Spinoza' RED NOSE!!!

For the past two weeks, the media were busy for the Red Nose day. Whichever
channel you turn, the red thingy nose appeared squeaking its tale. Images of
the nose colonised the fragmented bodies (poor, homeless, aged ppl, famine).
These images became the translating machines for linking the bodies onto the
body of the capital.  

At Warwick University (UK), this Saturday, Spinoza in his One Day Research
Workshop had to fatten his red nose. No more squeaking!! He presented his
body as an immanence for an alternative translation that could make a
difference to our present intellectual effort. PhD students, post-graduates
and graduates, in total of 25 persons, came over with bodies of affect to
work out the generosity of Spinoza. A number of interesting presenters,
(John Appleby, Aislinn O'Donnell, Debi Kenny, Mogen Laerke, Michael Eardly
and perhaps Francisco!?) settled their nomadic move, after loosing two
friends of them (Jeff Rodman and John Sellars), to speak out the various
influential aspects of Spinoza.

Spinoza brought his virtual mirrors and territorialised them. He wore his
spectacles. Too much time spent on grinding a proper glass. It did not fit
with his flatten red nose. The nomadic settlers, each at a time, were very
eagerly enthusiastic to help Spinoza unfold his modifications. After a long
journey in the desert, the thickened dusts on the virtual mirrors were wiped
out. 

There had to be a start from where one was. John Appleby, a key organisor of
the workshop, presented his paper 'Immanent Bodies; Spinoza'. Cheerfully and
carefully, he outlined Spinoza's theory of bodies. His friendship with
Spinoza, a two years of thesis work, tamed the hectic night spent in
preparing the paper after realising that Jeff Rodman could not turn over.
The paper's aim  was to produce a materialist theory of subjectivity. Within
such outline, Kant's idea of subjectivity became an inferior one that did
not have a set up for a true politics of difference. This was because of the
Kantian tendencies for adopting a universalizable moral law. 

Wearing her casual cloth, with a posture of insight, Aislinn O'Donnell
substituted Spinoza's lenses, one with a Deleuze-Guattarian while the other
with a Simondonian. She managed in the paper with the title ' Spinoza,
Simondon, and the Virtual, to convince Spinoza for the necessity of such
substitute if his virtual mirrors had to be profused with becomings. Slowly,
though the ideas were weaved with tired tone, she reflected on the processes
of individuation, arguing that in such a reflection there is a concept of
virtuality.  

Coming from outside Warwick University, outside the D&Guattari's loop,
Spinoza listened carefully to his voice in Debi Kenny's paper ' Freedom and
Subjectivity in Spinoza'. In resonance with many themes John Appleby
introduced previously, Debi, interrogatively and intelligently, produced her
specific account about the Spinoza's importance in breaking with the
philosophy of subject centrism. Ethics as an activity and endeavour
displayed through the conatus was advocated as a point of difference, a
becoming real through the knowledge of the infinite. Such Spinozist adequate
knowledge could be a path through which the individual autonomy is displaced
with a non-unified subjectivity, an idea of self as a work of production and
self-realisation.

Another outside speaker, a very consistent illustrator tinted with French
accent, Mogens Laerke presented the final paper, 'The Voice and The Name:
Spinoza in the Badioudian Critique of Deleuze'. Spinoza was enjoying and
appreciating the effort of Mogens' child minding the monstrous children that
Deleuze and Badiou brought up. Unfortunately, Spinoza's glass grinding job
could not afford to pay Mogens. At all costs, Mogens was happy with what he
had done to Spinoza. He brought forth appropriation of Spinoza in the
vitalistic foundations of Deleuze in comparison to the Badioudian
mathematical ontology of 'cold constellations' in "La Clameur de L'Etre" and
" Court Traite de L'ontologie Transitore". In particular the signification
of the term of univocity and the question of 'naming' were the heart of this
controversy. 

A tribunal court, a round table discussion, was held. A moment, Spinoza was
afraid of. Is Spinoza useful today or not? Spinoza did not want to answer.
He gave his body, not to become striated. Spinoza wanted to flee, there were
plenty of things to do. Nobody knows what Spinoza's body can do. Michael
Eardley's robotics affects and Fransisco??'s ethical politics (Unfornately I
forgot his name)were flashing signs that the settling was not a matter of
striation but just a moment of waiting, a passage way to see what the body
can do.

With the sunset, Spinoza did not have any other choice except to leave us
with more questions than answers.   

amd