Long Sunday: Tyger and Becoming-Artifical

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Tyger and Becoming-Artifical

Hi. I'm Tharmas, but I listed my username as Roger Whitson. I've been fascinated by this film short from Brazilian filmmakers Guilherme Marcondes and Andrezza Valentin for almost a year without knowing precisely what to do with it:

The short seems, at first glance, to be an eco-redemptive narrative. The tyger appears in a nihilistic urban setting and unleashes the primitive core of each character, animalizing them. These characters are, to borrow an often quoted term from Deleuze and Guattari, becoming-animal, their repressed primitive essence exploding onto the bleak world and illuminating it.

But this becoming is not as simple or as easy as my theoretical shorthand suggests. Becoming, first of all, has nothing to do with essence, nor does it have much to do with the animal. As Ron Broglio and Fred Young suggest in the subtitle to their essay Animal Revolution, "there are no animals." Steve Baker's The Postmodern Animal argues further that Deleuze and Guattari's becoming-animal is a mode of experimentation in which the language of subjectivity is sacrificed for the awkwardness of finding a new style, a new way of participating in the "unthinking or undoing of the conventionally human" (104). One does not become an animal when one is involved in a becoming-animal.

Tyger struggles with the line separating interpretation and artistic experimentation associated with becoming-animal. The film must contend with another becoming that haunts literary scholars: its uncertain relationship with William Blake and his poem "The Tyger" written around 1794. "The Tyger" (you can read the poem from the Blake Archive here) argues against the violence of symmetry by allying it with the ferocity associated with tigers and disrupting the otherwise orderly and arguably symmetrical meter and rhyme with the word "symmetry." The poem performs the violence of symmetry by highlighting our desire for order in poetry, suggesting that this order can only exist by sacrificing the most important word in the poem (symmetry) and foregrounding our frustration when the orderly structure of the poem is subverted.

Marcondes and Valentin’s film replaces essentialist conceptions of ecology and authorship with one that celebrates the awkwardness and uncontrolled enthusiasm of artistic experimentation. Its setting suggests the carnivalesque, with early images of roller-coasters and tents replaced with the neon foliage surrounding the drab, flat cityscape at the end. The tyger is manipulated by shadowy figures, its joints expose a kite-like structure to the animal. The shadowy figures highlight the tyger’s artificial nature and suggest a sinister presence behind the tyger’s actions. The distinction between artificiality and nature becomes difficult to maintain in the film as it represents nature with artifice and imagines the cityscape (and its resonances of artificiality) with realistic photographs.

The filmmakers situate the background with filmed images, and place their flat, artificial characters on top. As the film progresses, the distinction between the background and the foreground becomes more apparent. This celebration of artifice in the face of authenticity or realism becomes the rallying point for the filmmakers' Deleuzo-Guattarian clamor of being—as the artificial, flat animals rise up and obscure the photo-realistic cityscape at the end. It also suggests that the becoming-animal is not natural or related to nature, but that to be becoming-animal, one must also be becoming-artifical.

By Roger Whitson | July 23, 2007 in Deleuze, Film, Literary Theory | Permalink

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Comments

It is indeed a fascinating short. I watched it once before and once after reading the main body of your text, and will likely do so a few more times. Within my limited exposure, it's the becoming animal part of D&G that I'm most sceptical of. I'm looking forward to more film and theory here at LS. So, welcome from an ever so slightly less new contributor. I'll be writing shortly, partly on the war of the lamb ("Did he who made the Lamb make thee?").

Posted by: old | Jul 23, 2007 6:24:12 PM

Really great first post, Roger. Can you say a bit more to fill out the last line?

It also suggests that the becoming-animal is not natural or related to nature, but that to be becoming-animal, one must also be becoming-artifical.

Posted by: CR | Jul 23, 2007 10:21:05 PM

You're being too generous calling this a 'film' when it's obviously a music video. It has all the trappings of a music video.

The animals in this video are all "symbolic" (i.e. reveal something via metaphor about the people who transform into them) and therefor have nothing to do with D+G's becoming-animal. Their concept refers to a zone of indiscernibility between man and beast, not to beast-like-ness (in other words, just cause there are animals doesn't make it a becoming-animal). See Georges Bataille's Theory of Religion for a good discussion of animality, becoming-animal, and immanence.

Welcome to LS, where animals eat each other!!!

Posted by: Cornchops | Jul 23, 2007 11:52:06 PM

cornchop,

GD seemed to be plenty interested in, say, Francis Bacon's "zone of indiscernability" between man and animal.

"Instead of formal correspondences, what Bacon's painting constitutes is a zone of the indiscernible, of the undecidable, between man and animal. Man becomes animal, but he does not become so without the animal simultaneously becoming spirit, the spirit of man, the physical spirit of man presented in the mirror as Eumenides or fate. This is never a combination of forms, it is rather a common fact: the common fact of man and animal. To the point that Bacon's most isolated Figure is to begin with a coupled figure, man coupled with his animal in an underlying act of bullfighting."

Etc.

Posted by: CR | Jul 24, 2007 12:05:10 AM

Thanks to all for your notes of welcome. I'll go through the comments one by one.

old: Are you skeptical of D&G in general, or my use of becoming-animal? I'm definitely intrigued by your "war of the lamb," and can't wait to see what you have to say.

CR: Many thoughts flooded through my head as I made the last revisions for the posting--in which I added that vague pseudo-argument.

First of all, I wanted to make a connection between transformation in the film and the question of literary identity in the appropriation of Blake's text for the film. Is there, in other words, a way to make D&G's notion of becoming-animal work to understand (or contest) the similitude of a film to its literary predecessor? I don't want to say that the film merely invokes the text, nor that it imitates parts of Blake's poem, but that perhaps there is a becoming between the film and the poem. I'm not really able to back up those claims completely--which is why they only exist partially in the text.

Second, I was struck by the artificiality of the film--the cartoony characters populating the foreground juxtaposed with the more realistic backgrounds. Also, the fact that the tyger is manipulated--not natural--suggests to me that whatever becoming occurs in the film, it is surely not natural or that--at least--it takes place in opposition to realism and naturalism. Becoming is not organic in the film, but is combined with a sense of artifice (neon vines, flat animalistic characters) and carnival. This is not to suggest, by the way, that D&G see becoming as organic, just to note that in the film transformation does not indicate a return to the natural or the essential. So, the artificial part of the argument picks up this sense that becoming happens in contrast to realism, apart from realism, almost diametrically opposed to realism.

Cornchops:
I want to stay away from a metaphorical/symbolic reading of the film--not only because of D&G's anti-mimetic reading of becoming-animal, but also because of Blake's disavowal of allegory. Becoming definitely happens in a "zone of indiscernability" as you say. Blake's "The Tyger" seems very allegorical, and yet a close reading of the poem suggests that allegorical readings are mired in violence. I would argue that the film's take on allegory is similar. It suggests allegory by the shape of the figures, but complicates allegory towards the end when the transformation of individual figures gives itself up to the image of the swarm. I contend that the swarm and the anti-natural elements of the film described earlier subvert an allegorical reading and celebrate the chaos of growth and transformation over and above the ontology that would otherwise be managed by a strict allegory.

I also don't have any problem with calling this a music video, but I don't understand why calling it a film has anything to do with generosity.

Posted by: Roger Whitson | Jul 24, 2007 1:09:57 PM

I guess I'll have to try to explain becoming-animal! lol. (not a Deleuzian...)

But first:
movie-video-film-cinema: there is your great chain of status. As much as we try to make these 'technical' terms that refer to 'purely' formal qualities, they're also value judgments insofar as they are mobile categories (you say film, I say movie, he says video, etc.) So basically I was taking the piss out of your loaded term 'film,' all in the name of entertainment of course.

Perhaps in my attitude you sense a bit of 'animality.' There's nothing animal-like about my digital words, but nevertheless we become aware of a certain ferocity in them, like a gorilla pounding its fists or a rattlesnake. What D+G's becoming-animal seeks to capture is that sense of indiscernibility between man and animal, when we're not sure if its a 'man' that speaks or an animal cry, a kind of territorializing sonority. So when D writes, "This is never a combination of forms, it is rather a common fact: the common fact of man and animal." He's no longer speaking of Bacon's paintings in which the matador is intertwined with the bull but to EVERY figure painted by Bacon, those sitting on chairs or bending over sinks, to the common fact that each figure, though isolated, is both man and animal indissolubly: "To the point that Bacon's most isolated Figure is to begin with a coupled figure..." And in the next chapter of FB we read: "whatever its importance, becoming-animal is only one stage in a more profound becoming-imperceptible in which the Figure disappears." This is Ds way of avoiding the Freudian-type 'animal instinct' by passing through a becoming-molecular that sends the Figure into chaos. Becoming in Deleuze is always a becoming-minor. Whereas the characters in this film, although they transform, are not caught in a becoming that would "shake off their faces"; that is, their symbolic status neer gives way to a-sygnifying traits, colour patches, random marks, thrown paint. Their transformations are made hurriedly, as if the filmmakers are worried that we might for too long experience that zone of indiscernibility between the man and the animal in which it is no longer clear which is which and we are confronted with the brute matter of fact (flesh). Their transformations are, in a banal sense, digital but not tactile (we do not see the intervention of a hand (or a paw) that deforms the material of which they are composed, and in the case of the puppeteers, the emphasis in on maintaining the illusion of the non-presence of the pupetteers and the independence of the tiger, not the becoming-animal of a man-puppet). The transformations in this film are celestial transformations in the sense that each undergoes a transfiguration towards a state of nature, the 'true' content of their being, the metaphoric value of the animals in this, this film. Its the difference between the T-1000's 'morphing' in Terminator 2 and Peter O'Toole's snarl in Lawrence of Arabia.

"The actor Robert De Niro walks "like" a crab in a certain film sequence; but, he says, it is not a question of his imitating a crab; it is a question of making something that has to do with the crab enter into composition with the image, with the speed of the image. That is the essential point for us: you become-animal only if, by whatever means or elements, you emilt corpuscles that enter the relation of movement and rest of the animal particles, or what amounts to the same thing, that enter the zone of proximity of teh animal molecule. You become animal only molecularly. You no not become a barking molar dog, but by barking, if it is done with enough feeling, with enough necessity and composition, you emit a molecular dog." (1000Ps, pp. 274-5).

Posted by: Cornchops | Jul 24, 2007 2:06:00 PM

Tharmas,

Neither "skeptical of D&G in general" nor of your "use of becoming-animal," but rather of D&G on becoming-animal. I have not read up sufficiently on it, but the discussion of zones of indiscernibility above reminds me of why I am put off by it in my initial reaction. It smacks too much of Derrida, Agamben, liminality as the core of radical politics etc. - though in my view liminality has a part to play in radical politics, it's more of a prophetic lodestone role, however. I am quite glad that, at least of what I've read, Negri and Hardt and Negri stay away from this stuff.

Posted by: old | Jul 24, 2007 4:06:44 PM

"It also suggests that the becoming-animal is not natural or related to nature, but that to be becoming-animal, one must also be becoming-artifical."

But isn't nature, in fact, already artificial--what i mean is that, isn't nature always artificing itself inthe first place?

Posted by: discard | Jul 25, 2007 12:40:43 PM

discard: right, D&G use the term Mechanosphere at the end of MP to suggest
what you call "the artificing of nature".

old: Negri has a passage in _Time for Revolution_ that says we should focus on being and not becoming--so, I can see what you mean, but I feel that Negri's decision was more pragmatic and strategic. And I'm not as sympathetic with these sorts of arguments as I sense you are.

cornchops: for a non-Deleuzian, you are certainly Deluzifying. I don't have time right now to completely respond to your explanation of becoming. I don't disagree with it; I simply think that the portrayal of transformation in the film is more complicated than you suggest. Certainly allegory is part of the film, but I don't think the film is satisfied with allegorical, essential or ecological explanations of what occurs. As I said in the post, the film struggles with its own sense of experimentation and interpretation--and this happens on several levels (on the level of the graphic rendering of the figures, on the level of its indebtedness to Blake, etc). However, I believe becoming occurs, or happens, or is hinted at in the film's struggle. To respond to what you say about the puppeteers--their mere presence in a CGI film would seem to indicate that the filmmakers are not interested in the complete independence of the tyger.

Posted by: Roger Whitson | Jul 25, 2007 1:19:31 PM

Machiavellians of various stripes make use of animal totems, obviously. Udai Hussein had a pride of lions, and occasionally tossed a whore in with 'em. Hermann Goering played around with lions too. Pammy Anderson loves big cats. Mayans thought jaguars were from the sun. Aleutian gals let alpha wolves fuck 'em. (And some simplering xtian like Billy Blake uses his Jee-suss tyger in a poem).

Posted by: Perezoso | Jul 25, 2007 5:08:51 PM

Interesting that we get a film called "Tyger" from a guy called "Tharmas." Blake, Blake, Blake! I love it. And I loved the film. I think it's interesting that the question as to who "framed" the Tygers's fearful symmetry in Blake seems to refer to a terrifying divinity that remains offstage, whereas in the film it points us to the shadowy puppeteers who somehow seem like less than their creation. Only through the Tyger and its shenanigans do the artificers transcend their initial role and take part in a fearsome becoming. They seem more to be unleashing the Tyger than controlling it, although they do direct its movements. The end result seems to blur the distinction between nature and artifice, or to show how nature is bursting out through, by means of, and as, artifice. I will watch this again...

Posted by: CBR | Jul 25, 2007 6:20:53 PM

Tharmas/all,

I'm not sure how to write this concisely which is why I've left it so long. But I rather think my reading which is rather left-deleuzian may open this out a little, though it's too short to avoid being a little elliptical.

There is another set of intertextual references that can be read in this short film, which I'd suggest is actually less William Blake and more early J.G.Ballard, I'm thinking especially of the becoming mineral of 'The Crystal World' but there are other examples that might be clearer still (the Drowned World). This is more in alignment to the Deleuze and Guattari(D&G) references because Ballards works are extreme and better examples of the immanent indifference of the becoming-other than Blakes Tyger. This produces a different reading which reminds us that Tharmas/Roger has produced a rather optimistic reading through the references to a Blakeian reading of the film. Through Ballards eyes the film would translate into something which is at best ambivalent and at worse translates into horror. Closer to the initial ambivalence of D&G's becoming-animal in Plateau 10 with the becoming-rat of Willard. With this in mind the film itself should be read/seen as much closer to the radical indifference of D&Gs work. Which in capitalism and schizophrenia is put in terms such as “lines of escape are still full molar or social investments at grips with the whole social field” (D&G ). It is always worth remembering that in capitalism and schizophrenia the repeated emphasis is on the immanent indifference of social/molar and desiring/molecular processes, of everything happening at the same time. (sentence adapted/borrowed from Diane Beddoes). This implicates the indifference of the Tyger becoming, which is as real as the indifference of the molar and the molecular, an understanding which runs through so much of capitalism and schizophrenia. This prevents the identification of becoming with positive values or negative values, for example the radically mistaken idea that a becoming minor is necessarily a good thing. Becoming remains beyond good and evil but also and always socially invested.

There is a sense in which any becoming-animal is sometimes considered as being something different than a becoming-machine as if the phrase “a machine is not an animal” (Guattari) justifies an intention to read one sense/type of becoming as prioritized over another. But indifference ensures that becomings are not good or bad, or to put it another way – pace both Ballard and D&G a becoming animal can be either or both a becoming fascist or a becoming communist. Ballards fear of the Tyger would then be that you cannot identify whether the Tyger-politics is fascistic or communist. The obvious Deluzian refusal to Ballards fear is the identification of the type of animal that the Tyger is – which is an individuated animal and sentimentalized which is as D&G would argue (see p240) an Oedipal animal, drawing us into a narcissistic contemplation.

regards

Posted by: sdv | Jul 26, 2007 6:59:25 AM

Thanks for the Ballard reference to the Tyger, SDV, I wasn't aware of it.

I'll write a more thorough response later, because Blake definitely has a more optimistic reading of becoming than your very astute reading of D&G. I probably err on the side of Blake rather than D&G, because I'm more of a Blakean than a Deleuzian. BTW, have you read _The Unlimited Dream Company_? I haven't, but I heard that the main protagonist is modeled after Blake.

Posted by: Roger Whitson | Jul 26, 2007 9:12:14 AM

sdv,

can say more about what you mean with:

"the radically mistaken idea that a becoming minor is necessarily a good thing."

Posted by: discard | Jul 26, 2007 9:56:31 AM

I thought I'd reproduce some passages from Blake in order to show the (sometimes inconsistent) Blakean approach to becoming.

1. The first comes from _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ and involves an unnamed poet (assumed to be Blake) who is uttering blasphemies. An angel "shews him his lot" by giving him a vision of a giant Leviathan. But as soon as the angel disappears, the Leviathan becomes a pleasant meadow with a harper. The poet departs and finds the Angel again who, asking him how he escaped. The poet replies "All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics: for when you ran away, I found myself on a bank by moonlight hearing a harper." Blake then comments that "The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind." This is probably the most optimistic characterization of becoming in Blake's poetry.

2. The second, a much more ambivalent characterization of becoming, comes from the Seventh Night of the Four Zoas in which Orc is chained down by his becoming, the rage which spurs his transformation is called a fetter. Now, there is a state that Orc assumes, and it is perhaps the idea of the state that Blake most forcefully rejects in his thought--so it may not be exactly what D&G call becoming, but what could be called the "fascist" elements of transformation can be seen in this selection:

Then Orc cried Curse thy Cold hypocrisy. already round thy Tree
In scales that shine with gold & rubies thou beginnest to weaken
My divided Spirit Like a worm I rise in peace unbound
From wrath Now When I rage my fetters bind me more
O torment O torment A Worm compelld. Am I a worm
Is it in strong deceit that man is born. In strong deceit
Thou dost restrain my fury that the worm may fold the tree
Avaunt Cold hypocrite I am chaind or thou couldst not use me thus
The Man shall rage bound with this Chain the worm in silence creep
Thou wilt not cease from rage Grey Demon silence all thy storms
Give me example of thy mildness King of furious hail storms
Art thou the cold attractive power that holds me in this chain
I well remember how I stole thy light & it became fire
Consuming. Thou Knowst me now O Urizen Prince of Light
And I know thee is this the triumph this the Godlike State
That lies beyond the bounds of Science in the Grey obscure

Terrified Urizen heard Orc now certain that he was Luvah
And Orc began to Organize a Serpent body Despising Urizens light & turning it into flaming fire
Recieving as a poisond Cup Recieves the heavenly wine
And turning affection into fury & thought into abstraction
A Self consuming dark devourer rising into the heavens

Posted by: Roger Whitson | Jul 26, 2007 4:37:41 PM

Roger

have you read Peter Achroyd's Blake ?

Posted by: sdv | Jul 27, 2007 6:52:21 AM

Discard,

I've found your question surprisingly difficult to answer. How to explain what I mean without having to get involved in a level of difficult discussion of Deleuze's symbolism, the lovely optimism, the statements about becoming-women...? It's not that I dislike the concept, just that the lack of realization that a becoming-minor may precisely mean a becoming-fascist.

Becoming-minor is a phrase, a concept which as with any Deleuzian bringing together of terms has a certain ambiguity, in this particular case the idea that the minor is necessarily better, revolutionary and more creative than the major. The way it's understood is frequently that it necessarily means that the line of escape being taken is always for the best, even though it always remains as D&G explain elsewhere embedded within the whole social field.

The becoming-minor-event can be and often is founded on what in the first volume of C&S is addressed “the desire to be oppressed”.

The instances of the minor used by D&G avoid this issue but nonetheless it is clear that becoming-minor when it references actual social minorities through phrases such as : “ Minorities are effectively definable states, states of language, ethnicity, or sex with there own Territory's, but they must also be thought of as seeds, crystals of becoming...” cannot avoid the unfortunate truth that minorities in their becoming can also desire their oppression.

Then there is the distinctly Jungian figure of the “...universal figure of minortarian consciousness as the becoming of everybody and that becoming is creation. One does not attain it by acquiring the majority... ” In our present the most common becoming-minor is the temporary return of religion, attempting to drag us back into a new middle ages – both christian, judiac and islamic each of which are making gestures at some related universal figure. Becoming-minor may be a terrible thing.

Posted by: sdv | Jul 27, 2007 7:17:40 AM

Discard,

The becoming-minor-event can be and often is founded on what in the first volume of C&S is addressed “the desire to be oppressed”.

Posted by: sdv | Jul 27, 2007 7:18:23 AM

"temporary return of religion" hmmph. It never left. It was just ignored by those who foolishly thought they could run a worldwide peoples movement while expressing utter disdain for traditions revered collectively by well over 90% of the world's people. Because, you know, all such traditions are exactly the same and exactly the problem.

Posted by: old | Jul 27, 2007 10:41:17 AM

sdv--You mean Ackroyd's biography of Blake? Yes, I have. I mostly enjoyed it. Why do you ask?

old/sdv--I agree with old about the need for distinction when talking about the so-called "return of religion." There are fascisms in this return but there are also fascinating "seeds" of revolutionary action. I'm thinking of the progressive Catholics in El Salvador using their religion to create environmentally and economically sustainable/equitable communities (and in the process rebelling against the encroachment of global capitalism) or Reformist Thai Buddhists who argue against more traditionalist views that transgenderism is a corrupting effect of the impact of Western thinking on the religion. The enthusiasts/dissenters of the 18th/19th century (of which Blake was a part) called for a radical rethinking of social/economic relationships and had beliefs that were proto-communist.

Posted by: Roger Whitson | Jul 27, 2007 11:55:56 AM

sdv,

I'm still not entirely sure what you're getting at. Is it simply that you think "becoming-minor" can be used over-optimistically, as a kind of slogan, and this is what you're cautioning against?

Or is it that you think the concept itself is not so much a productiv concept as an essentially a kind of report on a phenomenone that can go in either direction (a "revolutionary" or a "fascist" one)?

or is it that you're saying that because certain religious groups you dislike are minorities, then it's the case that becoming-minor is not necessarily good?

btw, in the following:

" “ Minorities are effectively definable states, states of language, ethnicity, or sex with there own Territory's, but they must also be thought of as seeds, crystals of becoming...” cannot avoid the unfortunate truth that minorities in their becoming can also desire their oppression."

I don't see the connection. Are you saying that the fact that minorities are effectively definable states, etc, means that they (can) desire their own opprssion? I don't get the link...

Posted by: discard | Jul 27, 2007 12:32:46 PM

Discard,Old,Roger

What I'm saying extremely badly, perhaps because I am feeling so tentative about this , is that even within the context of C&S it's clear that becoming-minor can be and often is a becoming-fascist or worse. The connection being drawn does relate to the definable states, and note that they are all examples that are fundamentally ambivalent (ethnicity, ecology and yes i have been reading ecological-ethics recently – and it makes mien kampf look potentially nice to women and jews) and so on.

Each instance of the minor should be understood for what it is and not through a misunderstanding of becoming that imagines that because becoming (and difference) supplant issues of being and identity that it evades the issue of reaction.

And as for whether the return of religion is temporary, well ask me again in twenty years.

Posted by: sdv | Jul 27, 2007 2:14:56 PM

'(ethnicity, ecology and yes i have been reading ecological-ethics recently – and it makes mien kampf look potentially nice to women and jews'

Huh?

'And as for whether the return of religion is temporary, well ask me again in twenty years.'

Well, if Old is correct and this isn't really a return, that's hardly the point.

Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Jul 28, 2007 11:31:35 AM

SDV is right. If we put it in terms of deterritorialization, rather than becoming-minor (a concept that's a bit more brittle) D&G are super-explicit that the former has fascistic and cancerous forms, and forms that are often undecidable in their initial manifestations. Indeed, they both use the term to rewrite the primitive accum. chapter of Marx--that is, deterr. can be and is often merely the negative phase of a deeper reterritorializing penetration by the market, by power, of the move from formal to real subsumption. Note, for instance, Eyal Weizman's piece about the Israeli Defense Forces reading of the War Machine nomadology chapter as a tactic for rethinking the space of urban warfare. This is a basic point that is made in many thinkers, from Adorno to Zizek, liberty on its own ain't nothing. The revolution of everyday life means revolution every day.

Posted by: Spc. Tackle | Jul 29, 2007 1:43:15 PM

Spc. Tackle--could you give me a citation for Weizman's piece? I'd like to take a look at it.

Posted by: | Jul 29, 2007 3:51:09 PM

http://www.frieze.com/feature_single.asp?f=1165 is one of the many places you can find the Weizman piece. There is a reference at the bottom there to a full transcript in the March/April 2006 issue of Radical Philosophy.

Posted by: old | Jul 29, 2007 4:04:33 PM

ah yeah the onto-hegemony of a Gorillaz outtake....even Ballard's Sussex surrealism preferable to the like tres sauvvage Tyger flick, BillBlake, or for that matter to D&G.........

Posted by: Perezoso | Jul 29, 2007 8:53:26 PM

Well yes, spc. tackle, if that's the case, of course--deterritorialization is not good in-iteslf, etc. I just was looking for clarification that this was the point of sdv or if there was something mroe there.

D/G say this themselves, such as, the minority must become-minor, noting the state of Israel explicitly as an example of a minority's failure to become-minor (perhaps raising the question of whehter it is becoming-minor, or more properly minority status, that can go bad).

Posted by: discard | Jul 29, 2007 9:28:07 PM

Anthony,

Sorry i should have been more specific, pretty typical in my view is Patrik Curry interesting text 'ecological ethics'. It's the numbers that count a planned decline of -6bn and counting.

As for Old's point, to accept it surely you would have to be able to explain how the recent repolitization of the religious sphere is in fact a delusion ?

Posted by: sdv | Jul 30, 2007 1:06:49 PM

I'm very sorry but your wording is still confusing me. Are you saying that you think there is a fascistic element to ecoethics? Are you saying that this is necessarily part of the movement? Thanks for telling me what book you meant, that was helpful.

Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Jul 30, 2007 2:22:03 PM

Anthony,

Sorry, it must be me being eliptical again.

I am not saying that it 'must' be part of an ecologically orientated movement, but that there are significant aspects of the movement which have the potential to make what we think of as 'fascism' look positively liberal.

is that clearer ?

Posted by: sdv | Jul 30, 2007 2:49:45 PM

discard/spc.tackle/all

Ok – now I can perhaps escalate the issue to a higher level. The example raised of deterritorialization is excellent - and yet the question inevitably becomes why is it that the family of related concepts of which 'becoming-minor' is almost the least troublesome, are so problematic. Deleuze and D&G were so careful to not say about 'becoming' what they repeatedly said about deterritorialization and reterritorialization.

I suspect that what underlies this is that Deleuze has so much more invested in 'becoming' that in deterritorialization. Because becoming is a key theme in Deleuzes work, along with the other central term 'difference', key terms in the ontology. Philosophically Deleuze develops theories of difference, repetition and becoming, using the term becoming to “describe the continual production of difference immanent within the constitution of events, whether physical or otherwise” (Pearson).

The usual notion of a politics of difference seeks to increase the rights of minorities to function in the majority. In other words what constitutes the majority becomes increasingly broad. D&G do not deny this is important and obviously support this political approach, the majority-minority binary construction. However they introduce the third term (becoming)-minor whilst avoiding the issue we have been discussing here. Perhaps it's because the third term carries with it a possibility of identification, briefly for example the concept of becoming-animal which begins with references to animals through Jung and Levi-Strauss (see 236 in MP) but crucially D&G insist that becoming-animal is not an identification because as they say 'they are perfectly real' which begins the change and the reference to becoming as 'the principle according to which there is a reality specific to becoming' (238) ---

The purpose of this note/comment may now becoming clearer, what this leads me to propose is that the underlying problem with the becoming-minor is that the examples and uses D&G make with it in C&S begin to produce some slight cracks/fissures in Deleuze's refusal of the Western Traditions 'Being and Identity'. The tool becomes in C&S a potential threat, a potential problem with the Deleuzian use of becoming, in other words the ontology itself, because they cannot avoid the problem of identification and identity.

sigh, painful process this...

Posted by: sdv | Jul 30, 2007 4:20:19 PM

Anthony,

i wouldn't want you to think that I was picking on Curry, try Lovelock's recent work 'The Revenge of Gaia' as well.

Posted by: sdv | Jul 30, 2007 4:22:50 PM

sdv,

This reminded me of Judith Butler's book _Undoing Gender_, which I found bizzare because it vacillated between a politics of identity (which Butler doesn't want to take away from certain queer movements) and a recognition of the fluidity (or more radically) the non-existence of sexual identity as such. The book seemed (to me) to fall apart in its own ambivalence. Perhaps the problem here is the combination of D&G? D's nuanced philosophical approach with G's commitment to radical politics? This is obviously too simple, but I think the problem you are noticing might be due to a tension in the many authors that wrote the book...becoming can't really be appropriated to radical politics and yet there are passages that attempt to do just that in ATP.

Posted by: Roger Whitson | Jul 31, 2007 10:15:56 AM

Roger,

Agreed and nicely put, with Deleuze a great deal appears to depend on whether you approach him, though the toolbox, as a philosopher of engineering or if one is content to 'read' him and continue to repeat the all to obvious logical and political errors. However becoming can be used to support a leftist politics, but you need Marx and not one whose social and historical context was about to become the neo-liberal counter reformation.

Posted by: sdv | Jul 31, 2007 5:23:01 PM

Tyger and Becoming-Artifical

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