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.

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.