Nietzschean Assemblage Theory or How to Philosophize with Duct Tape

1:Word Association
Let's play a word association game.
I say Nietzsche. You say what?

For most its 'God is dead' and all that other highschool cottage industry run of the mill run of the mouth run amok slop you'd expect from a new age atheist (secular protestant) wearing a fedora. Or perhaps its the silly diatribes - he was a fascist, a megalomaniac, an idiot - that you would expect from, well, a new wave theist (secular protestant) wearing a fedora.

Say you're not a new age atheist (secular protestant) or new wave theist (secular protestant). I say Nietzsche. You say...? Hopefully things like "How to Philosophize with a Hammer" and "Why I Am So Clever?" Ok. I know what you're thinking. I've rigged the game here. These are the things I want to talk about anyways. Yes. This is because I am so clever.

2:Why I Am So Clever
I've been at this blog for about 7 months and am beginning to reflect on my work and its limited reception (lowest views on a piece 25, highest 755). I think to myself the following questions:

• 'why should people read my blog? 
• 'what does it offer?' 
• 'what makes it stick out in the marketplace of ideas?' 

I narcissistically answer myself

'because my work shows the power of the mind's faculty for synthesis. I pull together disparate and heterogeneous elements that at a glance appear not to relate, not to be connected, and I connect them with my own internal narrative organizational power.' 

That is, in my work there are connections that do not seem readily apparent but when strung together  interesting things emerge (Smash Mouth and cultural collapse. Energy drinks and Nick Land. Early 2000s PBS Kids television programming and accelerationism. Tim Heidecker, Martin Heidegger, and Franco-linguistic drift. Andrew Yang and Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Deleuze, Guattar, Lyotard, Moldbug, Land, and Fisher. OJ Simpson, Orange is the New Black and Joker. China, Horror Videogames, and feces and Hegel, etc. to name a few). Gone is the model of making well reasoned arguments for 'real' 'objective' connections between objects, in is the model of the subject using its power to create objects out of part objects.

I continue to reflect and then I get to thinking this is philosophizing with a hammer. Instead of reacting to something, I'm interested in creating something (what Felix Guattari in an interview compares to using semiotic material in the same way one uses Legos, what he terms an assemblage of enunciation). This is why I am so clever. I hammer things together that don't seem to fit in an attempt to make something new, even if it is a Frankensteinian monster (and is not horror that which ruptures us from our dogmatic slumber and forces us into the real?). But is this connecting of seemingly disparate elements the work of a hammer or some other tool?

3:How to Philosophize with Duct Tape or The Use and Abuse of Guattari-Deleuze
(Bigger section here means 3 subparts).

3a:Hammer Time
But first - when philosophizing how exactly do you use the hammer? And on what does one use it on? Nietzsche writes

"To pose questions here with a hammer for once, and maybe to hear in reply that well-known hollow tone which tells of bloated innards—how delightful for one who has ears even behind his ears—for me the old psychologist and pied piper, in whose presence precisely what would like to stay quiet has to speak up...eternal idols that are touched here with the hammer as with a tuning fork..."

The psychologist bangs the the 'ole thing around to see what its really made of. To see what it says when its poked and prodded (and here we see the early roots of psychoanalysis...Freud's ruthless interrogative method and it's softer cousin Teddy Reik's 'listening with the third ear'). The hammer is the perfect tool for this aesthetic act - if the object is weak the hammer smashes through its defenses and then builds them back up so that it may be strong. If the object is already strong the hammer recoils from the surface of the strike and the object rings out its true tone, that which is immutable, apodictic. The first is dismantling values and voices that aren't your own (neurosis) but you think are your own (superego), the second is getting to the core of your real values and experiences in life (appropriate ego strength in relation to the instincts and transvaluation of values, health).

3b:Assemblage Theory
That's the early Freudian psychoanalytic method. Later comes Bion, a British Kantian who grew up in India, with his theories of knowledge and internal mental synthesis. For Bion, unlike Freud, the analyst does not smash through defenses, he understands them and tries to connect the often disconnected dots that patients bring to the session. In short, the Bionian analyst makes sense out of  (alpha function) nonsense (beta elements) so that the patient can use that sense (alpha elements) to further explore their nonsense (non psychotic sense of self in the world).

In Deleuze and Guattari's terms this feedback cycle of sense and nonsense would be called 'de- and re-territorialization' while the subject or ego that composes this process or is composed of this process would be called 'an assemblage of eunciation' or 'desiring machine' (this is not to conflate the terms but to move quickly and not get stuck in details better left to the real philosophers as opposed to me, a mere psycho-social-analyst). Similarly, for Deleuze and Guattari - who were polemically referred to as 'old Kantians' -the concept of synthesis holds an important position in their larger assemblage theory.

So Assemblage, Desiring Machine, and Synthesis are all connected. Let's carelessly rush through these concepts.

An assemblage is a grouping together or collection of heterogeneous components or, in other words, pulling together things that don't seem to go together and seeing how they go together and what they produce. It is, like a desiring machine, a meeting place between organic and inorganic milieus that produces a new effect. It is not reducable to its parts and in fact creates new properties whose emergence is wholly dependent on the particular parts assembled or synthesized.

Active synthesis is an adjustment to Kant's passive synthesis. The object world imprints its experiences onto us and as an organism with mental faculties and certain senses we put the pieces together (beta, alpha, and alpha function mentioned above). As I put it when explaining this to students - have you ever tried to actively not make sense out of all the stuff that comes your way? Probably not. We're always already making sense (unless we're psychotic).

In addition to passive and active synthesis there is connective, conjunctive, and disjunctive synthesis.

• connective = if...,then
• conjunctive = and
• disjunctive = or

Let's put these concepts to work in relation to a person and its biological, psychological, and social existence. Connective synthesis is the most primal and basic act of investing libido (attention, energy, whatever) in an object. If I invest then I get something I need to survive or feel good in return - 'If I suck at the breast then I will get satiated.' Conjunctive is left over energy - 'if I suck at the breast then I will be satiated, and then, in addition to the breast, I can use my left over energy to explore or play with a toy (or, I can suck on the breast and also want to be like daddy).' Disjunctive is 'If I suck at the breast then I will be satiated, and in addition to the breast I can also want to explore or play with a toy, or I could go to sleep, or I could play with my toes, or I...'

Furthermore, disjunctive synthesis, put generally based on my reading of D and G, is also a relationship wherein a ‘not’ or a ‘lack’ is a connection through inclusive disjunction as opposed to a ‘not-being’ or non-existent, that is, a negation or exclusive disjunction. The difference between 'A' and the constant ‘is-not-like A’ is a very existent thought, feeling, or behavior which requires a preexistent ‘A is like A’ which is secondarily negated. In other words, it’s not a negative or a gap, it’s a positive connection through two different objects being brought together.

3c:Duct Tape

The tl;dr here is that I am so clever because I apply D and G's assemblage theory - which is thought to be abstract, silly jargon, etc. - to direct, shared cultural experiences in a meaningful way that goes beyond itself. In other words, my work which I listed above - Smash Mouth, PBS Kids, Tim Heidecker, French Language, OJ Simpson, Accelerationism, etc. - is a collection of heterogeneous components (beta elements) which I've first passively experienced (passive synthesis) and then actively pulled together through theoretical thinking and enjoyment (active synthesis / desire / alpha function) into meaningful connections (alpha elements) the effects or outcome of which amount to more than the sum of their parts (generative feedback as in a diagram or hyperstition). This is not necessarily the work of a hammer - or just the hammer - but of duct tape. I smash things together that don't belong and then heavily apply the duct tape to keep 'em together. 

an duct tape assemblage someone should probably alert the authorities about...

The accepted but somewhat cringe quip about duct tape is that it's the modern fix-all tool, so it is somewhat fitting that a tough fabric (interwoven heterogeneous micro particles) based adhesive that is often used to build or repair things would (sort of but not really) replace the hammer (duct tape is certainly the millennial hammer).

In fact, the very nature of duct tape is itself an assemblage. Consider the following:

"In the 1940s, the tale goes, the US military asked Johnson & Johnson to come up with 'a waterproof, strong cloth based tape that could keep moisture out of ammunition cases.' The tape J&J produced was (allegedly) called “duck tape,” either because its cloth base was cotton duck (a plain-weave fabric, lighter than canvas) or because it repelled water (as in 'off a duck’s back'). 'Duck tape,' by this account, became 'duct tape' only during the postwar building boom, when its chief use became taping heating ducts" (Tale of the Tape).

The military commissions what is essentially a health care company composed of a family of businessmen to make a new kind of adhesive. Different industries with different aims and their flows of money connect over different needs and desires and produce a shared physical object. The general public then utilizes this object in a way that is different than the way the first two parties intended. The function of the object drifts and along with its function the signs and system of signs tied to the function and object (in Marxian terms, use value of material becomes commidity fetish). War ends, needs change, and Duck turns into Duct.

Conclusion

So why read my blog? 

Because I make theory (fictions) real in interesting ways (and have totally unneeded conclusion sections) and, in addition to offering a model that I believe is more condusive to any other model for understanding others and the Outside, this very way of thinking is important to living in an enjoyable and healthy way while also actively creating a world that one would want to live in.

 

Joker (and its relation to the unconscious)

Abstract: In this text I examine the recent film Joker through a psychoanalytic perspective. The text uses theoretical and clinical thinking and begins by addressing the form of the film - its genre, its intended viewer, its place in culture - before moving onto the content, that is, the stuff that's actually in the film.The primary points argued are:

• Ontological / Sexual difference not simple difference: The film is in large about the irreducible ontological difference that is evoked through deep psychoanalytic encounters with regressed individuals and how these primitive states translate into later developmental states. 
• Preoedipal not oedipal: Part of this means that Joker or Arthur Fleck is at a preoedipal stage of development, and therefore closer to a schizophrenic than anything else, but appears as if he was having an oedipal conflict. 
• Apolitical not Political: The consequence of this position is that Joker/Fleck is not a political subject as political thought and action can only meaningfully take place, as far as intent and conceptualization is concerned, on oedipal levels of development. Rather, Joker's inarticulate apolitical rage is appropriated by populists with their own political aims.

Index: 
1: Introduction or Bowling for Gotham - What Genre Are You / What Viewer Am I 
2: Form -  Imaginary Other, Assemblage of Enunciation, Counter/Transference, and Object Relations / Sexual Difference and Ontological Gap / Language and Affect 
3: Content - A Schizo Out For A Walk...(One Or Several Theories) / Emotionally Dysregulated Adolescents 
4: Conclusion or Watchmen, De Niro, and Orange "OJ The Juice" is the New Black Simpson 

Yang and Guattari: Yang's Molecular Revolution

In an interview in Japan of 1980 Guattari had the following to say:

"...the mass media can move in two directions: it can become self-unified, crushing, translatable over the entire world into the same languages and sentiments...or, on the contrary, it can help to make sense of what language is, what behavior is, what the desire of a particular group is..." (pg. 30)

That is, media networks can be used to

• A: to reterritorialize / overcode - make things similar, singular, unified, homogenized, etc. - and in doing so strengthen superficial connections between molar (or macro) entities, what Guattari elsewhere referred to as Integrated World Capitalism (a friend and I were just discussing Facebook's IWC global take over as well as Nick Land's discussion with Justin Murphy where he remarks how interesting it is that the cyber[schiz]punk culture of the 80s and 90s gets reterritorialized by 'face' book -i.e. D and G's facialization...). 

• or B: to deterritorialize / scramble codes, that is, employ the reterritorialized media structure as a stimuli to induce deterritorialization (in Guattari's case, he uses the radio, a centralized media organ, to 'amplify' or 'give voice to' - to use somewhat cringey contemporary terminology - . the very notions of decentralization, that is, its decentralized content (radio program) and decentralized form (the radio itself being a re purposed tool...).

Part of what this means, as Guattari emphsizes by saying 'make sense of what something is,' is getting at the underlying ontological nature of all this stuff - the absolute deterritoliazed strata, a sort of prebiotic soup of possibilities that exists in a raw and virtual state before being articulated and reduced into binary strata later on. This manifests as what people really want, and the possible combinations of things that can happen when people are in touch with what they really want (I speak somewhat clinically and ultimately very briefly on these matters in terms that are not intended to be taken as strictly technically). Or, in other words, acceleration (or at least one possible conceptualization of it...).

Guattari goes on

"We should not...be satisfied with the Marxist division of exchange value and use value...we must introduce two additional forms of value; 'value of desire' as well as...'machinic values.' And exchange values should reflect these values of desire and machinic values."

So, the typical Marxist concepts - the actual use of a thing (in touch w/ the real material conditions) and then its bastardized decoded and relative relation to other things in lieu of its use (CMC) - don't get us far enough. We need to posit a creative base material desire beneath these. I won't use more theory or Guattari ultimately, to show why this is case, but will shortly refer to something else as an example... For now, back to Guattari.

He continues

"Machinic values are values of creation...a technological innovation or scientific equation will take its value from the register of exchange values if it can be found useful in the immediate process of production. But there are also values of aesthetic and scientific creation that do not have an immediate effect on exchange values and which, for this reason, actually deserve to be financed. Machinic values and values of desire are things that should be aligned with exchange value in the same way as any other use values [my italics]. For example, the work of women at home or the work of children at school....machinic values and values of desire do not depend upon the scarcity of goods...what I call the perspective of a 'molecular revolution' " (pg. 31).

What matters here (at least for now) are not the particular ins and outs of these theoretical moves, but the general idea that Marxism does not bring us far enough because it doesn't grasp desire in the least, and that in order to maintain any sort of 'revolutionary' 'change' desire needs to be linked up in a very real material way to the mechanisms that will achieve the so called revolution (an is over an ought).

It's like I said in my Yanged Noumena: Why Andrew Yang is an Accelerationist and Why It Matters -
Yang "engineers environments that will create organic relations conducive to the kind of relationships that will ignite desire; he aligns interests, connects excitements, attaches flowers of desire to one another, all through money as a third party connector."

This is no mere coincidence. Look again. Everything Guattari says in this last passage reads like the rhetoric in Andrew Yang's campaign.

• Tech, like automation, locks into capitalist efficiency loops thus reorganizing production such as regular middle class work ("a technological innovation or scientific equation will take its value from the register of exchange values if it can be found useful in the immediate process of production").

• Yet there are things that, lying neglected outside of the values or incentives of capitalist efficiency, can, if attached to the capitalist engine or desire, be integrated into capitalism in a way that can generate new ideas and ways of existing with others out of old structures, i.e. the sort of left accelerationist rhetoric ("there are also values of aesthetic and scientific creation that do not have an immediate effect on exchange values and which, for this reason, actually deserve to be financed").

• This is of course done by using capitalism to incentivize revolutionary or anti-capitalist things or in the least things which were neglected by capitalism ("Machinic values and values of desire are things that should be aligned with exchange value in the same way as any other use values") such as - and Yang and Guattari unanimously agree here - the work of woman, the experiences of children, and sort of health family relations. 

I.e., what if we connected desire to politics in a meaningful way and created a capital loop that takes desire into consideration? Molecular Revolution!

...

If the reader takes anything from this piece its that Yang in 2020 is embodying Guattari from 1980 (and lets remember that Guattari died in 1992, the same year Nick Land publishes his first book... It is interesting to remind one's self that Nick Land and D and G were alive and producing thought at the same time for a short period...). I think it really is an interesting time to be alive where such an interesting candidate (whether or not we fully agree with him or think he will win) seems to unconsciously embody strange theoretical and practical notions from polarized and weird thinkers of the present and past.