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Towards a New Vocabularv

Machine and Structure'

The distinction I am proposing betweenmachine and structure is based solely on the way we use the words; we may considerthat we are merely dealingwith a 'written device'of the kind one has to invent for dealingwith a mathematical problem.or with an axiom that ma1'have be reconsidered to at a particular stageof development, againwith the kind of machinewe shall or be talking about here. I want therefore make it clearthat I am putting into parentheses lact to the from its structuralarticulations and, that, in realitv,a machineis inseparable conversely, that each contingentslructure is dorninated(and this is what I want to demonstrate) a systemof machines, at the very leastby one logic by or machine.It seems me vital to start by establishing distinctionin order to the of to make it easierto identif,v peculiarpositions subjectivityin relationto the events and to history.2 We may say of structurethat it positions elements way of a systemof its by references rel.tes eachone to the others,in such a wav that it can itselfbe that relatedas an elementto other structures. The agent of action, whose definition here does not extend beyond this principle of reciprocal determination, is included in the structure. The structuralprocessofde-totalized totalizationencloses subject,and will the

r . l n i t i a l l y i n t e n d e dl o r t h e F r e u d i a n S c h o o li n P a r i s i n r 9 6 9 , a n d p u b l s h e d i n C h a n g en o . t e , ( S e u i l )r, 9 7r . r. To adopt the categories suggested Gilles Deleuze,structure, in the sensein which I am using by it here, would relate to the generality characterized by a posirion oiexchange or substitution of p a r t i c u l a r i t i c sw h e r e a st h e m a c h i n e w o u l d r e l a t e t o t h e o r d e r o f r e p e t i t i o n ' a s b e h a v i o u ra n d , '1D viewpoint rel a t ive to a singul ari ty tha t can not be changedor replaccd' fJ,ire.nu ripitition,Presses et Universitaires de France, I 969, p. 7). Of Deleuze's three minimum conditions determining strucrurein general, I shall retain only the first two: (r)Theremustbeatleasttwohetcrogeneousseries,oneofwhichisdefinedasthesignifierandrhe orheras the signi6ed. (c) Each of these series is made up of terms that exist oni1, through their relationship with one another. His third condition, 'tx,o heterogeneous seriesconvergingupon a paradoxical element that actsso as to di{lerentiare them', relates,on thc contrary, exclusivelyto the order of the machine (Logique du s a r oM i n u i t , t 9 6 9 , p . 6 3 ) . ,

I 12 f'owards a Nerv Vocabularv n o t l e rs o a s l o n ga si t i s i n a p o s r t i o no r e c u p e r a t ie w i t h i n a n o t h e r t r u c t u r a l t t s determinatior.r. 'fhe e { n r a c h i n eo n t h eo l h e r h a n d ,r e m a i n s s s e n t i a l lrv m o t e i o m t h e a g e n t , e 'fhe -fe o{ action. somer,r,here sLrbject alrval,s is else. mporaiizationpenetrates the machineon all sidesand can be related to it onl,vzrfter the lashionof an n a fr e v e n r T h e e m e r g c n c o l ' t h ci n a c h i n e r a r k s d a t e ,a c h a n g ec l i f l e r e n t o m a , e , structLlral representatiolr. 'fhe history of technologvr.sdated bv the existence each srageol a ar o t s t a i ) a r t i c u i a r 1 ' p e f ' n i a c h i n e ih e h i s t o r \o f t h e s c j e n c eis n o w r e a c h i n g p o i n t , i n a l l i t s b r a n c h e sw h e r e e v c r vs c i e n t i 6 c h e o r ) ' c a nb e t a k e na s a m a c h i n e , t rzrthel than a strlicture, rl'hich relates it to the order of ideoiogr'.Everv (almostto the point by machineis the negation.the destro;-er ir-rcorporation o f e x c r e t i o n ) o f ' t h e r n a c h i n e t r e p l a c e sA n d i t i s p o t e n t i a l l ,iv a s i m i l a r i . n , r e l a t i o n s h i po t h e m a c h i n et h a t w i l l t a k ei t s p l a c e . t Yesterdav'smachine, today's and tomorrow's, are not reiated in their structur?11 determinations: by onlv by a process historicalanal;-srs, referof r:ncetr) a signifling chain extrinsic to the machine, bv what u,e mrght call historical structur;rlism, can we gain anv overail grasp of the ei}'ects of c o n t i n u i t v . e l r o - a c t i o n n d i n t e l l i n k i n st h a t i t i s c a p a b l e f ' r e p r e s e n t i n g . r a o For the rnachrne, the subjectof history is elsewhere, the structure. In in I z r c tt,h e s u b j e c o f t h e s t r u c t u r ec o n s i d e r eid i t s r e l a t i o n s h i o f a l i e n a t i o no t . n p t trf ;1s,vstem cle-totalized totalizarion.shouid rather be seenin relation ro a of-'being ego'- the egoherebeingin contrastwrth the sub.ject an ;;'henorrrcnon o i ' t h e t r n c o n s c i o ua s i t c o r r e s p o n d so t h e p r i n c i p l es t a t e d b y L a c a n : a t s s i q n i 6 e r - r e n r e s e n t sb r a n o t h e rs i g n i f i e rT h e u n c o n s c i o us u b j e c t s s u c h i l . s a will bc on the same side as the machrne,or better perhaps.alongside the T r n a c h r r r c .h e r ei s n o b r e a ki n t h em a c h i n e t s e l f : h e b r e a c h s o n e i t h e r s i d e f i t i o
lt.

Machine and Structure I l3 In this sense, worker'salienationto the machineexclude him lrom any the s kind of structuralequilibrium, and puts him in a positionwhere he is as close as possibleto a radical svstemof realignment,rve might sav of castrarion, wherehe losesall tranquillity, all 'sellconfirming'security,all thejustificarionofa'senseofbelonging'to a skilledtrade.Suchprolessional bodiesasstill like doctors,pharmacists, lawyers,aresirnplysurvivals exist, or from the days of pre-capitalist productionrelations. This changeis ofcourseintolerable; instirutionalproductiontherefore sets out to concealwhat is happening by setting up systemsof equivalents, of imitations.Their ideologicalbasis is to be lound not solely in fascist-type, paternalistic slogansabout work, the lamily and patriotism,but alsowithin thevariousversionsofsocialism (evenincluding the most apparentlyliberal like the Cuban), w,ith their oppressive ones, myth of the model worker, and theirexaltationof the machinewhosecult has much the samefunctionas that o l t h e h e r oi n a n t i q u i t y . As cornpared with the work done by machines, work of human beingsis the nothrng. This working at 'nothing', in the specialsense w,hichpeopledo it in todav,r,vhich tends more and more to be merely a response a machineto pressing red or black button to producean effectprogrammedsomewhere a else human work, in other words, is only the residuethat has not yet been integrated into the w'orkof the machine. Operations performed by workers, techniciansand scientistswill be absorbed, incorporated into the workings of tomorrow's machine; to do something over and over no longeroffersthe securityofritual. It is no longer possible identif. the repetition human actior.Is ('the noble task of the to of with the repetitionof the natural cycleas the loundationolthe moral sower') order.Repetitionno longer estabiishes man as someonewho can do that a particularjob.Human work today is merelya residualsub-whole the work of of the machine. Tfris residual human activity is no more than a partial procedure that accompanies central procedureproducedby the order of the The machinehasnow cometo theheartofdesire, and thisresidual the machine. humanwork represents more than the point of the machine's imprint no 'a'3). onthe imaginary world of the individual (cf. Lacan's functionof the - in the sphereof scientificresearch, exampleEverv new discovery lor moves acrossthe structuralfieid oftheorv like a w,armachine,upsettingand rearranging everythingso as to changeit radically.Even the researcher at is themercyof this process. His discoveries extendlar beyondhimself,bringing in their train u,holenew branches ofresearchers, and totally redesigning the treeof scientificand technological implications.Even when a discoveryis called its author's name, the result,far lrom 'personalizing' by him, tends to
Ohjelpetil 3. SeeGlossar.v, 'a'.

The indir.'idual's relationto the machinehas beendescribed sociologists bv Friedn-rann one of lundamentalalienatjon, fi>llowing as This is undoubtedl,v true ii one considersthe individual as a structure for totalization of the irnasirarl'. But the dialecticof the mastercraftsmanand the apprenticeJ rhe r.,ld picrurcsof the clillelenttradesflourishingin dillerenrpartsof the countrv, in ail this has becomemeaningl.ess the faceof modern mechanized industry ics tlrat rcqLlires skilled rvorkersto start lrom scratchagain ru'irh evel'\'new technoltrgical advance But doesnot this startingliom scratchmark precisely . that essentiai breakthroughthat characterizes unconscious the subject? Initiation into a trade and becomingaccepted a skilledrvorkerno longer as takes piace by wav of institutions,or at least not those envisaged such in s t a t e m e n t s s ' t h e s k i . l lh a s p r e c e d e n co v e r t h e m a c h i n e ' ,W i t h i n d u s t r i a l a e capitalism. the spasrnodic evolution of machirrerykeepscr-rtting acrossthe h c x i s t i n q i e r a r ,l r v o f s k i l l s .

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tr)A^a/J2_

'1'aiY J. 'ti ?^tn"t

r 14 Towards a New Vocabulary be to turn his proper name into a cornmonnoun! The questionis whetherthis eflacing of the individual is something that will spread to other forms of productionas weli. Though it is true that this unconscious subjectivity,as a split which is overcome in a signifying chain, is being transferred away lrom individuals and human groups towards the world of machines,it still remainsjust as un-representable the specifically at machinic level. It is a signilierdetached from the unconsciousstructural chain that will acI as representallue to represen t the machine. The essence the machine is preciselythis lunction ofdetaching a signi6er of as a reprsentative.as a'di{Ierentiator', as a causal break, di{ferent in kind lrom the structurally established order of things. It is this operation that binds the macirineboth to the desiringsubjectand to its statusas the basisof r the various structurai orders correspondingto it. The machine,as a reperition I of the particuiar, is a mode - perhapsindeed the onlv possiblemode - of i univocal repfesentation the various forms of subjectivitvin the order ofi of generalityon the individual or the collective plane. i In trying to see things the other wav round, startinglrom the general, one i would be deluding oneselfwith the idea that it is possibl"to baseoneself on sonlestructural spacethat existedbeforethe breakthroughby the machine. This'pure', 'basic'signifving chain,a kind oflost Eden ofdesire, the'goodold days' before mechanization,rnight then be seen as a meta-language, an absolute relerence point that one could alwaysproducein placeofany chance eventor specific indication. 'Ihis would lead to wronglv locating the truth of the break, the truth of the subject,on the level of representation, information, communication,social codesand ever)'otherlorm ofstructural determination. T'hevoice asspeech machine,is the basisand determinantolthe structural , order oi language,and not the other way round. The individual, in his bodiliness,acceptsthe consequences ofthe interaction ofsignifying chains of all kincis which cut across and tear him apart. Th human being is caught where the machine and the structure meet. Human groups have no such projection screen available to them. The rnodes of interpretation and indication open to them are successiveand contradictory, approximative and meraphorical, and are based upon di{Iererit structural orders, for instance on myths or exchanges. Every change produced by the inrusion of a machine phenomenon will thus be accom. panied in them with the estabiishment of what one may call a system of anti-production, the representativemode specificto structure. I need hardly say that anti-production belongs to the order of the machine:the keynotehere is its characteristic change, ofbeing a subjective which is the distinctive trait of ever),order of production. What w'e need

Machine and Structure I I5 moving as though by magic thereloreis a meansof finding our way r.r,ithout relateto the same systemof from one plane to another.We must, lor instance, productionboth what goeson in the worid ofindustry, on the shopfloor or in research, and indeed the manager's ofFce,and what is happeningin scientihc in the world of literatureand evenof dreams, Anti-production rvill be, among other things, what has been described 'production relations'.Anti-production will tend to e{Iecta under the term in kind ofre-tilting of the balance ofphantasy,not necessarily the directionof within a given inertia and conservatism, sinceit can alsolead to generalizing socialarea a new dominant mode of production,accumulation,circulation and distribution rela!ions,or ofany other superstructural manifestation ofa is nervt,vpe economicmachine.Its mode of imaginarvexpression then that of of the transitionalphantasv. Let us then look at the other end ofthe chain,the levelofdream production. We may identify anti-productionwith working out the manifestcontentof a dream,in contrastto the latent productionslinked with the impulsemachine petit'a', described Lacan as the root The objet that constitutepart objects. by of desire,the umbilicus of the dream, also breaksinto the structural equilibrium of the individual like someinfernalmachine.The subjectfinds it is being petit rejectedbv itself. In proportion with the changewrought by objet-maehine 'a'in the structural field ofrepresentation, successive formsofotherness take their places for it, each fashioned to fit a particular stage of the process. Individual phantasizingcorresponds this mode ofstructural signposting to by meansofa specificlanguagelinked with the ever-repeated urgingsofthe 'machinations' desire. of petit 'a', irreducible, unable to be The existence of this objet-machine into the relerences to absorbed ofthe structure,this 'selfforitself' that relates theelements the structureonly by meansof splittingand metonymy,means of leads that the representation oneself meansof the'stencils'of language of by 'otherness'. The to a deadend, to a breakingpoint, and the needfor a renewed objectofdesire de-centresthe individual outside himself,on the boundariesof the other; it represents the impossibility of any complete refuge of the self inside to oneself, but equally the impossibilityof a radicalpassage the other. Indi','idual this it phantasvrepresents impossiblemergingof di{Ierentlevels; is thisthat makesit diflerentlrom group phantasizing, a group has no such for 'hitchingposts' no of desire on its surfiace, such remindersof the order ol specific zones,and their capacitvlor touching truths as the body's erogenous andbeingtouchedby other people. Group phantasy superimposes dillerent levels,changesthem round, the substitutes for another.It can onlv turn round and round upon itself.This one circular movementleadsit to mark out certainareasasdeadends,as banned, asimpassable vacuoles, whole no-man'sland of meaning.Caught up within a

r r6

Towards a New Vocabulary

Machine and Structure I r7 functioned as a system of change or machine, in a group it is either the sub-wholesthat happen to come into being temporarilvwithin the group or anothergroup that will assumethat function.This areaolstructural equivalencewill thus have the lundamentalfunction of concealing abolishingthe or entry ofany particular object represented either the screenofthe human on subjectby unconscious desire,or on the more generalscreenofunconscious signifying chains bv the change eflectedby the closeds),srem machines. of The structuralorder olthe group, olconsciousness, ofcommunication, thus is surroundedon all sidesby rhesesystems machineswhjch it will never be of able to control, either by grasping the objets petit'a'as rhe unconscious desire machine, or the phenomena of breaking apart related to other types of machines.The essence the machine,as a factor lor breakingapart, as the of a-topicalfoundationolthat order ofthe general,is that one cannotultimately distinguishthe unconscious subjectofdesire from rhe order ofthe machine itself. on one side or other of all structural determi*ations.the subiect of economics,of history and of scienceall encounter that sameobjet petit ,a;as the lour.rdation desire. of An exampleofa structurefunctioningassubjectlor anotherstructureis the lact that the black community in the United Sratesrepresents identificaan tion imposed by rhe white order. To rhe modernistconsciousness is a this confused, absurd, meaningless stateof things. Art unconscious problematic challenges rejection a more radical 'otherness' the of that would be combined with. say, a rejectionof economic'otherness'. The assassination Kennedy of was an event that 'represented' impossibilityof registering economic the the and socialotherness the Third World, as wirnessedby the failure of the of Alliancefor Progress, endeavourto destroyVietnam and so on. One can the only note here the points of intersection and continuity betrveen economy the ofdesireand that ofpolitics. At a particular poinr in histor,v desirebecomes focalizedin the totality of structures; suggest I that for this u'e usc the generalterm ,machine':it could bea new weapon,a new production technique, ne1!'set a ofreligiousdogmas, or such major new discoveries the Indies,relativity,or the moon. To cope as with this, a structural anri-production developsuntil it reachesits own saturation point, while the revolutionary breakthrough also develops,in counterpointto this, another discontirruous area of anti-production that tendsto re-absorb inrolerable the subjective breach,all ofwhich meansthat ir persists eludir.rg in the antecedentorder. We may say of revolution,of the revolutionary period, that this is rvhenthe machinerepresenrs socialsubjectivity lor the s!ructure - as opposedto the phaseofoppressionand stagnarion, when the superstructuresare imposed as impossible representations of machine efrects. The common denominatorof w,ritings this kind in history of wouldbe the openingup ola pure signifvingspacewhere the machinewould

currency,but a the group, one phantasyreflects anotheriike interchangeable wherebyit currencyrvith no recognizable standard.no ground ofconsistencv can be related.even partiallv, to anything other than a topologyofthe most purely generalkind. The group-as astructure-phantasizes events means by of a perpetual and non-responsiblecoming and going between the general a and the particular. A leader,a scapegoat, schism,a threateningphantasy from another group - anv of theseis equatedwith the group subjectivity. Each e'rentor crisiscan be replaced anothereventor crisis,inauguratinga by further sequence that bears,in turn, the imprint of equivalence and identity. Today's truth can be related to yesterday's,for it is always possibleto re-write history. The experienceof psychoanal,vsis, starting up of the psychoanathe lvtic machine.makesit clear that it is impossiblelor the desiringsubjectto preservi such a s-vstem homologt,and re-writing: the only function of the of translerencein this case is to reveal the repetition that is taking place, to operatelike a machine- that is in a u'av that is the precise opposite a group of eflect. The group's instinctualsystem,because is unableto be linked up to the it petit 'a' returning to the surfaceof the phantasy body desiring rnachine - objets - is doomed to multiply its phantasy identifications.Each of these is structuredin itself,but is still equivocalin its relationshipto the others,The fact that they lack the diflerentiating factor Gilles Deleuze talks of dooms thenr to a perpetuai process of merging into one another. Any change is precluded, and can be seen only between structural levels. Essentially, no break is any iongeraccepted. That the structures haveno specific identifying rnarksmeansthat the;' become'translatable' into one another,thus developing a kind of indefinite logical continuum that is peculiarly satisfvingto obsessionals. The identification of the similar and the discoveryof diflerence at group level function according to a second-degree phantasy logic. It is, for example, the phantasy representationof the otlter group that will act as the locatingmachine.In a sense, is an excess logicthat leadsit to an impasse. it of This relationship setsgoing a mad machine,madder than olthe structures the maddestoflunatics, the tangentialrepresentation ofa sado-masochistic logic in which everythingis equivalentto everythingelse,in which truth is always somethingapart" Political responsibility king, and the order of the is generalis radically cut offfrom the order of the ethical.The ultimate end of group phantasy is death - ultimate death, destruction in its own right, the radical abolition of any real identifving marks, a state of things in which not merely has the probiem oftruth disappeared forever but has never existed evenas a problem. This group structure represents the subject for another structure as the basis of a subjectivitv that is clogged up, opaque, turned into the ego. Whereas,for the individual, it was the object of unconscious desire that

I i8

Towards a New Vocabulary

Machine and Structure r r 9 hesitant, late and violently opposed experiment of lorming actior) commlttees. The revolutionarv programme, as the machine for institutional subversion, should demonstrateproper subjectivepotential and, at every stageof the struggle, should make sure that it is lortified against any attempt to 'structuralize' that potential. But no such permanentgraspofmachine effects upon the structures could really'be achievedon the basisofonly one itheoreticalpractice'.It presupposes the development of a specific analytical praxis at every level of organization the sruggle. of Such a prospectwould in turn make it possible locatethe responsibility to of those who are in any waf in a position genuinely to utter theoretical discourse the point at which it imprints the classstruggleat the very centre at ofunconscious desire.

l'epresentthe subject lor another machine. But one can no longer then continueto say ofhistory, as the site ofthe unconscious, that it is'structured like a ianguage'exceptin that there is no possiblewritten lorm ofsuch a language. It is, in fact, impossibletc systematize the real discourseof history, the circurnstance that causesa particular phase or a particular signifier to be represented a particular event or social group, by the emergence by ofan individual or a discovery,or whatever. in this sense'we must consider,d priori, that the primitive stagesolhistory are u'here trurh is primarily to be sought; historv does not advancein a continuousmovement:its structural phenomenadevelop accordingto their own peculiar sequences, expressing and indicating signifying rensionsrhar remain unconscious to the point up where they breakthrough.That point marksa recognizable breakin rhe rhree dimensions of exclusion, perseverance and threat. Historical archaisn-rs expressa reinlorcing rather than a weakening ofthe structural eflect. That And16Malraux could say that the twenriethcenturyis the centuryof nationalism,in contrast to the nineteenth, which was that of internationalism, was becauseinternationalism.lacking a structural expressionthat matched the economicand social machineries work within it, withdrew at into nationalism,and then further, into regionalismand the varioussortsof particularism that are developingroday, even within the supposedlyinternational communistmovement. The problem olrevolutionary organizationis the problem ofsetting up an institutional machine whose distinctive leatures would be a theory and practice that ensuredits not having to depend on the various socialstructures - above all the State strucrure, which appears to be the keystone of the dominant production relations, even though it no longer correspondsto the meansolproduction. What entrapsand deceives is thar it looks today as us though nothing can be articulated outside rhat structure. The revolutionary socialist intention to seizecontrol of political power in the State,which it sees as the instrumental basisof classdomination, and the institutional guarantee cf pri..rate ownership of the meansof production, has been caught injust that trap. It has itself becomea trap in its turn, for that intention, though meaning so much in terms ofsocial consciousness, longer correspondsto the reality no of economic or social forces.The institutionalization of 'world markets' and the prospect ofcreating super-Statesincreasesthe allure ofthe rap; so does the modern reformist programme of achieving an ever-greater 'popular' control ofthe economic and social sub-wholes.The subjectiveconsistencyof society,as it operatesat every level ofthe economy,society,culture and so on, is invisible today, and the institutions that express it are equivocal in the extreme. This was evident during the revolution of lvlay I 968 in France,when the nearest approximation to a proper organization of the struggle rvas the

The Planeof Consistency r2l

The Plane of Consistencyr

Matlrematics and Physics, Technological Innovation and the Military Machine - At first theseappear to be quite disparatefieldswhich will only coincide 1npresent-day development the economic of and national military complex. - But in fact, ,.r'e have to start lrom the premise that, from the veryfrst, they mergeinto one another,and that what makesthe web of history - that is of historvup until the scientificrevolutions is the machinic phylum. The machinic phylum takeso{f with the military machine,then with the technologicalinno'"'ations linked with the concentrationof the means of productionin primitive statemachines(cities, empires, etc.),and finally with the scientificrevolutions.But the machinic power of desirewas, alwaysand everl,where, already there. To take an example,the invention of bronze in southernSiberia led to the territorialization oftribes whoseficrmofproduction was settledand agrarian.The collective desireenergyrapidly changed its objectand turned thosesocieties into a military proto-machine. Nomadism introducedlurther benefits, both in material termsand in termsofdesire.(In some cases,the extensivestock-breedingof the nomad machine caused settledagriculture to disappearaltogether.)3 In'a few decades', there had comeinto being an encodedsurplus-value which led to the abandonmentof settled homesteads. Wealth 'suddenlystoppedbeingthe desireto own a piece ofsround'. People had acquired'a new conception oforvnership, with land as something merely to be used.basedon mouable goods, flocks,horses, chariots, personaleilects, bows and arrows, rvhat was gained by pillage' and 'an expanded,,vealth'. In all this, machinic power was making and unmaking primitive territorialitv and nomadism,the primitive stateand its divisions. We therefore find the plane ofconsistencyboth as the impossible goal ofthe history ofscience and tire preliminar,v the 'start' of histor.v. to It is important to consider the position of the plane ol consistency in relation the semioticmachine,to the independence to acquiredby the voiceas theinstrument lor opening up the field of the spokenword. Why should the battle-cry,the mating call, leave the sphere of the functional, of caste behaviour,to becomeopen to a transvaluationof encoding? Words have a di{Ierent use:they carrv lurther - or perhapsthey go nowhere. Thev produce new connections. After all, it is surely in this figurative shift of the oral semiotic machinesthat the essence the phenomenon religionlies? of of In any case,it is in the frameworkof the city machines, with the primitive stateas anti-productionof the military proto-machine,that we can identify oneof the two basic strata of the territorializationof the plane of machinic consistencl'-the other one in fact being brought into action bv the military
3. 'Prdsence des Scvthes', Crilique,December t97 t.

The term is an approximation. As will becomeclear from what I am going to say. first, it canrrotbe just a single plane, and second,we have to make a and the machinic consistency distinctionbetweenmathematicalconsistency \{e are concernedrvith here. For the moment, let us note that: - Mathematical consistencyimplies a set of axioms that are noncontradictorv.2 * Machinic consistency avoids such an implication in that it does not resort tc a dualist systemof appulngmultiplicities to a semioticwhole so much have anything to'fear' lrom as embracingthe totality" It doesnot therefore purely logicalconradictions. - Moreover, the basis of axiomatic consistencyis the lact that ultimately there is a consistencyin machinic propositions. * The plane of consistencvindicates that the machinic phylum is a canlinuun. The unity ofany process,the unity ofhistory, residesnot in the fact and traversingeverything,but in the fact of of a shared time encompassing that coltinuum of the machinic phylum, which itself results from the conjunction of the totality of de-territorialization processes. is Whenever a muitiplicity unfolds,the plane of consistency brought into operation.The machinic phylum is in time and space.Plane,here, has the of sense the phylum, the continuous.Nothing is small enoughto escapethe are net of machinic propositions and intensities.The strata of slbjectiaity set the againstthe pianeofthe agencyofcollectiveutterance, subjectagainstthe provides the answer to Russell's agent. The plane of machinic consistency paradox. There really is a totality of all the totalities.But it is not a logical totalitv; it is a machinic one. The problem of the continuousis resolvedat the level of the machinic phylum befiorebeing stated in mathematical terms.

madc in April r 97:, r . lrtrotes a, Robert Blanchd shows that a closer analysis distinguishes betwcen contradiction and conPresses Universitaires sistency,bctween dillerent notions ofconsistency,and so on (L'Axiomatique, de France, l 955, p. 48). This is something that needsexploring.

t_

r2,2 Towards a New Vocabulary prc)to-m?1chine. questionof whether the militarl' proto-machinecomes The beloreor after the primitive stateis secondary. There is, in eflect,a link, an encodedsurplus-r,alue betweenfhe two. Either the primiti'e statefinds itself having to fall back on the military proto-machinein the name of antiproduction, or, conversely, has itselfachieveda technological it take-oll,a systemof innovation (in the sphereof written language,the use of metals, ditTerentiating the kind of work to be done bv people lrom that done bv anirnalsetc.), and is in turn enrichingthe military machineand moving it a notch higher in rhe process ofde-territorialization. The fiuxesare tidied away, controlledand over-encoded meansolthe bv writing rnachine.In this case,despotismis svnonymous n,ith forcine e'erything into a bi-univocalmould, fitting the whole of the gcodson the sherves into a new whole of graphic symbols, The military proto-machineconsumedits goods- lor instance,when a pharaohdied, his concubines, servants his and evenhis slaves rverekilled. In the feudal system,on the orher hand, which set out to preserve the labour force of its serls and the fighting force of irs vassals,the primitive state restrictedand dela,ved such consumption.The sign was retained.Semiotic Cedipaiism, for the writing machine, consistsin an exrernal taking hold of objects and subjectsin their completeness. writing and reckoning are not the same as consuming, though to name a thing may be a way of eating it. 'fhe positionof writing is thus one of anti-production. written text, itself A impotent,is ne'ertheless sign olpower. This is the source the dichotomy a of between mathematics anci phvsics. Pythagoras was concerned with the 'essential' numbers that lay beyond ,real, powers. In an article in the 'Phvsique Enclclopaedia Uniuersalis, et marhimatiques,, Jean N{arc Levytr eblond presents critique of the two forms in which peoplehave soughtio a make mathematics'thelanguage'ofphysics. Mathematicsis viewedeitheras the languageof nature, rvhich man must learn (the attirude of Galireoand Einstein),or as the languageof man in which natural phenomena have to be (the attitude ofHeisenberg). But there are also all the possible expressed positions betweenthese two, all of which, in one way or another, tend to consolidatethe dualism between empiricism and formalism - opposing nature tc) man, experienceto theorizing, concrete to abstact, scientific phenomenato scientificlaws and so on. Ler^,r-Leb.lond maintains that there are two possibleusesfor mathematics in tl're sciences.It may have a relationship of apptication as with chemistrv, biology, the sciences the Earth and all other spheresin which of ihcre is numerical calculationand a manipulation of quantities.or it mav 'Thus have a relationshipof conrrf tutionor producrian, mathematics interioris izec by physics', and their conceprsare indissolublvinterlinked (derived

The PlaneolConsistency r2Z speed and the electro-magneticfield, for instance).This sort of relationship is peculiar to physics (which Bachelard failed to realize when he spoke of a 'progressive the Nevertheless, sepmathematicization'of all the sciences). aration between mathematics and physics remains. They are different in kind. in physicsis difficult to express axioms.One can give Unlike mathematics, of several coherent mathematicalexpressions the same law or concept in (mathematicalpolymorphism). In physicsthe principlesand lau's physics aremore mobile, more transcursive, less hierarchized. Conversely, a single mathematicalstructure can govern a number of diilerent domains without 'underlying called'a hiddenharmony unity'- what Poincar6 there beingany of (mathematicalplurivalence).It is the identit,v- the object of in things' physicsthat can only be known approximately, that eludes absolute definition. Thus there is a contradictory two-way movement going on: mathbut ematics tendingto evergreaterautonom,v, alsotendingto greaterinteris with mathematicalphysics. dependence 1n lgl,y-Leblond's view one must abandon the idea of any hierarchy 'it in amongthe sciences lavour of mathematicizing them: is by the nature of its relationshipto mathematics,and by the constitutiverole mathematics piays, that any branch of the natural sciences major or minor - can be seen asbelongingto the sphereofphysics'. In other words, physicsis constituted of by two processes de-territorialization (a semiotic processand a material process). An object in physics becomesconsistentonly in so far as it can be authenticalll' treated mathematically.It no longer has a relationshipof application with the sign, but one of production. The way the particle ofa with the sign no longer refers to the disjunctive syntheses corresponds system representation, but to an experimental connective system and a of theoretical conjunctive system, in which the surplus-valuesof encodingor of sets axioms are formed of lVe thus end up with a physics-mathematics complex that links the of of de-territorialization a systemof signs with the de-territorialization a cluster phenomenain physics.Levy-Leblondwould seem,at this second, of 'material' of level, to be niaintaining the primacy of the existence the real. The (including traditional split benveenmathematicsand the natural sciences would appear to be, for him, physics) sanctioned by experimentationa insuperable. We may note the twolold connection between the de-territorialized phe- that is, to the most 4. The wav in which he rgjects any subjection of physia to mathematia srratum - by quoting the example ofastro-physics,which becameestablishedon de.rerritorialized theprevicusi.v mathematicized ground ofastronomy, is unconvincing N'lathematicalastronomy wil never a'non-experimental'sciene: it was physics already on the way to being turned into mathematics,

tz+ Towards a New VocabularY Rather t6an nornenorlof the ph'sicist and the mathematicssign machine.5 on an ollject, Iet us sa)rwe ar e dealing with a nnmtnloJinertia the tutf i"g about of at part oi themachinism a given point in the contingen! Process de-terriscience' is In to.iaiirutior"t. the last resort,mathematics also an experimental with serliotic phenomenarvhichwerein the paststill at rest as nts I t experirne future more grup'hi. symbolsirre srill ar rest, but might perhapsbe so in the syntacticalrulesolinformationot.. tn. iashionofrhe figuresofspeechand

The Plane of Consistency r25

the partial machinisms harmonize on a single plane of consistency- not susceptible being totalizedinto one axiomatic, not susceptible repreto to sentation, bu.tinfinitelyde-totalized, de-territorialized, de-axiomatized. And this plane of consistencythat mathematicslinks up *,ith the other ::,L:j:."" Machinic consistencv evadesthe alternativeof mathematicalconsistency defined by Gridel's theorem. First of all, to it a machinic connecrionmay be t h e o r y m a c h i n e s . . f l r e o b j e c t o | p h , v s i c s i s p a r t i c l e s ( t h e r e a r e s o m e h y p o t h e . actual and non-actual: machinic time encodescontradiction, the observerof light, the contradiction has his own machinic time, the connecrionis governed by tical ones,known as tachyons,that are supposedto travel fasterthan the general relativity of conjunctions.Secondly,nothing escapes Machines not it. going back in time, ar-icl being subjectto the usuallimitationsof causalitv rvith a particttcannot stand emptiness, lack, negation, an exclusively referential stratum. E'er1.such moment of inertia is connected and i.-,ilbrmatio'r).6 of .f With machinesthe questionis one of connection non-connection, as or without o l a r s i t u a t i o n i t h e r n a c h i n i s m . J L i s r t h e m a c h i n i s r lo ) e x p e r i m e n t a t i o n ofmatheconditions, without any need to render an account to any third party. It is physicshas produced the conditionslor tlre expansion theoretical ofencodingoriginates. The situationis like m a t i 0 a l p h y s i c s , s o t l r e i n f i c r m a t i o n - t h e o r y m a c h i n i s m w i l l p r o b a b l v c o m e t o from that that the surplus-value 'pure' mathematics'We that of the bumble-bee which, by being there, became part of the genetic more eflecton the developmentof huve ,-,-to..'ar-rd and phvsicsbeing chain of the orchid. The specific event passesdirectly into the chain of come to think in terms of both mathematics may therefore machine.Far lrom thinkencodinguntil another machinic event links up with a different temporalizathe al()ngside theoretic-experimental sense in sonte on tion, a dillerent conjunction. can radically axiomatizephysics,we shall find ourselves the ins that \4'e the .oirr.u.y having ro r.elativize axior'atizationof mathematics. It is the principle of the excludea ,flira term rhat is itself excluded here. jossible a*iomatizations you like for as Ultimately, the only referenceis the plane of consistency,but no limit or lack The computer.willproduce as manv Mathematicsis not concerned must be written into it. The plane of consistency the organless is body of all e'er' th;ry - o poiitir. {loodof axiomatics.T axiomatic svstems;it is not the total being of the machinism, but the harmony. It is as much a machineas physicsis, rvitir'pureuniversalsemictic it is somewhat impossibility concludingor totalizingmachinicexpansion. of exceprthat, front the poiilt of view of technicalmachinisni, claim that of Behind the opposition betweenwhat is as yer hardly axiomatizedat ali lirrrher behind. Godel'stheoremnarked the condemtration any therecan be lessand less (thatis, physics)and what is very much so (that is, mathematics) UndoubtedlV,therelore, one can see axiomaticsis omnipotent.B theoutline of the order of what is'radically non-axiomatizable'- machinic the variousattemPtsat mathematicaxiomatization possibilityof concluding all multiplicity. Axiomatics was related to the structure of representation, on with any super-axiomatics. the contrary,what I want to shorvis that whereas flux ofaxiomatization relaresto machinic production. This being the l r h e s p l i t l l e t l e e n p h y s i c sa n d t h e o l h c r s c i e n c e s h a t u s e a so,can one maintain that physics has a specialrelationship with the order of 5. I alse'have rcservatiotrs bout other o n u n , e r i c a lo r d e r . I r i s p o s s i b l et h a t t h e r e a r e o t h e r m a t h e m a t i c s , t h e r e x p e r i m e n t a t i o n s ' existingrealit)'? machinisms. The object of the mathematics/physicscomplexusis not physical; it relates in scierce-fiction: what would a compuler working rvith 6. Here we conle to a lirtle probiem neitherto the nature of the physical nor to the physical as nature. Machinism : r a c l r ro n s o c l i k r l C f . I ? r c h c , . h tn .o 7 . D e c c m b e rr 9 7 o . p 6 ; 5 ' a R u y e r ' sp o s i t i o ni n c o n d e m n i n g p r i o r it h e p o s s i b i l i t v links together physics and mathematics, working equally well with symbols 7 . I n m y v i e r v t h c r e i s n o j u s t i f i c a r i o nf o r m t h a t c i ' b e r n e t i c s a y e x p a n di n f i n i t e l y . andparticles. The particleis definedby a chainofsymbols;physicisrs'invent, .. o n a f i n i t en u m b e r B . . . G o d e l ' sr h e o r e mn : r k e s c l e a r t h a t w h a t e v e rt h e o r vt h e r em a y b e b a s e d particlesthat have not existed in 'nature'. Nature as existing prior to the some unprovable of axion)s r,; make it possible to construct arithmetic, one can alr*ays discover '(\Varusfel, Dicttonntire dts '\'lathimatiques' 2!t7] If one appends that machineno longer exists. The machine produces a di{Ierent nature, and in P proposirion in it . . . in orderto do so it definesand manipulates it r.r,ith proposirion as a supplementary axiom, then rve have a different theory' but otre symbols (the diagrammatic paradoxical number o1-axioms w h i c h r h e r e i s a { u r r h e r u n p r o v a b l ep r o p o s i t i o n .I t i s i m p o s s i b l e ' t h a ta f i n i t e process). t h e p r i n c i p l eo f i l a s h o u i d b e e n o u g ht o e s t a b l i s h n y u n i v e r s a m a t h e m a t i c s n w h i c h n o t m e r e l l ' w o u l d Epistemologicalprimacy thereforelies neither with mathematics nor with in which any the excluded third (P cannot at rhe same time be true and false) bc true' but physics. may perhapslie with art. It is arguablethat the mostde-terrirorialIt non'de monstrable proposirion might be eillur rse or faise. Some theorems will a)wa.vsre main ized level relates to the sign. It is true that the mathematical sign has to Ihcm' (ibid.1. r b e c a u s c h e r ei s n . r a n s w e r

I26

Towards a Nerv Vocabulary

The Plane of Consistency r27 whatis it that enables sign machineto'grasp'and controla flux of particles? a It is man's specific capacity for de-territorialization that enables him to produce signs,not nothing signs,but signs signsfor no purpose:not negative to play about with for fun, for art. Human intervention so transforms things for that an oral semiotic machine produces numen no reason, and a writing machinein the hands of mischievousscribesruns to no purpose (for example, thepoetry ofancient Egypt). Art and religion are arrangementsfor producing signswhich will eventually produce power signs,sign-pointscapable ofplaying the parr ofparticles in thearena of de-territorialization. The Shamanic invocation, the sign-writing of the geomancer,are in themselvesdirect symbols of power. They mark the importation into nature of signs of power, of a schiz that, via successive surplusvaluesof encoding,w'ill eventually bring rue the wildest dreams:first thedream of the alchemist; nrst desire, beforede-territorializing mathematicalsignsand the particlesofphysics.It is the dualist reductionofcapitalist Oedipalist science that tends to sterilize science even as it is expanding (splitting up into separate compartments research,production, technology, teaching, art, economics, etc.). It is the conjunctionof the military machine andthe State with sciencethat determines the importance to be attributed to science and definesthe scopeofits activity. We must therelore distinguish between the individuated Oedipalist utterance, directed towards bi-univocity, the complete object, representative application, and the quite diflerent individuated schizo utterance whose force, whose de-territorializing charges,go out to the furthest cornersofthe universe. The phenomenonof physicsdoesnot need to be 'mentalized',but encoded, made machinic. To read, to understand, to interpret - this is to renderpowerless.The sign must abandon its yearning for oral semioticsand betransformed into a machinic sign-point so as to throw itself unreservedly intothe machinicphylum. The schizo position, which articulates the de-territorializedchains of collectiveagencies of utterance that constitute the present-day scientific machine, cannot be reducedto the sum ofthe interventions individuals.It by is somethingtrans-individual.The schizo scientistindividually produces de-territorialized signsalongsidea coliectivemachine. The cutting edge,so to say, ofthe machincis herethe desire, perhapsthe madness, or ofthe scientist. His desire has become a sign of power by coming into contact with the machinism.The collective agency of utterance that connects things with 'human values'. people What gives the scientific machine its does not crush super-power the super-humanness is that carriesdesire to the heart ofbeing. Far more powerful than any physicist's cyclotron is the desire that produces 'natural' partide-territorialized signs- super-particles capableofexploding cles into a multiplicity, and so in a senseforcing them to be on the defensive.

some times let its hand be lorced bv the de-territorialization experimental of pirvsics. but, equallv.it is the de-teritorializationof the sign that governsthe entire process, generalizingits eflects,and projecting the surplus value of encoding onto the totalitv of encodedareas. Even in caseswhere phvsics appearsto be controlling !he movement,the machinic points remain on the side of the mathematicsmachine. And this wili be even more the case as physicsbecornes more involvedin information-theorv technologv and abandons anv claim to signiii anvthing at all apart fi'om irs own machinic connectrons. Yet thoseparticlesreallv do exist- somewhere else,in other galaxiesfor example.Thev are not inventedor arrangedby mathematics and physicsas though createdbi'an artist. Hou'ever,the galaxiesarealso collective production agents,'settingup' particles, arrangements matter,of life and so on. It of is not a questionhereofcontrastingnature rvith creation,but oflikening it to creati\/e The galaxies machines. are alsocollective agentsilnor ofutterance, at leastofproduction. lVhat is perhapspeculiarto what happenson or:r pianetis that production is airvavsaccompanied a transcription:the collective by transductive agency of'nature is paralleled and surpassecl a collectiveagencyo1'utterance, by' r,vithin hich the de-territorialization u olthe sign playsa major part. The sign paralleis the particle. It goes further than it in its capacities of deterritorialization, and providesit with an added capacitylor multiplicitv. 'Ihe rritorializationthat runs throueh the wholemarhematics/physics de-te compiexus iur.'olves scientists,but also a lot else besides:all of political society,the flux of investments.armies arrd so on. De-territorialization is produced as much by the sign as by nature. However, the most important instrument.the machinic spearhe now sideswith the sign.The sign-point ad, of this complexuscan be considered lrom two angles: asigntt is an agentof as de-territorialization; a phvsicalpoint,it is the point of recurrence the as of lesidualph],sicai{lux in the role of anti-production. We are now concerned with the representative not functionof the sign,or of its application, but w,ith the productive and anti-productiveaspectsof the 'fhe sign-point. distinction benveenmathematical representation and the ploduction of physics relates to rvhat we may call a scientific Oedipus situation. lVitlr the advent of rvriting, the sound machine has become With the coming of information machinisms,and their audioseconclarv. visual developments, traditionalwriting machinema)'now alsobe on the the u'ay to becoming secondary. To return to individuated utterance: it is something thar cannot be detached from its circumstances time and place, of sex, of class, etc. of Florvever, moment of inertia i,,henthe splitting-off the into subjectivity' occurs cannot ire arssigned purel.vand simplv to tl"re order of representation. Just

r28

Towards a New Vocabulary

The Plane of Consistency I29 are isolatedfrom any production.Time and consciousness of subjectivation The links in the processof not bound up with an individuated cogito. de-territorialization are the events, the meaning, the emergenceof machinic mutations.There are as many diflerent times coexistingas there are machines in action. The conscious human being is simply the manifestation of the ofde-territorialization, greatest intensity in the conjunctionofthe processes the thehigh point ofde-territorialization, point at which the signscoursitself out,loids in upon itselfto open out into a script that is levelwith reality. The finality olhistory is not to be lound in a blind machinism,but in the frnality of desire, in fact of the most self-aware desire of all, that of the supermanrvho has won mastery of beingin-itself by sacrificingmasteryof his Solitude,meditation,letting the contemplationof individualconsciousness. have lree rein, the lossof individuation in lavour of cosmicengagement desire - ail this leads to a paradoxical combination of e{Iects: an individual hyper-subjectivationof desire (as in Samuel Beckett, for example) and a that link man radicalabandonmentof the individual subjectto collectivities, with the machinicphylum. Capitalism tries to interiorizethe unboundedboundariesofthe plane of It consistency. arranges ofgans, self-containedobjects, relationships, individual subjectivity. What prevented the organlessbody of the primitive State lrom abolishing the plane of consistency into infinite lragments was the setting in motion of the machinic phylum. Whereas the military protomachine destroyed whole towns, destroying even its own soldiers, the machinicphylum survives.

its of The de-materialization nature, its transmutations, new productions, power ofdesire.The intensityofdesireis all dependon the de-territorializing intensities anywhereelsein nature, Not strongerthan the de-territorializing i d c q i r ei n i t s e l I t h e d e s i r en f d r e a m s h r r t t h e d e s i r ei n s c r i b e d n m a c h i n i c complexes. ofself, ofindividuated utterance, The questionthen is whether awareness If is a function of anti-production.To this there are two ans\4'ers. what is rhe meant is the Oedipalistcogito, reductionto the levelof the individual, the machine is ego, the lamilv, then the answeris Yes. But if the consciousness in secnas somethingthat emptiesout the sign,the space one'sheart,to charge it with i'rrvholly new power so that it can becomeattached to *'hatever it is wants at once.lasterthan light, then the ans\{'er No. The tachvoncould be belongingat once to physics an elementarl,particie of de-territorialization olsemiotics. Indeed, perhapsthe very thought ol ar-rd the arrangements to a constitutes kind of anti-matter! de-territorialization doesnot make The annihilation olintentionality b.vthe phenomenologists of to supposed be a vastNothing, but the omnipotence useolsome substance is a complex of de-territorialization potentiallycapableof creatinga multiand of Consciousness awareness oneself, plicit-vout of whatever it touches. and of the nearnessof a collectiveutterancemachine, producesthe most 'charge'of de-territorialization a kind of anti-energl', ol enormousmachinic semioticanti-rnatter. is The piane of consistency thus rvhat enablesall the various strata of and socius,ol technologyand so on to be cut across,invested,disinvested transferred.Does this bring us back to the idea that there is an absolute knowledge,a superiorrationality, that is the goal of history?No, lor there is The thesisofthe plane of ofreference. no questionofits beinga super-system as consistency the unattainablegoal ofhistorv amounts to a rejectionol'any order,or code attempt at totalization,any reductionto a singlerepresentative lrom to or set of axioms. It is a positiveafhrmation that it is possible escape consis cl . ten and an underminingol representative hierarchies reference, of of that would encodethe essence Consistencydenies that there is one being history for its ou'n sake. It affirms the coherence,the consistencyof aprocess Intensive or in not expressible hard and last propositions rational theologies. multiplicities do not refer either to reason or chaos,or to eschatological The machinicphvlum runs through all beingthat is held in the significations. . time/spacestrata of individuated utterance Being in itself, being as unity, ofan utterance ofthe same,resultslrom the contingency being as the essence made impotent. Diagrammatic conjunctionsare the motive force for de-territorialization. representation They are the sourceof the machinic phylum, Only because has beenflattenedout into exclusive do dysjunctivesyntheses we find modes

IntensiveRedundancies and Expressive Redundancies r3r

trntensiveRedundanciesand Expressive R.edundancies'

redundancies. Intenir-rtensir,'e expressive and betlveen \\,'emust distingLiish advancebv wav of intrinsic encoding,u'ithout involving sii.'eredundancies remain the prisonersof thus they themselves specificstrata of expression; They include,for example,the intrinsicstratification encodingstratification. of the 6eld of nuclear particles,or that of atomic, molecular,chemical or biological organization. None of these lorms of encoding, reproduction, maintenanceand interaction can be detachedfrom its individual stratum, interpretation,referconcordance, There is nn relationshipof expression, by ence)etc.,among the differentstrata;they remain unaffected one another. One can onlv passlrom an energystratum to, say) a material or biological of stratum) by meansof a surplus-value encoding,a kind of proliferationand irrterlacing codes.but one w,ith respectlor the autonomv and integrity of of the various strata.The heaped-upstrata lorm a kind of humus, or what one soup,beyondthe might call a systemof soups.Behind life thereis a biological soup and so on. We thus have a semiotic biologicalsoup a phirsico-chemical machine which is encoded .rlithout changing levels. Abstract machines oltheir stratifications. remain the prisoners autonomized semioticmachinesare brought into plav Only when specific, lrom one stratum to another.There will then be can there be a direct passage The semioticmachine not a surplus-r'alue olencoding,but a trans-encoding. that is capableofcrossing procedure ofabsolutede-territorialization setso1'l-a Such a semioticmachine embarkson its autonomizaall the stratifications. tion with the biologicalreproductionmachine.In fact, this latter is the first squeezing speciaiization a reading machine that crushesthe intensities, of thejuice out offruit. The machineofgeneticexpression them as one squeezes implies the detachmentof one strand of encodingto act as a reproduction rnould. Thus there is establisheda s,vstem twolold articulation: a deof territorializedstrand ofencoding, in other words a strand as lar as possible a detachedfrom the secondand third dimensions,z line that is attachedto the
r . N o t e sm a d e i n A p r i l r 9 7 . 1 . 'l'he :. r e l a t j v ep o s i t i o n so { ' r h e t i m c d i m e n s i o nm i q h t p e r h a p sm a k c i t p o s s i b l e o p i n p o i n t t h e t d i f l c r e n t : eb e t w e c n g e n e t i c c o d e s a n d l i n g u i s t i c c o d e s ; t h e t i m e w h e n r e l a t i o n s h i p so f b i u n i v o c a l i z a t j o n o n r ei n t o b e i n g i s n a r r o r v e r n d s t r i c t e ri n t h e g c n e t i cm a c h i n e .w h e r c a st h e f o r m s c a t o r u n r l c r l v n g st r u c t u r e si n l a n g u a g ei n t r o du c ea c e r t a i i a g b e t w e e n h e o r g a ni z a t i o no f u t t c r a n c e s i n and that ofcodcs.

intensities and diagrammatizes them. Only the lact that such a line can be discerned makes it possible to read and transcribe a complex process diachronically. The processofreproduction, in crystallography for exampie, does not have recourse to this alignment system of the code. A threedimensional crystal,or a solutionin the process becoming of crystallized, only 'de-codes' the organization of another crysral lrom outside; it can only model or adapt itself to it, Unlike the RNA and DNA chains,a crystalremainstoo territorializedto be able to reach the level of the abstract machinesthat govern the process ofphvsico-chemical de-territorialization. But the genetic chain isjust as much the prisonerof the organismstratum. The same is the case though to a lesser extent, with the de, territorialization ofuttering forces in primitive societies instance. for They make a start on setting trans-coding systems into operation, but such trans-coding still only relativeand poly-centred. is This poly-cenrredness is theexpression kind ofrejectionolrhe'gangrene'ofde-territorialization, ofa a rejectionthat can be indicated by the way a machinic systemis organizedinto (For example,traditional societies castes. wili try to restrictthe expansion of metallurgy perhaps,or ofwriting, by allowing them only to be usedfor certain specific purposes.) Only at the end ofthe process ofdegeneration ofsignifying semiologies, with the emergence a machinic utterancecomplex,will the of lines of diagrammatizationand socio-material collectiveagencies start to operatewhich will produce the sign machinesthat can really control the stratifications. The de-territorialization signs- in mathematicaiphysics, of information-theory, etc. - gives the sign a kind of super-linearquality; so much so that one can no longer speakstrictly in terms of a sign at all any more. We have left the sphere of a pre-signifying poly-vocal expressioninvolving movements, words, dancing; we have even left that of semiologiesoverencodedby the signifier, and the post-signifying sphere of the axiomatized letters and signs of science and art; we are now dealing with a direct expression abstract machinisms. The dillerence between sign and particle of is blurred; diagrammatization deniesthe primacy ofmaterial fluxes,while on the other hand the real intensities speak for themselves, borrowing the method of machines including only a minimum of semiologicalinertia. Theories,theoristsand economic/experimentalcomplexesform a network of non-signifying expressive substances which can demonstrate their deterritorializationsin spaceand time, without the mediation ofany representatlon. At this level one can no longer speakofseparatescientific areassuch as the areaof astro-physicsor the area of micro-physics.We are faced with a single universe ofabstract machines,working both on the galactic and on the atomic scale.(Cf. the theoriesabout the first secondofthe expansionofthe universe.) Thus it is the very idea of scale that succumbs to the principle of relativity,

r32

Torvards a New Vocabulary

IntensiveRedundancies and Expressive Redundancies r33 settrng-up non-signifying of sign machines. The by-productsof the signifier, figuresof expression, pre-diagrammaticagencies, are essential elernents ol the engineeringof accelerators particle-signs of whose de-territorializing powerrvill be capableofbreaking down the strataofencoding. The organizationolthe living world first setup this sort of accelerator. a At certain ievel, multi-cellular organisms are still coloniesor collectionsof uni-cellular living partly by a system organisms, ofintra-encoding, and partly by trans-encoding. trans-encoding, But though limited by having ro maintain thoseintrinsic encodings, open to variouscosmicintensivestratifications, is which it expresses and rearranges. this sense, may be said to represent In it the starting-up ol a primitive a-signifyingsemiotic machine. But we shall obviouslv have to make a radical distinctionbetw'een this biologicalmachine and the a-signil.ving machinesof collective agencies utterance.Indeed it is of hard to say whether or not this is alreadv in lact a signmachine.The signifying signand the a-signil,ving sign dependon the operationof two other extremely specific types of machine: first. on this sort of accelerator of deterritorialization that carriesit to the absolutein order to nullify it, and then 'semiotic on the processing lactories' that convert that absolute deterritorialization into quantum form. It would be ridiculous to suggest that the same system ol signs is at rvork at once in the physico-chemical, the biological, human and the machinic6elds.Only non-signi{,ving the parricles, movingarvayfrom abstractmachines,would be capableofsuch an exploit. The conditions in which they are produced remain exrremely specific, depe nding on the achievement machinic agencies of with nothing universal about them. The signs of semiologyand of almost all semioticsconstitute stratalike any others.Just as there are strata of elementaryparticles,of physical, chemicaland biologicalelements, and so on, so there are semiotic s t r a t aa n d s t r a t ao f a - s i g n i f v i n g a c h i n i s m sh a t , i n u u . ' r : i n d e g r e e sb r i n g . g m t , into plav quanta of absolute de-territorialization.Consequently, then, though srgnsremain localizedupon particular strata,abstractmachinesare, onthe contrarv,implicatedin all strata. De-territorializationis either categorized(in 'nature' or in the binary semioticmachines into which it is forced by the signifying-consciousness svsrem) set lree by the non-signif,ving or machines the collective of agencies of utterance. Dependingon movement from one stratum to another, abstract machines will receivea greater or lesserdegreeof actualizationand force. This degree of liberation corresponds to the degree of intensity ol the 'beginning', a siow, de-territorialization.' lt is as though there were, at the
3. Two tlpes of intensities must be distinguished, diflerential intensities as between different a i d s t r a t aa n c it h e a b s o l u t e n t e n s i t yo f t h e c o m p l e t e r g a n l e s s o d y . A b s o l u t ei n t e n s i t y i s p l a y s t o n c e , o b to ali the force oi de-territorialization as such, and all its powerlessness break away from the system. semiological de-territorialization ofthe signifying-consciousness

and il' there are extra-rerrestrialu,orlds similar to the human, it is as reasonable expect to find them in the world of micro-physics in other to as galaxies. Not that this makesit any easierto make contactwith theml The existence semiotic machines,therefore,corresponds an interof to 'Before'the mediatephasein the de-territorialization process. sign (this side 'After' the of it) the abstractmachinesremain the prisoners stratification. of sign (rvith a-signiffing machinic complexes) leavethe senriotic we registerto pass to the direct inscription of the abstract machines on the plane of 'Before'the sigrithereis a consistency. redundanc,v pure stratifie informaof d t i o n . ' A f t e r ' t L r e s i g n , t h e r e i s a d e - s t r a t i f r e id f o r m a t i o n ,a d e - s t r a t i f y i n g n diagran'rmarization in other words a princ.ipleof transformation that repeatsthe relativede-territorializations, and opensup the intensivestratificationson the basis of the de-territorializingpower of the sign machines. Betrveenthe t\4'oale the semiologies significativeredundanc,v, other of in r,vords the systems all that work to renderimpotent the intensiveprocesses of de-territr.rrialization. stratified encodings physico-chemical, The biological, ecological, etc.- having coliapsed one after another,de-territorialization has Iostsomeof its weight,The strataare no longerhermetically separated: fluxes o{ irltensive de-territorializalion passlrom one to another.Systems oldouble articulation of form-content redundanciesrepresentan attempt at total shutting-off But their oniy result is a relative de-territorialization, stlatia frcationof lorm that will end by missingits main aim, u.hich rvas to keep a tight rein on the potentialcreativityof non-signifying machines(miiirary and technologicalmachines,machinesof writing, of monetarv signs,scientific signsanclso on). After the barriersof'natural'de-territoriaiization, the next things to go will be thoseof 'artificial'semiological de-territorialization. This rvill mean the failure of all attempts to give things a representarive nature, basedon the u'olids, and worlds beyondthe worlds, olthe mind as so many fortificationsagainstthe accelerating process de-territorialization. of inlbrmation theory has tried to save the bacon of the semiologies of signilication by defining significative redundancies as being in inverse proportion to the quantity of information- but this is no more than a rearguard semiological skirmish. In fact, the transler of information belongs to a diagrammatic process that has no direct relation with the significative redundancies human 'understanding'.'Before' the signifier,redundancy of irnd inlormation came togetherin a process intrinsic diagrammatization. of 'After' it, diagrammatization startsoffa process unlimited trans-encoding. of Between the two, however, signif-vingsemiological stratification still has a vital part to plav: for in lact the residuesof a signifying processaccumulatein thc same u'ays as thoseof an,vother strata of encoding.Lines of interpretwith their ation, r,viththeir hierarchy of contentsand lines of significance, carefullv monitored expansion, become a kind of raw material for the

r34

Torvardsa Nerv Vocabulary

hierarchizecl de-territorializationin the intrinsic encodings,and rhen an de-territorialization a kind ofup and down process. each accelerated by At peak of de-territorialization there is the emergence an abstract machine of lollowedby a fiesh stratificatio'. lvith the movementfrom onestratum to the next, the coefficient ofaccelerationofde-territorialization simply increases. The abstractmachinesspeedup the process ofintensivede-territorialization until the strata burst apart, thus crossinga threshold,a kind ol,rvall ol absolutede-territorializalton'. Ifthe de-territorialization reboundslrom that threshold' we are still in the vu'orldof semiologicalimpotentization (rhe signifi ine-consciors'ess svstem); it getsacross we mo\.einto the w,orid if it, of a-srgnilying particle-signs (agencies collective of urterance).

Subjectless Actionr

One can alwaysreplaceany pronoun with 'it',2 which covers pronominalall in', be it personal,demonstrative,possessive, interrogativeor indefinite, whether it refersto verbsor adjectives.'It'represents potentialarriculathe tion of those linked elementsof expressionwhose contents are the least formalized, and thereforethe most susceptible being rearrangedto produce of 'It' the maximum ofoccurrences. doesnot represent subject; diagrammaa it tizesan agency.It doesnot over-encode utterances, transcendthem as do or the various modalitiesofthe subjectofthe utterance; preventstheir lalling it ',vhose under the tvrannv of semiological constellations onl1,function is to evokethe presence a transcendent of uttering process; is the a-signifying it semiologicalmatrix of utterances- the subj ectpar excelLence utterancesof the in so lar as thesesucceed lreeingthemse in lvesfrom the swavolthe dominant personal and sexual significations and entering into conjunction with machinicagencies utterance. of One can alwa;,sunderstandan I-ego underlyingany pronominalfunction. A supposed utterer externalto the languageusedis then taken to be making its imprint on the discourse, and that imprint is what is called the subjectof the utterance. flux ofpure subjectivitytranscends statements A the made and processes them accordingto the dominant economicand socialnorms. This operation begins rvith a spiit in the 'it', the pretendeddiscovery that ,it' containsa hidden cogito, thinking I-ego. The elementsof expression a are taken over by an uttering subject. An emptv redundancy, a second-degree redundancy appears alongside all the redundanciesof expression.The phonic expression longer evokesa gestural,postural, ritual, sexual,etc. no expression. has first to rurn back upon itself,cut itselfofrlrom the collective It desiringproduction, and becomearrangedon separate, hierarchizedsemiologicalstrata. The splitting of the I-ego is the point of origin of sysrems of reciprocal articulation - double articulation - between redundancies of contentand redundancies signifyingexpression. of The materialand semiotic
e r . G i v e n a t t h e r 9 7 4 N I i l a n C o n f e r e n c e,,P s y c h a n a l y sc t S i m i o t i q u e , , r o , / r g . z The French is r/, which means both he and it, The nearest approximation to this in English seemsto me to be 'it', but readers will find this section clearer if thev bear in mind rhat ,ir' can be usedto mean he, or it ro a subject, or the indefinite 'it'of'ir is raining', 'it is tue'. lrrarcLator)

r36

Towards a New Vocabulary

Subjectless Action

tg7

fluxcszrre made to fit a mental world constitutedby being filled with mental fadeawav into powerless. Intensities representations havebeenrendered that echoes;machinic connectionscome apart; utterancesno longer refer to . and the lormalizationof the dominant discourse anvthins but themselves 'fhe rs sign can no longerbe linked directly rvith rr'hatit refe !o, but must hale have The signri ill alw'ays recourse the mediationof the signifvingmachine. to of to reler to the semiologies the pou'er machines,with their parlicular at if svnlagmaticand paradigmaticcoordinates. it is to produceany e{Iect all To the upon realit1,. constitutethe semiology'of dominant order, the function tu'o semioticlevels, detaches and articulates ol'indii'idriatingsubjectivation ol ihe spoken tord and the written word. \\hile the polyrrocalit,v- the 'primitive'language is flattenedout by the despoticformalismof a rvriting from the territorial fixation of the machine inseparable machine (a por.r'er 'primitive' writing machinesas a whole lall nomadic military machine), under the control of a singleofficialwriting machine:the signifyingmachine the voice bv dividing speechup ofdouble articulation.The letter castrates into phonemes,and rhe voice mutilates the diagrarnmaticpotential ol an arche-u,ritingby rearranging words according to meaning. The desiring organized ale intensities thus governedby a world ofmental representations whosepower is derived from rendering arourrd a ilctive subject- a sr,rb.iect them powerless. between \Vith this semioioey, there is no longeran1'direct trans-encoding olencoding. The one semioiicand another,nor thereforeany surplus-value semiologies analogy,for example,becomedependentupon the of so-callecl of signifying semiologies double articulation. Similarl,vwith all the preloving. economicand so on. signifl,ingsemioticsof perception- aesthetic, lay the The re is no limit to the porverto r,vhich signifyingsemiologies claim; it miotic ('natural') and a-signifying cove :rll modesolencoding,eventhe a-se rs (machinicand artificial); the splitting of utterancecomesmore and more to is all The totaiityofexpression thus infectand or.er-encode semioticelements. that a emptied bv a pure reflexiveness creates kind of irnaginaryOther World of out of s,vstems formalizing now powerlesscontents directed both to 'natural' material fluxesand artificial machinicffuxes. The establishment of triangulation, resultsin the'it'ofa personological signilvingsribjectivation ofthat first splittingofthe I-ego. itselfthe resultofrepeatedre-enactments The toois brought into operation by the arrangementsol individuated will becomeboomerangs. one level, that of the individual At subjectiv:rtion in and the persorl,thev succeeded nullifying desirein its relationshipwith But material fluxes,ovithintensivede-territorializations. they cannotprevent figuresof expresof the molecular,sub-human,semioticescape a-signi{,1'ing and sion from starting up a new desiringmachine at a quite diilerent ler"ei, that with a quite difierent power.The sudden,absolutede-territorialization

to brokedesireup into subjectand object has failed,despiteits absoluteness, that abolishitsellin the paroxysmofjov ofa machinicconsciousness hastruly broken all territorial moorings. (We do, however,6nd such consciousness drugs, trances, etc.) without ties in certainextremeeffects ofschizophrenia, Thenceforth these territorial remnan!s reorganize themselves into asigniff ing particles; they rvill provide the raw material for a-signifying semiotic machines beyond the reach of the impotentizing attacks of the wereright: therogllo does reflexive consciousness. one sense, Cartesians In the mark a radical escapelrom the system of coordinatesof time, space and governingrepresentation. the cogilo still a fiction,for all that, But is substance carriesdesireto such a a machine-fiction. The process ofmaking conscious lrom pitch ofexcess, ofirrecoverable final de-territorialization, ofdetachment all reference-points, it no longer has any'thingto hang on to, and has to that inrprovisewhatever expedientsit can to avoid being destroyedin its own It nothingness. is not even a questionofa binary oppositionbetweenbeing of is and nothingness, all or nothing; consciousness at once both all and wearsitself nothing.The forceofdesire,at this blazingpoint ofnothingness, out upon itself- a kind ofblack hole ofde-territorialization. F rom then on thereare two possibilities: that of asceticism, castration, or of that of a ne\{' economy of de-territorialization with super-povrerful signmachines capableof coming into direct contactwith non-semiotic encodings. Such sign-machines in some \4ay take hold ol the absolute de-terriconsciousness set it to w,orklor artiand torialization ofthe representational ficialmachinic forces- forcesmanipulating a flux of 6gureswhich become, i n a n e u ' q u a n t i c f o r m , t h e b e a r e r so l t h a t a b s o l u t e d e - t e r r i t o r i a l i z ation. and the Rather than adopting Lacan's overdoneoppositionbetweenreaLig real, I preler to borrow Hjelmslev's terminology, and suggest that the alternative is benveena dominant realitystratified by the various semiological formed'intensiue substances the contentand the form, and'non-semiotically of (though let it be noted that being'non-semiotically materials formed'doesnot 'scientifically imply for Hjelmslev that they are therefore lormed').3 One can, then, distinguishseveraltypesofde-territorialization: - an absolute either in global form with the instance of de-territorialization, consciousness, in quantic lorm with non-signifying or machines; -an intensiae de-territorialization, the levelof material fluxes; at - a relatiue at de-territorialization, the level of signifyingsemiologies and mixedsignif ing/a-signify'ing whoseaim is to securecontrolof the semiotics, e{Iects de-territorialization meansof semioticstrata dependingon the of by signif,ving machine.
q. Cf. Louis Hjelmslev, Esscis inguis tiques, Editions de Minuit, r 97 r, p. 58. /

tiltr i$l
ii

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T'or.,u'ardsNew Vocabulary a

Subjectless Action

r 39

of three nrodalities encoding,we can thus seethreecorrespondin{ T'o tl-re t r h l t h n r . .u f d e - t e r r io r i a l i z aito n: -- a.rlou cle-telritorializalion, that takesplaceonly b1'breakingthrough or getting beyondthe strata built up earlier.But with eachsuchbreak,time, the speeds up. (One must in lact talk in terms of co-efncient de-territorialization, to interaction.)At this levelit has becomeimpossible overcome of space/tir-ne laqades,the stratificationof encoding rhe accumulati()nof heterogeneous resiststranslation.The or sysrems, at least of lvhat, within those s,vstems, of various coe{frcients de-territorializationcreate relative fields of deterritorialization which themselves produce an intensive de-terri'semiological up, so to say' and blocksoffthe soup' speeds torialization.The soup', entire'ecologicai/ethological/biological whiie thislattersimultaneously 'physical/chemical soup' . . . and conceals(though it does not destroy) the so on. The relative intensitiesthus remain subject to a stratified mode of semioticplaneindexes that do not raisea specific (signals, figures, encoc{ing There is no translatperyrrus instance,or the hol'monalmessage)' lor stress, ol ing lrom one stratum to another. There are surplus-!'alues encoding, without an.v significance,and all possibilitiesof diagrammatizationare t reducedo thenlinimum; - an ahsolute the absoluteloss of that accompanies de-territorialization, porn with a svstemof signilyingsigns; er, * a de-territorialization of heightened power, wtth machinic systems of which, in quanticlorms, take ofparticle-signs, a utterance, kind ofaccelerator in of possession absoiutede-territorialization order to de-stratifyboth the machines of the plane of signifying expressionand those ol the plane of content-encoding. One cannot get round tl'reparadox of an absolutede-territorialization te beingtranslormedby discre quanta into semioticunits without abandoning all attempts to explain hon' the capacitl'of machinesolscientific,economic, olmaterial iri artistic and other signs can inter','ene the intrinsic encodings That agencements. there is this absolute de-territorialization in the economyof it signsis clearfrom two consequences produces: non-signifying - the direct passage betweensign fluxesand material fluxesin the process to (frorn absoluteand quantic de-territorialization the of diagramn'ratization de-teritorializationof fluxes); intensive - the lact that non-semiotic agencies, the one hand, and non-signifying on on agencies, the other, cannot be broken down in a binary fashion. It is impossible,outside some structuralistillusion, to reduce them to minimal any physical-chemical, alu'ays translate digitalizedunits.One can, of course, into the termsola mathematical process biological,behaviouralor ecotromic of logic that can be reducedto s)'stems binary oppositionand to an axiomatic syntax.But this will neverprovide an explanationofthe real functioning,the

their capacity for diagrammatic agenciesthat produce those processes, de-territorialization, hor+' they fit into the machinicphyium and the abstract mutationsthey effecton the plane of consistency. diagrammaticparticleA sign carriesa quantum ofabsolute de-territorialization that puts it beyond de-territorialization processes the material fluxesto which it is of theintensive linked.The sy'stem diagrammaticsignsparallelsreal de-territorialization, of performingits silent and motionless danceon the plane of consistency away, from any machinic manilestation in time, in space or in substances ol expression. is as though the massivearousalofconsciousness, spiteofIt in or because of - its impotence, had exploded its capacitv lor deterritorialization and collapsed into a black hole rvhich then emittedfluxesof a nerv kind: a thousand sharp points of particle-signde-territorialization. From human desire, now made impotent, there has emerged a kind ol machinic superpower. The territorialized agenciesof utterance and the individuatedsubjects utterancewill of coursecontinueto burn themselves of o n t h i s g l o b a l a b s o l u t e f d e - t e r r i t o r i a l i z a t i oa n d o n t h i s s t i l l t h r e a t e n i n g o n collapse representation that they trv to achieveb,vmeans,lor example,of of godsof some kind. Thev will try to tame the abstractmachinisms, but at the molecularlevel thei, cannot prevent the quanta of possibilitythus liberated from managing, sooner or Iater, to enrer into direct contact r,r,ith natural, economic, socialand other encodings. Facedwith the danger of this upsurgeof the nomad molecularfluxes,the signili,ing machinehas to redoubleboth its meansof defence and its eflortsof impotentization. Today's signifying sub.jectivity can no longer rest content with dealing merely ',r'ith imaginary ghosts, phantoms, benevolentgods, perfectlv adapted to fit the area of representation,as was that of the pre-signifving dispensation primitive societies. of The collectivesystems of re-enclosing, re-territorialization,are held back. In a double twisting of movement. individuatedsubjectivityturns back upon itselfin reactionto the these molecularsemioticfluxes.Microscopicvision and hearingconcentrate all the strataof meaningupon an ideal point of signifyingsubjectivation. is It nolongerenoughlor subjectivityto annihilatethe world globally;it must now takehold of evervsemioticelementwith the lorcepsof double articulationof the planes of content and of form. It will have to take everv utterance, whereverit comes lrom, and syntactize,morphologize,hierarchize and axiomatize (cf. Noam Chomsky'sSyntactic it Structures). signsolintensive AII de-territorializationu,ill be repressed by the s,vstem of relative deterritorialization semioticredundancies. of Once an a-signilying machinehas b e e n ' l i b e r a t e d ' -a s l o r e x a m p l et h e b a n k i n gs y s t e mo l t h e V e n i c e ,G e n o a , Pisatriangle in the Renaissance it is immediately taken over by a double articulationmachine that Iimits its effects subjectingthem in practiceto by the particular content systemof an oligarchicalsociety.The diagrammatic

112 Tou,arCsa Neu'Vocabulary the poweriessworld of representatio!and a subjectivationthat can onl,v, 'lacking' it, I do not meanjust not having it, but Iacking ever,lack reality. By in the sensethat it is continually filled with a lack. The in an active sense. relationshipof the machine of the money/merchandise expressionrcontent mixed semiotics of the capitalist economy, lor example, will infect all The jntensive multiplicitiesof axiomatics. with its orvnspecific territolialiries rvill be ofexpression, economicand socialproduction,havingno other source ofform and content,and obliged to acceptthesedouble redundancysystems will be brokenapart b-vthe systemof body of the intensities the full organless bodv can onll' and subjectivation. The organ)ess ofsignificance surveiilance of and the fuh-ress a survive as best it mav b.voscillatingbetweenemptiness rvill be surrendered the organization, to rnalignant tumour. The intensities and the interpretationofthe the hierarchy,the bi-polarity, the equivalence 'moving'rvill thus be entirelvshilted body of dominant values.The organless organizationof a particular socialorder. Whereas to$,ardsthe logico-sexual verb left all the possibiiities ofexpression ofthe the logic ofthe undetermined pre-personal fluxes open to the widest variety of institutional and political an the framew,orks, logic of the subjectwill producea reversibility, equivalence,a pronominalinterpretation compatiblewith the fluxesof capitalismin or terms of ;r grid of mutually exclusiveopposites:inter-subjective intramasculineor feminine,within the triangle subjective,sexualor non-sexual, a (I-you-he) or outsideit. From rlte material logic of abstractmachines, logic we process, have u'ith the unleashing ofa de-territorialization thaf coincicles logic rvhosecoordinatesof signification retain moved over to an axiomatiled the only what helpsto preserve dominant socialorder. -fhis with by repressive axiomatizationestabiished signifi'ingsemiologies the pronorninal function is only one example, The same sort of process dictates the entire organizationof the Ianguage syntactic,morphematic, rhetorical,poetic.All systems strata,all s,vstems of of connotative, semantic, contribute strarified doublearticuiation(includingthoseof mixed semiotics), to this sarnervork of controlling, or what we may call'semiologizing',the multiplicities. In every casethe aim is the same: the diagrammaticflux of a-subjectivestatementshas to be transformed into a subjectiveI-cgo flux in and sr.rbstantify every situation, and such a way as to particularize, forn-ralize and so on. A sexual,aesthetic to stratify eachof its ramifications economic, permanentwhich establishes dominant mentalrealit.v a generaisubjectivitv, lv cut ollfrom ail the real intensities,permanently guilty in law, will aflect all forms of serniotization, and will always have to be seen as exterior and attributable to personologicalfunctions, by way ofthe systernofsemiological shouldin theory be equal before dorrblearticulation.Qualitatively,everyone the flux of this subjectivity. But quantitatively, each will receivea share it'ith the place he or sheoccupieswhere the various formations comrnensurate

Subjectless Action

r43

of power intersect.In raw, we are at subjects not necessarily the subjects o,f the signifier,bur at leastsubject/a Knowiedge,power, N{oney. But tlr..hu..s in. this kind of subjectivity are in lact radically differenq depending on u,hetherone is a child, a memberof a primitive soclety, a woman, poor, mad and so on. The'it' arose out of quanta of absolute de-territoriarizati,on way by of abstractdancesof particre-signs folrowingintensivemateriarp.o....... ii, the I-ego economy, on the other hand, fower switches towards relative de-territorialization; absolutede-territoriaiization made ro work rowards is its or'r'ni-mpotence the operation of systemsof by redundanciesorawareness n,hoseefforts are directecl to.systemsof mutually exclusive, binary opposi_ tions,whereas the 'it' shapeda machinicforceof .,"ittout actionsemioticalry passin^g judgement upon the value of the non-it, any the slightestmanifestation of an I-ego is over-determined by a whole set of soci"ar stratifications, hierarchical positions and power relationships.

MachinicPropositions I45

Machinic Propositionsl

The prc,duction ofutterancesbv territorializedagentshad in itselfa certailr a certain semioticgrasp of material and social diagrammatic effectir,'eness, no s. energie But this was as,vet more than a diagrammatismcontrolledby the functioningoi'the territori:rlgroup as a whole,intendedto compartmentalize it in the same\r,a)'asany other machinismcapableof settingto work on its individuated. the diagrammatism,'vill own account.,\s utterance becomes frornthe lzrnguage point of r,ierrrt becomediflerentiated, specializedlwhereas it lrom the point of viervof sign nrachines and lzrdes, becomcsirn;rovelished areas: and expand.There are thus three senlrotlc can orrlVclevelop ( r 1 t h a t o f t h e s c i e n c e s , c h n o l o g y n d t h e e c o n o m yw h i c h i s c o n s t a n t l , v te a , that lunctionfrom mathematicbeingactedupon by diagrammaticmachines al and algorhythmic utterances; ( z ) r h a t r r fr h e l a n g u a g e s l a u t h o r i t y , t h e l a n g u a g eo f b u r e a u c r a c y 'n d s a o is diagramm:rtism entirelydirected to controllingthe resrdual relieion,rvhose s e m i o t i z a t i o n sf d e s i r e : o , t 3 ) t h a t o l s p o k e n l a n g u a g e sw h e r e t h e v a r i o u ss t r a n d so f d e - t e r l i t o r i a l and territorializationof the other two areascome together. Thus the iz.ation languages imposedby the u,ork of purging and impovcrishingterritorialized fluxe,s capitalisrntend '.o rcsuit in setting up two quite distinct tvpes of of 'judgement'or over-encoding: meta-languages of - algorhl thmic meta-languages j of that express statements scientific udgerole rnrnt sLrppilrteci a rigorouslvcontrolledand controllinglogic,rn'hose is bv a t o i n r p o s e n d g u a l a n t e ca c e r t a i nc o n t e n to f ' u n i v e r s a l 't r u t h i n t h e u t t e r ancesthey produce. -- bureaucratic meta-languages express that statements ofauthority, u hose 'universality" in role is equally to imposeand guaranteea certain contentof and formalizations they produce. the significations 'fluth and authoritv can thus be considered formationsthat replacethe as of The despoticsvntactization organlessbodiesof territorializedsemiotics. o i t h e s e m i o t i c s n t h e s p h e r eo f p l a r i s , a n d t h e s e m i o t i z a t i o n f t h e p o w e r so machinesin the sphereof the sociusthus combinetheir effects as to define,
r. ilnpublishcd.

concentrateand acceleratethe diagrammatism of what used to be the territorial machine.These formalizationmachinesthat can modify existing are concentrated the handsof a power formationthat dominates in structures 'scribe'caste.But that operationcan be carriedout only ifthe process it the involves is deemed to be a universal one: hence the role ofde-territorialized reasonr power - science, monotheism,and of the unity of the transcendent 'universal'if peopleare to acceptand legitimacvor whatever.Truth must be interiorize the particular power lormation that controls the sign machines with the dominantformaof for responsible linking lormalizations expression as Iizationsofcontent. The idea that statements such can be the bearersof of formalization, universalinformation,is the sameas the idea that a value of universal exchangecan be derived lrom the circulation of market commod'surface'statements of and the fundamentals logical ities.The split between the out truth develops ofa methodoftranscendentalizing signifierparticularthis is in lact part of the basisof their ly dear to the hearts of scientisrs; them from other groups.No organizationas a caste,of what dillerentiates of is ionger- it from a despot,or a despoticsocialformatiotl,that the utterance ofpower, thereis a underlyingall the writings,all the realities truth proceeds: proloundtuth levellingup the logicalfabricof the signifyingchains.Political truth is not just something produced by society; the values of desire, 'discoveries'of a completely arbitrary kind, all theseare reinforcedby Truth like that of capitalism,considers existingin itself.The languageof science, itself - as pure discourse- to be the exclusiverepositoryof the forcesof diagrammatismit brings into action.Yet really, bv definition,diagrammatism cannotbe concentratedinto a single semiotic stratum: it is alwavs If trans-semiotic. a diagrammatic relationship is establishedbetween a it and a materialor socialmachinicsystem, is not because of system utterance What happens is that the ol any lormal similarities or correspondences. inner machinismwithin both systems an diagrammatisminvolvesthe same abstractmachinismof positivede-territorialization utterances Denying the existence ofpropositionsthat transcendl.inguistic and machinic lorcesis only one aspectof a more generaldenial that there is any universal formal law. Diagrammatism brings into play more or less forces, systems ofsigns,ofcodes,ofcatalysts trans-semiotic de-territoriaiized and so on, that make it possible in various specific wa,vs to cut across sratificationsofeverykind. Thus therecan be no questionofany self-existent Truth. A propositionis true in a particularmachinicfield;when anv material to things,it will cease be true. Truth is what is or semioticmachinechanges are now. It stopswhen the machinicconnections broken.Consehappening of quentl),, there are as many logics,or as many dimensions logicaltruth, as there are types ofengagement. In other words, to search for some universal propositional logic underlying all of scientific discourseis to lollow a mirage.

I+6

Torvards a New Vocabttlart'

MachinicPropositions r47

Propositionsof judgement relate to all the different tvpes of utterance machine I prel'er,therefore,to talk of machinic propositions,Linguistic are not to be comparedwith the valuesof utliversaltruths. but starenleltts i.vith specific c()mbinations3f machinic propositions (that is, of'abstract lv{einong! canreto rhe r'achines). In recognizing truth valuesolthe referent, to escape from a simplistic alternative between existenceand nontry existing without necessarilv he ideal ob.jects, said,subsist(DesleArz) exisrencc: of (cxistieren). also suggestsa third rvay of being, the ausserseiendthe pure He 'beyond being and non-being',ar.rd fourth, an nth kind olbeing that a ot.,ject But negatiolls.:1 his battle with the be c;rrr attributed to an objectl.r;'successive 'prejr-rdice lavour of the real'doesnot lead him on to attackthe illusion that in all thereexistssomeuniversal being transcending contingelltmanifestations. hand, prefer to start lrom the idea that there are as nlanl I, on the other as modesqf existence tltereare modesof activity and machinicpropositions. is the object of intentionalitv has a reai reference absurd. Tr_iask rvliether. l e u , \ A r h a i.s ' u n d e r l v i n g i' i n g u i s t i c t t e r a n c ep e r c e p t i v s e m i o t i z a t i o te .t c . ,i s a n t s o l A h : r r a r ' iu r a t h i r t et o , , . r i c h r h e c o o r d i n a t e s f e x i s r e t t c 'e p a c e ,( i l n e . i u b ) s t z r n c o l e x p r e s s i o nd o n o t a p p l v T h i s o b j e c t ,a t t h e h e a r to l t h c o b j e c t ,i s e ri o i r . r os i t u a r e dn s o m ek i n d o f h e a v e n f r e p r e s e n t a t i o ni s : s b o t h ' i n t h e m i n d ' r machineit As all coordinates. a de-territorializing and in things, but outsicie It both oflanguage and ofexistence. is neither a cuts acrossthe coordinates

Nlachinic propositions have no hierarchy: they do not start from the simple and work up to the complex.There is complexityin their most elementary 'Machiway. stages, and their totalitiesmay well function in an elementary is not basedon universal principles, nor doesit postulate any transcennics' a dent larv.The objectis not to establish machiniclogic,bur onlv to graspthe way phvlums and rhizomesfunction. Sincethe stratawhere they appearare inseparable, machinic propositionskeep cutting acrossthem, establishing highly differentiated lines ofescape (lines ofpositive de-territorialization). These,in return, will becomea foundationlor coordinqtingthem in space, (coordinates negative Machinic time and substance of de-territorialization). 'simplified' propositions cannot be or'reduced' like mathematicalformulae But when they are not re-absorbed or logicalstatements. into a black hole of positive de-territorialization, formed into a network of lines of escape or unrelatedto anv strata, they accumulateto form residualblocsthat provide the raw material lor constructing strata. trVethus passfrom a systemoflatent quanta, inherent in the lines ofescape,to a stratifiedconstruction which in the lines are arrangedto fit togetherin a s.vstem multiple articulation.In of the first, virtuality, continually fluctuating with the threat ofa black-holestyle abolition) ensures the possibilitiesof opennessand rearrangement represented the line ofescape;in the second,the quanta are rearrangedin by blocks(infinite-limited-discontinuous) systems in olarticulation from stratum to stratum, Discontinuity among the strata replaces the intensive nrenral olrjectnor a material one. 'degrees'of existence or quantic regime (finite-contiguous-continuous-unlimited).+ We have, then, so, thefe is no occasionto consider This t-'eing ' d c g r e e s ' o f t r u t hE t e 2 t l f i f n t e x i s l s , a n d e t ' e r y t h i n g i s t r u c : t h e u n i c o r n e x i s t s i nton e . o consider a trvofold stratification: a molar, visible stratification, relating to of matter, life, sign machines,etc., and a transversal, molecularstratification particular stratum of machirtic propositionsand one particular s1'stem that captures the energy ofde-territorialization, and lorcesit to spin round on discoursequite as much as the horse or the dinosaur exist in others.The being and its own axis rather than letting it escape) eflectlike a black hole.So,all the in ofthe pure objectbe.vond the bodv ofexistence, existence orqanless processes ofde-territorialization absolute, relativeand so on - will have in univelsalcategor) It is the point ofall is non-beirrg, not an undifferentiated one $'ay or another to adjust to the state of stratification of machinic u'ithout coordinates(the plane of conabsract, machinic clilTerentiations 'belore'beingcaughtin the movement propositions,sincethere is no way ofmaking the fluxeszol have beenstratified The intensivemultiplicities, sistency). an asthey have been;thus, unlike the abstract machinism, thisis afait accompli, a to from one stratr-tm anothel!constitute abstract ofexistence of'coordinates subjectionto eventsfor the machinic phylum which we shall later compare r n a t t e ro f p u r e d i { I e r e n t i a t i o n . with the function of concretemachines.In the last analysis,at the level of The functionine of machines, therefore, cannot be reduced eithei to that we machinicagencies action, the distinction betweenabstractmachine and in articulations.or to stratified manifestations logical/nrathematical 'science'. stratification disappears:it is as though the positive de-territorialization of have to explore r.r'iththe aid of sorne phenomenological should theabstractmachinismand the negative de-territorialization the stratumof what is needed here is a scienceof of Ir-rsteacl logir: and phenontenologr', to-stratum articulations neutralize one another without there being any of a machinics in other r,vords s,vstem arranging nlachinicpropositionsthat question a'dialecticalsynthesis', of cannot be reduced to loeical/mathematicalstaiementsor the realms of phenornenoloev.
. z . A l e x i u s M e i n o n q ( r 8 5 3 - r g z o ) . a p i o n e e ri n o b j e c tt h e o n . H i s m o s t i r n p o r t a n tw o r k s a r e 0 b e r Ordnung i Annnltnenltqoz), l'lune Studien r8;.;-gr), and UberGrynstinlr hdhrer lt9ggit Seuil, I 974, p. 34 de a. Ldr;rrardLinsky, Le Prablime lo riJlrence,

Editions de N{inuir, r g75, 4. CfG. Deleuze and F. Guattari, KaJka:pourunelilthaluremireurc,

I48

Towards a New Vocabular'1, negative de.territorialization z Proposition - Positionality machines

lv{achinicPropositions t49

Positive de.territorialization;

' i n d e p e n d e n t l y ' o f t hs t r a t a , e Considered t h e n ,a n d o n l l ' a t t h el e v e lo l l i n e so f escape arrdstratum-to-stratum engaJernents, de-territorialization a posihas tive ancia neqativenature. Positive de-territorialization corresponds a sheerblack-hole to effect, an to absenceor abolition of coordinates(one can distinguish betu,een line of a escape lor the absenceof coordinatesand a line of abolition lor their de-territorialization, this verv distinctionshowsthat one cannotconsider but positivede-territorialization apart from strata:in effect,the line ofabolition inrpliesstrata, and the line of escape alwavsa line evadingstrata). Unlike is this intlinsic cie-territorialization, negativede-territoria)ization dillerenis tiai, establishirrg systems determinantsand substances expression. of of Out of the mutationsof its quanticsystem, positivede-territorialization constructs ozsabstractmachinicrealitv,a singlereaiity accountable nobody;whereas to negativcde-territorialization consritutes concrete, the stratifiedreality based rupon systems connection, its of interaction,encoding,reproduction, etc. B u t t b e c o n r l a s t i s s t i l l t o o c l e a r ' - c u rI.n p o i u t o f f a c r , p o s i r i v ed e territorializationentersin varfing degrees into the constitutionofthe propositions of coordinates and substances.There is a positive de-terrirorialization of spaceat the ier,'el astro-phvsics of and particles,while, at our level, time represents positiveprocess a ofde-territorialization. isjust that It \{'eneverha'"e anr,contactwith that time and spacein the initial stages except via the machinesof expression that deal with intensivematerial,substantif_vit ir-rg in the br.rsiness sub.jectivizing stratifvingsemiotization of and (concrete rnachinesof s1'rnbolicsemiotics,signilving machines, the machinism of a u t h c r i t ya n d s o o n ) . brief rdsumd of some machinic propositions 1A A. Fluxes B. Strata totality C, C)bj ect-species
A. FLUX PROPOSITIONS

These demonstrate the impossibiiitl' of black holes as a proposition of cannotexist apart from the machinic exisrence. Positivede-territorialization propositions that negate it. The first pro-positionalagency that connects these two tvpes of de-territorialization is the extensiae fux. At the level of as systems stratification,machinesof positionalitywill later be specified of propositions interaction,of crystallization,of catalysis,of moulding, of of reproduction, diagrammatice{Iectand so on. of Propositton - 0r t - Intetuiuc <erl fuxes paradox,shouldbe presented This proposition,an anti-dialectic beforethose relatingto de-territorializations, even though it can exist only in association with machinesof extensive propositionaliry. The intensivefluxesconstitute thechannelolnegotiation ofpositive territorialization the other proposilor trons. Proposi 3 - A bstrac machines t ti on Theserepresentthe peculiar mode ol quantic organizationof the positive de-territorialization ofthe intensivefluxes.The negative de-territorialization of the positionality propositions (proposition z) is thus 're-positivized'. Positive de-territorialization quantifiedand put into operationin the fluxes is andstrata accordingto machinic formulae that cut acrossand overtakethe (Thereis, obviouslv,no necessary link system and substances. ofcoordinates between propositionand the next, but only a machinicaction.Thus what one was,at the level of proposition e, for example, determination by negative positionality,determination b_v" encoding, by the creation of lack, by objectivation, bl' representation,etc. - all ol which appeal to much 'later' propositions stratification- gives way to the return of sheer positive of de-territorialization.There is thus no.4uf ebung;proposition in connection r, with the propositions of stratification, functions as an abstract machine of breaking off and innovation without preserving any of the 'gains' of deFrom the standpointofpositive de-territorialization, territorialization. there isneverany established gain, but only the residuumofmachinesand strata.) Abstract machinescan equally be defined,much later on (seeproposition r7), as resulting lrom the conjunction ofseveral processes ofpositive dervhich implies the possibility and autonomv of certain territorialization, pr0cesses.

Proposition - Positiue t de-territoriali<ation T'hisis fbund in its pure statein the black hole.But it is a basiccomponent of propositions olinrensiveflux (line ofescapeand line ofabolition). In reality, 'yet' a proposition- but that positive de-territorializationis not does not mean that it is an anti-proposition:it exists as much before as after an)' proposi tionalitv.

r50

Towards a New \rocabuiar,v

Machinic Propositions r5r (c) The level of lines of residualde-territorialization, rr'hichwill serveas coordinates as a possible or connection either by way ofa line ofescape, or by way of a line of abolition. Propo.sition- Interactioru 7 Theserepresent reverse the ofredundancies. From them, the stratifications of the fluxes can be polarized in terms of zones, of a field, an object, a constellation and so on. In stratified,negativede-territorialization, oppositionbetween the redundancy and interactionrepresents reinlorcement a ofthe oppositionin levelA (flux propositions)between positive de-territorialization and negativedeterritorialization'in the pure state'. The propositionsof interaction and will relateto one anotherdiflerentlyaccordingto their respective redundancy paceof d e-territorialization. The interaction ofnegative speedsofinteraction and negativespeedsof redundancycorresponds a 'cold' stratification(for example palaeol.ithic to , soclet)'). The interaction of negativespeedsof interaction and positive speedsof redundancyproduceslines of abolition or lines of return (for example,a fascist rhizome:whereas economicand materialfactorsbecome'reified',the organless body ofthe sociusis positivelyde-territorialized, that the whole so thing becomes hollow inside). The interaction of positive speedsof interaction and negativespeedsof redundancyproduceslines ofescape(for example,capitalistic societies that become re-territorialized and archaic in proportion as they are deterritorialized) The interaction of positive speedsof interaction and positivespeedsof redundancyproduces machinic actions which get beyond the opposition redundancyand ir-rteraction revolutionary (a between societythat wili function on the basisolflux and schiz). As we shall seefurther on (propositiont 7), the abstractmachines will also bedefined as a rapid systemofconnecting up fluxes,for the relation between abstractmachine and machinic agencyoperatesaround the 'e{Iective'taking overof the strata.

of anci Prorhosition Thenature speed de-territoriaLi<atirtn 4De-territorializatiol is positive and absolute in the case of black holes, continuousand di{lerentialin qganric in the caseoflines ofescape,negative, in the caseof relationshipsamong strata, and non-existent the caseof the also The speedol de-territorialization organlessbody ol the stratifications. brings into play propositionalcomponentsthat would onl.venter the scene ,later' in a dialecticalphenomenologv in other words stratifyingdeterminations. For the relationshiP nrgati\.e e-territorializatton d de-territorialization Positive accordingto the strata rvill be totaliy diilerent both in nature and in rh.vthrn rvithin which it operates(strata of elei'gy, biologicalstrata, semiotrcstrata a n ds o o n ) . There w'ill be a positive speed when an action becomesrelativelv deIn territorialized,and a legative one when it is relativelvre-territorialized. it the latter case, is as though positiveenergv were spinninground on its o,,r'r.l axis. and the orsanlessbody of the stratum would then be functioningas a kinclofanti-biack hole,while the plane ofconsisten6 could be definedas the might happen area rvherepositivede-territorializatiolrs

B . S T R - A T AP R O P O S I T I O N S

poinn oJintetui['t Propositir,tn Tlu mecti.ng 5the These constitutethe points ofreturn, ofoscillationbetrveen propositions 'knots' underlie the These and ofnegative de-territorialization. ofpositive powerolthe strata,in the de-territorializing or Strata, rnoreprecisel,v negative statements to as rnuch as theyforcethe positivede-territorializations become of abstlirctvirtrralitv.5 6 Proposition - Redundancies the knotsofintensity that compose actual This brings us to the second-degree fabric of the strata. We can distinguishthreelevelsof stratification: of (a) The moiecularIevelof the meeting-Points intensitl'; betweenthe meeting(b) The levelof molar redundancl: the organizatiotr an inter-stratum entitv turned in upon itsell' an points, which produces 'facedistinctivefeatureof anti-black hole ({br example,concretemachines, n e s s ').
r e l a t i o nt o t l l e s l r a t a p r o p o s r l r o n s 5 . \ ' i r t u ; i l i t v h e r eb e c o m e s ' s t ' c o n c l a r , v ' i n

C. PROPOSITIONS F TOTALITY. OF OBIECT AND OF SPECIES O

Proposition - Polari4tions B Theseresult lrom the counter-effectofmachinic interaction propositionson systems stratified redundancy We talk of polarization it,hen speedsol of

r52

Towards a New \rocabulary t Proposition 4 - Encodings

MachinicPropositions I53

pointing in opposite directions coexist in any given de-ten-itorialization Bi-polarizationis one exampleof this, but there can be an indefinite agcr-rcy. . emerge olspeedfronr which polar zones number of thresholds g Proporition - Breaking-off The eiTect oia redundancyrelating to polarizedforces. ro Proposition - Thearetns relating to propositions of These i:csultfrom the counter-effect breaking-off polarizedstrata. and t Propositian t - Totalities,objects speties 'fhese ol result lrom the counter-application a breaking-offpropositionbreaking-oll- to fields which thereby take on a referential second-degree is position." r\ svstemofspecific - stratified- coordinates then set up; the a doubiearticulationbecomes definedreaiitv,This bringsus backto the point rn'estarted lrom: the analysis of different modes of encoding and semiotizatlon. r Proltosition t - Thefficts homologies We return ro tl-re These ale the leverseof object propositions. referred to earlier betweelr ( l ) positiveand nesativede-territorialization the Ievelofthe fluxes; at (2) interactic)ns at and redundancies the levelofthe strata. But herewe have a further lactor ofinertia, ofsecond-degree stratification. reproducethemselves their ow'n through proon Objects, totaliries,species cessesof mouiding, catalvsis,crystallization,etc., whereas the intrinsic lrom tl-re extrinsic interactions redundancies the strata w'ereinseparable of a among the strata.With fficts, a new formalismis stratified, new principleof The form and organismand so on olrhis propstratificatiollis established. 'origin' effect the on ofthe strata. ositionu'ill havea celtain kind ofretr-oactive Proltosition - Processes t3 This reft--rs eilects involving a link rvith an escapeline of positive deto territori alizarior-r.
r a , 6 . C o n c r e t em a c h i n e se s r a b l i s h i n e e l a t i o n s h i p s l o n g t h e l i n e so f s u r l a c e ' / d e p t ho r g a n / o r g a n ism,rtc.

Theseresultfrom the interactionofstratawhosespeed olde-territorialization is negativeand which bring into operatione{Iects ofobjectsand totalities. r5 Propositian - Encoded reproductions T h e s ea r e a s y s t e mo f r e d u n d a n c yt h a t r e s u l t s n t h e p r o d u c t i o n f s p e c i e s i o functioningon the basisofa negativede-territorialization. processes t6 Proposition - Diagrammatic Theseresult lrom the conjunctionofstrata propositions with objectproposispeeds tionshaving de-territorializing ofopposite tendencies, dominated by positiveescapelines and leading to the production o1'objects, totalitiesor s p e c i eu i t h t w o c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s : s ( t ) they are reproduceable; ir) thev thernselvesconstitute a lresh stratum that is more deterritorialized than the srata and objectsofthe original organization. into a Here *'e once again find the paradox ol the linking of propositions rhizome:the dizigrammaticreproductionin lact appearsto depend on the encodedreproduction,despite being more 'innovative' and'creative', becausethe surplus values of encodingremain dependenton the strata. But there have to be stratum and object propositions if the positive deterritorialization the diagrammatic processes to introduce its semiotic of is mutationsinto the machinic agencies and r,'ice versa.Nor must we lorget t h a t ' d i a g r a m m a t i s m ' i t o b e l o u n dj u s t a s m r . l c h u t s i d e e m i o t i c n c o d i n g s s o s e (in geneticmutations,lor example), Proposition - Abstract t7 machines These result lrom the conjunction of positive processesof de-rerritorialization. Thus, abstract machineshave a twolold origin: a 'natural' origin at the level propositions flux (no. 3); and an 'artificial',diagrammaticorigin, at of of the level of propositions of object (no. I6), which 'implies' their being extended ofstratification. over all the systems In reality there is no 'before'or 'after'; like diagrammatism,the abstract ofcoordinates, machines acrossthc s1'stems cLrt ofstrata and ofobjectslrom all directions.

Concrete Machines

r 55

Concrete Machines'

wlrat is it tha.t is operatirrg in i^,hat one sees as the featuresof a lace, a a iandscal;e, body?How do we accountfor the mvsteryof a particularlook, a se thing. a stfeet, a memory?\\rhat is actuallythereto see emsto be concealing sometiringelse. \vhat sort oi'line ol escapegives us the sensethat some of potentiaiities encounrcrrnightoccur?What exactlyare these extraordinar.v The entrv of worid. operating br differentrules,differentcodes? someorher 'rnysterization'. is memory inro per-ceprion undoubtedlyvital in this effectof On and re-ten'itorializatiort. the one de-territorialization lvlernorvcornbines representation,and on the other it hand it selectsspecilic ieatures of as a reassembieswhole that can be presented one thing, on which one can take stand, so to say' vet which is in lact whollv suljective arld' in a sense' <,rne's w.ill never be able to elude us as reality has. Memory',slines of escapeare to escapes play at beingalraid' lalseones,imagesoi'escape, alrvays rveight,acquiringthe functionolmatrixes, some memoriestake on special it a lunction of'orgalizing the nrodeolsubjectil'ation; is thesethat we classifr and so on. In fact, memory as the featuresof faciality, animality, bodiliness it itere is not quire a single w,hole,because operatesat the level of things ir tiremselves; might be better to talk not of memory but of block:a childhood block, unlike a childhood memory, is srill in the present.The featureso1' which are machinesoi' or laciality, animaiity etc. iorm consteliations masses actualizethe intensities.I want to describeall thesevarious the kincl that machines. kinds ofbiocks generallyas concrete The function of these machines,at least those that opel'atein terms oftwo typesof redundanc;': is svmbolicsemiotics, to associate ol'images that underliethe semantisrn of Redundancies representation t I) paradignisof signifyingsemiologies' anclof the syntagmatized ol' elernents that iz1 Diagrammaticredur-rdancies put the de-territorialized reality itselL An example of this would be the sign machines ro work orr bfteprints - the physical a'd mathematicalspecifications fbr Concord: ol articulations what is noted at the semioticregisteris the de-territorialized the various things that go to make up the aircralt aluminium, electrical
r. UnPublished.

fluxes, semioticfluxesas expressed materiallyand so on. But sucha blueprint is onlv ofinterestir so lar as its arriculations sufficiently are de-territorialized and can be made to correspond with the de-territorialized articuiations ofrhe materialsof expression. Diagrammatizarionconsists this interchange, in at the most de-territorialized level, between these two sorts of deterritorialization. If the high points of de-territorialization of the semiotic systems are to be able to combine with thoseof the material systems this in way, the relevantfeatures the materialsof expression of involved- their raw materia.ls, ue might say - must be compatible with the nature of the articulatory fearures de-territorialization the materialfield.The semiotic of of Ievelof expression must be able to'support' the type of machinicconsistency of the material (or social)system,and nor abandonit in any way. To take a simpleexample:vou cannotmake a mould lor a kev out olj ust anything- you needa particular kind of wax; if vou w.e to try doing it rvith mashedpotato, re could not hold or transferthe diagrammaticoutline that makesthe ke1, ,vou what it is- If vou lvant to reproducethat outline on paper you need a brush that is not too broad, and ink that is neither too thin nor too thick. In other rvordsyou must choosematerialsof expression suited to the features the of machinismyou want to transfer.Diagrammatic redundancythus depends, on the one hand, on the de-territorializingarticulations of the various materialand semioticstrata that are to be connected together(aluminium, steel, information, equations,etc.) and, on the other, on the capacityof the materialsof expressionto use, to activate, to organize that system of connection, What I have called the redundancies representation not functionon of do the basisof such diagrammaticconjuncrions, nor do they work lor anl,and evervmachinic agency.For instance,a picture or a portrait organizesno machinrcconjunction between the element of de-territorializationof the subject reproduced it and the materialofexpression; portrait alwaysadds in a somethingto its model, as well as transforming its materials into the substances expression. picture produced by a computer, lor example, ol A wouldbe vely di{Ierent:it would correspondto a convention,quite independent of the 'creative' idea of the person rlho programmed it; in this case anythingadded rvould be superfluous, the ideal ofsuch a diagram is to for allowfor the Ieastpossible inertia on the part ofthe meansofexpression, and to transmit a message basicallvreducedto a binary encoding.In diagrammatism. semanticor signifyingresidualsubstances either of the object or of themeansofexpression are alwayssuperfluous. Semanticism significance or will be toleratedonly temporarily, and the expectationis always that they will be reducedwith the advanceoftechnological and scientific progress. The concrete machines of actuai faces, scenery, etc. bring both types of redundancy into play (redundancy ofrepresentation and of diagrammarism).

r56

Towards a New Vocabulary

Concrete Machines

t57

betr.eendifferent thev activatea negotiation Thel, relateto mixed sentiotics; that At the levelcf the piane of consistency, semioticand materiai registers. al b,v is negotiarion made possible(possibilized) abstractmachinesl the level of ieal lbrces,it is orgattizedbv concretemachines. Just as otre nray sa,vof consciousnessthat it represents the impossibility ol absolute deso territr..rrialization, one can now defineabstractmachinesas indicating the impossibilit,v 0f anl. quantic. positive de-territorialization.zAbstract reality, but only at the level of the exist not in some transcendent maci-rirres of the possibilitvthat rhey may appear.They represent essence ever-pfesent possible,a possiblervhoseonly impossibilitYis to exist as a substance. the Similarly, one cannot think of a substance of de-territorializaLion, or a

are obliged to proceed bv way of these non-abstract machines that are hierarchized in such a way as to make some kinds of becoming depend on others,particularly the machinesof invisiblebecomingof Oedipal guilt, and of I'emalebecoming in relation !o rhe sexedbody. How does rhis hierarchization of the concrete machines become apparent? Both by the conjunction of machinic propositionsat a molecular level, and that of the capture and interlinking of extremelyvaried lines of escapeat a molar level. Concrete machinesdo not in fact belong specificallvto the molar or rhe molecular order,an1'morethan do abstractmachines, precisely because they represent the possibil.ity olarticulating the two. A concrete machinedoesnot belongto a particular stratum, but indicatespossible politicsof inter-stratification. Ir presents practical 'either-or': either an acrion will close in and become n a dualisnrbetwee being and becoming in the machinedemonstrates impossibilin'. the field stratified, it will openout onto diagrammaticlinesof escape. or Facialitvas a concrete The concrete independentof the lormalism of contents. machine of anv becorning opensup the possible, eitherin the form ofsignifyingcircles, of representation, centred perhapson the features of faciality, or in the form of post-signif,ving Contents are nothing apart from power formations. apart lrom the diaspirals The features that let the lines ofescapego offat a rangent,In the first case,the concrete grammatic operatorsthat function in particular stratifications. machinedevelopsheavy,figurativeterritorialities, a that cornpose lace presenta real micro-authorit\'.One might evensay that operatingon at leasrtwo of' and stratifications dimensions; the second,it disperses de-terrirorialized basedon signifling stratificarions in in capiralistsvstems, a line in particlervithout thesemachinesof be signs that tend to eludethe dimensions time and space no sub.jectivatiop. authoritv coLrld established of altoge ther.Consider 'faciality'. A ctrpitalistdoes not have power in a general sort of wav: he the practiceof transcendental meditation now so lashionable the United in factory,in a particularcountry, and in States: mav find it developinginro an organless we controlsa speci6cterritory, a specific body openingdesireout ofsignifica' onto an a-signif.ving outsideworld, or, equally, closingin upon a signifying each one he dependson a certainnumber ofthose transformers In activitythat alienates individualsin line with the valuesof authority, In most tion - concretemachines.3 each of thesesituations,the dominant facial etc. cop,judge,pop-star'boss, cases transcendental meditarorsare doing both things at once. (It is worth features thoseofthe mother,lather, teacher, 'archaic' concrete * determine the possible sun'ilal of the other, more noting in passing that the signifying text of a ritual does not necessariiy with the etc. which are connected requirethe existence a written text like the Buddhist scriptures; can.just the being of animals, scenery, machirres: of it forcesofaction belongingto childhood,the counas rvell be a 'spatializedtext', like that of the Japanesetea ceremony.)In territorialized deep-seated and so on. Establishingtheseconcreteauthority Hitler'slascism, instance, a mcllarlevel,therewereconcrete for at tryside,primitive societies machines militarv,police,aesthetic, - managingthe conjuncrionof a longstanding, machinesis the only meanswhereby a capitalisticsystemcan tolerale,and erc. of the linesofescapeinherentin the deyelopment indeed archaic,stratifiedauthoritv with abstractmachinesthat were stili an tuql t() its own advantage, 'feeling of their way' along highly de-territorialized productive {brcesand the de-territorialization production relations.Its paths: thus such modern power as icon avouldbe nothing without the diagrammaticpotencyof those themes State capitalismand science as came paradoxicatlyto be associated with completelyregressive machines. le-territorializingconcrete ideaslike'rapaciousJewsraking over the world,, 'purity the of blood' and so on. Similarl,v,we can see rhe conjunctionberween Concretemachinesdiagramrnatize strata;they are the point of interacand the strataolpower. The variousbecomings Stalin, the little lather ofthe people,Ivan the Terrible, and the running ofa rion bctween abstractmachines - homosexual becoming,child becoming'growth becoming,etc bureaucratic planned Srate The concrere . of desirc machinesmetabolize conjuncthe tionof semiotic,material and socialfluxesindependentlv the relationships of 'I'hus, as not torally seriouslr" one could define corrsciousness being rhe organlessbody of the :. ofcausalitv genealogy or that may belongto the variousstrata redundancies. abstract machincs, as opposed to the olane ofconsistency rvhich cannot be defined either as the Things can thus be happeningon several differenrlevelsat once.One can say toralit,vofall totalities, or as the organlessbody ofthe organlessbodies. of Louis-Ferdinand C6line, for insrance,that his writing had nothing to do must be particularly concerned with detecting anci neutralizing the 3. Revolurionary analysrs withlascismand eve rything ro do wirh it. It had nothing to do with it in that re-rerrirorializing ellects of lhe concrete rnachinesthat make people attached to hierarchies,male his rnachine of literary de-territorializarion diminailce. individual otnership, a clinging to depcndence,etc. was par-t of a set of abstracr

! 58

-I'owirds

a New Vocabulary

ConcreteMachines I59 of general equivalenceof rnoney capital. The great, supposedlys)'mbolic, * signification the Signifier,Capital, the Libido, operatorsofsecond-degree - never exist in themselves, operateonly in dependence concrete on but etc. machines. Thus, it is not enough to sal that a cerlain form of deof territorializedmonotheism, the type codifiedby St Paul and St Augustine' after the first is to be seenin relationto the influx ofcapitalismthat appeared revolutionof the twelfth centurv' One must also note the producindustrial coordinalesat th level of of tion of new significations, new interpretati"'e the things that actuaily ofcharacteristics, the accompanyingconstellations go in one direction rather than another: with the Desert made the system Fathers,there was a risk that it would disappearaltogetherin pursuit ofthe at ofthe the spiritual;with other heresies, son was territorialized the expense seeingl\lary as mother of father; at another time, it had to choosebetrveen God or mother olhumanity; a! another, the decisionhad to be made not to venerateimagesof Christ for their own sake;and so on. It was via all sortsof 'negotiations' ofthis kind on the Part olthe theologicconcrete micro-political al machines that there came to be defined the right to life, the possible survival of animal-becoming, child-becoming, female-becoming,body(of all beconring, the intensity-becomings music,lor example and so on. The ) can of macro-redundancies capitalisticrePreserttation never be validly deon for scribedin termsof a singledualisticlogic- based, instance, the symbol ral of the phallus.The phallusbecamea gene operatorof authority only to the 'masses'of ofactual realities, on extentthat it remaineddependent collections - and the samecan be said ofall the producedby concretemachines events, other part objectsof psychoanalysis. concretemachinesis that they should make it The reasonlor considering aboveall far harder lor us to try to describehistory in termsofsignifications, of significationssimilar in nature to a particular level of a major power perspecformation.What one has to examinehere is the whole genealogical tive; indeed there is probably no genealogl'that can account for madness, illegalism,shutting up children and so on rvithout referenceto concrete machinesthat carne into being independentof the relationshipsof molar fbrces, concreternachinesexisting independentlyoflarge-scaiebalancesof of power,olthe diachronicimplicationsof the machinicphylum in the sphere etc.Would it be legitimateto theeconomv,of demography,of rvar machines, one molecuiarfolly, might have that one particular poetic madness, belier.'e strain ofcourtly love?You may objectthat this is not a originatedthe diseased vital problem,or perhapsthat the time was ripe for the thing to happen.But and at that levelonly, that surelyit is at the levelofsuch individual madness, among the various ivecan hope to discoverthe links, the inter-relationships of machinesthat have metabolizedthe significations the period, as concrete as much in termsof the literarv,the eroticand the aesthetic of the military, the

quite unconnected rvith the nTachines, a phvlum of literarv expression of political and socialbattlesolhis own day; and it had everythingto do with it in that it u'as only becauseof a particular concatenationof identifying characteristics, especially racist ones,that his literary machineexistedat all (lor instance. role of the concrete the machines offamilialismand the u'orkers' it movementin his writing) , Consequently, is not a matter of our having to make a distinction betweengood facial featuresoperating,lor instanceras sign-points,and bad ones operatingon a more territorializediconic mode; in one can find fascistre-territorializations both kinds. Let us make a further distinction:redundancies ofrepresentation can be micro-redundancies macro-redundancies. or In anv signifying stratum, the totality of local expressive redundancies relatesto the macro-redundancies the effects signification. signifring of of A stratum cannot directiy engenderlines ofescape,unlessit is on the wa)'to destruction. the caseolsymbolic semiotics non-signifv'ing In or semiotics. is it diflerent.There is not the sametype of centringor encircling.Pre-signifying symbolic semiotics are territorializedaround a multiplicitv of centres, forming a kind of semiotic segmentalization uhich no one of them is prein (post-signif,ving) eminent,n,hereas a-signifi,'ing semiotics escape systems the ofterritorialization and ofbinarized linear encoding. Thus, neither subjects the lines of'escape a systemofcentring that would over-encode to them and turn them into outsidelines that could be projectedonto systems ofcoordinates.The line olescapeis part of the territorialized diagrammatismor the machinic diagrammatismin just the sameway as the other elements the of rhizome.For instance, line of escape a madman in a primitive societl is the of part ofthe territorialized lorceofutterance.The line ofescape collective ofan unexpectedactivitv on the part of a particle which is our of line with the theoretical/experimental organizationis part of the development science. of Thus concrete machinesare established directly from the lines of escape without going bv way of the particular mediationsand over-encodings the of svstems signifyingsemiotics especiall.v the second-degree of not s.vstems of significadon.We can therelorecontrastconcretemachinesthat metabolize lines of escapediagrammatically with those that re-territorialize a signifving authonty. At evert'level, then, concretemachineswill be the negoriating point between the diagrammatism of the active forcesand their falling back into svstemsof analogy, significance, etc. That negotiationwill constitute the concrete politics of de-territorialization: either the formation of is de-territorializations organizedunder the domination of a quantic, diasrammatic de-territorialization; or else it wili end in an empty reterritorialization, the form ofan empty consciousness,facelessness, in a that all over-encodes the becornings ofdesire and is expressed a transcendent, in monotheistic God, perhaps,or the abstractLady ofcourtly love,or a system

160 Towards a New Vocabulary technological the architectural, dcscribethe machinicrhizomeswould or To make it in-rpossible split up homogeneous to stlara ar the ntolar level. Is it reasonableto suggestthat at everv pcriod, systemsof concretemachines infiltrated the perceptive semiotics, sensitivity,memorv and so on in such a wav as to causethe sociusto crvstallize human relationships a particular in wav? \\ihat concreremachine led the collectiveperceptionto hold thar nor merelv are all men equal - and n'omen too - but that all stagesof human developmentare equal as r.r'ell? Whence come the systems overall equivof alenceof men, rvomen"children - an equivalence which, incidentally,has merely reinlorcedthe dependence rvomenon men, of childrenon adults,of of the primitive on the civiiized,etc.?lVhat sort of molar machinehas enforced the settins-upoflibidinal equivalences betweenusefulwork and useless as activitt,, ,',aiue desire and value in use, value in exchangeand value in in desire,and the rest?At the level of macro-redundancies, power would be nothing withr:ut the diagrammatic operarors that empry the microredundancies of their substance and make them work against deterritolializingcollnections. (To takean example:the way the emotionof love rvas puerilized in the romantic era, coincidingwith a loss of childhood ficr children themselves, they weremassively as sweptinto schools and factories.) Capitalism's general interchangeability values is achievedbv means of of non-abstractmachines.Its homogenizing personologica.l of areashas been insepalable lrom the homogenization it has eflected in the infrapersonological arez, at the level of molecularizing the concrete machines. Indeed it is only this that has preventedits developmentfrom collapsing under the rveightofrhe contradictions that should- accordingto N{arx- lead it inexorably to destruction.The power of the bourgeoisie over the working classis notjust a seneralizedrelationshipbetrveen two classes; operates it lrom the countless molecularpointsofauthority established thoseconcrete bv machines,as thev 'negotiate'rhe various modesof de-territorialization and manipulateboth molecularmultiplicitiesand massstratifications.a T'o sum up: concretemachinescoincidewith the existence a twofbld of articulationof strata: - in the meta-srata, the lines of escape and the abstractmachinesof the plane o1-consistencv) realizethe possibilityinherentin quantic positive they de-territorialization; - ru the inter-strara, thev stratifi, a diflerential negarive de-territorialization. 'l-he abstractmachine- or diagrammaticcondenser- draws togetherthe code, the quantic positive de-territorialization, and the flux. the differential nega.tir.e de-territorialization) arld thus in a sensemust be thought of as
a. Thus concrete machines can be said to be molar in rheir strarifying aspect and molecular in their diagrammatic de-terrirorializing aspect.

ConcreteMachines

I6l

and to diflerentiaof existingprior to dillerentiations fluxesand encodings, My distinccodes. rionsamong natural, symbolic,signifyingand a-signifying tion benveen macro-redundancyand micro-redundancy,in the specific and instance in olsemiotic encodings, lact coversthat of signifl ing semiotics svnrbolicsemiotics,but we shall go on to use it in a rnore general way, applying it to the totality ola-semiotic lormed matter; its main interest "vill then consistin the problem of whether the eflectof diagrammaticconcrete machinescan be transferredoutside the particular caseof non-signifying serniotics w'hichwe have up to now restrictedit. to in imply It goesrvithout safing that the loregoingconsiderations no sense any prirnacyof the molecularover the molar economyat the levelof concrete for rnachines. Indeed, though it mav be necessary a verv powerfulmolecular machine to exist (a revolutionary movenlent,sav) in order to produce a it rvithin a molar stratification, may on the other diagrammaticline of escape machineto be set up to produce hand be necessary a vast molar concrete for rhetiniestdiagrammatice{Iect(suchas a poetry machine).Most olthe time, wili work in both directions: example,the rvhole for in any case, such 'effects' of La Borde must function as a concretemachine in order that, at a given or moment,somepeculiarity,a wa1'of taking a cigarette of handing someone modesof bV a dish, can relarero the leyelofcoljunctions eflected psvchotics' must be able to horvever, thosesame psychotics semiotization. Conversely, that function as concretemachines to make La Borde the kind of agenctment it is. To produce a concretemachine, then, can involve tremendouslorces,a kind of semiotic Pierrelatte extracting lrom territorialized ore the deterritorializedmolar substanceupon which irr turn the production of deterritoriaiizedmolecularparticlesdepends.A productive force can thus be as considered much fi'om the viewpoint of rt'hat it specificallyproducesas organization. lrom that of its macro-scopic There ale always two aspectsto the presentationol'a face: one turned open to a rhizomatic deploymentof semiotic towardsmrcro-redundancies, which is svstems,and the other towards redundanciesof representation, where connectionscan alwa;'s be eflected with the hierarchy of power then becomingequivalentto the public lormations the actual laceone sees presentation the lace of authority. That pubiic lace is a mask, lor the true of is faceof power, in a capitalists-vstem, ashamed,and must keep hiding the to it hollowness ofits principles; has to clothe,to represertt, produceanalogies in lor the diaerammatism it territorializes an arbitrarily chosensystemof ofthe figures class arrd caste.This contradictionaccountslor the fascination of rhe judge, the cop, the teacher and so on, and the mvstely of their diagrammaticcounterparts- the thief, the prostitute,the delinquent.The by keyto the mysteryof the lacepresented capitalismand the individuationof is subjectivitl, undoubtedlythe u'av it is continuallyoscillatingbetweenthe

I62

Towards a New Vocabuiarv

revelation of an invisible binary-phallic porr,erand the uild explosionof desirein all directionsthat followsthe disruptionofthe old territorialities. It is not a questionof two 'facialities',but of two aspects a single concrete of machinethat pushes desirero the extremeof abolishing all'faciality'.All that is preservedof the face is the barest minimum of redundancy that will keep the svstem functioning; an artificial face is continually being reassembled by the media. But the svstem is nnder threat on all sides lrom an invisible becontng; in itselfrepresents final point oflascination, this the capturingall the energyofdesireand making it a desirefor annihilation.Whv are !he machines 'faciality'essentially of bound up with the individuatedmode of subjectivation? Whv are thev not linked to animality, or some mode of creating bodiliness? The diagrammatism of territorializedagencies tends to reconstrlrct territories, emblems(like thoseon tee-shirts, updatedversionof or an tattoos). u'hereas the production of facial features is an operation that produces de-territorialized signifying formations. The relevant elements of the presentedface are there to enabie the system to gain semiotic control of individua.ls, connectthem with a decodedflux of u'ork. fhe {bceis never to recognized a multiplicitv or a rerritorializedemblem, but onl;, in that it as makesit possible universalize signilications porver.-significations to the of of generalhuman equivalence. The animal totem, the tattooedbody, was not a way into a universal languagelike that of the exchangisteconomy.With 'faciaiity'. the distinctive features ofthe face and body are used to serve a specificnrodeof diagrammatismthat de-territorializes whole constellations of desiremachines and connects them up with productionmachines. The lace is Par excelbnce substance expression the of olthe signifier.We may say here that the human profiie is like the outline of a key: what mauers is not its unique characteristics,bur the ellectiveness with which it unlocks the code. 'faciality' Capitalist alwaysexiststo serve signifyingformulalit is the means a whereby the signifier takes control, the way it organizesa certain mode of individuated subjectivation,and the collectivemadnessof a machine that createsconsciousness w'ithout any content,and ofa becoming cannor be that perceived. Consequentlv is impossible think that the w,rittenword could it to have anv lunction at the level ofthe bodv: before there was a face,there were features of bodiliness, a s,vntaxof bodiliness; after the face, we come to an invisible becoming,a blurring, a senseof shame over the bodily elements ivl".ichare now merely tolerated as left-overs,since the essence the laws of of Powerare basedupon the interpretable elements a script. of

Meaning and Power'

The structuralists'ideal is to be able to capture any situation, however in compiex,in a simpleformula- a formula that can be expressed mathematical, axiomatic form, or handled by a computer.The modern computer can 'formulate'a picture. it handleextremelycomplexproblems,for instance can picture is not fundamentally different lrom the The question is rvhether that imageswe perceivein the 'natural' world. The picture produced by the a computerhas beenreducedto the stateof a binarv message, lormula that it can be transmittedin rhe sameway as electricitv; has lost all the depth and u'armth,all the possibilities re-organization, the original.It se for emsto me of producea similar result.What they that the leductionsof lhe structuralists give back to us is comparableto a kind of technocratic vision of the world; it 'essence', has lost the essence the background lrom which it came. By of I meanail that relatesto desire.Whatever the complexityof the situationit is lookingat and of the r,vay proposes lbrmalizeit, structuralismassumes it to that it can be reducedb;' a systemof binaly notation, to w'hat is cailed in to semiotics digitalizedinlormation,which can be transferred the keyboardof a tvpewriter or a computer'. The human sciences think to acquirescientific status by following rvhat was the path of the pure sciences,(As for example whenmathematics soughtto makeitselftotallyaxiomaticby making algebra, topology,geometry,etc. all dependenton one and the same fundamental logic,a singlebasicwriting,) Linguistic analysts,by analysingall the differentsoundsand signs,have tried to produce a seriesof symbols capable of encompassingthe structure of all languages- but in fact all they end up with are the features shared by language general.The life of the language what it means,and how we use in In havefora it- eludes too,people suchlormalization. the realm ofpsychiatry, tables long tinre beenproposingthe use ofscientificdescriptions, systematic of symptoms and syndromes,but what happensin real life never quite fits in with this sort of classification.There are too many borderline situations:one can never say for certain whether one is dealing with a hysteric with certain paranoid featureswho behavesnot unlike a schizophrenic,though there is an
r, A talk given at the Douglas Hospital, Montreal, first published in the ret'iewBriches, Montrcal, r976.

r64

Towarclsa New Vocabularl'

Meaning and Power I65 message carriednot via linguisticchains,but via bodies,sounds, is mimicr,n-, postureand so on, Food allergy at six months. I cannot define the diiference between the semioticelements involvedin this allergyand thoseinvolvedin the mother's vomiting, but one thing seemsclear: in lhe caseof the allergy they becomefar more important. From birth, noises, sensations heat and cold, of light, of of contact,of one lace respondingto another, have begun to lolm the child's world. It remainsto be seenrvhy that new rvorldshould stay attachedto her skin- is it that she is refusingto enter it, or ro haveanything to do with it? At six vears old, school problems. These obviously relate to the use of Ianguage someway - notjust language general,but the language in in ofthe teacher,oladult power. lvlany people's luture fate is sealedin primary school. There is no need to administer an IQ test to predict in advancethat some chiidrenwill nevergo to university.The schoolmachinemakr:s implacable its We selection. are now in the realm of signifyingsemiotics, with school,the for child becomes subjectto sociallaws that did not touch upon such things as vomiting and eczema.One could not reasonably punish a child lor having eczema bu! no one thinks it wrong to punish her for being unableto get her sumsright. A series micro-social powerstakesshape lamily, school,local of authority- eventuallythe Statepower.Any therapistwho took no interestin the child's everydavlife, at home and in outsiderelationships, and concentratedoniy on pure structures, pure signilyingchains,complexes, supposedly would be simply refusingto seethe essence unir.'ersal phases development, of ofwhat was happeningat the levelofreality and ofthe economyoldesire. At twentv, attacks of anxiety. These could be schizophrenic syndromes that manifest themselves only at a certain point in one's life. Somepsychoanalystsnowadays claim to have found schizophrenicsat the age ofthree or four.I do not seehow anyonecan makesuch a diagnosis beforepuberty.The semioticfactors in puberty (new impressions,anxiety towards the unknown, socialrepressionand so on) are enormously a{Iectedby such syndromes,and analysisshould therefore be directed to considering the power formations thatcorrespond them: the high school,technical to school, sportsclub, leisure arrangements, etc. At this point a whole new facet of societythreatensto clampdown upon the desireof the adolescent, cutting her offfrom the world and leading her to turn in upon herself. At thirty, non-specific vaginitis.Once again,the levelhaschanged, and it is undoubtedly marital problems that are in the forefront. At forty, attempted suicide.This involvesher in the whole apparatusof medicalpower, police power, religious power. This is a very summarysurveyof the main directions analvsis an must take: theunchartedconrinentofpower lormations,in other rvordsthe unconscious of the socius itself rather than the unconscious buried in the lolds of the

It and so on, ad inJinitum. is one thing to analvsea elementof the deplr'ssive; structure;it is a very diflerent matter to put fcrrwarda structuralistphilosophy, a structuralistinterpretationthat can accountevenlor the movementof of politicalsituations and in','estments desire. lor objects, pcrverrelationships, Obr.'ious,one would sa)'; yet it is preciselv this that Freudians do, and lrequently fuIarxiststoo, rvhen they talk ofunconsciousstructuresor econ'fhev rvould have us beljeve that the,vhave found the omic structures. is all definitii.eatomic lormula, and that hencelorth the;-needd,-r to intervene with an ir-rterpre tation or a word olcommand basedupon that structure,that power and importance.I think ibrmula. This rvould sive them considerable our answermust be that their structuresexist not within things,but alongside them. The structurai approachis one praxis among others,but perhapsnot the most lruitful or the most e{Iective. It is:r questionof re-dellningthe problem of meaningarrd sigr-rification not as somethineirnposedb.vheavenor the ttatureof things,but as resultinq in iiorl tire conjunctionof serniotics)'stems confiontation.Without suclt a r:onjunctionthele can be no meaning.One tvpe olmeaning is produced bv of of tfresemiotics the body, anothet"bythe semiotics pou'er (olr'vhichthere .rre lnarry), .vetanother bv machinic semiotics- rvhich are those that Llse ol' signs that are neither symbolic, nor of the order of the signifvings,vstems pow,er.All these diflerent sorts of meaning are continuallv intertrr'ining u l t u ' i t h o u t i t s e v e r b e i n g p o s s i b l e o s a ) ' t h a t t h e v t ' e p r e s e n tn i v e r s a s i g n i f i cations. relating to One n.ra;'savthat there are two types olpolitical conceptions desire. On the one hand, formalist reasoningseeksclues lrom which to to on gain access its interpretation,to a hermeneutic; the other,an apparentlv mad reasoningstarts liom the notion that universalityis to be found in the 'dilection ofsingularity, and that singularitl'can becomethe authenticbasis for a political and micro-politicaiorganizationthat is lar more rational than rvhat rvehave at the moment. Let us takeas our startingpoint the exampleof tbe patientCarlo Sterlinhas r h r o l d u s a b o u t .T h l e c m o r r t h s e f o r e e r b i r t h . t l r e l ew a sp r e g n a n L ) ' o m i t i n g b food allergv;at three,w'idespread thc b',v mother;at six nionths,shedeveloped eczema;at six, problernsat school;at i\!'ent\',attacksof anxietl'; at thirty, non-specificvaginitis; at forty, she attempted suicide more tharl once. Diilerent semiotic conrponents\t,ould seemto have beenat \4'orkat eachstage of this clinical history. In the caseof the mother'svomiting, tl'redisturbance lrom one personto rvasexpressed bv a localizedsubject,but u'aspassed not itnother- like the old saving that when the parentsdrink the children get that this is a caseof a semioticorganizationtaking over druuk. I should sa1, do not involr.e a ll"orn a symboiic functioning. Such svnrbolic senriotics speaker and hearer.Words do not play a major part, sincethe distinguishable

I66

Tou'ards a New Vocabularr,'

Meaning and Power I67 the social environment,or the interventionof an a-semioticencodingthat dependson viruses,bacteria,etc,?How much relatesto socialsituations,to relationshipsof power, language, money, kinship? To suggest that the signifier is everywhere (and that consequentlyinterpretation and transferenceare effectiveevervwhere)is to miss the lact that eachofthese encoding and (whether semioticor not) can gain polverover the situations components objects conlronting us. On the contrary, I believethat one should not be has dogmaticabout which mode of access priority. Such priority can emerge only lrom analysingeachparticular situation. \{e thus already have our first distinction between sign machines that function by constituting an autonomous semioiogicalsubstance a language - and those that function directly as a 'natural' encoding,independentof language. it Perhaps would be more correcthereto talk ofsignalsrather than signs.The differencebetweena signal, a hormonal signal lor examPle,and a linguistic sign lies in the lact that the former produces no signification, no of engenders stable s,vstem redundancythat would make it possiblelor anyoneto seeit as identicalto any representation. We then cometo a second distinction.The signifyingsystemis punctuated Iinguiststell and by signifiedrepresentations by the objectsto which it refers; us that the relation between signifier and signified is an arbitrary one. thereare t1'pes ofsigns that sustaina relationship ofanalogyor \evertheless, and the representations thev signify: between themselves correspondence theseare calledicon signs.An exampleof theseis the symbolson road signs, rvhich do not involve the operation of a linguistic machine. Experts in linguisticsand semioticshave gradually come to consider that icons, or diagrams,or any other pre-verbalmeansofexpression (gestural,etc.) are languageand are only imperfect meansof dependentupon the signify'ing communication. I believe that this is an intellectualistassumption that extremelyshakywhen appliedto chiidren,the mad, the primitive or becomes in any of those rvho expressthemselves a semiotic register that I would classifvas a symbolic semiology. of include dance,mime, somatization feelings(havSymbolicsemiologies ing a nervousbreakdown,bursting into tears),all meansofexpressionthat form. A crving child, take an immediate,and immediatelycomprehensible, whatever its nationality, is making it clear that it is unhappy without the that such symbolic semiotics benefitof a dictionary. It has been suggested on should be seenas dependingon linguisticsemiotics, the ground that one can only decipher,understandand translatethem by using language.But what does that prove?Just becausewe use an aeroplane to travel lrom on are Americato Europe,we do not say that thesetwo continents dependent aviation. AII sorts of peopleshave survived- and some still do - rvithout signifying semiotics, and in particular ,,r'ithout a written language. Their

individual's brair-r,or expressedin stereotypedcomplexes.The analyst cannot bc neutral towards thosepower formations.For ir-istance, cannot he rest content with acting as a specialistdiscoverinsthe allergiesthat cause eczema. It is the whole attitude of specialists that needsquestioning,rhe whole politics of interpretationbasedon prefabr-icated codings.To analvse specific eJements when dealing with an essentialmicro-politicalproblem (which bi, definitioncuts across number of quite dillerentareas)is notjust a a matter of form: it involves,first and foremost,the practiceof what I should defineas a rriicro-pc-,litics relating both to the object of study or rherapt., and to the desireofthose rvho conductthe analvsis. T h e s t r u c t u r a l i s t so r m a l i s m s r e d u c t i o n i si t n a t u r ew h e ni t c o m e s o t h e f' i n t relationship it establishes betr.veen what it calls profound structures and manifest srlrcrures- Particularlv so in the case of the linguistic double articulation.rr,hichconsists the one hand ofa systerrr on olsigns that haveno rneaning as such (phortemes, graphemes,symbols), and on the other, ol chainsof discoursethat convey meaning (monemes, etc.). It seemsthat lor them the formal level takes control of the significations,in some w.ay engende rins or producingthem. Br-rt significations not comelrom heaven, do n o r d o t h e v a r i s es p o n t a n e o u s lo u t o f a s t ' n t a c t i c a l r s e m a n t i c o m b .T h e y v o w are inseparablelronr the power forrlarions that generatethem in shifting relationships pon'er.There is nothing universalor.automatic of about them. In an attempt to clarilv the statLrs the variousencoding of systems, rvhether or not the),'pass wav of siensin the sense bi, definedby studentsof semiotics and linsuistics. suggest series I a ofdistinctionsrvhose enrireaim is to identify the practical lunctioning of u'hat I rvould call sign machines. realitv, In however,one is alwaysdealingwith an interwear.'ing several of such systems, with a mixture olsemiotics.I believe first of all that one must be carefulnot to confuse natural encodines rvith semioticencodings. This first distinction should preventour accepringthe somervhat magical resemblances that stmcturaliststend to seebetweenlanguageand ,nature,, which rest ultimatelv on the notion that one could gain control over things and sociervsimply bl' gaining conrrol of the signs thev set in morion (like ploing back to the ancient madnessof witches and cabbalists,with their statuesancl Golems). C)f coursethere is a spherewhere signs have a direct effbct on things - in the genuine experimental sciences, which use both material technology and a complexmanipulationof sign machines. But what I shouldlike first ro do is to referagain to the distinctionproposed bv Hjelmslrv between the material of expressionand the substanceof' expressiorr. is the conjunctior-r diflerentmaterialsof expression It of that has changedthe pragmaticbearingof the message. ecze lormed scientificalIs ma ly or semiologically? Does non-specific reactivr'aginitis,at particularstages of its development,have as its major componentthe signifyingsemioticsol

I68

'Iowards

a New VocabularY

Meaning and Power r69

systemo|expression(inwhichwordsareindirectinteractionlvithother musical,etc') hascertainlynot beenany forms ofexprlssion- ritual, gestural, peoplesresistedthe ,h. poor". lor that. it is aiguable, in fact, .that some the resisted intrusionof somelorms ut comingol a wrltten language*(jutt thev a- signifying system rvou.Id of technologr')becausetiey feared that such and the traditional rvay of lile and mocleof desire'Children destroy their most to them without *.n,uily ill often express rhe things that matter

for are responsible your own actions.There are all sortsofthings you can do, starting with fucking up yourself and everything around you . . .' Signifiof cation is alwaysan encounterbetweenthe lormalizationofsystems values, ofinterchangeabilitvand ofrules ofconduct, bv a particularsocietvand an machine which in itself has no meaning - which is, let us say, expressior-r the a-signil,vingthat automaticallyproduces behaviour, interpretations, the ,,vanted the system. b.v the responses The system of double articulation, introduced by lvlartinet, masks the rel'erencetosignifyingsemiologiesExperts,technocratsofthemind'repreprofounddisparitybetweenthe lormalizationoperatingat the levelof content sentativesol'themedicaloracacle'nicestablishmentsrr'illnotlistentosuch I and that operatingat the leve of form. At the latter (which lvlartinetcallsthe ofan entire s-vstenr has ior*. of expression.Psychoanai.vsis worked out level of the second articulation), the sounds, the systemsof distinctive whateverto the samerangeof it interpretation',r'hereb)' can relateeVervthing oppositionsor the a-signifving figures of Hjelmslev, form an extremely order and so it svmbolizes a universalrepresentations: pine tree is a phallus, eflectivemachine, what I u'ould call a diagrammatic machine,that seizes expertstake controL these of suchsystems itlterchangeabilitv on. By imposing upon all the creative operationsof languageand imprisons them in one and others to try to used by children, the mad of the symboliJsemiologies the particularsyntax.At what he cal.ls levelof the first articulation,of written as best they can' But the signif ing sal'eguardthelr econom'vol desire u'ords,sentences, there takesplace semanticand pragmaticinterpretations, will not leave them be: it tells them: establishment .e*iology of the ruling of the conjunction,the re-centringand the hierarchization all power formathiit is 'Tftis isleally what vou wanted to sav You don't believeme' but The a and tionsso as to organize specilictypeofequivalences ofsignifications. go on adjusting my probablv becuuseI am explessingmyself badlv' I'll 'structuralize' linguistic machine is there to systematize or those power the to accePt principlethat all vour actuali.v int.rpr.t^tion until I can g.i "ou lormations; it is basically a tooi lor the use of the law, morality, capital, symbolicexpressionsareuniversallytranslatable.,Forthepsychoanalvst,it of religion,etc. From the first,words and phrases their meaningonlyby wav get all expressions. has now becomea crucrallf important questionof power: ofa particular syntax, a rhetoric that is territorialized upon eachofthese local control ol t\e sameinterpretattve desire must be made to come ullder the power formations.But only the use of a more generallanguagethat oversubmit to This is his way o|making deviant individualsof all kinds language, and dialectsmakesit possiblefor a social encodes theselocal languages all and it is this that the pslchoa'alyst specializes ruling pow.er, of tt.,e-io\^/. the power at a more totalitarianlevel.It is to and economicstatemachineto seize in. the extent that the two kinds of lormalization(that of the linguisticmachine l.hisbringsuStotheproblenro|therelationbetweensignificationand of as an a-signifying machine,and that of power formationsas the producers significations In power. All stratificationsof porver produce and impose signifiedcontent)becomeinteriinkedvia a signifyinglanguagethat we get a this rvorld of the .ircr-rtuntut peoplemanageto escape ..rtui,t exceptional after meaningful world - that is to say a realm of significationin harmony with the consciousness recovering a dominant signification lor instance, Person of ofjolts' social,economicand moral coordinates the ruling power. t'here he is' but then' in a series therapy wonders electro-convulsive Structuralists,especiallyAmerican structuralists,are not interestedin crossesbackor.er.thett-,,.,t.'otaofsigrrifications'Heremembershisname.arrd and claim that socialorigins underlying the lormalizationof significations, of significationof the graduaiiy fits back into place all the different asPects they arise lrom profound semiotic structures. It is hard to say rvhere thev world. think the meaning comesfrom - it seemsto have landed out of the blue. Let crossthis thresholdof Peopleresort to aicohol or drugs in an attempr to this me say again that meaning never comes from language as such, from direction But what exactly is in dominant significatrons the op-posite or of Meanproloundsymbolicstructures the mathematics the unconscious. of redundancl' systenls threshold, tf,is crossing point of all the various ing is deternrinedby very real socialpower formationsthat can be identified we Put on everymorning when What is it that encodingand signsof al'isorts? by anyone who caresto take the trouble to do so. SupposeI come into the nationalitv and so on? That threshold we get up - identity. sex, profession, ofsymbolic expression room wearing a long gown: in itselfit meansnothing, but if I am doing it to re-centringof the variouscomponents o1'the consists Ifeveryoneelsepresent it ofdesire shon'thatI am a transvestite doesmeansomething. bodies;,ofeverythingin the economysounds, (the world oi'gestures, 'come on now, pull yorrrself is also a transvestite,there is no problem; but if, say, a conferenceofclergy its own. that is threatening to break out on wearing cassocks taking place, then it r,r'iilhave quite a diflerent meaning. is this particularjob' You toqether.There you are, in this particular marriage'

r7a

Towards a New Vocabularv 'He's

Meaning and Power

t'Jr

again: not too In a rnental hospital,it could be interpreteddifferently' u,ell today - wearing a dressagain.' In other words for a man to wear a skirt r n e a n s n e t h i n g i f h e i s a . j u d g eo r a p r i e s t ,a n o t l r e ri f h e i s a l u n a t i c ,i e t o lrom the Significationis alrvavsinseparable another if he is a transvestite. on position.Supposeyou were to bring your shit to someone a dish: por.ver atrd buI ordinarv peopleu'ould find it meaningless disgusting, to a therapistit which a could be a goodsign.It would represent gift, or an important message would unfortunatelytend to adapt to fit his o*'n systemof the psvchoa.nal,vst ('He's trving to explain his transferenceI atrt his mother, he interpretations , i s r e g r e s s i n g. . ' , e t c . ) . In modern societies(be they capitalist or bureaucratic socialist), all are of svmbc'lic senriologies centredupon the educating the rvorklorce. This is \4,e ver;'earlyon to do battlelvith a process that startsin irrlancy: setoulselves The child is continuallv the child's own logic and methodsof semiotization. startingwith s-vsterns) being drivcn frorn side to side bv contradictorvpo\ryer his his or.'npowerover himself,his gifts,his own leelings, u ish to run, his rvish to draw - all of'which are in contradictionwith his wish to becomean adult. that burden the porverrelationsof On top ofall this there are the constraints is tiretarrily and indirectlv burden him too. Tl-rere a wholemazeof contradictory powersthrough which the child must thread his waf in order to develop his owr-r semioticcomponents ofdesire,to disciplinethem, to bendthem to the of by direction clecleed the signifiing semiologies the donrinant porver- in other u,ords, to castrate them. Sometimesthe entire s)'stemshatters,and and all the rest. the to panic. neurosis. vis.it the psvchiatrist thereis conlusion, The third distinction I have suggestedis between signifving and asrgnilving semiotics.Following Charles SandersPeirce,semioticianshave concluded that the systernof images (icons) and the svstem of diagrams should be brought togetherunder a singleheading,sincefor them a diagram at is no more than a simplifiedimage. But an imagerepresents oncemore and less than a diaqram: ar-rimage reproducesa great many aspectsthat a while a diagramincludes lar diagram doesnot include in its lepresentation, more preciselyand efficientl;'than an image - the articulationsrvherebya the two, placirlg one must separate In there{bre, s-vstem operates. my vier.v, the image alongside symbolic semiotics,and making diagrammatism a of semiotic categorv on its own, a category/ a-signifvingsemiotics- u hich is ol' it the utmost importance because is rvhat we seeat work in the world of the A-signifving,or diagramand elsewhere. sciences, music, of the econom,v ol matic. semioticsproduce not redundanciesof signification.but machinic redundancies(theseare rvhat linguistsrefer to when thev talk ofrelational To explain what he means by a diagram, Peircegives the significations). example of a temperaturecurve, or) at a more complex level, a systemof The signsfunction in placeofthe objectsthey relateto, algebraicequations.

independently any e{Iects significationthat may exist alongsidethem. of of This is as though the ideal would be for diagrammaticsign machinesto lose all their naturai inertia, to give up all the manilold valuesthat car)exist in symbolicsvstems signifying syste nrs:the sign becomes refinedthat there or so areno longerthirty-sixpossible interpretations, a singledesignation but with an extremell' preciseand rigid s,vntax.In physics,for instance,one can alwayscreatefor oneself one s o\{'n representation atoms or particles,but of sucha representation would not figurein scientific semiotization. Non-signifying semiotics can bring into play systems signsthat, though of they may incidentally have a slmbolic or a signif,vingeffect, have no connectionwith that symbolism or significationas lar as rheir specific functioning concerned. is Symbolicse miotics,like signifvingse miotics,derive their e{Iectiveness lrom their dependencon a particu.lar a-signilying machine It should be made clear that non-signifying . sign machines every in sphere tend to elude the territorialiries ofthe body, ofspace,o[rhe porverof ty, rocie and the complexus ofsignificarions that they conrain.They arein lact the most de-territorialized all. For example:a child wakes up and comof plains leeline ill, w,hereupon mother concludes of his that he doesnot want ro go to school.Then, changingkey, she decidesto cail the doctor- who alone canactuallysay,'Your child is not to go to school.' Shehasshiftedfirst lrom a svmbolicserniologv operatingat the levelof the child's body to a signif,ving semioiogy the levelof familial power,and then on to a lurther levelwherea at porr'er machinestepsin u'ith lormidablesocialand technicaleilectiveness. At eachof theseshifts,one territoriality has been abandonedfor another that offers greater scope for non-signifying sign machines. A diagrammatic machine the presumedscienceof the doctor, dissolves the diagrammatic , machine ofthe pou'erofthe school,rvhich has alreadl'partly ovelriddenthe power the family. of The rvhole labric of the capitalist world consistsof this kind of flux ol de-territorialized signs- money and economicsigns,signsof prestige and so on.Significations, socialvalues(thoseone can interpret,that is) can be seen at the level of power lormations,but, essentially, capitalismdependsupon non-signilving machines. There is, for instance,no meaning in the ups and downs the stock market; capitalistpower,at the economiclevel,produces of nospecial discourse ofils orvn,but simply seeks control the non-signifying to semioticmachines, to manipulate the non-signifyingcogs of the system. Capitalism giveseachof us our particularrole - doctor,child, teacher, man, woman,homosexual and it is up to us to adapt ourselves the systemof to arrangedlbr eachofus. But at the levelofreal power,it.is never signification thistype of role that is at issue;power doesnor have to be identifiedwith the director the minister- it operates relationships or in offinanceand lorce,and amongdi{Ierent pressuregroups. A-signifiing machinesdo not recognize

172 Tou'ards a New Vocabulary i r g e n t s , i n d i v i d u a l s , r o l e s o r e v e n c l e a r l y d e f i n e d o b j e ctth i.s vle r l ' l a c t t h e v s B rvithin systems moving across signification the acquirea kinclof omnipotence, and becomealienatedliom one another. r.hich individr,ral agentsrecognize Capitalism has no visiblebeginningor end. There is no moment when we are not encircled powerformations.In our by societiespeople must not gesticulateovermuch;we must each sta1,in our the we on proper place,sigr-r the dotted line, recognize signals are gi"'en- and any lailure mav iand us up in prisonor hospital.Ratherthan Iookingupon the rvho is paraly'sed insidehis ou'n bodv and needsto scirizophrenic someone as t) be lookedatter, it might be better to r)' to see(rather than interpre how he Iunctions in the social situation he has to contend with, and rvhat are the diaerammaticproblemshe is facing us with. It is not a matter of transr.ersal, ap.ingschizophrenics, playing at catatonics.but of discoveringhorv a mad person, a child, a homosexual.a prostitute, etc, shifts the componentsof 'normal', take care to let well desireabout in tire socialarena while we, the alone. What doesit rlatter to us whether dramas of a symbolic (pre-signifiorder are being acted out in the body ofa cant) order or a post-significant s i u n a t i c ,a c h r l do r a n v o n e l s e ?s i t o u r j o b t o ' a d j u s t 's u c hp e o p l e ot h a t t h e ) e I What do we mean when rve talk of {lt into the rvorld, to 'treat' deviance? One wonders whether it is more a matter of his treating a schizophrenic? us being there to challenge rhan of our being there to look after him. When I t a l k a b o u t ' u s ' , I d o n o t j u s t m e a n u s a s i n d i v i d u a l s( t h o u g h ,i n l a c t , i f ; - o u have a discussion with a schizophrenic soon after a familv quarrel, you find experience), vourselfstartinsto think on quite differentlines- a therapeutic T i s s b r - r t ' u s ' a st h e \ ^ / h o l e o c i a lc o n t e x t . h e s c h i z o p h r e n ri c f l o u n d e r i n g n a world in rvhich relationshipsof signs. or productions of signification,far and outstrip our individual madnesses neuroses.

Politics and Desire

Causality, Subjectivity and History'

r. History and the Signifying Determination i{isconceptionsabout the subjectivityofhistory arisefrom the fact that one tendsw,ithoutnoticing it to posethe problem of a subject- whetherto afhrm utterance ofdiscourse or deny that there is one - as the subjectthat produces it and actionsrelatingto history,rather than envisaging simply as the subject of utterances we receivethem. That there is a subjectof history is not in as dispute;ir is the subjectrhat is constitutedby, and remains the prisonerof, The repetitivestructures,signifyingchainswound back around thernseives. u'orking class,for example,as alienatedsubjectivity,becomesthe classof producing,in a givenarea class words - in other words the class ofutterances, 'class', and 'class o{' historic utterance, significationslor such terms as the struggle'- rvhereas should bear within it the historic destiny of abolishing it Indeed,in a certain time and place,thereis a divisionofsocietyinto classes. waf in which the word is spoken, reinforcement the stress, that a of so special theword itselltakes on a particular class.In the u'orkers'movementthe u,ord 'class' used currently as an abbreviationfor'working class'is pronounced quite diflerentlylrom, say,a classat school. with Every mode olthought thus has its own initiatory codeof metonyms, particularmeaningsgiven to'Party', 'the OId Man', or even'44'.'We might takeas a starting point somethingLacan said in his first Seminarof l965-6: 'One need only say in passingthat, in psychoanalysis, history is a diflerent lrom that oldevelopment,and that it is a mistaketo try to identily dimension
u t r . S e c t i o n st , r a n d 3 a l l s u m m a r i z el e c t u r e s i t h t h e d i s c u s s i o nh a t l o l l o w e de a c ho n e .T h e f i r s t o r h o w c r e g i v e n t o r h e ' T h e o r . vC o m m i t t e e ' o f r h e F G E R I ( F e d e r a t i o n f I n s t i t u t i o n a lS t u d y a n d ResearchGroups). In October t965, some dozen groups, working along the lines ofinstitutional a n a l y s i s ,l e d e r a t e d w i t h i n t h e F G E R I : t h e y c o n s i s t e do f a b o u t t h r e e h u n d r e d p s y c h i a t r i s t s , psychoanalysts, psychologists, nurses, academics, teachers, urban studies people, architects, economists,members ofcooperatives,film-makers and so on. h l S T h e C E R F I ( C e n t r e f o r n s t i t u t i o n a l t u d y ,R e s e a r c h a n d T r a i n i n g ) , a m e m b e r o fe F G E R I . de the publishes the revieu' Recherches, a series of Cahiers reclvrchesi CERFI aiso commissions and various public and private bodies to produce specializedstudies (on plant, cooperation, health, educarion nd soon), a P z . T h c ' O l d l t l a n ' c o u l d a p p l v e q u a l ) yt o L e n i n , S t a l i no r T r o r s k r , i 4 4r u e L e P e l e t i e r i n a r i si s t h e h e a d q u a r tr s o f t h e C o m m u n i s t P a r t y C e n t r a lC o m m i t t e e . e

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