, eliminate, eradicate, or negate the image of thought. They seek to take it to the horizon, on the plane of immanence, and somehow rupture it, change it.(The question of how this is done remains relevant.) I do not think I need to reject or eliminate the image of thought in order to determine the material conditions for the reactivation of a philosophical ethos--I need to find out (if I am following DG, but I follow DG by forgetting about them most of the time) how to the rupture the image of thought.

Thinking - Or Rather "The Image of Thought"

The previous posts have basically dealt with the question: What is thinking? Or in a broader sense: What is abstract thinking, as in the proposition that the Enlightennment represented a ”reactivation of philosophical ethos” and whether this can be reborn. This is indeed at the heart of philosophy. But it also seems curiously dated, since it draws on a mythology of thinking that goes back to Antiquity and Plato’s dualism = philosophizing penetrates phenomena and reaches the purified sphere of the eternity of ideas.

This metaphor or concept has since – via a symbolic Rodin-like sculpture– become an archetype which signifies: sobriety, absence from reality, isolation, seriousness, non-practicality, ”the cobwebs of idle brains” as Shakespeare would have it, and generally an activity, ridiculed as a nerdy exercise.

Philosophers from Socrates,Descartes, Humes, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein et. al. subscribed to this image of thought and have consequently been viewed as ”dead white men” who were – for all practical purposes – ”failed persons” (as in ”failed states”) – unable to have satisfactory lives. And yet, this ”image of thought” has – and needs to be – evolved. Thinking about thinking naturally changes. As it should.

But thinking is speed. Not the so-called deep reflection = that slooooow contemplation is better (or more philosophical) than the rapid insight, the quick flash, the instant concept creation.

(Note: This is not just the proverbially provocative opposite)

The image of thought implies a strict division between fact and RIGHT: what pertains to thought as such must be distinguuished from contingent features of the brain or historical opinions…Are contemplating, reflecting, or communicating anything more than opinions held about thought at a particular time and in a particular civilization? The image of thought retains only what thought can claim by right.

Thought demands ”only” movement that can be carried to infinity. What thought claims by right, what it selects, is infinite movement or the movement of the infinite. It is this that constitutes the image of thought. (D&G: What Is Philosophy?, p. 37)

Why do we still cling to the ancient ”image of thought” and why can’t we let the ”image” of it flow and flourish with the times, and thus ”reactivate a philosophical ethos”?

The Totalization of Shadows, Part XII

I encounter a fork in the road. Does the fork represent an opportunity for an activation of thinking? Is the choice I must make, of going right or left, a thought? Is the act of making a choice an example of making a thought? Does it matter that the necessity of the choice is presented to me as already there—there being already a fork in the road? Does the unavoidability of choosing one way or the other bear on the quality of choice as thought, if thought such a choice be? If the choice is blind (i.e. if I have no way—no information—about which tine of the fork will take me to where I want to go,) is the choice thoughtless, while on the other hand if the choice is informed, is it thoughtful? Would I know that knowing where I want to go has been determined by thoughtfulness? I can’t rule out the possibility that where I want to go has been predetermined for me (i.e. determined by something external to me, by which I take to mean something external to any thought-act or thought activation on my part,) by incentives and rewards which guide my movements. If I amble through a garden of forking paths, is that a sign I am less thoughtful than if I stop, stare, and frown as I come upon another fork? (An extremely peculiar behavior, especially if I come to these forks blind, as specified above, but undoubtedly a behavior I do exhibit quite frequently.) However, on the other hand, do we ever amble? Do we pass a fork somewhere down which one path we can go to ambling, while down the other we move with deliberation? If so, that must be a blind choice.

The Totalization of Shadows, Part XI

Just to keep things moving here… If my goal is to determine the material conditions for the reactivation of a philosophical ethos, what prevents me from taking a “labor theory” of reactivation seriously?

If I think that the reactivation of a philosophical ethos involves a real problem, a problem which remains worth thinking about, this means I assume we are not taught to think. If we could be taught to think and we required a reactivation of a philosophical ethos, we have an educational problem, (and the various accompanying logistical, organizational, and economic problems,) but not a problem of thought itself. The educational problem involves knowing how to transmit what it is to think, but wouldn’t as an educational problem involve or need to solve knowing what to think is.

If I don’t think I can be taught to think, and yet sense somehow I am not thinking (how do I sense this?), how do I work on myself so that I attain thinking? Do I goad and reprove myself, marinate myself in the shame of not thinking to such an extent I become so miserable I force myself to break out of this intolerable state? Is it an act of will? Or do I wander about, trying this or that, experimentally trying different combinations of thoughts and ideas (and what, in this context, are these thoughts and ideas, and how do I recognize them as such?) until one way or another I hit on a combination through which I sense some activation occurring, (and how do I sense such a thing? What are the characteristics of the sensation of a reactivation of a philosophical ethos?)

If I seek the mentorship of others who are thought to have been successful in the reactivation of philosophical ethos, how do I know what I am achieving is reactivation rather than mimicry or imitation, (which I take to be different than reactivation, though I am willing to consider this may not be correct. I don’t think the problem of a reactivation is the same as seeking to be original—I would be interested in seeing how the two are related. To tell the truth, I don’t think much of the problem of seeking to be original.)

The Totalization of Shadows, Part X

I am primarily interested in the process of a reactivation of a philosophical ethos, and am trying to learn how such a reactivation happens--bypassing the mystifications of reactivation understood metaphorically or subjectively, psychologically.

This primary interest is not entirely irrelevant to the Enlightenment theme of the blog: my favorite way of viewing the historical Enlightenment is to think of this period as one of a reactivation of philosophical ethos. The period can be viewed this way without being blind to any of the imperfections and failings of the period's philosophers or their projects.

I also think that our blog exploration of the theme of Totalization and the overcoming of Totalization is consonant with finding out how a reactivation of a philosophical ethos might happen. Reactivation could be an overcoming of Totalization, (but how?)

I am mentioning what my primary interest is because I doubt it would be obvious to anyone looking at the various approaches I have been playing with, which might not even seem to have anything in common.

For example, the hominids interested me because the hominids had to have reactivated a philosophical ethos—I do mean to say reactivated and I do mean to say philosophical—the philosophical ethos is not cultural, or humanly, or subjective. I think hominids were philosophers in exactly the same way children are, through a raw confrontation of reality.

Children devise ways of ending this raw confrontation with reality as quickly as possible-- reality is not pleasant or fun to confront—-that this is so has a great deal to do with what I want to say about reactivation. Also, I find that the theme we haven't touched in a long time, the one about "desiring of ones' own repression"-- and why we would so commonly observe the deactivation of philosophical ethos, meet up in the horror of this raw confrontation.