Reconceptualising Pathological Demand Avoidance as a neurodivergent phenomena using the Philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari.
Tag: Deleuze
Since the late 20th century, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been an exciting yet daunting topic of discussion for many disciplines, and within the last ten years, we have seen exponential growth in algorithmic use. In the UK specifically, since 2015, police departments nationwide have begun testing and introducing algorithmic-led predictive policing which uses historical data to recognise trends to predict crimes. Academics across many disciplines have widely acknowledged the potential for these systems to reinforce existing social bias. However, one critical issue has remained largely unexamined by such academics: the ominous implications of predictive policing algorithms for the victims of sexual violence within a rape culture.
This project offers an alternative criticism through a feminist lens of predictive policing algorithms, and delves into the power dynamics exercised in such a society along with the structure of oppression that may come from it. This project further shows that to solve the issue of rape culture, reform of individual beliefs and systemic power structures is needed instead of focusing on predicting the outcomes. Using Foucault’s disciplinary power, Deleuze’s Societies of Control, and Iris Youngs phenomenological and political philosophy, this project concludes that understanding the lived experience of women is the most effective way to combat rape culture and sexually violent crimes, not predictive policing. The relationship between cultural structures and physical embodiment shows that it is only on the individual level that we can deconstruct structures of power that permeate a culture, not through institutions.
We’ve had Athenian civilisation, we’ve had the Renaissance, and now our civilisation centres round the arse.
-Jean-Luc Godard, Pierrot le Fou
Since World War II, capitalist society has experienced a proliferation of consumer goods and items so vast that, according to Jean Baudrillard, they have come to take on the nature of flora and fauna. Our streets are lined with shops and restaurants, while our houses are filled with various nonessential items. For some, almost every moment in waking existence is related to consumption. For others, consumption is a type of leisure, a break from a life spent in an office doing paperwork. But how did we end up in this endless cycle of consumption? Why is consumption a lifestyle for so many people? How could such a large societal change be enacted in such a short space of time?
Judging by how quickly capitalist society has accepted and embraced consumerism, it would seem as though humans have an endless capacity to consume, and that consumer capitalism frees us to pursue this natural end. However, I will argue in this essay that consumerism is an oppressive identity and force that makes us desire its oppression. I will do so by opening the discussion of a consumer identity through Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 film Pierrot le Fou. Following this opening, I will use Pier Paolo Pasolini’s critique of consumerism to show how consumerism acts as a force of social homogenisation, and also apply this critique to Pierrot le Fou. Then I will use the concept of the Young-Girl from Tiqqun’s book Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl to show how the consumerism as a form of social control has developed from the 1960s, and how it has created an identity that engenders more consumption, and therefore a degree of self-oppression. Finally, I will use Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s book Anti-Oedipus to show how the social and the political directly produce subjects and how desire comes to desire consumption, even if this leads to its own oppression.
The object of study for my stage three project is track and trace. In late 2019 the COVID-19 pandemic was reported as an unusual virus. At the beginning of 2020, the virus, now identified as a novel coronavirus began to spread throughout the entire world. Aside from a lockdown and a vaccine that had to be developed, the UK government invested heavily into a contact tracing system called track and trace. The aim of this system would be to trace who had come into contact with those that had testing positive for the virus so they could isolate and quarantine. Despite being heavily funded, track and trace has only a “marginal impact on transition of the virus”. This essay will be investing track and trace and what affected the way it was organised. By understanding it with reference to Deleuzian and Guattarian thought, it will be considered why track and trace was organised the way it was with a historical approaching using quantitative data and then why this meant track and trace was unsuccessful using an axiological approach. The territory in which the object will be considered is from political responses to catastrophes and centralisation.
In order to make this invested, this essay will attempt to give a broad description of Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of state form thought and nomad form thought and the rhizomatic, and then discussing whether it is relevant into track and trace. State form and nomad form thought is the outlining how the state has power not only explicitly through laws but also by giving itself a rational justification for its framework. By considering the war machine, an entity that exists outside the state, Deleuze and Guattari develop nomad thought in order to offer an alternative to state thought, which is used to critique how the UK state organised track and trace. The rhizome is Deleuze and Guattari’s description metaphysics where the world operates as a rhizome, meaning it is fundamentally decentralised. This will be used to critique the fact track and trace was centralised. Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus is used primary to develop these concepts and understood with reference Eugene Holland’s A Thousand Plateaus: a reader. Moreover, the essay uses information from the BBC and The Guardian to understand how track and trace worked and how successful it was. By considering this information, it will be investigated whether Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts are relevant to track and trace, considering how neoliberal policy affected how track and trace was organised, how sources advocated for centralisation in facing the COVID-19 pandemic, and finally whether Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts are relevant.
Sadism and masochism coupled together as sadomasochism is a compound term which denotes a pair of opposites, adopted by psychoanalysis. The development of sadism and masochism began from the literary contributions of Sade and Masoch, which later contributed to the psychoanalytical analysis of the relationship in perversion between opposites. This project focuses on psychoanalysis being useful in the developed understanding of sadomasochistic relations, specifically in terms of how, why they are formed and are able to function despite being structurally separate. As a result, psychoanalysis claims a necessary reliance on each other present in sadomasochist relations, despite being the opposite of each other. The common psychoanalytic reading of sadism and masochism will be used, as a challenge to sadism and masochism being defined without being sourced from a process of reversal. In addition, there is focus on role of fantasy and if whether sadism and masochism can exist as a pure example without elements of the other, with perversions always existing as a pair of opposites in a relation of an exchange of power. The objects of sadism and masochism are applied to the territory of psychoanalysis with psychoanalysis providing depth into these concepts as they are of a paradoxical nature. A historical methodology will be used to follow the progression of the understanding of sadism and masochism, as developed over time with psychoanalytical understanding as such provided by Freud, Deleuze and Lacan.
Wonderland is often used as a synonym for nonsense, but is there something more complex and logical functioning beneath the surface? Lewis Carroll’s fiction novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland presents the most remarkable synergy of sense and nonsense; logic and fallacies. With Deleuze’s Logic of Sense being utilised to illuminate the key fields of logic in the novel, appropriate fields of geometry and algebra will be utilised under the scope of mathematics to elevate an establishment of logic.
A conservative mathematician, Carroll disputed the pivotal change that was being introduced in the 19th century. With preceding mathematics emphasising logical Euclidean methods, the 1800’s saw mathematical theories introduce more abstract principles which extended mathematics beyond the isolation of arithmetic and numbers. Deeming this absurd, Carroll thus utilised the nonsense fiction in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to subtly mock the contemporary mathematical climate.
Having always possessed an interest in how fiction literature can re-orientate the mechanics of our perceived reality, highlighting the logic in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland will enable a platform to project my passion for mathematics in a qualitatively fiction context. By illuminating the masked logic and mathematics throughout the novel, this project will ultimately aim to convey how this nonsense fiction literature often anchors itself in a sound and consistent logic.
My project’s territory is desire, and the object of this enquiry is the film Festen by Thomas Vinterberg. Festen showcases a family’s revelation to its secrets and traumatic past. The film was the first film made under the influence of the rules of Dogme 95 Movement. The aesthetics of the film are directly influenced by the strict rules of the movement. From the aesthetics of the film, I started my examination of the film in order to uncover a new understanding of desire. The conceptual tools that I utilised for this intellectual exploration are found in two primary texts. The first text, written by Gilles Deleuze, is Cinema 2: The Time-Image. This text provided a philosophical taxonomy of cinematic images that indicated a way the aesthetics of a film can be understood. The second, and more central text, is Anti-Oedipus. This text was written by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari and it features an extensive critique of the psychoanalytic discourse and a new conceptual image of desire.My project’s main objective is to present the novel image of desire, as seen in Festen, with the aid of the two philosophical texts. The film is interested in the idea of the family and all things that are attached to it. Through my examination, I uncovered how closely attached is desire to the family. Festen, seemingly, unpacks this conception of desire and reveals the repressive implications of such conception.The result of my examination is a new, and more open, picture of desire that can reverse the negative and repressive implications of the familial conception of desire that was previously established.
This project aims to argue that the doppelganger in cinema represents a fear in society. The project will aim to chart the change in this fear. Deleuze’s work offers a psychoanalytical perspective on this whereas Giddens and Beck look at modernity more generally. Science fiction cinema is a cinematic cousin of the double film and works in a similarly reflexive manner. As film projection is digitized so is our society, meaning that we both rely on and resent technology. So is the prevalence of double films in 2014 related to our increasingly strong links to machines?
Minor Literature is that which completes three tasks: the continual deterritorialisation of major literature, the enablance of collective enunciation and the instating of non-hierarchal relationships between signifiers and the signified. This project considers whether postmodern picturebooks complete these tasks.
The term, ‘postmodernist picturebooks’ refers to a series of books co-published in Britain and America between 1994 and 2004. All of these books make use of metafictive references and narrative gaps.
In this project, borrowing from the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, I shall argue that with the increase of technology, the spread of capitalism and the loss of ambiguity in language, a second Enlightenment is needed; in order to save man from destroying, and losing his ambiguous relationship with the world. I shall argue that the only way for man to avoid such fate is through a revolution in education. I shall draw on the educationalists Ken Robinson, and Mary Evans to demonstrate that contemporary education is failing children, for multiple reasons. Essentially modern education systems have turned into businesses, as such not only do they restrict creativity in the class room, but they are ensuring ‘cut-backs’ in creative subjects.
I shall draw on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze to demonstrate why creativity and creative thinking are an essential attribute of any individual. Moreover I shall argue alongside Jean François Lyotard, that the modern world calls for order and structure which is dramatically limiting the creative abilities of individuals in our society. Thus my proposal is that the only way to change this ordered, scientific mind-set, inherited from the Enlightenment, is to revolutionise the way we educate children, so as to encourage creativity and critical thinking. Furthermore I shall argue that if this is not achieved, the conclusion could result in the end of mankind.
The object of my project is the premise behind Machine of Death, an anthology of stories about a world where people can know in advance how they will die.
The aim of my project is to establish the nature of existence as singular, through an examination of Jean-Paul Sartre’s ontological work Being and Nothingness in tandem with the collection of stories presented in Machine of Death. The question is: what is ‘singular’ existence in Sartre’s philosophy? What does it entail? And what are its implications for human existence, freedom and responsibility?
The thesis behind this endeavour is that, by examining the ontological status of the world found in Machine of Death in light of Sartre’s philosophy, we can both establish answers to these questions and open up for ourselves a new possibility; the possibility of conceiving of an existence whose fundamental state is not a stable mode of Being, but patterns of organisation in a sea of fundamental differentiation and chaos. In so doing, we point ourselves towards a new ontology: the ontology of Deleuze in Difference and Repetition.
Karl Marx: Here, fashion is nothing but ideological apparatus utilised by the capitalist system in order to manipulate the working class. I have linked these ideas with the collapse of the designer brand ‘Thomas Burberry’ whereby the infamous pattern was adopted by the lower class ‘chav’ and a decline in stature equated with a decline in sales. Deleuze and Guattari: I have drawn on the notion of ‘minor politics’ and art as a ‘becoming’. In a more positive sense, the punk sensation of designer Vivienne Westwood has, as an art form, generated a revolutionary community culture. There exists an issue that fashion is a trivial subject. I intend to challenge this misconception and show how this phenomenon can directly affect our society. I have further deconstructed the ideas of these thinkers and introduced the work of Hans-georg Gadamer, as offering an alternative approach and a distinction between fashion and taste.
This project began with Bill Drummond’s poster, Notice. For Drummond, the digitization and instant access to music through the internet has rendered recorded music a dead art form. To try and understand Drummond’s perception, I have chosen to examine three moments where technology had altered musical production and dissemination: – (1) The birth of notation. (2) The advent of file-sharing software such as Napster. (3) The rise of house music and ecstasy culture where DJs perform using recorded music. Throughout, I have used Deleuze and Guatarri’s A Thousand Plateaus as a conceptual tool-kit. Drawing on their notion of the rhizome, faciality, the refrain, becoming-imperceptible and micro-politics I have attempted to understand both these three movements and develop an approach to music itself. In order to cast some light on Drummond’s perception of recorded music as a single, irrelevant genre, I have turned to Adorno’s conception of the culture industry. Through Derrida’s Dissemination, I have attempted to show that the dichotomy between recording and performance cannot be sustained and that the musical experience returns the listener to the play of differance.
I will explore the life and work of Philip K. Dick, best known for writing Science Fiction, by closely examining a number of his novels, as well as a selection of his non-fictional, philosophical, theological and literary writings, coupled with information obtained from biographies and interviews with the man himself. The main themes permeating his life and work which I will explore are the nature of reality, the psyche and humanity, especially in relation to contemporary capitalist society. Of particular interest will be his exploration of the concepts of sanity, considering his views on schizophrenia and paranoia, and his treatment of ideas about selfhood, identity and subjectivity. I will explore these areas in terms of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, both alone and in collaboration with Felix Guattari. I will pay particular attention to the concepts of schizoanalysis, rhizomatics, territorialization, lines of flight, nomadology, becomings, machines and difference. My aim, rather than to reach a definitive conclusion, is simply to explore the vast and complex works of both men, using each to shed light on the other, and to pose questions, rather than propose answers, which will have a profound effect on the way we view the world.
Aim: To analyse whether or not the internet can be said to form a functional rhizomatic system and from this analysis to discuss what this implies for the future management or control of the structures that exist therein. Sources: Deleuze and Guattari – A Thousand Plateaus and Anti-Oedipus, Manuel Castells – The Internet Galaxy
Aims and Objectives • To being by establishing and exploring the shift towards Capitalism and more importantly, how and why it came about. • To show, through the work of Deleuze and Guattari, how MySpace is a product of Capitalism. • To illustrate how and why society has changed with the production of MySpace. Overview of Territory: MySpace is a social networking website which consists primarily of an interactive, user-submitted network of friends. The site consists of personal profiles with photos, music, videos, and blogs, attracting a billion page views every day. The company consists of over 106 million accounts and gains over 230,000 new registrations a day. MySpace is currently the fifth most popular English speaking website in the world, while 82% of online visits to social networking websites are made to MySpace. Key Change: The redistribution of labour with the move to the city saw a new emerging middle class with the bourgeois controlling the factories and their profit. The old hierarchy and values of the feudal system are replaced by money which operates as the universal source and bearer of all value. The emerging economic system of a world where money is the centre of social organisation is Capitalism. Capitalism creates desire in a fundamentally unpredictable way in a society where fortunes are made and lost. Through the use of marketing and advertising, Capitalism is able to unleash desire and channel it towards our fixation with money itself in a society structured around the capacity to earn. Philosophical Concepts To Be Explored • MySpace as a rhizome • Pre-personal desires • The processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization • The major and minor movements • Identity. Sources: The Key source for my investigation will be Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. In addition to this, I will refer to Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
TERRITORY: Banksy is an infamous stencil graffiti artist, using the urban scenery for his canvas, painting on everything from walls, over the top of other art and even animals. Banksy’s work, from the walls of London Zoo to the Segregation Wall of Palestine, evokes strong reactions in the minds of those who look upon it. This is arguably one of his many aims, evoking reaction and controversy, awakening the often numb souls of the urban jungle. The city streets of the world can be transformed, his work acting as a catalyst within the minds of creativity; attempting to corrupt the already corrupted world of corporation, government, advertising and capitalism. Deleuze and Guattari, the War Machine. In this study, I will evoke what the a war machine essentially is, and what it actually encompasses with a close reading of A Thousand Plateaus, which I will use as my primary reading source. I will consider Banksy as a war machine, and throughout the study will relate the characteristics of the war machine to Banksy’s thought and art. In developing this I will explore what I believe the war machine has created, and whether these movements are useful, or perhaps more appropriately whether they are beneficial, to modern society. Furthermore, I will also argue as to whether one, or whether the war machine, can maintain a level of creativity within our society, which as it evolves appears to be suffocating the creative flows with the engulfing arms of capitalism, systems of government, and society itself. One question that I believe is crucial to ask is can a war machine truly exist? Are all attempts at creativity inevitably condemned to fail and become part of the system that they originally rejected? It is these, amongst other questions that will form the structure of Weapons of Mass Creation.
To explore noise and its theoretical underpinnings. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, I wish to argue that noise appears as a perpetual deterritorialization of music. Over the course of the twentieth century there arose an increased difficulty to distinguish music from its counterparts of silence and noise. It was not until Luigi Russolo’s 1913 essay The Art of Noises that noise was encouraged to be used in musical composition, consequently liberating musicians from the antiquity of harmony and rhythm which dominated musical discourse for centuries. Noise today can be found permeating numerous musical acts. However, my intention was to examine those artists whom present noise with no melodic retrieval, who remain with noise as noise. My main referral was the work and philosophies of Masami Akita (Merzbow) a quintessential figure within noise music. Attali suggested that music, the codification of noise and silence “prefigures new social relations.” Likewise, I wanted to examine noise as a possible marker of temporal and cultural difference. Territories and Change: Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, I argued that noise is a perpetual deterritorialization of music. Capitalism brings with it both restrictions but also the possibility to escape such restrictions. Just as the human is encouraged to live creatively within capitalism, noise artists likewise attempt to exist creatively within music, challenging conceptions of how music is to be defined and created. That is, noise artists such as Merzbow trace lines of flight in an attempt to resist stratification. In this sense I also examined noise as an example of a smooth space and a rhizome. Noise however cannot escape musical strata entirely; rather it remains within music, forever on its periphery challenging what it is we define as music. It thus seems that the ethos or idiom of noise is dependent upon musical strata. Noise therefore must remain within music as extra-idiomatic, that is, a sense from within music that it is uncontainable. In examining noise as a perpetual deterritorialization of music, I was examining a change in musical conceptions as they have been hitherto and as they may come in the wake of the possibilities opened up by noise.
The initial reception of D&G’s C&S was coloured by the twin presences of its authors and the situational context of the ’68 riots. Until Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy in ’74 the political interpretation seemed to close around an orthodox reading of Deleuze and Guattari rather than a reading of C&S. LE puts into play the structuring processes of desire on the political economy at micro-economic level. Stand must be taken: to side with which aspects of C&S? * Marxist interpretation of a capital (hard left) * Psychoanalytic relation of schitzo/capital (soft left) * Micro-economies of desire (libertarian) * Pro-capital destruction of despot (neo-cons). Current battle plays itself out across intellectual topographies (journal, academic publishing) and also Capital rips up every stable political settlement, but where does it head next… CCRU track capital-war-machine path of flight: 1. 1500. Leviathan. Command core: Northern Mediterranean . Target area: Americas. Mode: Mercantile. Epidemic opportunism, selective intervention, colonial settlement. 2. 1756. Capital. Command core: Britain . Target areas: Americas-South Asia. Mode: Thermo-industrial. Imperialism control. 3. 1884. Spectacle. Command core: USA-Germany . Target areas: Africa-Russia-Nodal:periphery. Mode: Electrocorporate. Cultural overcoding / selective extermination. 4. 1948. Videodrome. Command core: USA / Target areas: Expanded:nodal:periphery. Mode: Info Satellitic-supercorporate. Cultural programming / general extermination. 5. 1980. Cyberspace, Command core: USA-Japan-Germany / Target areas: Totalized extra metropolitan space. Mode: AI-hyper corporate. Gross-neurocontrol / intermittent media-format exemplary extermination, virtual biocide. 6. 1996. Babylon. USA-EU:2-China (metalocal command centres) / Totalized planetary space. Photonic-Net Hypercapital Neo-Organic. Neuroprogramming / AI:Capital:Media:Military fusion, constant entertainment extermination process.
Introduction. The Rhizome and the arborescent model. The powerful tree trunk, here representing a hierarchy of opinion against the horizontal, discontinuous and free flight of the rhizome. The trunk is filiation. The rhizome on the other hand represents multiplicities. It has no beginning or end, just a middle (a milieu). It is a subterranean shoot, it spreads horizontally, and at certain junctures plateaus arise. A rhizome is about connectivity. It does not run opposed to the arborescent (or state) but it is a line of escape/flight, a different way. No one language in a rhizome, multiplicity. Arborescent might seek a universal language. Nomad thought verses state space. The overall aim is to investigate the music press and the changes that have occurred due to advances in communication and technology and to look at the potential future of the music press plus industry and the implication for the consumer, artist and the record labels. Plateaus. What are the new plateaus that have arisen due to advances in technology and communication? New web sites, the advent of file sharing. The consumer ideally jumps from one to another (metacritic.com) and makes informed decisions on what to listen to or buy. The eventuality of the rhizome might be becoming ‘a self facilitating media node,’ (Nathan Barley, Channel 4). What about those who can’t reach these plateaus? Is the arborescent structure still in existence? The event. ‘The best of all worlds is not the one that reproduces the eternal, but the one in which new creations are produced, the one endowed with a capacity for innovation or creativity: a teleological conversion of philosophy,’ (p79, The Fold, Deleuze). Deleuze’s theory of the event and the growing sense that music is becoming more about the event. The live sphere is the only one that doesn’t represent an absence. Can the press ever influence us more than the first hand experience? Examples, Polyphonic Spree, Arctic Monkeys. War Machines. The war machine is a kind of movement which is separate to the state, and it causes concern to, or somehow disturbs the sedentary cultures within the state. For the purpose of this discussion the arborescent root within the music industry could be equated with the state. Independent labels and bands as war machines. They try to mix the state apparatus up. Runs away from as well as struggle against the state. Eventually become recoded by capital, example Creation records. Reterritorialization and deterritorialization, capitalism and the attempt by the state to limit desires. Do the new plateaus mean a creation of desires. Hell is For Heroes and Captains of industry case studies Interview with an independent label and band. The band have been signed to a major, and independent, and a have released an album on their own label. Captains of Industry is run as a collective, skills which can be used are used. There is no management structure and yet they have been relatively successful. How much can a small label and a rock band do? The culmination of war machines to strangle the arborescent root. Bands that have been directly affected by the changes in technology- Arctic Monkeys, Wilco etc. Are there pitfalls to file sharing? Conclusion. Is the music mainstream music press losing its influence? How much did it have in the first place? Is there a cycle going on- the arborescent, the struggle to topple it then the creation of another? If we are bored of trees, why do we keep planting them?