Until this point in the series, my titles have been somewhat more…
creative, “primitive territorial machine” is simply the title of the
division of the book that I’ve selected this weeks' quotes from. This
larger section is about, I think, the development/emergence of
“oedipus” (and capitalism, too I suppose) but really it’s all about
the development of culture and civilization. That’s my read anyway.
While this isn’t exactly chicklit, or all purpose op/ed writing, I
think there’s something interesting here, and it’s my hope to make
this pretty accessible to everyone. So if something isn’t clear, call
me on it. If you want more resources, ask. If you completely disagree
with my interpretation of a quote, I welcome it. My selections only
reflect what catches my eye, and I claim no impartiality.
I ran across this piece on Lavral
Subjects called
“Schizoanalysis in
Practice,”
and I think it is helpful in situating Anti-Oedipus in the appropriate
intellectual context.
With all that said on to this week’s attempt:
The first quote I have is kind of pithy, but it reiterates a concept
that I talked about
before:
“..it is in order to function that a social machine must not
function well” (151).
The idea that functioning is dependent on not-functioning. It’s a cheep
shot, but I suspect that we can account some of the enduring popularity
of Freudian theory itself to this basic principal. Somewhat more
seriously, on an ethical level, as Foucault instructs us to read this
book, the theme is about enduring contradiction and all that.
As I wrote the above words, I realize how incredibly pomo and 1990s this
all sounds. Which I suppose is the point. While I still believe it, I
think it’s interesting how this sort of sounds dated, or at least
tried.
On to less pithy sections:
“The death of a social machine has never been heralded by a disharmony
or a dysfunction; on the contrary, social machines make a habit of
feeding on the contradictions they give rise to, on the crises they
provoke, on the anxieties they engender, and on the infernal operations
they regenerate. Capitalism has learned this, and has ceased doubting
itself, while even socialists have abandoned the belief in the
possibility of capitalism’s natural death by attrition. No one has
ever died from contradictions. and the more it schizophrenizes, the
better it works, the American way” (151; emphasis added).
I think this passage speaks for itself, so I won’t bother, and I think
this point is well made. I add the emphasis, not because I think it’s a
particularly powerful conclusion, or central to the passage, but simply
to highlight the ways that this book can induce a chuckle here and
there.
Lest you think that AO is all fun and games, and relatively low on
trips through psychoanalyic land, don’t be fooled by excerpts, I’ve
chosen well… So if you get a copy of the book and start following
along with me, don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.
“…And isn’t that also what Oedipus, the fear of incest, is all
about: the fear of a decoded flow… It is the thing, the unnamable,
the generalized decoding of flows that reveals up a contrario the
secret of all these formations, coding the flows, and even overcoding
them, rather than letting anything escape coding” (153).
I talked about this passage a few weeks ago, and after I had prattled on
about “flows” and “decoding” for a few minutes I paused to take a
sip of water, and promptly realized how absurd it all sounded. At the
same time, while I’m convinced, I’m not sure how directly applicable I
can make this out to be, and that was my initial goal of these essays. I
think that it speaks to our propensity to make meaning, to over explain
coincidence, and to construct representational models based on
insufficient data. In away they sort of say that Oedipus is about
needing a good story to explain this disorganized “schizoid” series
of events and situations.
That’s my gloss anyway, what’s yours?
Cheers, tycho