mezomian community?

non-local dialogism and eventality

here's definitely a piece of philosophical delirium on the way: I have started a piece of work on the possible co-thinking of dialogism, evental philosophy, and inspirations from sufism and other mystical thought directions (there's a lo of quasi-platonic stuff written in the 70's by people like Capra and Bohm, that the 'real' physicists hate like hell. But lt's keep our minds open, shall we? I f we are to understand what dialogism is about, we have to take non-local quasi-causality in consideration.

Anyway, this is all in the making, this small piece is merely first step, to be discussed at a meeting in the NSU this weekend.

Becoming difference

What's your difference?

Did you ever become difference?
Did you ever let the difference enter into your life and start working on you, tearing up your "conscience", your "mind", freezing your body apart in a few days, starting to work on the rest with a meticulously slow and steady destruction of all that is there, known, and certain?
Did you ever let it come far to enough to change your life?
Did you?
Or did you just keep on talking about that terrible disease of the West, boredom, smugness, waiting in your room or talking over dinners, standing in line in the supermarket exchanging a few wrods about what could be done?
Did you ever let any thought come as far as exposing it to the rest of the world, letting everybody know how ridiculously naïve you are?
Because, you know - that is the only way to start things. Start talking, start telling - feel the certitude of letting others know what goes on inside your mind.
Oh, btw: do your thoughts ever have anything to offer the world? Or are they just thoughts about how you could get laid a bit more, as Houellebecq teasingly tells us that humanity lived before inventing immortality? (if you read French, you will enjoy the reviewers hatred at Houellebecq's lack of literary qualities - what hatred, impressive..)
Or are they just thoughts about how you could make a little more, which again comes down to securing your progenity or your sex appeal - as Nørretranders would have it?
Did you ever feel, in other words, a true desire to become difference for the world? Changing something that you would feel had a positive impact on the world?
I guess that may involve a certain amount of thinking about the fate of the world, of humanity, but you could start outside your own doorstep - they say that globality numbs us a bit, so if you feel that way, atke it right out to the streets and start there..
Think about the "last act of freedom", as Pinhas says about Deleuze's suicide in Politis (where I also found the hatred for Houellebecq, who likes Deleuze, but ..) - what if suicide was not your last act of freedom, but your first? What kind of a life would that be?
Did you? Will you ever?
Or let me put it like the editors of Edge did in the wake of 2004, when they asked "What's your law?"
Except, I don't believe too much in pure observation, Kant puts it more precisely when he makes law the centre of ethics. So, skip the descriptive, and go straight to the normative, and active:

What's your difference?

(Feel free to comment, if you understand the question - and if you don't feel free to comment anyway)

Tarde, Latour, and community

(Picture taken from this place, which also contains a full translation of Tarde's "Laws of the Social" available for free..)

Had not discovered Gabriel Tarde while working on my Ph.d. from 1998 to 2003. Pity, but meeting his ideas now is combined with the relevance of discovering at this moment that there actually was a sociologist trying to work from some of the same breaking points as myself. In spite of the inevitable distance brought in by the advances of physics and human biologym, as well as some of the developments of social formations, after Tarde, I find myself inspired mainly by the ambition and radicality in his thought. Tarde does not hesitate to take seriously Leibniz' idea of the monad as a possibility to be examined, yet he also, as one would expect, reaches the conclusion that when you take monads into social existence (out of Leibniz' baroque chambers), you have to open them up. The idea of the isolation of the monad is unsustainable, if you want to reach any understanding of societies or communities from it.

"Could we hope to solve them [the problems of the isolated monad] by conceiving open monads that interpenetrate reciprocally instead of being exterior to one another? (...) every one of them, previously seen as a point, becomes an infinitely enlargened sphere of action" (monadologie et sociologie, p. 56-57, my translation)

I have some other problems with Tarde, quite important ones, I think, but he is one of the few moving within social science/philosophy of the social to remove the problem of identity from the centre of the scene. This is important, though I doubt that his insertion of "to have" as the replacement for "to be" is sufficient to solve the problems and enigmas we face today.

But, as Latour says, "let's slowly down". I will leave it to Latour to explain the movement towards avoir, as he is so taken in by it.

No wonder that someone like Bruno Latour, with his ideas of the actor-network-theory (one of the most misleading names of a theory I have seen as yet), would be in favor of a sociology such as the one that Tarde wishes to develop. Latour writes as explanation for his text that he has found in the well-hidden archives af Tarde a forefather to ANT:

"I want to argue in this chapter, through a close reading of his recently republished most daring book, Monadologie et sociologie (M&S), that Tarde introduced into social theory the two main arguments which ANT has tried, somewhat vainly, to champion:
a) the nature and society divide is irrelevant for understanding the world of human interactions ;
b) the micro/macro distinction stifles any attempt at understanding how society is being generated."

Now, I am not sure that Latour is quite right in making these two points the essentials of what Tarde introduced into social sciences. This is mainly relevant if taken from the point of view of what was comme il faut in these sciences at the time. But if you take the second point first, then there is a question that could be asked: why is this the case - what are the reasons that a micro/macro distinction is a problem for explaining social genesis? There could be the answer that social genesis is a question of dynamis, of forces, of events, whereas the micro/macro distinction has always been a structural one. And you cannot explain dynamics by structure (with the risk of sounding like an old hippie..). Take that answer back to the first point and we end up with a similar possibility: that the divide between human and other nature is one constructed in order to discard or at least conceale the genetic link between "the social" and "nature". Or, as it has been put, between first and second nature.

And Latour is caught up by the distinction between être and avoir - if not seduced by the way leading to it, through unfamiliar forms of reductionism and bold attacks at philosophy as we knew it..

"We may now be better equipped to grasp this sentence of Monadologie et sociologie which was going to have so much influence on Deleuze :

‘’To exist is to differ ; difference, in one sense, is the substantial side of things, what they have most in common and what makes them most different. One has to start from this difference and to abstain from trying to explain it, especially by starting with identity, as so many persons wrongly do. Because identity is a minimum and, hence, a type of difference, and a very rare type at that, in the same way as rest is a type of movement and the circle a type of ellipse. To begin with some primordial identity implies at the origin a prodigiously unlikely singularity, or else the obscure mystery of one simple being then dividing for no special reason.’’ p. 73

But what is going to be the bridge allowing one to go from one difference to the next ? Identity is ruled out. What then ? Possession ! In one of the most important sentence of his work, Tarde remarks almost in passing :

‘’So far, all of philosophy has been founded on the verb To be, whose definition seemed to have been the Rosetta’s stone to be discovered. One may say that, if only philosophy had been founded on the verb To have, many sterile discussions, many slowdown of the mind, would have been avoided. From this principle ‘I am’, it is impossible to deduce any other existence than mine, in spite of all the subtleties of the world. But affirm first this postulate : ‘I have’ as the basic fact, and then the had as well as the having are given at the same time as inseparable’’p. 86

Here goes Hamlet, as well as Descartes with his cogito, Heidegger with his Being qua Being, together with thousand of homelies about the superiority of what ‘we are’ above what ‘we have’. Quite the opposite, Tarde instructs us. Nothing is more sterile than identity philosophy —not to mention identity politics— but possession philosophy —and may be possession politics ?— create solidarity and attachments that cannot be matched. ‘’For thousands of years, people have catalogued the many ways of beings, the many kinds of beings, and no one ever had the idea of cataloguing the various kinds, the various degrees of possession. Yet, possession is the universal fact, and there is no better term than that of ‘acquisition’ to express the formation and the growth of any being’’ p. 89. If essence is the way to define an entity within the ‘To be’ philosophy, for the ‘To have’ philosophy an entity is defined by its properties and also by its avidity…"

And this is where I start to disagree, even though it seems like an important move away from identity politics, towards another possibility. At the same time, though, I feel a strong discomfort at explaining the world from possession, when obviously the urge for possession seems to make such a mess of the world, to an extent where the American citizens in space declare that they are stunned by the destruction visible from above that we have made upon the atmosphere.. ok, it would explain a great deal, yet again, this would have to be through the explaining of the distortion of reason and collectivity. Thus, if we really took Tarde seriously on this point, we would have to accept that there is no way out of the problems we face. None except control and power. Could the small control the great? Logically, no, if we follow Tarde again, for then the collectivity of the small will always be more complex than the big. And have less power to act, if more potential to have it. Problems, problems. I think we have to stay for a while on the "have" and its alternative possibilities - or even, on the possibility of seeing the monad in a different light once again. We may have to take the monadology even further away from its starting point, in order to understand better the events taking place "inside" it.

Community is far away from creation still, though Tarde is probably so much closer to a less ideological solution that the economists trying to explain development through invisible hands and rational choice games..

Alliez on D&G

Oh, the countryside called me.. blessed be the flowers, the food (all the food..), and the quiet moments of contemplation. Will be back with more substance later in the day. Will just quote this beautiful phrase from Eric Alliez' book on D&Gs philosophy:

"Placed under the sign of the creation of new coherencies, this movement opens up the sciences to the problem of becoming and to the question of the emergence of the new. Contradicting the Bergsonian diagnosis, it asserts the actuality of a science of the mecomings of matter."

Yes. That's what it's about, except we still remain a bit too much within categories such as "science", "matter" and the like, of course signs that the transformations have not taken place yet - much of this is a calling of messianic times, that still wait to be fulfilled. By own writing has also often done this. But we should not call prophecies, we should do. Try, play, die for it.

For texts by Alliez, go here for a start.

actionable?

"because the world in which I work is one in which nearly everything is actionable" - I open today with the words of "Spurious", defending his right to write freely, without being quoted for academia, whether students or others (but I guess the others would be too proud to admit quoting a blog..).

I started this morning by reading a post by Spurious about being captured by coffee and work, and having to go out, drink, indulge, enjoy company. I know what he means. His tone is light, he is poetic, yet there is definitely a seriousness about what he says. Getting caught is no fun, feeling the energy that you know is there somewhere, escape and elude you, is no dance.

So I will browse on the possiblity of action, the necessity of it, the impossibility of it. If you read the post yesterday about differentiation, you will know what I mean by these words. Otherwise, maybe you will, maybe you will red something totally different into them, than I intended. Probably you will, anyway, that's all part of the beauty of the distance between the writing and the reading.

What is action? Let me try to define it as that which takes place, being en-acted by someone or something, with an intension, in a milieu, with which the action interferes, intervenes, divides and takes part. Bakhtin trid to write a small philosophy of the act - strange guy, Bakhtin, one yet more than one, focusing on dialogue and worldly matters that could not possibly be understood through books alone. Yet this was what he did, he wrote about books, from books - and maybe from mouths and hands untold. This was maybe part of his fate, being where he was at the time that he was. The questions of action were easy then, but the acting of action was far more complicated. Action in the old USSR, CCCP, was preferably not something that took place throught the will of an individual, taking life into his or her own hands. If someone was credited for an action, it would have to be in a symbolic manner, ensuring that the true credit was given to the party, the nation, the diaspora of communists, etc. Certainly not the disapora of artists or dissidents - they did have their own herology, though, but one that lived its own, pseudo-clandestine life, and shared its own, untold, yet well known, mythologies.

Did I drift into the USSR? Why, strange thing to do. No, because I had the words of a Lithuaninan artist in my head while thinking and writing a moment ago (or he spoke to me in my dreams, I don't know, since he sopke to me so long ago, it may have been repeated numerous times). What he said, 13 years ago, was that you must "remember to do nothing", in order to get something done. Obviously, this sounds like s small, everyday, Zen phrase. Do nothing to do something. The words are kind and mild, and so was the man. We met at 9 in the morning, and 15 minutes later, he offered me coffee, then vodka. Yet, he was not drunk, he just drank a bit of vodka. The issue was to let the body accept the waiting of doing nothing. I watched him work, he dressed scupltures in half made clothes, he even dressed the Pan God outside the museum of modern art in Kaunas. And his friends knew ahat he was saying, they knew that he spoke, even in the days when words had to carry a colour which made them almost impossible to hear. Yet, thorugh the imposed silence of never being allowed to utter the prohecy of another world, he and all the other artists and philosophers of those times, had to invent a language which seemed to copy remains of western traditions, in order to seem as harmless as possible, while slipping their messages into the eyes of the people around them. There is another world, they would whisper - not the West, not the East, but another world, one in which we do not know what the meaning of everything is, one in which not everything is determined beforehand, as this determination is the only rule for planning action at all. I hope you live well, Alexis, doing something through nothing.

And in the world in which everything is doubly articulated, in which the lethal lobster grasps us with its careful claws, one for the forming, one for the meaning - or one for the capture in time, one for the capture in sense. In this world of ours, can we act? Is there a space for action that does not know its determination, that is not "actionable" before it even begins to carry itself into the fold of unfolding? I am sure there is, but I am also sure that it does not take place in the spaces that are usually assigned to productive action. Yet, even there, we will find pockets, bodies, slim streching bodies, folding between the members of communities, workteams, gatherings, legions. Bodies becoming, in action that does not know its course, eacpet that difference must be made, must be heard and felt within the corners of the predictable, doubly articulated movements of production.

Think of how mush production fills in your life, today. Or tomorrow. Do you feel the in betweens, that were not supposed to be in betweens, as they are probably the only reason for you to be there in the first place (or the last)? Or do you not let them be herad, felt or seen, last of all seen? Does action act in you, or do you belive to be the master of it? And if it does, is the meaning, sense and time of the action predefined, do you feel that it has a set time and course, that will remove you from responsablitiy? In that case you have got a problem. Actually, the whole world has got a problem, beacuse it means that you are completely enslaved in a fascist regime, that permeates much more of the society we have created, than is accepted on the front pages.

So much for morning words - will return to action, later. Enjoy the day, let it act upon you. Not as in "remember to smell the flowers, listen to the birds, tata". But as in remember to be aware, when a difference lurks upon you, ready to act. You will feel it by its indeterminacy, its complete strangeness. And you should invite it in, embrace it. It will play with you, toy you around, but it will fill you with the beauty of that which does not have a name, because we do not know its name. Remember?

did you (die yesterday)?

But when was the last time you got a truly new feeling. A truly new insight? A truly new sensation? Do you know what I mean? I can't prove it, you know. I even find it hard defining, what the hell I'm talking about. But I think you know what I mean. New, right? Recombinations, different constellations, other cahllenges, other results, another word, becoming other. Can you make that out of life everyday, can you get a new insight every day? Take a loan to cover that one. Can you get one every month, every year? When was the last one, when was the last time??? Did you get wiser last week? Last year? Can you really explain and justify why you didn't?

One concept every day. Starting tomorrow. I will try to x-strecth my mind. Just got to satisfy the research guys, the tax gals, the food animals, the house people, and whoever else has exigations on the lighter side of life. But are they actually thinking? Are we?

No more shit. Tomorrow. Oh, and check out Spurious, really, he's fun. Philo-geek fun, hehe.

philoshop/workosophy

..off in a few minutes to help a guy called Sune. He just got his philosophy degree, and is slready out there trying to make his way in the strange world of consultancy. Mark it, making that as a philosopher is not the easiest thing to do, though trends are going his way. Anyway, he called and asked for a hour of sparring on how to do philosophical workshops in organisations. Cool subject, nice work, LOTS of work to do out there.

So in the next hour or so, Sune and I will be going creative. And if anyone has ideas for Sune, let me know, or if anyone is in the need of a philosophical workshop, let us know. Oh, if you don't have any idea what a philosophical workshop could be, make it heard as well. I'd love to try and define that..

midsummer morphosis

Midsummer is over us. We spend beautiful evenings in the green spaces, talking, laughing, melting into this particular, warm-breezy Nordic rarity of a summer's eve (sun sets at this time of year around 10 PM). And we don't think too much about it, but we are in the middle of a morphosis..

A morphosis is a forming process. A morphosis is the process, stretched out between virtuality, suspension, and becoming. In other words: this is not about individual memories or motives. This is something, which excedes the limits of the lonely mind, it happens into, between, and through the minds of the individuals.  In fact, a morphosis can be an individuation process, but what is being individuated, are vibrating segments of thought, which continue their lives after we part. Nobody may even notice them while we are there, chitchatting innocently, yet they go on, they can even be in sync - ever thought about the physics experiments, that indicated a synchronicity between particles at a high distance? Why should this not count for thoughts?

So, try to feel them, next time you take part in a cozy discussion around the summer table. Their lives may be very short, they may be absolutely unstable, or they may form, throught a highly complex process of cultural or cosial morphosis, into what Bakhtin called chronotopes, steadying into tiems we believe to recognize, because we think they "make sense" to us. Right. They do make sense. Into us. And when we meet them again, more or less developed or changed, expanded or compressed, we recognize them. On a winter's day in St. Petersburg, or on a summer's night 10 years later in Copenhagen. Thoughts are alive, get used to it. Go out there and feel them.

Beating individuals

Individualism is passé. Individuals are yesterdays news. Think about it. Ok, so maybe Jeremy Rifkin is right in accepting that capitalism does a lot for entrepreneurship and innovation. But wait a minute.. these are categories defined by, for, and at the high peak of capitalist crisis (understood as a splitting moment)? No wonder.. What else does competition and individualism do that's good for us?

My claim would be quite different: the american dream, with all of its european subdreams and slightly different, but converging visions, creates lonely, desperate individuals that are bored half to death, only kept alive by the entertainment provided by the other half left alive.

How much do we really know about what we are able to do as more-than-one? when was the last time you read a seriously researched study of interactive processes of mental creation? Not a report about the results of the process. Not an article claiming to know something about the nature of creation, but without actually including the virtuality of creation itself. But a study of the processes, telling you what happened, what was the substance of an event of creation, the body of interactions of thought movements..?? have you ever seen anyone actually studying and telling about the processes of multiplicities?

If you come across any, please give me a beep. If not, I would highly appreciate any help that may be offered in beginning this effort. Beat the individual. Let the beats be the beat, forget the "drummer-hero".

philosophical capacities

What is the most important capcaity of a philosopher? This is a question which we might encounter also as "What are you bringing to the party?" The answer is deadly: the most recurrent ability of the philosophical thought is to be creative, in a self-destructive manner.

The process consists of four steps: 1. doubt anything you and anyone else might have thought. 2. construct a new thought, which still builds on everything said before. 3. Laugh at that paradox, consider philosophy impossible. 4. Stat all over again, knowing this to be impossible as well.

Conclusion: as a philosopher, you must love impossibility, absurdities, and aporias. Which may make you perfectly suited for the post-post-modern world. But it also makes you perfectly suited for suicide. And makes CV writing a little difficult.

Will work on that problem. Any help welcomed.