On the Realism of Manuel DeLanda (and Gilles Deleuze)
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Last Modified: January 5, 2008 Issue: November 2007 |
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Manuel DeLanda has often spoke at the European Graduate School as part of the Gilles Deleuze chair he holds there. The EGS publishes many of its lectures online, and a 2007 lecture DeLanda gave there dealing with Chapter 3 of Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus has made its way onto Youtube (for the lecture series, visit: youtube.com/watch?v=…).
The subject of this lecture dealt with Deleuze’s interest in the animal world, and why humans concerned only with the human world must expand the scope of their interests to the the ‘natural’ world in order to more fully experience the richness of life. As DeLanda notes, we must “learn from the world itself”, in order to ensure that our “pride of being human” doesn’t prevent the deeper experiences we have when relating with our environments. In short, we must try to be “like rocks, or like birds”. While I thoroughly agree with the principle of this position - that life itself should not, and cannot be limited to the human realm, that instead we must embrace the phenomenal diversity of the human experience - my point of critique is primarily methodological.
DeLanda begins by discussing ‘expressivity’ as a fundamental feature of the living and nonliving world. A crystal expresses its ‘crystalness’ regardless of human interaction when its molecules interact with light, when its molecules rest atop soil molecules, when it transforms the path of wind by its simple presence. This is a very attractive concept, and so encompassing (some might say ‘totalitarian’), that it is hard to disagree with. Indeed, I don’t wish to reject the concept of expressivity, if I do think the concept is a slightly clunky replacement for materiality. However, the use of ‘expressivity’ to account for this phenomena in ontology does imply, to me, something essential, something independent, something immanent.
And this is precisely what DeLanda states explicitly - he and Deleuze are realists precisely because they believe in the independence, one might say the isolation, of materiality. Things come from themselves, not from something else. It is hard to disagree with this point as well. We cannot say that the bourgeois make alienation, or that the sun makes cherry blossoms flower. To ‘make’ this extreme claim, one would have to tread towards dangerously close determinism. However, the other extreme (though not so distanced), that every aspect of materiality is independent and individual is equally worrisome. It is not an either/or question of ontology, but rather the space in between - the interactions, the interconnectedness, the inseparability of materiality.
This must apply to the human world as well, and therefore it is more than a little problematic to talk about these separate spheres of ‘animal’, ‘plant’, ‘geologic’ and ‘human’ as differentiated worlds (and within them, countless differentiations as well). They are deeply intertwined, contingent ’spheres’. And it is here where my point of contention with DeLanda (and probably, by extension, Deleuze) lies. I can accept this differentiation of ontology as existent, but this is where the ability to say more about our world, and indeed to experience that world, ends. The next step is a question of interpretation, and this is, since we are humans, a human endeavour.
It is easy to see how, through language, our interpretation of the world is constructed. But even our experiences, constantly vetted by our socialization, (or, if you prefer, environmentalization) and by our very ‘humanity’, are regulated in immensely complex and interdependent, but finite ways. Now, this is not to make a case for a highly complicated determinism. Rather it is to say that human action is contingent on the confluence of ontology and epistemology at any given moment. Thus, it is impossible, as humans, to talk about understanding the (non)lived experience of a crystal without referring to the contextuality of the human (but more often much more cultural, social, political and personal) experience.
One might present the teleological argument that humanity is full of potential that we must actualize, and I am not necessarily against this position directly. Human nature, the range of all possible human experience and expression is impossibly vast and entirely out the scope of my thinkable range to provide even a brief overview of it at this given moment, let alone at all temporal points. However, this vastness and the unpredictability of history makes these kinds of claims extremely difficult. It is always easy to look at an Oak tree and hold a seed and make the link, but much harder to predict from the seed what will emerge.
The point of all this is to say that the interconnections of our atoms that relate to form our psyches, whose manifestations relate to form our society which relate to form our humanity, which is itself only a small part of an interrelationship between our ecology, and so on, preclude us of making definite statements on the veracity of independent reality. What we are ultimately making statements about is our interpretation of this reality.
Thus, when DeLanda says “we must be more like a rock, or more like a bird”, what he is really saying is “we must be more like our personal and social human interpretation of the expressivity of ‘rockness’”. This might be a moot point to some, but it is a debate that is laden with power. The knowledge that we create when we express our experiences affects us in very real ways but it can only ever explain the power relations that actually “do” the shaping of our realities, since it is a product of these relations themselves. Simply, there may be a “truth” existing in the world, an absolute form of ‘rockness’ independent of individual or social subjectivity – that is, traditionally ‘objective’ – but it is unimportant, since we can never know it because our understanding of it will always be mediated by our surroundings.
Matthew Lymburner is an MA student at the Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University. He is interested in Brazilian history and political economy, and progressive politics worldwide.
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[De Landa] and Deleuze are realists precisely because they believe in the independence, one might say the isolation, of materiality. Things come from themselves, not from something else. It is hard to disagree with this point as well. We cannot say that the bourgeois make alienation, or that the sun makes cherry blossoms flower. To ‘make’ this extreme claim, one would have to tread towards dangerously close determinism. However, the other extreme (though not so distanced), that every aspect of materiality is independent and individual is equally worrisome. It is not an either/or question of ontology, but rather the space in between - the interactions, the interconnectedness, the inseparability of materiality.
I’m afraid you betray a misunderstanding of how De Landa situates and relates expressivity and materiality. The former does not replace the latter. Rather, they work along an axis that defines the elements that form ontological entities; what De Landa calls an ‘assemblage.’ Any entity that we claim to exist is emergent of the parts that make up its whole. These parts are certain properties and greater capacities that are exercised in assemblage. Each part should be understood in terms of their expressivity and/or their materiality within assemblage. My hand has the capacity for both as it can operate materially within the world but is also capable of expression (biting my thumb, giving the finger). These capacities are exercised within the assemblage and depend upon the other parts for their material-expressive contributions. Giving the finger requires an entire social history of engagement that has both constructed the meaning of the gesture and taught that meaning to myself and the gesture’s target. However, it also requires a biological history that has evolved the hand as a body part. That biological history also consists of both material and expressive elements as it draws on both the physical world that creates flesh and bone and the expression of genes.
De Landa’s assemblage theory is far from claiming a pure independence of the parts of physico-social assemblages. Rather what De Landa claims is a flat ontology of interlocking and overlapping assemblages that consist of both material and expressive features. Neither should be necessarily privileged but rather features of the assemblage should be identified in terms of its role in both. For more on this I recommend his work A New Philosophy of Society as well as his works Deleuzian Ontology[PDF] and New Ontology for the Social Sciences.
Looks like the PDF links aren’t working. I’ve uploaded A New Ontology for the Social Sciences here. A video lecture by DeLanda on the foundations for this new ontology (drawing from Deleuze), given at the European Graduate School, can be viewed here.
Haven’t you guys heard about the Deleuze and Guattari hoax? A Thousand Plateaus and Ani-Oedipus were basically computer-generated texts created by early IBM supercomputers. A small group of prankster philosophers from the Sorbonne teamed up with computer scientists and pulled off the biggest intellectual prank in the history of ideas. Have you ever noticed how the works of Deleuze and Guattari don’t really seem to make sense? It’s because they don’t. The texts are basically a recombination of twentieth century critical theory sent through a computer program based on cybernetic algorithms coded in geological and biological terminology. The team intentionally left clues to the joke in the structure of the writing itself. Take the whole Rhizome vs Tree thing. The notion of pitting botanical metaphors against each other is hilarious, especially as the foundation for a serious school of thought which claims to somehow speak beyond representational modes of analysis. Also, the idea of the double pincer as one of the key structures of the model - the pranksters included this as another clue, because double articulation is arboreal - that is how a tree grows, through the production of lateral branches in bifurcating forks, which undermines the rhizome schematics. Their sense of humour was too obscure, though, and they were amazed to see great thinker after great thinker gobble up the work and start preaching it like a religion. As a huge breakthrough in thinking. And it is. A good joke was exactly what philosophy needed at the end of the 20th century.
There is more information on this at www.play-your-guattari-good.com. The domains for these sites are constantly changing though, so you may have to try a French search engine. The cover-up runs really deep.
“Haven’t you guys heard about the Deleuze and Guattari hoax? A Thousand Plateaus and Ani-Oedipus were basically computer-generated texts created … engine. The cover-up runs really deep.”
haha.. Josh, didn’t you know? - It’s already the Age of Spiritual Machines.
I don’t think Deleuze and Guattari’s works are computer fabrications - though I can see why the opaque language they use inclines people to believe that - but you could question, as does Richard Dawkins in his review of Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont’s 1998 book Intellectual Impostures, their political purpose. Personally, when we couple Deleuze’s concept of immanence with the kind of dense and elitist philosophy that he is engaged in, I am disquieted by the repercussions for accessibility and equality that this leads to. If Deleuze seeks to influence - but not judge - the kinds of micropolitics people carry out in their quest to realize their creative potential, just who is he targeting? In any event, the kinds of questions that Deleuze seeks to answer, whether computer generated or carefully plotted, whether in full seriousness or in farce, are deeply pointed, and deserve the attention of anyone interested in philosophy, politics, and social theory. On a lighter note, there is a good site which does employ the techniques you describe. I think there is slightly more meaning, both in substantive philosophical concepts and in sentence structure in Deleuze and Guattari’s work than in these.
The first Deleuze I ever read was A Thousand Plateaus. Rather, I should say the first Deleuze I ever looked at. At the time I dismissed it as, at best, poetry or, at worst, gobbledy-gook. Then I read De Landa’s A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. The brilliance of the book, which included a clarification of some of Deleuze’s concepts led me to reconsider his work. However, rather than again trying to scale the Plateaus I went back to his earlier monographs. In particular, I read Empiricism & Subjectivity. Although it was incredibly difficult I immediately knew that there was substance. After getting through the book I was left seriously impressed and prepared to give the man another chance. While I too question the necessity of the writing, Deleuze’s collaborations with Guattari need to be understood in the context of his earlier works which are more classic works of philosophy. In particular, his ideas on the nature of reason and creativity can be seen enacted within the Capitalism & Schizophrenia works. He is working with a different mode of reason. Dawkins is a believer in eternal Truths; there is a single, acceptable mode of reason. D&G tried to work outside what he considered acceptable (although notice that Sokal and Bricmont did not discuss What Is Philosophy?, which is again much more classic philosophy) and are therefore to be dismissed. While I think it their self-assigned task is presumptuous, so too is that of a staid contemporary science that denies the history of its own thought. I think the works of Ian Hacking and David Bohm - two scientists turned philosophers who, like Deleuze, accept the changing modes of reason and the role of human/social creativity - are far more insightful and useful than either those of die-hard rationalists like Sokal and Dawkins.
So, in response to these posts. I watched DeLanda on Utube, and hope to read him one day. I trust that his writings will be more illuminating than his talks. What struck me in his lecture was how far removed his language was from the texts which served as his subject. He speaks of rhizome thought in a very unrhizomatic language. In so doing he seems to fall victim to the semantic problems which Deleuze and Guattari set out to solve by developing their own way of writing and thinking. In other words, DeLanda didn’t really seem to be talking about Deleuze at all, he was talking about himself, his own point of view, and these views seemed more related to his preoccupations with the environment than to understanding Deleuze and Guattari. It seems to me that the best analysis of Capitalism and Schizophrenia would speak in the Deleuzian tongue, which I assume DeLanda must in his writing, and thus his onstage effort was just an example of how difficult it is to address about these issues without constantly editing one’s thoughts.
What Troy and Matthew say about reading earlier works is so true. Deleuze’s analysis of Bergson is another example…you can see the ideas forming, and perhaps these early ideas are vital for an understanding of later ones. I jumped right in with A Thousand Plateaus and have been stuck there ever since.
Eliot, what you write scares me. Just what sort of programming work are you into these days? Spiritual Machines?
And now to Troy’s comment that Capitalism and Schizophrenia seemed to be “at best poetry” when he first read it. This reminded me of the ancient conflict between the poets and philosophers, which is an offshoot of the argument between imagination and rationality. Many seminal works of philosophy are actually deeply poetic. I think of Plato’s cave allegory in The Republic, for instance, remembering somebody once saying that Plato was a poet who just didn’t know it.
The philosopher has a highly developed rational self, which disregards anything that is perceived as being merely poetically symbolic, or loosely metaphoric, or unformed/malformed. Plato’s criticism of poets and artists is by extension a criticism of his own artistic tendencies. Maybe works that are masterfully rational don’t last because rational constructs can always be picked apart (of course I am using the term “rational” loosely here).The big works of philosophy that last are frequently opaque, and slippery, impossible to pin down using common modalities. In this sense, they are poetic, constructed in an open language (open in the sense that their closedness lends itself to reinterpretation.) Thus people can make their careers by extrapolating upon this openness, and interpreting the texts like they would a poem.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is another example. The Blue Book by Wittgenstein another. A big book by a big philosopher frequently fuses the rational mind and the imagination and draws upon the chaos that underlies the egoless self. Perhaps this is the spot where several disciples merge.
What the conspirator pranksters at the Sorbonne got wrong was really a huge right. Rhizome, Tree, metaphor, psychology - all these things are the basis for philosophy, and, instead of waking people up to the fact that the text was fake, actually caused people to think more highly of the work and rally around its authenticity.
Josh,
If you are looking for writing in the style of Deleuze in DeLanda you will be a tad disappointed. Although you can see some influence of the plateaus in A Thousand Years, DeLanda’s writing is far more traditional. He does this intentionally. I cannot recall where he says it, but he once said that Deleuze writes as though he doesn’t care if he is understood or not; it took 400 years to understand Spinoza, so what if it takes 400 more to understand his works. However, DeLanda says, we don’t have 400 years. We need Deleuze’s ideas put into practice now. That is why he grounds them in some of the problematic modes of thought of which Deleuze was critical. I fully agree with his decision to do so. If he hadn’t, I doubt I ever would have come to Deleuze and seen what there is of value in his work. Others should certainly push the forms of thought as Deleuze did with Guattari. However, we cannot simply wildly deterritorialise, as Deleuze himself says. DeLanda is trying to grasp onto the fleeing thought of Deleuze and hitch Western scientific thought to it not in order to ground the former, but rather to wrench, twist and transform the latter.