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.
posted by Orla Schantz at 8:34 PM
4 Comments:
Orla, I have to protest here, and not because this is an attack on me. I protest because some of this is downright silly.
I'll give one example now, but I hope to come back and give a few more later.
You write,
"It contains an almost impossible negation of its title: Totalization can by definition only occur once."
Does totalization occur only once by definition? I think this is debatable, but I will give you the point for the sake of discussion.
If totalization occurred only once by definition, would that entail that someone gropingly thinking and writing on the subject of totalization must do so only once, in one post, or essay,or work , or whatever? Please show how that would follow or is even remotely plausible.
Say it does follow. Someone who wished to validly or consistently comment on the subject of Totalization must form the commentary all at once, in one sitting so to speak.
Now, say for one reason or other, perhaps problems uploading posts due to a bad internet connection or some other cause, or perhaps simply as an aesthetic preference of some sort, a perception people will like to read shorter posts, or are more likely to read them, or some other such thing, the author of the valid "one time" work on Totalization decides to cut it up and post the sections of the "one time" work on Totalization, one section per week. Does the valid work thusly become invalid? Why?
Given you do not know if I did or did not work in this way, by your criteria of judgment you don't know whether or not this is a valid work on Totalization.
--Yusef
"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?"
You appear to recognize something about Deleuze's thinking here--if Totalization is something which by definition can happen only once, and if Totalization is something which can happen at all, Deleuze's concepts of repetition, difference, and change are all wrong.
With what you say in this quote you wittingly or unwittingly pit yourself against Deleuze. I wonder why you would do this. I do think my repetitions are dealing with Deleuze's concepts of essential change, so maybe I could also say you are pitting yourself against both me and Deleuze. And I wonder why you would do that, too.
Two of us and only one of you--
--but I will be very interested to see the team you put together (the company you keep) to support this idea of yours that Totalization is by definition something occurring only once.
--Yusef
"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."
I couldn't understand your reaction to what I wrote until I noticed you've misquoted me. You think I want to separate the elements of Totalization. Actually, you even edit and rewrite my very words to make me SAY I want to separate the elements of Totalization. What I want to separate are not the elements of Totalization, but the elements of Carl's theory. (Of Carl's theory, Totalization is one element.)
Maybe there are elements of Totalization and maybe I want to separate them, but I haven't even thought about it yet. I definitely haven't intended to do this...
Here is what I wrote,
"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."
--Yusef
AAAAAHHHH, I should STOP writing so deep into the night - ! You are right: some of it turned out both too silly and unnecessarily combative.
Forgive me.
And yet it did produce some very refreshing questions and stimulating reactions from you that we can pick up later when (my) fog clears. Thanks a lot.
I'll return - in a better mood.
Orla
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