Contents of spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/papers/good.ethics
The below is an excerpt from: Philip Goodchild, _Deleuze and Guattari: An
Introduction to the Politics of Desire_. London, Thousand Oaks CA, New
Delhi: Sage, due September 1996.
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From owner-deleuze-guattari-digest@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDUTue Jun 25 15:41:06 1996
Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 04:18:35 -0400
From: owner-deleuze-guattari-digest@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
To: deleuze-guattari-digest@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: deleuze-guattari-digest V1 #215
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From: Goodchild P
Date: Tue, 28 May 96 09:18:00 BST
Subject: Re: Ethics Text
Sorry, here's another go:
On ethics and becoming-Deleuzean
Perhaps one of the most appropriate acclamations from Foucault is to be
found in the preface to the English edition of Anti-Oedipus: 'I would say
that Anti-Oedipus (may its authors forgive me) is a book of ethics, the
first book of ethics to be written in France in quite a long time.' (1984:
xiii) It is possible that the meaning and force of Deleuze and Guattari's
concepts will always remain incomprehensible to the majority. If, one day,
there may be some Deleuzeans, they will probably be those who add a
specifically Deleuzean ethos or style of life to their mode of existence.
Such an ethos can never be possessed or attained: one can merely enter and
dwell in the middle of it, on a plane of immanence.
Deleuze admired, above all others, the ethics of Spinoza (1988a: 153;
1994: 60). In many ways, both lived a contemplative, philosophical life,
writing books, removed from some of the labours and cares of everyday life.
For Spinoza, the philosophical beatitude of contemplating eternity acquired
a strange twist: instead of the eternal being withdrawn from the temporal,
in some Platonic realm of reminiscence, the eternal is a condition of being
or power of existing, not simply an exercise of thought: it is an ethic, a
way of living. A Deleuzean ethic, likewise, wishes to recapture the
presence of the infinite (1994: 197). But the infinite must be torn from
its representations in order to be rediscovered in life: Deleuze's vitalism
struggles with an intense, unbearable, unliveable life surging in the chaos
that lies between thoughts and things. A Deleuzean maintains struggles on
two sides at once (1994: 203): against a death that is the completion of
living, the grasping of which shelters us from access to vital forces -
perhaps an opinion, a cliche, a product, a feeling, a perception; and
against a too-vital life that overwhelms us, scattering singularities and
unbearable intensities all around - perhaps the chaos of science, with its
unpredictable events, or else the chaos of thought encountered in psychosis.
'The philosopher is someone who believes he has returned from the dead,
rightly or wrongly, and who returns to the dead in full consciousness. . . .
This has been the living formulation of philosophy since Plato' (1989:
209).
A Deleuzean lives in the world as though already dead. This is the
condition of living a vital and full life, escaping repetitive movements of
the death-instinct. Much can be dispensed with: morality, opinion, and
judgement, for example. For all morality is based on a negative
representation of death: everything will be judged in relation to whether it
produces life or death for complete persons. To help is to restore to life;
to harm is to destroy; but what kind of life is helped or destroyed? What
opinion does one have of life? Unlike Guattari, who had much to say about
everything, Deleuze expressed few opinions. A Deleuzean renounces life in
opinion and representation in the hope of finding life in experience.
A Deleuzean is also one who is able to have done with judgement
(Deleuze, 1993: 158-69). An ethic that lacks judgement would appear to mark
the death of ethics, in the way that one used to announce the death of
philosophy, or history, or reason, with a flourish of world-historical
pathos. Perhaps one should say that this is a reduction of ethics to a
condition of univocity, of single-mindedness, of simplicity: there is only
one ethic of philosophy - amor fati, affirmation - the irresponsibility of
necessity, the innocence of existence. How much complexity can be implicit
in this simplicity. At any rate, the love of fate is necessary to have done
with judgement, so that one no longer judges existence from a perspective
that claims to be higher.
It is extremely difficult to have done with judgement, with its
infinite appeal,
neurotic self-questioning, and compulsions. Deleuzean ethics counterpose
affirmation to judgement: they restore encounter. Ethics concern relations
rather than
representations - moral judgements are replaced with a micropolitical ethos,
involving an exchange of forces, a contest, a struggle. Each encounter is a
violent penetration of bodies or souls: one is wounded, changed, modified by
an encounter, for one is struck by that which exceeds representation,
affecting one's very constitution, including one's power of representing.
Death no longer functions as the limit within representation, in relation
to which all will be judged. Instead, it functions as a limit to
representation, for one's continuing to live and think in the same way.
Since a Deleuzean lives in the world as though already dead, the wounds
that affect one have no effect in representation - there is no grievance,
complaint, ressentiment. Amor fati - a Stoic and Nietzschean formula - does
not complete Deleuzean ethics, but renders them possible.
How does one proceed? Once torn from the context of representation,
ethical conduct becomes problematic. An ethic of encounter has no concern
with obligation or response, with placing either self or others first. All
such questions may be directed to hypothetical situations, but an ethic of
encounter explores the forces present in real situations. For one does not
choose one's problems: they are given to one in the forces one encounters.
Ethics proceeds from a passivity or impotence at the heart of conduct: a
power to be affected (1988b: 123). If one is not affected by an encounter,
one can enter no relation with the other encountered. The problem of
ethical conduct is that of finding an appropriate response - in the sense of
making life liveable once more - to express the forces acting in a specific
encounter.
Ethical conduct is therefore problematic in several senses: all
infinite grounds withdraw, so that one can no longer represent the 'just
deed'; having renounced the infinite, there are no longer any guidelines or
principles of good conduct except for local, provisional, and questionable
ones; one cannot try to be moral - ethical conduct begins when one reaches
the limits of one's power; one faces the problem of finding an appropriate
response to a specific situation of encounter; and all responses are cruel,
all action is beyond measure, for each act affects the discrete individual
in a way that exceeds representation and cannot be anticipated. Ethical
conduct can only begin with a modest acceptance of this problematic: we are
not yet capable of ethical conduct.
Each wound constitutes a problem for an affirmative ethos: one has to
discover how to turn its sad passions into active joys. How does one turn
excess into
friendship? How does one rescue life from death? In Spinoza's ethics, all
relations
are mediated by the infinite, for every modification affects the monistic
infinite
substance. One affirms one's wound if one is able to relate to it from the
perspective
of eternity. In Deleuzean thought, the mediating infinite must also be
rediscovered in
the finite: one can regain the infinite if one is able to extract an event
from states of
affairs. Encounters become problems for thought. Self-destruction,
detachment and
generosity are simply techniques for attaining an absolute threshold of
deterritorialization, where a thought responds to an act.
There are events of friendship for which no one is responsible. Such
events
exceed all conduct - they happen if one affirms all chance. Unlike
friendship
conducted within representation, where one is attracted to others with whom
one has
something in common, a friendship of encounter relates the different to the
different.
When one is affected too deeply by this encounter with difference, conduct
can no
longer appeal to habits and memory in order to discover how to proceed - one
has
seen something in the other's life that one does not possess or understand.
Perhaps it is something that exceeds the human; certainly, it is implicit,
something of the order of a style of life, a force acting through the other
that exceeds all representation. One
becomes impassioned with the hope of learning such a style of living so as
to make
something with it. Passion motivates thought - the problem of ethics
encounters
something unthinkable that forces us to think. This passion disguises and
displaces
itself through the conduct that it selects: since that which is desired
exceeds
representation, then this passion does not know itself; it can only act
through
something else. It thinks by trying out roles and disguises, always adding
something
new to its way of life. It cannot speak on its own account, but requires a
series of
intercessors (1991: 171). Everything is performance, role, disguise; every
act enfolds
the intensity of the force. If such a passion is reciprocated, in a process
of double
deterritorialization, then asymmetrical evolution ensues: there is a mutual
invagination
of each others' processes, a sharing of intercessors.
There is also a plane of such events: the socius of desire. This plane
is
characterized by a fractalized, infinite movement of turn and return through
which it
builds consistency. In the course of history, events of friendship come and
go: one
remembers or anticipates them. On the geophilosophical plane, however, if
passions
affirm and enfold each other, then they constitute a single, abstract
machine that acts
through both. Great events of friendship affirm themselves: they are
self-positing, the
affirmation of force by force in an infinite movement of consistency.
Unlike the infinite
regression of the ground, they are the eternal repetition of an other, a
force of
differentiation or mutual passion, in the moment of encounter - an infinite
progression
of the future. A voice speaks in friendship that has never before been
heard. It is the
voice of a transcendental other, speaking in a foreign language of a
possible world,
showing its face through a series of intercessors, always singing a new
modulation of
its refrain. It joins expression and content, language and world, self and
other. The
finite bonds of friendship become an aesthetic form, a home in which one
dwells, a
mode of relationship that is affected by cosmic forces (1994: 177-97).
Earnestness is mere metaphysical presumption. Only humour, disguise,
displacement, and passion can save friendship. Desire is a capacity to
invert, laugh
at, let go, forgive, transform and express both self and other.
(1984) Anti-Oedipus (1972), trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem & Helen R.
Lane.
London: Athlone.
(1988a) A Thousand Plateaus (1980), trans. Brian Massumi. London: Athlone.
(1988b). Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (1970), trans. Robert Hurley.
San Francisco: City Lights.
(1989). Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1985), trans. Hugh Tomlinson and
Robert Galeta. London: Athlone.
(1991). Pourparlers. Paris: Minuit.
(1993). Critique et clinique. Paris: Minuit.
(1994). What is Philosophy? (1991), trans. Graham Burchell & Hugh
Tomlinson.
London: Verso.
______________________________________________________________________
Phil
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End of deleuze-guattari-digest V1 #215
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