I’ve always had a somewhat strained relationship with psychoanalysis and Freud, as you might expect, given that I’m generally a fairly rational human being. I mean, really, psychoanalysis doesn’t really present a very good (or accurate) picture of how mental experience or culture functions, and frankly--and perhaps this comes from Deleuze and Guatteri--it seems like the analyical tradition is as inscriptive as it is descriptive. Which is ok, if that’s your thing, but it’s not mine. The problem with this is that there are a lot of thinkers who’ve been influenced by the psychoanalytic tradition that, I think on the whole, have something interesting to say. Deleuze and Guatteri for instance, but also folk like Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida: you know all the angsty continental intellectuals of the last 30 years. All this despite the psychonalysis, I’d be inclined to say.

I’m also reminded of a conversation I had with a professsor in which I made a typical complaint about psychoanalytically-derived theories as being “a lousy explanation for mental experience,” and “not based in any sort of meaningful understanding of reality.” In response she said something like “it’s interesting that people don’t go after Marx for that,” which is to say, we accept a lot of Marxist ideas on faith in ways that we won’t for psychonalysis. Now for the record I’m totally ok with that, but I think in the larger sense she’s right, we tend to dismiss a lot of Freudian based thought wholesale without really engaging with it. That’s what this week’s essay is about. Sort of.

As I return to Anti-Oedipus, I’m struck by how much I absolutely hated the second chapter, which is all about the function (or non-function) of Oedipus in the world as a result of psychoanalytic theory. While I admit that I’m only beginning on the third chapter, I am realizing how important it is that this book “deal with” Oedipus. I think in my reading of this, I was drawn to passages that allowed me to connect with Deleuze and Guatteri’s psychodynamics, and also learn anti-oedipalism. Also, as a side note about this part of the text: it’s pretty clever writing, there are parts that were honest-to-g-d funny enough to laugh out loud. That’s why I love this book. Anyway, here’s what I found:

“For the unconscious itself is no more structural than personal, it does not symbolize any more than it imagines or represents; it engineers, it is mechanic. Neither imaginary nor symbolic, it is the Real in itself, the ‘impossible real’ and its production” (53).

I rather like the way that this sums up their idea of psychodynamics, and at least for my purposes it allows Deleuze and Guatteri to both engage psychoanalytical theories without accepting the suppressions, while still working in “some sort of meaningful understanding of reality.” Furthermore, I think way of thinking about psychoanalytic theory makes it possible to both engage the tradition in a productive way without subscribing to its more unhelpful/insidious aspects. This is very much in line with the sort of thinking/approach that I looked at last week.

In the spirt of rethinking the tradition they say, “We are so molded by Oedipus that we find it hard to imagine another use” (76), given the inscriptive nature of psychoanalysis and Oedipus, reforming is incredibly hard to think beyond it. This is clearly where a lot of people fall down (I’d point to Kristeva, if I had more experience with her), but I think this is part of the reason that new ideas are so incredibly hard to come by. I mean if you take a step back and look at Deleuze and Guatteri, (and perhaps this is a product of how I’m thinking about them, but) it’s easy to see their project as being incredibly Hegelian: this isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, but a useful example.

Back to Oedipus for a moment:

“Oedipus is completely useless, except for tying off the unconscious on both sides. We shall see in what sense Oedipus is strictly ‘undecidable’ (ind√©cidable), as the mathematicians would put. We are extremely tired of those stories where one is said to be in good health because of Oedipus, sick from Oedipus, and suffering from various illnesses under the influence of Oedipus” (81).

This critique isn’t difficult to swallow, and I completely endorse this point. But I didn’t need to read eighty pages to get to this conclusion, thankfully they propose a solution:

“It is not the purpose of schizoanalysis to resolve Oedipus, it does not intend to resolve it better than Oedipal psychoanalysis. Its aim is to de-oedipalize the unconscious in order to reach the real problems. Schizoanalysis proposes to reach those regions of the orphan unconscious--indeed ‘beyond all law’-- where the problem of oedipus can no longer even be raised” (81-2).

This passage comes from a chapter of the book (#2) that is the foundation of their criticism of Oedipus, the discussion of schizoanalysis, based upon my reading of the table of contents comes later. But I think this early summary is helpful in saying “there’s a way out, just hang on for it,” and “arguing against oedipus isn’t the answer.” And I hope there is.

Though this is a sticky section of the book, I do want to reiterate that this is still a rather entertaining text: as I was searching for these parts I found myself chuckling at some passages, and others that I had annotated with “ha!"’s and smiley faces. Maybe I’m weird, but that’s part of the reason I liked this book so much.

Stay tuned, and I hope you have a good weekend.

Best, tycho

I’ll be posting an essay on Deleuze in a few moments, so sit tight. I think you’ll enjoy. I have a few things to report.

I prepped to write another Deleuze essay. I did some checking and if I proceed at my current pace, I should be done with chapter 2 by the end of the summer. There’ll be a hiatus of sorts, and if I’m still interested we’ll use the break to explore something non-Deleuze.

In other, Station Keeping news, “I’ve” started a twitter microblog, for station keeping. I’ll post SK updates and also little notes from the characters. It will appear in the sidebar, with the tag “Twitter / Station Keeping” For your entertainment pleasure.

Check it out here!

--ty

ps. I’d like to thank dave of soliloqueer for the incoming link. Dave, you’re a gentleman and a scholar.

I meant to add some bumpers to Tuesday’s *Station Keeping* installment, but I seem to have failed with that project. Here are the bumpers that I’m adding, for your enjoyment.

I’ve been killer busy, and I think I’ve probably driven a good bit more than 1000 miles in less than a week. It’ll probably be more than 1500 in a bit more than a week. Crazyness. On the upside, I’ve managed to get unstuck enough to really concentrate and get things done, writing wise. This is very good, as I tend to value my sanity. But anyway…

Before the story.

Welcome to Station Keeping this is the second installment in our first “season” of this project. It’s fiction, collaboratively written and planned: set in the distant future, station keeping tells the story of the residents and visitors to a space station called “Hanm Centre” far away from the populated core worlds. As you will read, this episode introduces a number of important characters in this story, on the eve of their arrival on the station. I hope you enjoy, and if you are interested in contributing to this project we are interested in hearing from you. Your feedback is always welcome and is most appreciated.

And after the story.

“First Arrival” was written by, `tycho <http://tychoish.com/tycho>`_, the creator of `TealArt <http://tychoish.com>`_ and `Station Keeping <http://tychoish.com/hanm>`_. He is a student and knitter by day and a science fiction writer by night, you can read his work elsewhere on `TealArt <http://tychoish.com>`_ and at `~/tychoish <http://tychoish.com>`_.

I think I need a better bio tag.

--ty

I wrote last week about how science fiction was sort of a synthetic element in the way I think about my own work and what TealArt means to me. I’m interested in cyberculture, I’m interested in cultural theory, I’m interested in story telling, and I’m interested in individuals. I’m also a computer geek, so sometimes I go off and talk about command lines, but it all makes sense.

Science fiction is interesting because it is both seen as escapist¹, and is at the same time a very intellectual or thoughtful approach to telling stories. Indeed SF stories do tend to be about ideas on some level, so it’s paradoxical that a good deal of SF isn’t considered literary, or critiqued for being both too “thinking” and not “thinking enough."²

During my time away from SF, I had a problem finding a place for my interest in cultural (and literary) theory in the larger field of “tycho-ness.” How do I responsibly think about my interests with a proper cultural level of analysis and also not allowing this to “get in the way.” Both sides of this conflict have been hard: I haven’t exactly been in a field that has taking a cultural approach to theorizing, and the integration aspect is hard.

It should have been obvious, given my interest in Samuel Delany’s work. Delany’s first reputation was as a science fiction writer, his second as an autobiographer, and his third as a critical/cultural theorist. Now that I have a modicum of extra time on my hands, I’ve started reading some of his fiction, and I have to say that I’m quite pleased, and it’s started to make sense.

While I think to define SF as simply one thing or another is probably more detrimental than anything, it strikes me that there’s an obvious connection between “theory” and SF, and this is a connection that I’m really interested in continuing to explore.

There are a number of good examples where theorists and science fiction writers tend to overlap, Delany is an obvious starting point, but there are others: I saw an Intro to Anthropology course that taught an Ursula K. LeGuin novel, and this strikes me as completely appropriate (I think that said class also used Vonegut, which I think is also an appropriate induction into both anthropology and science fiction.) While we’re on the anthro connection I’d also point out “The Watching People” which appeared on EscapePod a few weeks ago. If you’re not familiar with escape-pod you should be.

Before, I leave you this time, I wanted to talk a little bit more about what I mean when I say “theory.” While others may dispute this (and feel free), I tend to refer to some sort of non-professional/cononical or applied philosophy. Not that I have something against philosophy, I think philosophers can do some really interesting work but ultimately have different goals and approaches to approaching a text, but their issues aren’t mine. It is in this sense of reimgaining the world and thinking about the implications of various “theories” (in a general sense) that SF can really connect to.

Just some thoughts? Do you have any?

Welcome to Station Keeping this is the second installment in our first “season” of this project. It’s fiction, collaboratively written and planned: set in the distant future, station keeping tells the story of the residents and visitors to a space station called “Hanm Centre” far away from the populated core worlds. As you will read, this episode introduces a number of important characters in this story, on the eve of their arrival on the station. I hope you enjoy, and if you are interested in contributing to this project we are interested in hearing from you. Your feedback is always welcome and is most appreciated.

Office Space

“Damnit!” Taila exclaimed throwing her notes on the desk. She had sent a message to Joshua Sian on Hanm Centre, without attaching the crew rotation that she had promised. Normally such an error wouldn’t have caused much of a problem, but the time delay between her ship and the station for messages was still too long for comfort. She had to wait for the response before she could go off duty, so Talia’s shift just got a little bit longer: “it’s not like there’s anything worth doing, cooped up on the ship like this anyway,” she reasoned, closing her eyes and leaning back in the chair.

The doors opened to the skipper’s office with out warning and Talia sat up with a start.

“Skippers' office, eh?” Eli Banner said, attempting to appear as if he was expecting to find Talia in his office.

“Sorry, sir,” Talia gathered her things slowly, but when the skipper sat down in one of the other chairs, she relaxed and stayed in the chair. “I was just coordinating our arrival with Joshua Sian on the station, and wanted some quiet to write the messages--because we’re still text-only. Besides, the comptuer and crew don’t need me to watch over them while they slow down… so slowly” she reported, still somewhat uncomfortable sitting on this side of the desk.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it, it’s just a room,” Eli said. Had there been actual business for the day, he might have been more interested in reclaiming his office, but it was just as well: the entire crew was enguaged of tedious game of appearing busy while trying to hide the fact that they were all bored out of their minds. “What did Sian have to say for himself? Keeping the station in one piece I trust?”

“It’s not fin--” Talia began, but of course the commander knew that already. “More or less, I suppose: I have to resend some data to the station before I can go off duty, but I think we’ve made all the necessary arrangements for docking,” she said, offering a printout report of the docking plan.

“The other ships aren’t going to be happy about having to wait so long to disembark.” He commented and handed the paper back.

“It happens, they’ll deal.”

Eli chuckled, “We’ll make a station governor of you yet.” Talia didn’t quite manage to stifle a glare. Eli continued “relax, get some sleep: I don’t have anything scheduled for this shift so I can I’ll send the message.”

“It’s alright, really, my mistake.” Talia paused, but before Eli could agree “I can’t decide what’s worse, the thought of staying on this ship for another instant, or the thought of spending the next several years of my life on a station in orbit of Hanm.”

“Easy; this ship is worse than the station. Now give me that paper, before I put a mark on your record for sitting in my chair,” he joked. They stood and he grew serious for a moment “It all different, it always is, but you’ll do fine.” He punctuated his sentence with a smile, as he took her stack of files.

“You’re probably right. Good shift, sir,” she said, before turning to leave the office. “Lets avoid doing that again, shall we?” she thought after the door shut.

Docking

David Conrad and Marc Perrin stepped off the shuttle they owned onto the docking ramp to find the entire cavernous bay devoid of people. They stood on the other side of their air lock in silence, waiting for something to happen.

Marc rubbed his eyes, which had begun to tear from exhaustian: “Aren’t we supposed to have a landing party, here? or something?” Marc whispered, leaning slightly toward David.

“I guess not, we’re just normal folk now, I guess.”

“Speak for yourself, I actually have a job here,” Marc said, pinching his shirt where the rank pin would have been, had he been wearing a uniform. Actually, given that he was in civvies he almost hoped that there wouldn’t be a welcoming party.

David chuckled. A uniformed figure trotting briskly across on the far side of the docking bay caught his attention, and he waved. “I guess that’s your welcoming party,” he commented as they began to walk down the ramp.

“Sirs, sorry. We’re still a bit short staffed: the real crew doesn’t get here till the begining of the week after next.” Joshua was still a bit out of breath from his heroic run down from the command center. “I’m Joshua Sian, Lieutenant. I’ve been keeping the lights on, and organizing the last construction details before the crew gets here. Is there anything I can do to help you move in? A tour?”

“It’s David,” David responded looking distracted by the wall behind Sian.

“Sir?” Sian asked, looking quickly over his shoulder.

“It’s just David these days, none of this sir stuff.”

“Oh, right, sir--Daivd.” Sian corrected himself, and suppressed a squirm. There was silence.

“We have some crates that should probably be unloaded before we move the shuttle out of this bay, if you could arrange for that it would be great.” Marc said, taking charge of the conversation. “The deceleration was a bit longer than we expected and I for one am a bit too tired for a tour right now. Can we schedule one for tomorrow?”

“Sure, that would be great.” Sian turned his attention away from David who seemed far more interested in gazing around the bay, “Are the crates marked?”

“Should be.” Marc confirmed, before swallowing a yawn.

“I’ll get someone down here to take care of that right away.” Sian made a note on a micro-tablet that he seemed to produce from thin air. “Can I show you to your quarters now?” He offered.

“That would be great,” Marc said. When Sian turned around, Marc glared at David and mouthed silently “Way to be the strange kid, fix it would you.”

David looked quizzically at Marc, and then getting a clue stepped up next to Joshua; “What’s the construction schedule looking like at this point?” he asked.

“We’re doing pretty good, but nothing is really fast enough.” Sian was caught off guard, but he quickly relaxed as they began to talk about station operations and construction.

Marc smiled, and yawned again, as he watched the two men talk, but he had no interest in keeping up with the discussion. He could hardly think about anything except the amount of time between the present and the soonest opportunity to sleep.

“First Arrival” was written by, `tycho <http://tychoish.com/tycho>`_, the creator of `TealArt <http://tychoish.com>`_ and `Station Keeping <http://tychoish.com/hanm>`_. He is a student and knitter by day and a science fiction writer by night, you can read his work elsewhere on `TealArt <http://tychoish.com>`_ and at `~/tychoish <http://tychoish.com>`_.

I was once again out of town this weekend. Chances are, that as you’re reading this, I’m still driving back from southern Minnesota thanks to the wonders of modern technology. Aren’t you envious?

This last week has been tough, by all accounts tougher than it should have been, but I had some accomplishments of note. I finished a sweater that I’ve been working on for some time, and was asked to teach a class at a local knitting store. That was pretty nifty. I did some serious job-searching, with mixed results so far. I also made some incremental progress on big projects (academic-y ones,) which was very needed, but not particularly satisfying.

I haven’t done much writing this week. Never fear, there’s still going to be TealArt entries, but I’ve been discouraged. Readership isn’t picking up, we’re not getting feedback and everything feels a little hopeless at the moment. While I know that the “trailer” station keeping episode wasn’t the most gripping piece of writing and that if it’s going to take off, we’ll probably need a few “real” episodes under our belts, I have a nagging voice that says “if it’s not good, it’s probably because no one likes it.” I don’t think this is the case, in part because I’m not keeping track of stats on the “station keeping site (and don’t know of a good way to do so),” and also--perhaps on a down note--I don’t think there are enough people reading it to say, fairly “nobody likes it.” Nevertheless, something has to give, sooner or later something will break--I/we’ll learn something, someone will “discover us,” or I’ll discover an unsaturated promotional market… It could happen.

Having said that, there’ll be new Station Keeping tomorrow, this one introduces a couple of key characters, and gasp has dialogue. I think you’ll enjoy. Also, this week’s Deleuze entry is great, they’re a great deal of fun to write, and I feel, more than the other things that I’ve written about here recently, they really “fit.” So maybe I’ll start writing emails to other deleuze bloggers and see what they say; and hopefully my semi-undefensable anti-lacanian stance won’t get in the way too much.

I’d love to hear from you all…

best, tycho

This is the second installment in my ongoing series on Anti-Oedipus by Giles Delueze and Felix Guattari. For more information read the Introduction _and my__ first installment regarding a part Foucault’s preface to the book.

I didn’t want to spend too much time going over “old territory” (for me) in Anti Oedipus, but I think a little bit more of background would be helpful as we produce. I’ve tried to pull out the parts of the first chapter that really stuck with me, now, almost a year after I read them for the first time. This post introduces Deleuze and Guatteri’s ideas about desiring production, recording machines, and breakages. These, at least to me, are the fundamental ideas from chapter one¹, and some of the most useful ideas that I carried with me as I went on to read further in the book.

First off, desire and production. This stuff is the foundation of their Marx/Freud synthesis, and I think rather than unproblematically append parts of Freud to Marx (or vice versa), they treat psychoanalysis with the kind of skepticism that it deserves, and are able to establish a very workable “common language.” Here’s what they say:

Hence everything is production: production of productions, of actions and of passions; productions of recording processes, of distributions and of coordinates that serve as points of reference; productions of consumptions of sensual pleasures, of anxieties and of pain (pg. 4).

Thinking of everything as production, including anxieties and other “subject” experience, creates a sort of common language to talk about subjectivity, without needing to draw on subject formation vis a vis the mirror stage, unconsciousness, and so forth. Identities are produced, memories are produced, bodies are produced, just as this computer, this website, and the corn flakes you had for breakfast were produced. The computer, corn-flakes and website, are clearly productions, but more often than not we ignore the processes of production of memories, identities, and bodies. This gives us reason to look at the very smallest of effects and mechanisms and think about how their production, rather than to be simply satisfiied with the “truth” of their experience. Cool.

As a psychology type, the stuff about recording, is quite interesting. I was processing this chapter for the first time right as I was writing a paper on episodic memory (specifically autobiographical memory), so I was thinking a lot about this. Immediately following the above quote they say:

Everything is production, since the recording processes are immediately consumed, immediately consummated and these consumptions directly reproduced. This is the first meaning of process as we use the terms: incorporating recording and consumption within production itself, thus making them productions of one and the same process (pg. 4).

Recording processes--communication, writing, memories, and histories--are produced just like the corn-flakes, just like our identities, and can and should be explored on this level. For the record, I feel like this is an old argument that has permeated pretty well, I suspect many feel pretty comfortable with this kind of idea. This, though, lays the groundwork for another statement a few pages later:

Production is not recorded in the same way it is produced, however. Or rather, it is not reproduced within the apparent objective movement in the same way in which it is produced within the process of constitution (pg. 12).

We see variations on this in “Reader Response Theory” and also Biographical/Contextual readings of literature, that look at the contextual forces that affect the production and the consumption of a text. We could, of course, replace “text” with “memory without any real conceptual problem, in fact it seems more like Deleuze and Guatteri mean memory in their writing, when all the literary theorists are talking about texts, because that’s what they do. Again, this, I think makes it possible to analize and address both the process and the content of memory, of recording on two very important levels: of its production on the micro level, and of its content on the macro level.

Ok, moving on to the final part of this already too long post on “breakages”. At some point, Deleuze and Guatteri begin to describe production as the combination of desire, and a machine like process, I think I’ve gotten into that. I think somewhere I probably scribbled in my notes “everything is production > desire > machines.” But here is a quote that I think descirbes how the machines² “work:”

Desiring-machines work only when they break down, and by continually breaking down. […] (pg 8).

I take this as an epistemological point, more than anything, but I like how as a guiding principal this pushes us to not look toward normative data, but toward the abnormal cases, the exceptions. These “breakages” are interesting not only as special events, but also insofar as they help us describe the normative functions of the system. This is why Deleuze and Guatteri are so interested in the conceptual space of the schizophrenic, for instance. But I think the directive to look at breakages is a useful one³.

And finally I’d like to leave you with the following quote which I found helpful and inspiring. The one thing that I have to say about this book is that it is--as these things go--incredibly enjoyable. It’s light hearted, it’s inspiring, and it’s filled with a sense of hope. And if nothing else that’s worth something…

The productive synthesis, the production of production is inherently connective in nature: “and…” “and then…“This is because there is always a flow-producing machine, and another machine connected to it that interrupts or draws off part of this flow […] (pg. 5).

I’ll see you all next week. I’d love to hear what you have to say. Don’t be shy, I haven’t a real clue about most of this stuff either, and I’d love to talk. So comment!

cheers, tycho

A good deal of the “end” parts of my recent educational experience were synthetic projects. That is to say that to prepare for the “real” world, I was encouraged to “look back”¹ in an attempt to find some sort of salvageable greater whole. Conveniently, I rather like this approach to thinking, writing, and production.

Maybe it’s because I’m something of a second rate thinker, or maybe it’s because I’m still incredibly green, but it strikes me that coming up with successful ideas/projects/outcomes that are compleatly new is much more difficult, even impossible, whereas making--to borrow a contemporary term--mashups is much easier, and ultimately more useful: standing on the shoulders of giants, and all. So all this to say, that I rather like this mode of thought, and have enjoyed trying to come up with an account of all my varied interests--I know they’re all connected in some greater way and the connections seem obvious to me, but perhaps not for you.

This is of course a problem here at TealArt: there’s a connection between how I approach knitting and how I think about Deleuze and technology, or hypertext, or productivity. I swear, but I can also understand if you all don’t see it as clearly.

In parallel to all this thought about synthesis, I’ve rediscovered an interest in science fiction. I was always a geek growing up and I loved all sorts of completely embarrassing science fiction, and as longtime readers of the site will remember I even wrote a long crappy science fiction novel when I was in high school. These things happen to the best of us.

I somehow got off the SF bandwagon at college. The SF club at school wasn’t my scene (with the exception of a half dozen folks), and there were other things on my creative imagination. I did take a class my second semester where we read Octavia Butler’s Kindred, and I was introduced by that class to Samuel R. Delany (who has been incredibly influential on me for some time.) Which is a completely different kind of SF than the stuff I grew up liking.

And then something clicked and I realized that in a lot of ways sci-fi is the synthetic glue that holds everything together. My interest in how individuals conceive of themselves and exist in social(ly constructed) networks, my interest in technology and hypertext, my interest in cultural theory. In terms of refocusing TealArt, I think the connection between cultural theory (in this case, Deleuze) and science fiction is particularly interesting and relevant, and worth exploring.

While I had hoped to avoid taking on the commitment for another “series” for TealArt, I think at least occasionally, as we move forward towards “the new tealart,” whatever form that takes, I’m going to be musing about this, a little. But because I’ve been “out of the world for a spell,” I’m interested in seeing what you all, kind readers, think about SF these days. What’s the future of the genre? How is it changing? What kind of contemporary SF do you think is particularly successful?

A friend, whose very involved in fandom told me the other day that she didn’t really get into sci-fi. I refused to believe her, and I maintain that there’s something about SF that appeals to an audience beyond the typical “geek” crowd. With luck these musings will help us explore these issues and ideas together.

Cheers, tycho