Thursday, October 28, 2010

Market Acceleration; Anti-Oedipus, Part 8

Purchasing power at the speed of schizophrenia

Chapter three of Anti-Oedipus is difficult to say the least; not simply because D&G are at first conceptually difficult to understand (like most philosophy), but because they play it loose with their terminology. That don't take great pains in describing exactly what a decoded flow is nor do they take pains in describing exactly what deterritorialization is even though one can infer what they're talking about. They will use these words in many different contexts making it difficult to stabilize the word for the reader, which of course is always the point when reading someone like D&G. On top of this, they throw the word axiomatic at the reader in distinction from decoded flows and deterritorialization in regards to describing the way capitalism functions. If the reader doesn't pay super close attention to the contexts in which these concepts are being used, they will easily get lost. This post will have it's theme, and that is the further schizophrenization of capitalism insisted by D&G, but much of this post will be an attempt at gaining clarity on these aforesaid concepts. They are crucial to understand because they form the crux of the book, but once the reader understands how they're using the concepts, they will witness small conceptual shifts which make them go back to the original usage. In the end, the concepts will have different senses, and different senses that will be understood only by laborious close readings. It would have helped if D&G were more clear by giving specific examples. As the readers of this text, we will have to be more clear about what they are referring to in different contexts with these concepts. It's important to understand because once the reader gains clarity on the conceptual foundation of Anti-Oedipus, it is very profound. You just gotta work at it. Chapter three in Anti-Oedipus traces primitive formation to barbaric formations to capitalistic formation. It's an ethnological trace that finds desire in each field of social-formation, and it's completion in capitalism. Each state-of-being has it's own mode of statehood whereby a primitive formation is coded, the barbaric formation is despotically overcoded in order to fulfill the nexus between familial alliances and the despot, and capitalism that's defined specifically by D&G as "the conjunction of all decoded and deterritorialized flows." This post will focus specifically on how they see capitalism as not have a territory and not having a code, and this is easy to understand by simply understanding a competitive market economy that creates needs at will that owe no allegiance to anything other than it's own process, it's own production. The profound analysis by D&G will come in what D&G see as after-capitalism, which we will see is the turning of capitalism from it's current nature of relative schizophrenia, to a nature that is absolute schizophrenia. Along the way we hope to gain clarity on their conceptual lexicon aforementioned.

Lets start off with an attempt at getting a closer understanding of three concepts aforementioned. What is the capitalist axiomatic? "How much flexibility there is in the axiomatic of capitalism, always read to widen its own limits so as to add a new axiom to a previously saturated system! You say you want an axiom for wage earners, for the working class and the unions? Well then, let's see what we can do-and thereafter profit will flow alongside wages, side by side, reflux and afflux." Traditionally speaking, an "axiom" belong to mathematics whereby random variables that require no proof of their own existence form an absolute truth-equation for themselves. Other statements are logically derived from an axiom. We see this in any geometrical proof. One is granted an axiom in which proofs are formed. The question comes up regarding the existence of these random variables that could possibly form an absolute solid proof. These are questions that Husserl would attempt to understand in Phenomenology and most specially in his Origins of Geometry that we went into prior posts regarding Derrida's involvement with that text. What we do know is that an axiom, mathematically speaking doesn't concern itself with its imaginary variables. In other words, mathematicians aren't ethnologists. We can infer from D&G's usage of "axiom" in terms of capitalism that it's an equation in which random variables are put into the equation to bring about other equations that work. An axiom for the "working class and the unions" would be a code itself, but not the code that would end up being decoded by capitalism, but a code with the flexibility to always change relative to profit increasing side by side with the axioms for the wage earner. In this sense, the axiom of capitalism isn't a code, it is it's constant movement for profit and surplus by whatever means necessary without any archaic code getting in the way of this schizophrenic axiom. The capital-axiom then is one where surplus-value is always added no matter what other axiom is included within it's own domain. Capital form will have to be flexible to respect wage earners while increasing it's own profit for itself. It will have to figure out ways for example to raise the earnings of a worker, while not losing the money it's raising from the worker (E.G. taxes). So "axiom" for D&G takes on a very different sense than the one classically understood in Euclidean Geometry. What they have in common is the fact that they're unaware of the genealogical origins of the variables they use for a specific cause; one for understanding for it's own sake and the other for the constant extension of surplus-capital. Surplus-value isn't exclusive to capital though. It's within desire itself and can be found easily in understanding for it's own sake (why we're all in graduate school). Deterritorialization is easier to understand. We can think of this literally as having no home. Literally, we can think of this as Native Americans being moved from their own home by English colonialism. We can think of this as the action of colonialism in general. What happens here is that what was once considered home to a certain group of people is no longer their home. Instead this group will have to adapt to colonization. This term gains a greater understanding through Marx when he expresses the relationship in Das Kapital between colonization and industry. In other words, a group of people are moved from their territory into an industrial place where the people aren't producing what they're used to producing, but are producing from and for the colonists. What takes precedence over home here is production for the sake of production. It doesn't matter who produces, as long as a surplus is being created for the sake of capitals axiom. Anyone from any place who at once was within a territorilzation in the body without organs (which was "originally" deterritorialized) will be moved into a deterritorialization for the sake of the captial-axiom. Now what is it to be decoded for D&G? This goes along with the process of deterritorialization. When something is decoded, it means to convert a code into a different one. What was at once coded and overcoded becomes decoded into the captial-axiom. What was once understood as a "primal relationship" between father and son now becomes a decoded relationship where the "traditional relationship" between the two no longer forms the meaning once understood traditionally. It becomes decoded into the work of the capital-axiom of production for the sake of production. An example of understanding this decoding is an example of understanding a "traditional relationship" between a father and son whereby the father instills certain codes and morals in the child. Under the capital-axiom, this gets converted into coding a sort of morality for surplus, meaning, the son must make money for the sake of money. He must produce for the sake of production. Morality becomes capital. In this example, the sons relationship to the father is to please him by showing him that he is fulfilling the captial-axiom without either of them knowing what they're fulfilling. Euphemisms will be put in place for this decoded axiom like "hard-work" for example. The son will want to be hardworking without knowing it's at the service of the capital-axiom of creating a seemingly infinite surplus. The capital-axiom is operating here, but so is the ostensible morality that is established between father-mother-son. This oedipal triangulation is simply no longer a matter of alliance or a purpose that would be the desire to be pedagogical (on the parental organisms part), but the lack of recognition that the pedagogy is of the service for the capital-desire. Deterritorialization and decoding happen together. One no longer has a home where they have codes in their home. They are constantly moved to different territories where the codes of the former territory are being changed for the capital-axiom (capital-surplus-value). With this being said, I hope there is a more clear understanding of these important concepts that D&G use and of course I would love to hear an expansion/modification of these terms from readers of the D&G corpus. Now, the topic of this post was called "Market Acceleration." As D&G saw transitions from savage-being to barbarian-being to capital-being, they are looking for what is after-capital. As they trace desire with its similarities (but different modalities) through different time-being periods they want to trace ahead past capitalism and psychoanalysis to a schizophrenic capitalism and schizophrenia in general. "So what is the solution? Which is the revolutionary path? Psychoanalysis is of little help, entertaining as it does the most intimate of relations with money, and recording - while refusing to recognize it - an entire system of monetary dependencies at the heart of the desire of every subject it treats...Is there a revolutionary path? Is there one? - To withdraw from the world market, as Samir Amin advices Third World countries to do, in a curious revival of the fascist 'economic solution'? Or might it be to go in the opposite direction? To go still further, that is, in the movement of the market, of decoding and deterritorialization? For perhaps the flows are not yet deterritorialized enough, not decoded enough, from the viewpoint of a theory and a practice of a highly schizophrenic character. Not to withdraw from the process, but to go further, to 'accelerate the process,' as Nietzsche put it..." We understand from prior posts the dependency in psychoanalysis and the analysts turning a blind eye to the money it receives from the patient who demands a cure, creating an infinite cycle of "sickness" for the patient who demands a cure, and the monetary compensation the analyst receives for finding a cure that the patient demands. The analysts "intimate relation with money" obviously is of no help to D&G. In other words, what happens after-capital is not being-in-capital going to other people to cure them of sicknesses where capital is used as the exact transaction between the parties. Nor is it a withdrawal from the capital-axiom; the world market where by this "economic solution" is another version of the Italian Fascism of WW2 where the state operates a market independent of markets outside of itself (other countries). A market without imports and exports is not a solution (Where could one start stating how bad of an idea this is? Or is it simply just a fascist economy?). The possible movement into something called after-capitalism for now would be an accelerated capitalism where markets happen at such a speed that no one would be able to predict the what would happen. D&G ask if we aren't decoded and deterritorialized enough. For however much we don't have a code in terms of using capital to buy things we think we need but we really don't need, and don't belong to a home that would code us with something other than the capital-axiom, maybe we aren't far enough? Maybe the process needs to be more accelerated? What would this market acceleration that we could understand as schizophrenic look like? Lets go back to the distinction we made at first in this post between relative schizophrenia and absolute schizophrenia. We will understand this distinction in terms of the neurotic and schizophrenic respectively. What is relative schizophrenia? In the capital-axiom, the neurotic doesn't realize the things it thinks it needs. It's deterritorialized in the sense that there is not an exclusive code of needs, besides needing. To be more direct, I can think I need anything at any time. Now to further understand this we need to understand this in distinction to what Schizophrenic Capitalism would look like. What is Schizophrenic Capitalism? Schizophrenic Capitalism on the other hand does not have a structured unconscious (which Lacan describes. But as D&G tell us, no matter how much Lacan brings us to the despotism of our unconscious, he still gives it a privileged place by understanding it as a structural despotism) that thinks it needs to need. There is an accelerated movement to differences independent of the neurotic structure of conscious or unconscious needs. The schizophrenic is "absolutely deterritorilized" while the neurotic is in a "relative deterritorialization." The neurotic is "not at home" relative to where it's at (it's need to be at home). The ironic paradox of the neurotic is its search for pleasure (home) that is never-ending; it's home in never finding a home that makes it sick. For example, the neurotic affirmation that will fetishize always "being in different places" without recognizing the eternal sickness in thinking this difference serves as a "cure" to an imaginary "existential angst." The neurotic conscious here is absolutely sick, and because of it, it's obvious that it will seek out a "cure" for not understanding it's own need to need. The neurotic is sick because it doesn't realize that it's being forced to think it needs things it doesn't need, and is in anxiety from not knowing what it would be like to not need anything. The analyst will serve as the conductor of appropriating the time whereby the patient can move onto a new home (a new need) which will become exhausted (as happens to all needs) whereby the analyst will move the patient onto needing something else. The neurotic man in the capital-axiom is at home in not being at home. This neurotic-being is sickness. It never knows why its not where it wants to be, not knowing it will never be there. A Contrario, the schizophrenic capitalist doesn't have an unconsciousness that's structured like this. For the schizophrenic, it's not a structure, but the break-flows that D&G elude to throughout Anti-Oedipus. It moves onto one place where it may purchase things with capital, gets sick of it (without knowing that it is sick from not needing it anymore), breaks with this investment, and flows onto something else where it knows not where it will invest. There is no future advance for the schizophrenic. The schizophrenic flows independent of time at it's own rapid speed; rapid compared to the neurotic who takes time to be sick from the nostalgia of not being interested in what it once invested in, and owned, and unconsciously thought was it's identity. This should serve as a preliminary distinction between two different "capitalists," and on the way, it should serve as a further distinction between the neurotic and the schizophrenic in regards to the way the capital-axiom happens to them. The question would then be if you could say that the capital-axiom applies to the schizophrenic. Without it's attention to the axiom of surplus, it wouldn't. It would operate in some abstract "market place" where the unpredictability of the schizophrenic would operate independent of surplus-value because of the Market not "knowing" the break-flows of the schizophrenic. The capital-axiom state would combust to the spontaneous flow of the schizophrenic. It seems D&G are leading us into a state of entropy other than something that could be called a "schizophrenic economy," but we aren't sure yet until we finish the analysis of chapter three, and most importantly, concentrate on what Schizoanalysis would be as a "social field."

Hopefully, this has been the most difficult part of Anti-Oedipus and there won't be as much labor in trying to interpret important and constantly used phrases that are nevertheless not defined, but only used in contexts. Having a grasp of these three terms (deterritorilzation, decoding, the axiomatic) is the key to understanding not only chapter three but I think both chapters that came before. With any book, after you read it once, you get a better understanding of it the second time around. The final chapter on Schizoanalysis will be much easier to read understanding these concepts to a larger degree than initially understood, or basically not understood at all at first. Within our analysis of schizophrenia and Schizoanalysis so far, it's going to be interesting to see how D&G place the Schizophrenic into a "functioning" ontological space. Maybe it won't be functioning, classically understood. I really can't say what is to come in the final chapter of Anti-Oedipus, and this of course is exciting. We procured hints at what this space would look like from the post on the introduction to Schizoanalysis and the way in which a "schizophrenic capitalist" would operate; at it's own speed (not recognizing time), breaking from something that its desire is currently invested in, flowing into something else for desire to become invested in, not being neurotically sick about a memory of the past where a desire was invested in an object, functioning within a flow not ascribing a meaning to whatever is "currently" being invested; in general, a real-time theater where the unconscious functions not as a language, but as a process. We will have to distinguish between Schizoanalysis and schizophrenia. Schizoanalysis is just that, an analysis, and in that sense a structured explanation to a phenomena which may run into the same problems of Phenomenology (finding the limits of Phenomenology as a hypothetical explanation of what happens in something called "real-time"). If the analysis of schizo consciousness is understanding its functionality (which we learned it was from D&G in a past post on Schizoanalysis), then this is certainly at a distance from the experience of the schizophrenic. Here we will ask what exactly the "method" of Schizoanalysis is trying to accomplish then. To be a schizophrenic? To privilege the schizophrenic being? To watch it's functionality independent of meaning? All of these possibilities have problems that I'm sure we will end up going into at the closing of the text. We will defer and refer to the final chapter of Anti-Oedipus to let D&G answer these questions for us first.

Friday, October 22, 2010

The Private Ideology of National Public Radio

The unbiased paragon of soft news.

If people listen to NPR because they like the news, that's fine. If they listen to it because they think it comes from some pure objective place, please read the article below regarding Juan Williams being fired from NPR:

"NPR's firing of commentator Juan Williams this week is one of the worst examples of rush to judgment since 9/11.

Mr. Williams, whether one tends to agree with him or not, is immensely respected by his fellow journalists and viewers alike for his ability to conduct himself with dignity and respect in a field where extremes of opinion and low-ball tactics have become all too common. He's mostly a moderate liberal who is able to hear other points of view with respect, and he can be nuanced in his own views.

In these times, Mr. Williams's instinct for finding both middle and common ground is no small feat.

And for what offense has he been pilloried by the censorship squad of NPR? For saying out loud what many Americans think—that he gets nervous when he's on a plane and sees people dressed in traditional Muslim garb.

As an Arab-American of Muslim descent, I am not offended by this because in all honesty I have had the same reaction in similar circumstances. In Berlin a couple of years ago, my flight was delayed because, we were told, one of the passengers, who was in a wheelchair, needed extra assistance. When she finally was brought into the waiting area, she was covered from head to toe in traditional Muslim dress and only her eyes were visible. What happened? I grew nervous. I got on the plane just the same, but with trepidation.

Was my response rational? Yes and no.

It was not Muslims in traditional garb who hijacked those planes on 9/11, and it certainly was not Muslim women in veils and wheelchairs. If anything, an Islamist terrorist wants to blend in, not stand out.

However, it was not a traditional sort of terrorist attack I feared in this case, but perhaps something unexpected: a traditional Muslim woman in a veil, confined to a wheelchair, who was loaded with explosives.

That may make me guilty of an overactive imagination, but perhaps not. Not that many years later, a young Muslim on an international flight into Detroit tried to light explosives in his underwear.

I mention all this for one main reason. I grew up surrounded by Islamic culture, went to Islamic events, and was used to seeing women in traditional Muslim clothing, and yet when that woman appeared at the Berlin airport, I was scared.

That's all Mr. Williams was saying. He didn't say that they should be removed from the plane, treated differently, or anything close to that. He simply said he got nervous. And for that, he was fired.

The reality is that when Muslims cease to be the main perpetrators of terrorism in the world, such fears about traditional garb are bound to vanish. Until such time, the anxiety will remain. In the long run, it's what we do with such fears that matters, not that we have them.

But regarding what happened to Mr. Williams, no one should tolerate such intolerant behavior on the part of NPR. This broadcast network is paid for by the American taxpayers, and as such we all have a stake in its decisions.

Anyone who cares about freedom of speech should protest what has been done to this decent and fair man. And even if that were not the case, even if Mr. Williams' views made him a detestable ogre to most, he still has the right to voice them. For many Americans, NPR's consistent tilt to the left has caused them to reject it as a viable source of news.

NPR often embodies the very things it claims to stand against: unfairness, narrow-mindedness and reactionary policies.

I ask all Americans of conscience, most particularly those of Arab and/or Muslim descent, to protest the firing of Juan Williams and to demand that public funding to NPR cease until Mr. Williams's good name has been cleared and he has been rehired (if he still wants to work for this network).

We deserve better from a public radio network funded by taxpayer money."

Mr. Dabul is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304023804575566363119493650.html?mod=ieslice


This post and article is not in regards to whether Juan Williams reaction was irrational, or "right" or "wrong" (Juan Williams admits to himself afterwords in the same interview that it was probably an irrational immediate response to this situation). It's in regards to the impossibility of something called "objective news," and the more grotesque fact that there are self-righteous people who aren't even aware of their presumptuous inclinations in thinking they can provide "objective news" for a "public." Still, more perverse are people who listen to any news broadcast and think they are getting "objective news," not realizing the style that's influencing this thinking.

For further reading, check out this article I wrote for Wedolists.com on NPR:
Ten Problems with NPR

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

The Visual Theater of Creulty; Anti-Oedipus, Part 7

All eyes on deck. There's a judgment brewin'

Before we get to the elaborated theory of Schizoanalysis that is present to us in the last chapter of Anti-Oedipus, there are more than a couple themes along the way that will give a more direct sense to the later theory. One will be the structure and gap that happens in-between Barbarian civilization and capitalism (Feudalism) and the phenomena of desire in the cultural happening. This will be addressed in the next post. This post though will deal with savage formation which D&G separate from Barbarian civilization and capitalism. More specifically, this post will deal with the beginnings of the categorical structure of social-being in its savage state. We will see parallels between any form of socius and one that others would like to think operated in some purity against later formations of socius that are easily criticized today (Every socius is easily critiqued when protected under "1st amendment" laws). D&G being thorough analysts/ethnologists won't aggressively attack modern forms of structural government over and against contemporary modes government in a Rousseauian fashion that contemporary critics find so easy to do. D&G for better have maturity on their side when writing a theoretical account of political and psychological structures; I.E. they approach the subject as rigorous Ethnologists. We will see in the post that savage formations were graphic, oral, and visual. The visual character of the savage serves as the mediation between the graphic and oral gestures of savage-being. And when I say that they serve as a mediation, I mean to say that they are a certain and very different mode of operation in the world from the word and it's graphme. We will see just how large of a complex is created in being when the visual category manifests. What this entails we will go into next.

"Savage formations are oral, are vocal, but not because they lack a graphic system: a dance on the earth, a drawing on a wall, a mark on the body are a graphic system, a geo-graphism, a geography. These formations are oral precisely because they possess a graphic system that's independent of the voice, a system that is not aligned on the voices and not subordiante to it, but connected to it, co-ordinated 'in an organization as it were,' and multidimensional." The first key to this statement is the insistence that vocal culture and graphic culture aren't separated. There isn't speech at one time that is separated from a graphic system. But when D&G include "a dance on earth" they mean to expand the concept of inscription to a character far more expansive than the physical writing. The graphic system and inscription are analogous. Not only is the graphic system (inscription) a "drawing of a wall" or a "mark on a body," but a "dance on the earth." Basically, anything that happens to the naked earth (the body without organs) by being is a writing (inscription) on this body without organs. D&G are very aware of making their concepts clear no matter how difficult they seem to be on first glance. Right after they mention these inscriptions, they connotate these inscriptions by calling them a "ge0-graphism," eluding to our point of anything happening to the earth (body without organs) as being an "inscription" to it; and addition to it (or negation. Addition and negation are philosophical concepts that can be applied to these types of phenomena depending on the context of the writing). They spell out clearly that it's a "geography" being good materialists that they are (consistent, which is the most we can ask for from something nominalized as "philosophy"). These modes of being are "oral because they contain a graphic system independent of the voice," showing how the oral isn't necessarily condemned to the mouth. They are connected with the voice instead. There is not the word and then writing. There is already the word and inscription. If we were to look at this metaphysically, we understand that there is already expression and input to the earth. Expression is the writing to the body with organs. The dance that happens spontaneously is a inscription the earth as much as it's an oral expression "on it's own." "On it's own" gets quoted here because it's tied to inscription. Oral expression is inscription. It's already a writing (inscription) to the earth, to the body without organs. Inscription isn't subordinated to the voice, the word, it's the coordination with it that at one and the same time expressed and inscribes, an affectation that effects. No correlation is place between affectation and effect. Instead, they are coordinated in the same space a-temporally. They form their own organization that isn't seen as being vertical but horizontal since they are not correlative, but rise together and inscription and expression. To be brief, something happens to the body without organs by a being that does things. Understanding this abstractly as possible goes far to disengage a correlationist order between the two. But in the inscription and the voice, there exists a third element. There is not only the "dance on the earth" and it's inscription onto something that was never danced on before. There is the eye that perceives everything that's happening. There is the eye as the third party that is neither a "pure" affectation by oral-being, nor a "pure" inscription brought to earth along with the expression of affectation. There is the eye that sees all this happening, and not just the eye physiologically, but the eye as a third form of being that completes the complex of being. "Isn't it necessary to add a third element of the sign: eye-pain, in addition to voice-audition and hand-graphics? In the rituals of affliction the patient does not speak, but receives the spoken word. He does not act, but is passive under the graphic action: he receives the stamp of the sign. And what is his pain if not a pleasure for the eye that regards it, the collective or divine eye that is not motivated by any idea of revenge but is alone capable of grasping the subtle relationship between the sign engraved in the body and the voice issuing from a face - between the mark and the mask. Between these two elements of the code, pain is like the surplus value that the eye extracts taking hold of the effect of active speech on the body, but also of the reaction of the body insofar as it is acted upon." The nuance of this statement is incredible. We will see why as we move through this incredible passage that surmises an ethological description. The voice speaks and inscribes. Inscription is an inscriptive voice. But within this phenomena, there is the phenomena of the eye, the visual aspect that Merleau-Ponty calls the sense, the sense that experiences in the most intense way. D&G go right at the eye as eye-pain, as the eye that sees pain, as the eye that supplements experience by adding pain to it which will form the creditor-debtor relationship described by Nietzsche in his Genealogy of Morals. What does the eye do that sees the coordination of inscription and the voice? In the savage rituals of affliction (E.G. a part of the body being held to fire in order to "absolve" oneself from from an injunction. From this we see how the credit-debit/guilt phenomena starts to manifest), there is a third. Not only a third person, but a third person who has eyes. The "patient" (or in this case, the savage trying to absolve themselves from an injunction by experience of an immediate affliction) does not speak, but receives the spoken word. The "patient" has already spoken, and not they will receive the spoken work for haven spoken. The "patient" stands (or sits there) while being graphicized (think of a cow being brandished). This patient receives a sign that may stay with them forever, and that's the point. The mark of the world, the inscription of the world as expression, inscribes itself to the body without organs through being. But what is the pain of the patient? We don't know the "pain" of the patient without the third party, without the eye. The eye watches in horror at the ostensible cruelty being applied to the "patient." But is this horror really being experienced as cruelty? Or is there a subtle pleasure in the "pain" administered to the patient. As I stated in a post on wedolists.com, "If you’re around someone who noticeably enjoys themselves when you are (pridefully) talking about your shortcomings, you can be sure they are just as prideful as you talking about your shortcomings," I.E. pain is experienced as pleasure, by the eye. Who sees this "ritual of affliction?" The collective and divine eye. We can interpret this as the people in a savage group who circle the event of the ritual, and watch with their eyes at the spectacle. It would be easy for us to say here that the third-person eye gains pleasure out of this event of a sense of vengeance and/or a sense of this ritual not happening to them. But it's not so simple for D&G much to there appreciation of a complex event. The eye grasps "the subtle relationship between the sign engraved in the body and the voice issuing from a face - between the mark and the mask." The eye isn't Oedipalized in savage-being. It doesn't have a sense that "nothing goes right for me" or that the "world is against me." The eye in savage-being is in "the real," to whatever extent we can conceptualize "the real." But yet, in this "real," the eye extracts a surplus-value of pleasure from the ritual event. It doesn't extract pleasure from the fact that someone else is being tortured or that someone else is being afflicted and not them. Rather, the eye is acting on it's own when establishing the relationship between inscription and the voice, between the body and the inscription. In "the real" an affliction is applied to the body which the eye sees, and then the eye sees the reaction of the body coming from the face (simply put, we can think of a scream or some sort of vocal squirm). The eye sees inscription and it's reaction my the word. And what happens with the eye when it sees this? It extract pleasure not from the above stated examples that apply to a relative oedipalized modernity, but from a pure reaction of the eye in the real. The inscription happens in "the real," the word-reaction happens in "the real," and the perceptive-eye happens in "the real," which extracts more out of the previous two "reals" than was happening in them alone. This "pure extraction" as a surplus to the event is a pleasure. The eye sees what's happening between the mark and the mask and something comes out of the eye, an unconscious interpretation of sorts. "These are the three sides of a savage triangle forming a territory of resonance and retention, a theater of cruelty that implies the triple independence of the articulated voice, the graphic hand, and the appreciative eye." What happens in this event, this spectacle, is resonance and retention. The hand (inscription) applied to the body (the voice) where an eye watches this application resonates with the eye and is retained by the eye. The eye retains what happens. It sees the bodies reaction. It sees the squirms. It realizes the relationship between the hand that applies the "afflictive ritual" to the body and the body that receives this affliction. Not only does this event resonate for the third party eye, but the intensity of the event creates a memory for the eye. The eye remembers intensity (as we understand perfectly from Nietzsche in that man forms memory for himself by afflicting himself with intense pain). History is born out of intensity. History is born out of subjective pain. History is born out of a set of important wars whose importance depends not just on the quantity of dead lives, but the quality in which these deaths took place. Memory and (H)istory is formed from intensity to the subject. It's not just the intensity though. It's the tripartite matrix of inscription, the voice, and the eye; where the eye perceives whatever is happening as intensity. It perceives for the first time the theater of cruelty in savage-being and the relationship between the other two characters in the matrix.

The eye in a strong sense is the gap between save-being and barbarian-being which we will elaborate on in the next post. The eye serves as the memory of what an intensity is. It sees and remembers. When it remembers, the event "made an impression" on it. When this impression is made, a memory is made. This memory has an intensity at its disposal, a disposal it may not want to partake in. While D&G have given a commendable analysis of this phenomena by characterizing the event as a relationship between the tripartite matrix that enveloped the phenomena in, it's also easy to understand that this intensity that the eye perceives becomes much more than a relationship. It becomes fear literally in the eye of the beholder. In other words, it becomes oedipalized. The flow of the event is no longer the flow of the event. The event is memorized as something to fear. The fear of intensity. Of course, D&G understand this when they affirm that the eye extracts a surplus-value out of the event but we should be more specific now. This surplus-value that is extracted out of the event we can call "fear." This "fear" though is not to be understood as something that the eye purposely tries to avoid, on the contrary; the eye is enamored with the fear it sees in the event (Why else could you explain why "scary movies" are so popular?). But there are two different ways in which the eye sees the event for us and D&G. For now, we see the event through the eyes of savage-being as a set of relationships. After, in oedipalization, we see the event through the eyes of a surplus-socius, as a desire to see "fear" as something not happening to oneself (as an outside spectator). This personality (or cult, or fetish) of fear is limited to ones own understanding of the relationship of primordial acts. When the memory has become so ingrained (by memories), the question of the relationship between component parts doesn't happen at first, but becomes historicized as an auto-response to an event. This auto-response is oedipus. It knows to fear. It likes to fear. But this knowing and liking never formed the relationship that constituted the event of savage-being that would eventually go on to establish oedipus-man.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Visceral Neutering

This looks like fun

I found this great post on the NFL's discussions to limit the hits on other players based on the refs perception of the degree of the hit when checking out the Giants.com message forum. The refs will have a new jurisdiction to regulate fouls based on their perception on the "devastation" of a hit.

"After a weekend of knockouts (literally), the NFL and sundry rattles its sabre in a pretense of caring for the health of its players. Analysts, coaches, players, commentators and even the fans are quick to say how out of line James Harrison, Dunta Robinson, and Brandon Meriweather are for their collective "cheap shots" on fellow players.

And they are all full of crap.

The whole debate about helmet to helmet, and defenseless players; this legislating of a full contact sport could be made moot with one stroke of the pen .... turn the NFL into a flag football game.

Why doesn't this happen? Because that product wouldn't sell. Period.


The NFL is the most popular sport in the U.S. for one reason ... it gives a visceral fix not seen anywhere else. The NFL is and always has been our gladiatorial arena. Crowds cheer more loudly at hard hits. We thrill at bone crushing hits. We delight when helmets come flying off. We shiver with pleasure when blood is spilled.


Then we feel guilty afterwords and publicly decry those we can label as obvious villains while scouring the Internet for the clips of those fantastic hits we missed on Red Zone, or the Sunday Ticket.

I say relish in this time of aggression. One day and one day soon, you will not be afforded your visceral fix any longer. The thought machine that directs what we say, and how we react publicly during our everyday lives will extend to (and already has) our private lives and in the not so distant future, sports like football will truly become a virtual sport.

Well defined, well trained athletes will give way to slightly built, physically challenged individuals with over developed hand-eye coordination, wielding joy sticks and your new heroes will be pixelated monstrosities that are blown apart in CGI'd wonder on a daily basis."

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Introduction to Schizoanalysis; Anti-Oedipus, Part 6

Human computers on a picnic look much like regular humans on a picnic

The disfiguring of what was normally understood as unconscious material in classical psychoanalysis, and which we hopefully clarified to some degree in past posts has been done for the sake of a movement towards what D&G in Anti-Oedipus call "Schizoanalysis." They will devote the entire final chapter of the book to this "practice." We are not there yet but the hints are starting to pop up in their chapter before on the nature of colonization as it pertains to an always and already social investment into a territoriality that slowly becomes coded by the axis of desire and the socius. This theory is heavy and deserves it's own time. Ultimately it deserves to be read on its own in the primary source. As we are in this theory though, we can see obvious hints at what schizoanalysis will be; as an absolute distinction from psychoanalysis. We will see how important it was for D&G to distinguish between the Ethnologist and the Psychoanalyst, between the person who asks about the use of a certain civilizations practices and the person who asks about the meaning of those practices respectively. The psychoanalyst who asks about the meaning of a ritual for example adds a code to something that's happening in a "present," meaning that something is happening in which they observe and are then able to understand. This function of the psychoanalyst at first glance isn't different from the Ethnologist. The styles are different though. The Ethnologist isn't looking to record a supplement to the event, rather it sees how something is functioning. This difference is crucial; the difference between seeing how something functions and giving meaning to an event. It's on these grounds that Schizoanalysis will find much in common with the Ethnologist in distinction from the Psychoanalyst. The unconscious will gain it's ostensible disfigured flow back from the structure of meaning placed upon it by the phenomena of Oedipus, and advanced further by the psychoanalyst (Oedipus believed in by the analyst). We will introduce this "method" now. "Method" is put into quotations because Schizoanalysis is obviously not a method, if by method we understand a structure in which we are consciously trying to make something of something; more specifically, practicing a psychoanalytical method at the benefit of the patient. It's somewhat accurate to refer to the picture above and see it as providing a program. It's like the insertion of a new chip into something that was previously called "consciousness." It's not dialectical. It's not metaphysical. It's not psychoanalytical. It's an abrupt change as quick as tectonic plates shift during earthquakes. It's not necessarily hospitable. It's volcanic without knowing it's a volcanic action. It's a disjunctive unconsciousness that nonetheless all happens in a space, as a body without organs.

"Shizoanalysis foregoes all interpretation because it forgoes discovering an unconscious material: the unconscious does not mean anything. On the other hand the unconscious constructs machines, which are machines of desire, whose use and function schizoanalysis discovers in their immanent relationship with social machines. The unconscious does not speak, it engineers. It is not expressive or representative, but productive. A symbol is nothing other than a social machine that functions as a desiring-machine, a desiring-machine that functions within the social machine, an investment of the social machine by desire." Not only does Schizoanalysis differentiate itself from psychoanalysis in the content of the unconscious, but doesn't find any content in the unconscious at all. For the Schizoanalyst, there is no meaning behind anything. We don't pear behind a human to find the paternal repressions that manifest themselves in mental sicknesses. We don't pear behind a human to find archetypes of a primordial civilization that give universal significance to us, a universal significance that's fat (weights a lot). We don't search behind the human for something that's called it's meaning. On the other hand, the unconscious does have a function for D&G; A function, not a meaning. The function of the unconscious creates other functions purely understood. These are processes that simply happen regardless of their appearance and representation to others (A reading of a Speculative Realist text will help immensely when trying to understand this. By the same token, Husserl's Cartesian Meditations would put one in this state of pure nothingness. For my own thinking, it will be important to see how Brassier offers this differently in his Nihil Unbound from Husserl. This text will be next). The unconscious functions to create other functions. It's an infinite multiplicity of functions never absorbed into the Parmendiean "one" where we would have something called a general "functionality." The function machine that has been laid out by D&G is the desiring-machine; the machine that looks to move it's way outwards (to be sure, a start for Oedipus). Desire though can't be seen in itself. Desire is seen as we learned from prior posts in it's connection to the socius. We see desire in the person apologizing to another person in order to be in good faith with the other person. We see desire in wanting to publish a book because one thinks that what one is saying is worth someones else's time. These are very modern examples, but we see how desire can't be seen in itself, but only with it's attachment towards "social machines," meaning, the function of communication, of people encountering other people. Schizoanalysis finds desire operating here in the socius. It discovers the relationship between desire and the socius and doesn't feign to see desire in itself, not attached to anything in something called "pure reason." This unconscious that attaches itself to social machines doesn't speak but engineers. In a strong sense, it's despotic in it's own right. It doesn't create dialogue with another in order to come to a resolution of a problem it never had. It operates independent of the voice, of the voice of the other, of the voice of you. It moves in it's own way and supplants its existence independent of the voice that may comment on it's movement. If it had a voice, it would be Heraclitean. It would be submissive to the disjunctive flow of the non-vocal space of Being. This unconscious does not need to express the fact of it's own existence, it doesn't even know it exists or that something like existence is actually happening. There is no need to represent the phenomena in the voice or the pictograph, even if we come to see that there has been a function within the desire of the unconscious to represent itself. This desire to represent itself understood most perfectly by Hegel is being as representation. The function that happens inside this and outside of our understanding functions on its own. The functional unconscious produces. It may even produce representation but it doesn't speak about representation. We speak about representation. If we see something that happens whereby in real time something is being carved out into space, this vision is ours of an unconscious doing what's doing without vision. We see the carving, the unconscious carves. Again, we, as the socius, see desire. The unconscious as desire does not happen to nothing, it happens to the socius whereby the socius sees something in it, and adds a meaning to it (coding). If one can be in a place where they are always producing without knowing they're producing, or reflecting back to their production, this would be the unconscious in itself. In other words, it would be nothing. When desire attaches itself to the social machine, a symbol gets put out. This is representation. Representation is manifested from pure desire where it expresses desire (not in order to express desire, but where it expresses desire). This spatial creation is a function without meaning. The Symbol is in the socius already. The Symbol is being understood and exchanged amongst being. Desire has moved into the socius where desire becomes the supplementation of representation. Desire is in fact representation for a time, the time that only we see. Unconscious desire is always attached to this time that we see (the socius). "Large molar machines presuppose pre-established connections that are not explained by their functioning, since the latter results from them. Only desiring-machines produce connections according to which they function, and function by improvising and forming the connections." The key to this statement lies in the specific words. "The large molar machine," for example, social formation, happen already at a micro-unconscious level. These micro-connections don't explain themselves. The explanation of their functioning is a result of the very fact of their functioning. Here we posit a correlation between the unconscious and consciousness for consciousness, not for micro-level functioning. The molar machine feels the desire to explain the function of it's manifestation. The unconscious desire creates improvised connections which function in ways we see. We apply the category of "functionality" to the unconscious. The "function" though happens on its own. The desiring-machine produces, it doesn't explain. Schizoanalysis doesn't ask about what the production means. It sees coding happening, it even sees meaning happening, but sees all this as a production. "A magical chain brings together plant life, pieces of organs, a shred of clothing, an image of daddy, formulas and words: we shall not ask what it means, but what kind of machine is assembled in this manner - what kind of flows and breaks in the flows, in relation to other breaks and other flows." What does this machine do? This is the question to the person that was once a patient in psychoanalysis. What do you do, not what's the matter with you? Representations are certainly assembled, but what kind of machine makes this happen? How's it possible for you to have representations? Not why is it possible for you to have representations, but "how did this happen?" What kind of machine functions? How does it produce representations? How does it produce Oedipus? How does Oedipus function? Where did the connection happen where you desired your mother in another affiliate branch? How did something become a mother (How was something represented)? How does this all function. Schizoanalysis is the exploration of functionality, not the meaning of you.

Why this is an introduction to Schizoanalysis is first and foremost because the actual chapter on Schizoanalysis has not been read yet. A second reason why is because it still functioned at the expense of psychoanalysis that one suspects it may do for awhile. A third reason is because this introduction didn't go into specific microcosmic "flows and breaks in the flows, in relation to other breaks and other flows." These specific break-flows is where Schizoanalysis operates, meaning it operates in different places all the time depending on where a current flow is going. And whenever a break occurs, the flow changes course. The flow doesn't continue on in one direction. The flow isn't Oedipal (until it becomes Oedipus by repressing unconscious breaks in flows). An analysis of break-flows isn't one where there is a paternal analyst who's satisfied in curing a patient from a sickness. It's not a duality between two people under the omnipotence of master-slave morality. It's any numbered and differently placed. In the observation of production, what happens is an observation. When I see a river pass by me in it's flow, I see the fact that I see myself seeing the river as a flow (the Husserlian noema). I'm a production of seeing and judging. In Schizoanalysis I desire to see how what's outside of me responds to me and how I respond to it. Desire attaches itself to the socius. Social-machines see the desire that produces them, and desire sees the social-machines that it attaches itself to. In Schizoanalysis, things are seen. Things are seen as happening at one time, and at another time as not happening. Time loses it's time-consciousness in the sense of it's being-in-fear-towards-death (historicity). Instead, it finds it's internal-time-consciousness in the melody where one note just passed by that happens to be connected to another note, that breaks into a different mode, but somehow still felt connected to what happened priorly. As descriptive experience of how a production functions, it's not very far from Husserlian phenomenology. But we will get a closer look when we enter the actual chapter.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Getting Well; Anti-Oedipus, Part 5

Far right is where you want to be

In the previous post on Anti-Oedipus we noticed invariable characteristics in the schizophrenic. Most specifically, we saw it's adaptations of sexual roles independent of a primary sexuality. This post will deal with somewhat of the same theme as the last. While the last post was a description of the schizophrenic, this post will do more to distinguish the schizo from the neurotic (oedipal-man). At the end of this post, the distinction will be even more clear. We will not only get help from direct expressions of each, but an understanding of the work of the primordial "biological egg;" more specifically, the distinction between induction and structure. The later will carry a symbolic and imaginative description while the former will carry no symbolic description at all serving as the space of the schizophrenic. The schizophrenic will find it's home in the inductors of stimuli that insight the biological egg. We will see where and how induction becomes symbolized in a mask that we know as structure, and more specifically, identity. Identity will be just about analogous to Oedipus. Identity will be the symbol for something that always and already happens. We may even sound like Plato in this post. We sound like Plato in this post but in a vastly different context; 20th century man and not Greek antiquity. And if we sound like Plato, it won't be a Plato that has been oddly solidified as the identity of Plato, but the dialects that ensued in the dialogues, without recognition for the winner. As a reader, I can stand in place for Thrasymachus in The Republic as I can stand in place for Aristophanes in the Symposium. At the end of the dialogue, I am not sure of what Plato is besides people being people. I am winner and loser, dialogue and a Greek bath; Whatever was in that text is up for connection...to be left as quickly as it was connected.

"If there is one problem that does not exist in schizophrenia, it is the problem of identifications. And if getting well amounts to getting oedipalized, we can easily understand the outbursts of the patient 'who does not want to be cured,' and who treats the analyst as one of the family, then as an ally of the police." This is a funny phrase here by D&G. The schizophrenic who has all the problems that needs to be solved doesn't have one problem, and that's the problem of identity. The schizophrenic doesn't ask themselves "Who am I?" The schizophrenic doesn't frantically run around doing things in order to establish an identity. The schizophrenic isn't even unaware of these actions making them go through a dreaded "existential crisis." It always and already knows that there's an oedipal place that it doesn't want to go in. The schizo goes into outburst mode when trying to be sat down. It doesn't want to stay in one place, it doesn't want to be told what has to be the case (you can open up possibilities to it though), it doesn't want you looking at it with a satisfied look. This look the analyst gives the problem of schizophrenia in which "everything is going to be ok;" this paternal look of consolation where consolation was never sought out, where paternal looks were never the case. For a second the schizo may see the analyst as a father, like I see a computer screen right now, in other words, as something that exists outside and that's it. It may traverse space to find the analyst as an ally of the police which in turn creates an outburst from the non-conscious sense of having to be sat down. It will be anything in one moment and something else the next moment, and any suggestions of staying put raises the anxiety level of the schizo to combustion. The schizo will break out of it's current "identity" not because it doesn't feel at home in the identity at the moment, but because it will get the sneaky suspicion that it can never leave. The analyst will reward the schizo for passing into oedipalization the second the schizo finds a home in an oedipal state. Reward though for the schizo is not part of their consciousness. It can only pass onto something else. As the patient, as the slave in the master-slave dialectic that is euphemized into pyschotherapy; is this schizo "lacking" something? If it's with the analyst, it's lacking oedipus. I am with the analyst as a patient because I am sick. I'm not there to just hang out with the analyst even though the session may be structured that way. I am sick and the analyst is there to cure me. But without oedipus, am I as a schizo sick? Is it not oedipus that makes me sick because I can't bear oedipalization? Because I can't bare knowing I have to stay in the same place for the rest of my life? Because I have to be the same "person" for the rest of my time? The schizo universe doesn't get well. It moves beyond an identity that would be in a state of illness. If I stay here, there are degrees in which I'm personally here. I may not be here at all and may be trying to find my way back to here, and this is where I'm sick. Instead of throwing off the shackles of the personality that I so coveted, and moving onto something I have never been through, I need to find my way back to myself. Always in this body is a sense of self; that glorified term that keeps me at a distance from others, but not too far to the point where I am not distinguishable; the identity/difference logic of Oedipus. You are not this, but you will be. You are not your father, but will be one day. You are not a teacher, but want to teach people about your experiences. The schizo is incensed by this logic. The schizo is one thing and one thing only, and fully, and then something else and something else only, and fully; an inclusive disjunction of eternal flows that break off just right when the identity "feels" expended. D&G compare the schizo to the "biological egg" where "stimuli are not organizers, but mere inductors: ultimately, the nature of these inductors is a matter of indifference." Inductions gets things on its way. Where it goes? Nobody knows. Stimulus is not teleological. It happens as quickly as I strike this keyboard, whereby I could have hit the wrong key making someone behind me laugh at my mistake, making me meet them, and then talking to them about what I'm writing about. This was not an organized process. This was a chaotic flow, Heraclitus's flow (Plato is just as much Heraclitus as he was Parmenides). What D&G say next is of crucial importance. "It was the beginnings of the development that favored the illusion: the simplicity of the beginning-consisting, for example, of cellular divisions-could lead one to believe in some sort of adequation between the inductor and what is induced. But we are well aware that, when considered in terms of its beginnings, a thing is always poorly judged because in order to become apparent, it is forced to simulate structural states and to slip into states of forces that serve it as masks." This strikes many chords. First is the speculative realist/empiricist anti-correlationism. The inductor doesn't know where the stimulus goes. What is induced from the inductor is not known. When something is divided, why is it the case that the division had to happen because of a presupposition? Why does a cell have to have consciousness? Why does it's division refer back to something that did the division, and not rather, the possibility that division didn't have to happen? We can't speak for the cell. We can't speak for the gap, but we do within our thinking, our correlationist thinking. I would go a step further than D&G (as would a speculative realist) in saying that not only is the beginning poorly judged, but can't be judged at all. But we would be correct in saying that we judged something. For something to appear, it has to take on a structural state that becomes the metaphor for something that was never a symbol, that was never a metaphor, but a pure induction, not pure reason, but pure non-identity. What happens at this level is not reason. The beginning is not a reason, just as much as it's new unknown beginning is unaware of something called "the place in which you came from." As a more direct analogy, if I happen to live another life after this one, "I" don't know that this one proceeded it. The mask that appears as the reason of the beginning is just that; our reasonable Kantian representation of something that always and already will happen. Of course, as we learned in prior posts, Kant was well aware of the always and already function of applying our own concepts to non-conceptual experience, so defining the proper name of "Kant" here is as tenuous as the proper name of "Plato" (It's all name-dropping as the desire of history. Infinite symbolization. This is for another day though). As was concluded with phenomenology (and this could be applied to Kant as the certain precursor to Phenomenology), we can have a hypothetical understanding of beginnings, and we can even have fun with it at the limits of philosophy, but it will always be just that; a hypothetical understanding. Whether this hypothesis should be called a mask with all the connotations attached to the word "mask" is another question. Personally, I think this classically understood Platonic verbiage of shadows and masks masks a mask. It gives comfort to some actual reality where the ego feels like they're in the know. The ego isn't hidden in the shadows, but in the light where it needs to admit freely that it's not in the shadows. This is what D&G will call a surplus-code. In this instance, it's the necessity of defining oneself as being in the know, implicitly serving the ego's own purpose of distinguishing itself from others exclusively. (On a side note, if Philosophy should understand it's own desire for understanding beginnings, it should realize the work of Kant and Husserl as hypothetical, not as trying to "unmask" something that was "masked" in reality. The cell can't be known. The beginning before differentiation and division can't be "known," but it can be hypothesized. The concept of the metaphor and hypothesis will serve as the death for the ego's love of unmasking things.) The schizo is aware of none of this. It leaves and enters bodies as quickly as Artaud would fill up notebooks of straight lines. As a final analogy to the nature of schizo, D&G de-oedipalize Oedipus by saying that "parental figures are in no way organizers, but rather inductors or stimuli of varying, vague import that trigger processes of an entierly different nature, processes that are endowed with what amounts to an indifference with regard to the stimulus." This goes back to our example of how we have relationships to the outside world which include parental figures, but the parental figures don't have total and absolute domination over the body. The body goes through it's own intensities and flows like the example of knocking into a toy truck and getting hurt by it. No parent was involved. Nothing was "involved." Something happened to be in the way of the path of a walker in which the walker moved into it. This is descriptive science, not teleological science (as if metaphysics could ever be called a "science.)" Later on we will learn of a distinction made by D&G between the Ethnologist and the Psychoanalyst that covers the distinction between finding the happening of something, and the meaning of something, but for now we see that the parental figures figure as much into the body as much as all other "stimuli of varying, vague import." Relationships will always be formed, but intensities and flows will always happen regardless of structure. The schizophrenic will always be intense in it's current flow regardless of how much it's being forced into oedipalization.

How do I know that I'm Well? I know it because someone else thinks they're well and want to resemble this wellness. And if I don't resemble this wellness? Well, I'm not well. Then I go into the analyst (or take drugs) to find out why I'm not well. I go into the analyst to find out about my sickness, to possibly find other sicknesses forming an oedipal dependence of the analyst which we went into in a post before this. I never say to myself though, "Maybe these people who appear well aren't well. Maybe "wellness" is a state that I just happen to pass through which does feel nice, but isn't always going to be the case." I can't always be "well." Sometimes I may be. Sometimes me and the analyst have something in common. Sometimes I can go out into the world and have a beer with an insurance agent. We talk about football. We have something in common. He is well and I am well. Then I tell him what I do and he realizes that I don't own a house yet, and then I am not well. Maybe he's not well either? Maybe he realizes that he doesn't like the fact that he's been stuck in the same place for the past 10 years. We both become sick. I am not him and he is not me. We can't be everything at all times. I can't be the insurance agent and the graduate student. I can be the graduate student and the lover of Giants football though. He can be the insurance agent and a lover of Giants football also. See? All is not so bad. We certainly are different, but not so different that we want to exclude each other into sickness and abnormality. I'm telling ya, disjunctive synthesis finds its experience best in competitive sports. Here's to the Giants and a road victory in Houston this Sunday. The sack attack; everyone gets sacks at different angles and different positions.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Artaud as a direct expression of Anti-Oedipus

Electro-Libido Therapy

Been watching La véritable histoire d'Artaud le momo. The parallel between Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus and Artaud's spontaneous enunciations about the asylum are obvious.
As I'm doing a close read of Anti-Oedipus, I thought this provocation/analysis of pyscho-medicine would be good to put up as a more direct and pithy way towards the general idea. It must be noted though that the written word without Artaud's inflection takes a great deal away from the intensity of the flow. It's a futile attempt trying to describe the inflection so the reader will have to imagine their own fervor of speech for themselves in these words:

Insane asylums are receptacles of black magic, Deliberate and premeditated...It's not only that the doctors encourage magic by therapies that are ill-natured and stupid, it's that they practice it. Had there been no doctors, there'd be no patients...For it is through doctors, not patients, that society began. Those who live, live off the dead. Likewise death, too, has to live. There is nothing like an insane asylum to quietly hatch death, and to keep the dead incubated. This began 4000 years ago, before Christ...this therapy of slow death. And modern medicine, accomplice in this on the most sinister and villainous magic, sends its dead to electroshock and insulin-shock therapy to assure the drainage of the egos, Daily in its men's stud farms, and present them thus drained. Thus fantastically available and drained to the obscene and anatomical and atomic solicitations. Of the state called Bardo...Delivery of the full pack for living with the demands of the non-ego.

Doesn't need analysis. It speaks for itself, expect maybe for what "Bardo" is. Search it.