Re: rhizomatic violence in KIBUTZ perspective

30 JUNE 97
Dear Liano,
whatever i may say in this post, let it be clear that i enjoyed your
message very much, it's one of the most interesting which appeared on my
terminal over the last two months. no mistake about it!
and yet i am bound to argue with you, for i find again the same
contradictions which i'd like to define as under-developed paradoxes.
1. on the one hand you say that the structure is there but it's in our
heads, so to speak, and not in the objects; the world, and here comes
your quote from Serres, he world as it is, is amorphous; it's not the
familiar philosophical position per se (which BTW has its honorary place
in western logocentrism) which interests me here, but the conclusion you
seem to make: for to rebuke make imposition of structure on you, Andrew,
and D/G, you imply that these texts are of the same nature as the world
as it is, i.e. that D/G textuality = texture of the world. to use the
kaleidoscopic metaphor which is co-genial to your discourse here and
which i've used some posts ago, you seem to say that D/G had not given a
kaleidoscop a toss, had not produced a "picture" etc. BUT, my dear
friend, abstract expressionism implies a toss as well, it's also a
"picture" (selection etc), i.e. an imposition of structure: i.e.
everything else than "natural" (so, we are returning to the discussion
we've had about naturalizing tendency in D/G and PoMo, and now i've
scored another point).

<its only a question of what you decide is important and what you
> decide is unimportant.<

do you think that the choice is a matter of free-will, arbitrary? for my
part, i read your excerpt from Eco as corroborating my point: if all the
roads lead to Rome, ergo.... you see, you make of D/G's phil. an
over-inclusive system a system which accomodates everything and thereby
becomes a Borgesean map of the world (a logocentric ambition,eh?).
oedipus IS only one possible interpretation, says derrida. BUT the
attempt to include all is oedipal, totalizing itself, so that it's
ouedipus who retains the upper-hand.
 < What you decide to take and what you decide to
> leave.  After the kiosk demonstration, Diotavelli says to Aglie, "Then
> you don't believe in numerology of any kind" and Aglie responds "On the
> contrary, I believe firmly.  I believe the universe is a symphony of
> numerical correspondences, I believe that numbers and thier symbolisms
> provide a path to special knowledge.  But if the world, below and above,
> is a system of correspondences where tout se tient, it's natural for the
> kiosk and the pyramid, both works of man, to reproduce in thier
> structure, uncounscioously, the harmonies of the cosmos".  The problem
> I've had in my communications with you, Vadim, (metaphorically speaking)
> is that you continue to insist that the correspondance between the kiosk
> and the sun and the pyramid is the most important structure in the story
> I'm telling about the relationships between, for example, me, you,
> writting, the list, John, Andrew, etc.  Yes we live in a world where
> lottery kiosks (fascism fo example) exist, but one of my side points
> from the beginning has been that lottery kiosks will have no power over
> us if we stop insisting that their measurments are inescapable becuase
> they show up again in the pyramid of Chiops, and the capital dome in
> Washigton D.C. and everything else we can buy at the Buy'n Fly on the
> corner.<

But that's what i was trying to articulate: so long as the impossibility
to avoid structure (Oedipus etc) is part of aour predicament as
human/speaking beings, to dwell upon it isn't productive, let's bracket
it, and it is this act which will produce the vacuum i speak of (BTW i
notice a sleight of hand on your part: at first you speak about original
chaos, and then it's the structure which becomes original, prior to our
appearance:
<THere
> is a pre-existing structure that we live in that no homages to vaccuum
> can get us out of--its called nature, or the universe, or the real world
> or whatever you care to call it.>: but you say that it's solely an act of selection/decision that matters: if i feel that vacuum is more important, how can you counter this AND remain true to your premises?)
>  Your solution, that we must begin from an absolute vacuum,
> rather than a space in which elements are already in contact with
> eachother, is largely a cop out, like the "perfect speach community" you
> likened some of my remarks to earlier.  Any vaccuum you create is
> already not a vaccuum, because it contains the idea of itself as its
> founding principle, which idea is itsels a responce to the need you see
> for it, thus its founding principle already presuppposes the elements of
> the surrounding universe it was creaed to avoid--thus it is already in
> the conflict you wished to use it to escape from.  If it is a natural
> void and not created for the purpose you propose, then it is even
> further implicated in the elemets of the universe it does not contain
> because it exists by not containing them.  To posit the vaccuum you have
> discussed in other posts (see below) as simply being without any of the
> problems I have posed above is no different than when Andrew posits that
> he is not a child, for which you rebuke him below:
> 
> > you follow the
> > leader/patient and simply say that you are NOT a child. but how could
> > you help being one?
> 
>         How can you help being a capitalist in our society?  You work, you
> spend, you consume, you do everything that most people associate with
> being a capitalist, as do I, and yet I (at least) claim I'm not a
> capitalist.  Why? because I have a different definition of what I do and
> why.  Like Andrew may have a different definition for the actions he
> takes in therapy that you categorize as "child".  Perhaps he's a
> detective, or a confused lover, or a priest, or a someone who can't ever
> figure out what s/he is.  All of these may contain a structure that you
> can point to and say "AHA!!  See!  Here is the child!  You see?!  It's
> just like I said, how could you help being one?"  But the child you pull
> out is no more at issue for Andrew than the lottery kiosk is at issue
> for the grad student studying the pyramids.   The obvious response, that
> I can't help being a capitalist in this society no mater how I care to
> define myself because capitalism permeates our society, is
> simultaneously equivalent with saying that the child must be at issue
> because of the leader/patient model you mentioned.  This response (not
> very) covertly  posits that models define their interiors, which D&G
> clearly reject (concepts lack meaning to the extent that they are not
> connected to a problem they solve or help to solve [approx. quote from
> WiP?]).  D&G posit fractals but you, Vadim,(I don't mean this the way it
> sounds, sorry) seek constantly to seal them under unities by which they
> can be manipulated  like symbols.  Michel Serres goes even further than
> D&G, he tries to think "the multiple as such.  Here's a set undefined by
> its elements or boundaries.  Locally, it is not individuated; globally
> it is not summed up.  So it's niether a flock, nor a school, nor a heap,
> nor a swarm, nor a herd, nor a pack.  It is not aggregate; it is not
> discrete.  It's a bit viscoous perhaps.  A lake under the mist, the sea,
> a white plain, background noise, the murmur of a crowd, time." (Genesis,
> pp. 4-5).  From this multiplicity you can form the shapes of any
> structure you care to and scream "See!! It's There!", but that very act
> of pulling it from the cloud is the beginning of its creation itself,
> where otherwise it might have been segmented by other formations pulled
> from the cloud cutting accross it, not unacknowledged, but unimbued, not
> unknown, but unempowered, not left to its own devices, but denied the
> combat which is its only life force.  Not nonviolence, but presense to
> which violence cannot be applied.<

 the fractals, then, are a matter of mimesis, of a perfect transcription
of the chaosmosis as it is? does not this mean to import wholesale
objectivity?
> 
> Here is that passage about vaccuum from another of your posts to which I
> refered earlier.
> 
> >this dependence on violence is the main deficiency: it's
> >the main fault for which deconstruction was rebuked (it needs a
> >pre-existent structure in order to set itself in motion. the same holds
> >for D/G who start IN THE MIDDLE, need two structures to provoke a
> >disjunctive clash, an event of meaning. so long as we retain this schema
> >violence is bound to appear.
> 
>         This assumes that clashes must inevitably lead to violence.  I don't
> believe it.  I don't believe that starting in the middle requires a
> provocation to bring about meaning, nor that starting in the middle is
> dependent upon violence, though both of these things may occur.  YOur
> statement above is thus yet another instance in which you shout "The
> STRUCTURE is there!!!!", while ignoring the (it seems to me) much more
> important observation that it need not be realized.  The main deficiency
> of deconstruction that I see is not so much that it needs a pre-existing
> structure in order to move, but that it moves only by attacking.  <
but the fundamental strategy of derrida (echoed by irigaray, butler
etc), the strategy of pharmakonizing is everything else than an attack:
it is a guerilla strategy of torture.


<  We live in it and philosophy and many
> other areas of thought exist between it and us.  Would you deny that
> meaning appears when we engage in relationships between ourselves and
> nature or other people or groups of people?  Where else does meaning
> come from if not from between things?  Yes, I do agree with D&G on
> this.  And yes, violence _IS_ bound to appear!  It is also bound to
> dissappear.  THe question is not one of how to banish violence forever
> (I've argued earlier that this cannot be done and that the attempt leads
> only back to violence itself), but one of how to relate to violence both
> before it is manifested and after.  How we relate to violence will
> determine the meaning it has in our lives.  Is it something to run away
> from?  Something to hide from?  Something to combat?  Something to
> fear?  Something to absorb and move on with/out?  Seeking the
> elimination of violence is either to combat it or to run away from it or
> to hide from it, while all the time assuming it is inevitable unless
> these escapes can be accomplished, and never knowing if they have been
> because the only evidence is the abscence of violence at every moment,
> and especially in those moments not yet past.
> 
> > why not try and start in the vacuum, in the
> >absolute , and not relativistic = D/G and D'r khora,non-place, why not
> >philosophize nihilistically/anarchistically, as a forgotten, and never
> >known for that, russian chap Shestov whom Deleuze tried to "ressurect"
> >in D&R, suggested?
> >vadim
> 
> About vacuum and gap, I hope I've been clear above.  I'd be interestd in
> any English or Spanish references to Shestov, I've heard of him before,
> but never read him. <

D/G read him in french, i do not know of english or spanish translation.
perhaps anybody does? (i heard rumours that a translation of Shestov
into the language of the aborigines of Papua New Guinea is forthcoming,
however)
 
> > oh yes, there's a way out: to discard the notion of
> > the unconscious , and it is this denial with which, as pointed out in my
> > essays with which the list members are by now sufficiently familiar, D/G
> > wind up.BTW, as another example of this conindrum,: you say that
> > rhizomatics comes to receive meaning after the fact,
> 
>         Disagree, rhizomes come to recieve meaning as the fact, with the fact,
> inspite of the fact, as a matter of the fact, for the fact, and after
> the fact only in that they are changed by the fact.

well, that's very dense and fine. if you can rebuke me only by taking
recourse to such discursive moves, then imay flatter myself  that i am
winning: the passage is, rhetorically, an analogue of an all-encompasing
over-inclusiveness which leads to nihilism: you say everything to say
nothing. whence the trouble with EXPRESSION D/G have.
> > >
> > > >btw, you inability to relate to the proposed = rhizome and soviet
> > > >ideology: okay, it DID not enrage you, can you relate to it on these
> > > >premises? and how can you deny this = since your interest is in effects,
> > > >actualizations of rhizome, and i've tried to show that soviets
> > > >actualized it?
> > >
> > > Yes, I understand that part. What I don't understand is how you conflate the
> > > soviet (totalitarian, and institutionalized/institutionalizing system of
> > > hierarchies, and so on--arborescent?) with the rhizome, and then claim that
> > > the soviets actualized a rhizome. Moreover, I'm not entirely sure that
> > > rhizomes are 'things' to be 'actualized' they are rather created as one
> > > goes, rather than pre-existing in some possible space and which are
> > > actualized like a tracing of a pre-existent drawing. However, perhaps I'm
> > > taking your idea of 'actualization' in directions unintended by your usage??
> > >
> > "actualization" was meant metaphorically to highlight awareness thatthe
> > soviets new nothing about D/G. you see, soviets were not arborescent BUT
> > rhizomatic: you know only the last part of the story, i suppose (i.e.
> > the fall of the soviet impire, its decadance), but for 50 years it was
> > full of living forces: take the 5-year plans which constantly went askew
> > in the manner of desiring-machines, take all the enthusiasm (which is
> > not a myth), i.e. desire of the people, in fact, despite the party's
> > attempts to control and rule and predict, soviet leaders (to say nothing
> > about such a worthy disciple as Mao) constantly acknowledged that they
> > only articulate the under-developed discourse of the people's
> > enthusiasm/desire: the party is a vanguard but at the same time an
> > arbitrary rear-guard. stalin and lenin always said that desire comes
> > first, the leaders only followed the actual leader: the desire of the
> > people. and no mistake about it!
> 
>         Do you really believe this about stalin, lenin and Mao?  They followed
> the desiers of the people?  Then you'd have to tell me which people, and
> which people they ignored, because no two people have exactly the same
> interests.  Certainly they didn't follow the desiers of the people
> killed in the varrious poggroms (SP?).  There was, I would venture to
> posit, a mutual and at least somewhat reciprocal selection process
> between whose desires the leaders followed and who followed the
> leaders.  And to put such adjectives on this process is probably much
> more blind than insigtfull, though I bow to your undoubtedly greater
> knowledge of societ history.  In China, I will most definetly dissagree,
> but that's for another time. . .<
yes, i mean exactly what i say: there was desire which lenin, stalin,
mao etc belatedly articulated. you say, they were not D/Gaean since they
accomplished a selection? okay, but then revolution is by definition an
act of selection, and if you deny its rhizomatics then you must admit
that rhizomatics proper is not revolutionary, has no political impact,
i.e. that D/G and revolution are incompatible. you say, that there are
only individuals each with its own desire: where has the im-personal,
presubjective stance gone, i wonder? we are returning to the human
rights of the subject, eh? "the people's desire" is a notion from D/G
rhizomatics. BTW the selection stalin accomplished was perfectly
humanistic, ironically, nearly prychoanalytic (the rascal was a great
admirer of dostoevsky): those who were sent to KZ's were given a chance
to convert: i.e. to do away with repression by which act "capitalists"
were believed to repress an "inner proletarian".
your friend, vadim