A Deleuzean Interrogation of Property and Subjectivity

`A DELEUZEAN INTERROGATION SUBJECTIVITY'

OF PROPERTY AND

Nathan Moore School of Law, Birkbeck College Ph.D Thesis

Thanks to Jose Bellido and Thanos Tzartaloudis. Special thanks to Anne Bottomley.

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ABSTRACT

The work of Gilles Deleuze presents us with problems that are directly relevant to the theorising of property. Deleuze's project is to establish a thought that does not base itself is it? is (such `what ' `what but instead locates ') this? essential questions as upon or thought within the circumstances through which it is capable of being thought. For this he is directly issues reason concerned with proprietary such as grounds, claiming, territory, and subjectivity.

This thesis utilises aspects of Deleuze's work in order to think

through some of these implications for property theory, meaning how property and the subject can be currently thought of. In so doing, it is critical of attempts to think property function (e.g. alienation), or as a universal essence, whether as some particular aspect or dialectics feminine. it Rather, the as a self-same mode or order premised upon and/or be in that terms of control, meaning the argues property and subjectivity must understood late investigation it Through this argues current regime of or contemporary capitalism. that both property and the subject are effects rather than essences. In such case, property is (paradoxically) the present assertion of what property will be, while the subject is in kept de-actualised effectively and a state of non-determination: a `whatever' subject. The thesis utilises a number of writers and theorists in pursuing these lines, including David Hume, Jeanne Schroeder, Hegel, Hardt & Negri, Alain Pottage, Nietzsche, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault and Marilyn Strathern, amongst others.

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CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

2 ................

INTRODUCTION

4 .......

CHAPTER ONE......... 12 CHAPTER TWO......... 37 CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR

77 .....

117 ......

CHAPTER FIVE....... 162 CHAPTER SIX.......... 215 CHAPTER SEVEN.... 265

CONCLUSION

316 ...........

BIBLIOGRAPHY

335 ......

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INTRODUCTION

This thesis is worked through the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. It could be thought of as it `Deleuzean' inasmuch a work as uses some of Deleuze's concepts to think through ideas particular and perspectives, predominantly arranged around two specific images: property and the subject. The term `image' is used here as a consequence of Deleuze's in Difference & he develops image Repetition, `the own usage where a concept of of ] thought'. Perhaps unusually for an introduction, I refer to this concept with no intention developing it in it Instead, I the thesis. of explicitly elsewhere raise now as an for in the trajectory this explanation arrangement and of producing a work work: inspired it is by Deleuze, `property' `subjectivity', concerned with and and necessary to problematise one's own terms of reference, not with the aim of revealing a true and free irrelevant them, the the of of chaff of and the essential understanding inconsequential, but rather to explore or investigate how it is that certain ideas and image into images The `property' `subject', the operate. of of and practices, congealed thought can be thought of as a concept concerned with the emergence of specific images in (and of) particular milieux or circumstances, so long as one understands `emergence' to mean an unending process of development, transformation, and complication.

To this end it is necessary to repeat ideas; to return, in one case, to what had been has in to treat and re-work once again as problematic what one assumed another;

See (Deleuze: 1994) Chapter Three

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developed and concluded elsewhere; to be prepared to allow for unexpected encounters between ideas and writers; and to transform one's arguments and demonstrations in line in the with circumstances which they are pursued and constructed. To draw an analogy with music, the problem is take the twin themes of `property' and `subjectivity' and to in these vary a manner which precludes a dominant, essential theme from ever being in stated either case; whilst simultaneously making each variation a theme in its own right, unconnected to an other theme, in relation to which it would simply be a variation. This means that Deleuze's philosophy is something that is only ever present in the act of is Variations `in' than that repetition, rather something on a theme each repetition. but instead implied, insisted hanging in the air, an aboutness or unstated ... upon, condition (in the sense of a weather condition).

For this reason there is something entirely unsatisfactory about the term `Deleuzean. ' Is it possible for one to be a follower or disciple of Deleuze? I would argue (although not in this thesis) that Deleuze's method or system is one that excludes the very possibility of Deleuzeanism. Instead of taking Deleuze as a resource to be uniformly used and applied in whatever area it is that one is interested in, it is better to attempt to encounter his work; in and this encounter, attempt to create resonances that are relevant to one's area of study `of Deleuze: they the time a `monstrous offspring' are recognizable as as at same

Therefore, to work through Deleuze's philosophy I have used repetitions and variations in doing, have found it form and, so necessary to attempt to write of methodology as a `beginning'. beginning one never encounters anything end: at or a and one never without

finally `ends' encounters satisfactorily but, instead, stumbles into the middle of them like his before is inevitably (as In Deleuze there work me a gatecrasher. well as all writing of of those who have also encountered it) and similarly, I have not reached a conclusion or have if Instead is I be this tried to make taken to ending a point of climax or resolution. ideas in hope it the that together, certain such resonance makes and concepts resonate least far in to think possible so as the topics touched upon are concerned. a new way, at But it is also necessary to say this: that thinking something new - if it is achieved - is a is beginning Thinking thing. the small and modest something new not of anything, very in that it is not a great proclamation, and it is certainly not `good news. ' As Deleuze being battle be... "Not " (Deleuze: the that a says, power, philosophy can't with powers

1995).

If one is not to extrapolate a system-to-be-applied from Deleuze's work (at least, if one if it'), how does How `with to to one go about starting an encounter? start not wants stay is by beginning? Can Deleuze the rigorous and systematic, at processes systematized? but part of his contribution to philosophy as a process of thinking is to be rigorous and systematic within the topic or case addressed:

It is not certain that the question what is this? is a good question for discovering the essence or the Idea. It may be that questions such as who? how much? how?

for better discovering for the are as much essence as where? when? determining something more important about the Idea. (Deleuze: 2004b, 94)

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It is not a matter of interpretation but of forces: of treating the materiality of the case, of experimenting with it.

In which case I have approached my subject in a somewhat clandestine manner, by trying to get behind any enemies rather than confront them head on (Deleuze: 1995,6).

1 have

found it useful to encounter many writers in this work, some sympathetically and some less so - but in either case I have not attempted to refute any of them. Where there is disagreement I hope that this operates to open up a modest space for thinking, a hairline fracture that one can slip through. This has been the greatest challenge of working with Deleuze - of ensuring that one slips both with him and through him.

The thesis is divided into two sections. The first, `Critical Property', takes a critical approach to certain ideas of both property and subjectivity, in order to highlight what, from my own perspective, is problematic in them. This is done not to simply argue that in but instead begin indicate different to to accounts are or error, a method such wrong for thinking property and subjectivity, in a way that does not seek to finally reveal the true and universal essence of these categories (nor to definitively describe the relations between them), but rather to problematise them as images of thought. This focus is Section Immanence, Becoming', Two, `Property, the of problematisation specific implications both follow I the of act of considering property and the subject certain where is, ideas from indistinguishable images that the thought; as or categories which are of as but (or them take that as such, yet on specific establish qualities singularity) processes nonetheless.

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Chapter One focuses on the account of property given by Jeanne Schroeder, an account that utilises both Hegel and Lacan to argue for a connection between the function of property and the function of the feminine, in the constitution of subjectivity: that the is subject constituted on an impossible margin as a consequence of exchange and jouissance.

In so doing, Schroeder necessarily finds that the subject is centred upon a

lack or loss, upon a negative movement that must preclude the thought of real movements Following Deleuze, I things. the of and specificity argue that this negative, abstract but itself, movement never encounters anything consequently making anything other than itself unthinkable.

Chapter Two further develops this critique through Deleuze's concept of duration. This concept, drawn from Deleuze's work, is central to the thesis, underpinning much of the doing do developed. I In analysis subsequently so, not mean to suggest argument and that duration is the core of Deleuze's philosophy, but rather that it is one that I have found useful in setting out the problem of property and subjectivity.

Duration prevents a

thought that only finds itself, and allows for a new thinking, a thinking that unfolds in the is directions, dimensions things, and and yet always relevant to the middle of of new it in the occurs. middle of which circumstances

Chapter Three remains under the influence of Schroeder, but criticises much more from Philosophy Right. I his Hegel's the that of property concept argue of explicitly in beginnings is to the too up and ends, caught extent that these two moments analysis

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become indistinguishable from one another. The dialectical movement of property is then too overdetermined, by being understood as a passage towards the founding of the state. To pass through Hegel I use a number of Deleuze's writings, particularly his reading of Nietzsche, to show that `before' there is a subject who invests his or her will in an object there is an object, and that this object invests the subject with it's will as the condition of the subject's possibility.

This is not a dialectical relation, as I do not

understand the object-subject relationship to be governed by an (absolute) end. What be in by is Hegel the teleological dimension of the dialectic, so that property must slipped and owner, object and subject, can be understood much more circumstantially, as a for process working through specific situations and problems. Confronted with a problem one should not seek a solution but instead an activation.

Chapter Four begins the second section by developing an argument that both property be in itself being the terms and subject should understood of perception, such perception organised and regulated by institutions. To do this I focus upon Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, reading this along side Deleuze's early work on Hume, Empiricism and Subjectivity. These works allow me to develop the circumstantial aspect of the categories `subject' and `property', and to show how both must be considered as problems of is for it how it is both Hume (including that things a matter of considering association: be to related to each other; most importantly, it is a matter of people and objects) come is distribution the of what perceivable. perception, of

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Chapter Five extends my concern for perception and institutions by linking it to Deleuze and Guattari's description of a `universal history' in their book Anti-Oedipus.

I argue

that perception (and hence property) must now be grasped through the regime of capitalistic control, a regime that is primarily concerned with the organisation and distribution of perceptions in order to impose a universal (anti)productive capacity. To give this analysis a firm connection to property I bring Deleuze and Guattari's work into an encounter with that of Alain Pottage, arguing that certain of his analyses can be kind history', longer be `universal to that of understood as a so as show property can no but instead be logistically. tactically should and understood strategically understood

The

conjunction of these writers (Hume, Deleuze, Guattari, Pottage and others) reveals a formulation somewhat paradoxical of what property means under the conditions of is be. Here we are returned the control: property present assertion of what property will to a concern with duration, and the understanding that control is, precisely, control of the future.

Chapter Six repeats this approach, but with closer attention to the constitution of the in bring I the subject. previous analyses of perception, association, capital, and property to relation with the crucial work of Marilyn Strathern, so as to develop an understanding forefront how is Strathern's the the of we can think of the at work of controlled subject. interconnections of property and subjectivity, yet it is curiously absent from many is is direct line between because Perhaps there this theoretical accounts. a mainstream (Deleuze's) Nietzsche and Strathern on this point, in the sense that the subject-object

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distinction is one that cannot be taken for granted, but must always be worked out in a given circumstance.

Chapter Seven effects a quasi-closure by returning, albeit obliquely, to some of the ideas drawn from Schroeder in Chapter One. In particular I replay the connection she makes between property and the feminine so as to argue that, under capitalism, the controlled is subject exposed to continuous processes of becoming-woman; not as a process of emancipation, but instead as the extension of control via increased differentiation, difference (potentially) that victimisation and virtualisation, re-presents any creative as a inequality, better instrumentalise) it To (and the to matter of unjust all quantify as profit. link becoming-woman I this the to a process of antimake point concept of from developed description insurance doing Ewald's I By associationism, of risk. so am highlight how both the to able control equates subject with property, articulating as being the expense of other modes of and perceiving. potentialities of productivity, at

SECTION ONE: CRITICAL

PROPERTY

CHAPTER ONE

Deleuze's philosophy, under the influence of Bergson, is often concerned with the construction of problems. Constructing a problem servesas a motor for the exploration of certain themes and ideas, the accuracy or usefulnessof which dependsupon its relevance to a particular circumstance.

The problem I am concernedwith is that of property and subjectivity. Is Deleuze relevant to such problems? This can only be determined in terms of the circumstance in which the problem is developed or unfolded. Deleuze has to be made relevant here. This is not so difficult becauseproperty, and of course subjectivity, have always been look from But how `Deleuzean' this philosophical problems. might problem a perspective?

In order to begin to set out the problem this chapter looks to the recent analysis of by Jeanne Schroeder her in book The Vestal made subjectivity property and and the Fasces (Schroeder: 1998).

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A COMMON SENSE APPROACH

I am interested in two themes in Schroeder's book. The first concerns the idea of property and the second that of the feminine.

Schroeder's idea of property is perhaps best described as a common sense idea. It is a

find lawyers. immediate that practical concept should resonancewith practising property She writes,

I believe that my theory is not merely of abstract jurisprudential interest. I have

in found has been that not only my my approach extremely useful personally teaching but also in my doctrinal scholarshipand in my legal practice as a commercial lawyer. (Schroeder: 1998, xvii)

Later she states"I am a commercial lawyer who turned to Lacan and Hegel in order better to understand and practice law" (Schroeder: 1998, xviii). In these two theorists Schroederfinds an idea of property that not only explains what property is and how it functions, but that also agreeswith legal practice. The academy and the law firm in lawyer law: "the reading this correspondence,sharing a common senseof property and book...

know legal if he does (sic) or analysis even not my ultimate may appreciate ,

led The (Schroeder: 1998, there" that the academic argument me xvii). path understand because is lawyer the the sharedcommon sense sufficient to practising need not convince her. him it to or make acceptable

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As to the second theme of the feminine, Schroederdescribesa common senseof another register: not between the academyand the law firm this time, but between philosophy and psychoanalysis. Specifically, something that is common to both Hegel and Lacan: mutual recognition.

For Schroeder,the entry point of this mutual recognition is the different speechpatterns of male and female lawyers, that causesthem not so much to fail to understandeach other join discussion from "often different starting places" (Schroeder: 1998, xix). to the as Reading Hegel and Lacan together enables Schroederto locate and analyse this phenomenon,the commonality between the two writers being well expressedwhen Schroeder writes, "Property is Phallic" (Schroeder: 1998,108). Between Hegel and

Lacan, Schroeder is able to equateproperty exchangewith symbolic exchange.

By putting the problem of property and subjectivity in terms of common sense,the has doubled. Not interrelations the problem only must we consider of property and designate but it to any such relation in terms of `common subjectivity also what means sense.' Through Deleuze, we can approach both problems together. What the two problems share is the dialectic, and it is this that forms the central focus of this chapter.

SCHROEDER AND HEGEL

Schroeder begins The Vestal and the Fasces by describing the procedure of the dialectic.

She points out that the resulting synthesis does not eraseor destroy the pre-existing thesis

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and antithesis. Sublation involves not only the coming together of two hitherto opposed elements and their fusion at a higher level but also the "freezing" of thesis and antithesis 1998,26). If (Schroeder: their the their co-existence with own and within synthesis dialectic makes thesis and antithesis identical (in order to render them capable of synthesis), the process of sublation necessarily preservestheir difference alongside this identity - the dialectic is the movement that results from the play of difference and identity. We should note immediately the movement of thought hereby demonstrated:it in directions in direction, identity in two the goes simultaneous one and synthesis; difference fragmentation. and other,

Once the dialectic has been set out Schroederproceedsto apply it. Application presents its own difficulties, however, becausethe point of application remains to be selected. How is the use of the dialectic to be orientated? If philosophy is understood as a project discovering itself: truths, then that of setting a method suggests concerned with universal from from for denominator. Following is the true everyone, most common out what Hegel, Schroeder explains that this denominator is freedom.

To be free meansnot to act under compulsion. In order to truly have free will, the person can have no needs,desires,relations, or other pathological freedom is if As the totally a consequence, pure arbitrary characteristics. it be bound by free. for be The that a reason, would reason, and not acted person is, (Schroeder: 1998,30). therefore, the a pure negativity. start person at

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Freedom is not real freedom while the individual is treated as an isolated case. This is becausesuch `arbitrary' freedom is divorced from the social relations that make reason and rationality possible. Individual freedom can only be a foundation upon which the dialectic must build a fully philosophical understanding of the subject (the social individual).

The crucial element here is the state, as it makes the exercise of freedom rational by foundation it in Chapter As Three, this particular giving a and orientation. we shall see is by Hegel in The Philosophy of Right. For now it is enough that problem addressed

has been identified begin. the to as proper place freedom

Outside of the state the individual can only exist in the abstract: as potential or negativity. Taken to its final degree,this potential is that of a pristine self-motivation: self motivated ' by self. However, this potential, or possibility, of the subject is uselesswithout 1998, be it be (Schroeder: "For to possible must actualized" something something more: 31) because otherwise it remains purely in the abstract. So the individual, the one

but is to more appropriately, a starting a starting point, common us all, not so much in line But between the points of abstraction and actualisation. movement: an oscillation but heavily it is to no proscribed movement: either north and/or south, a with sublation, in between. points

' This contradiction is perhaps the one central to the function of the dialectic, inasmuch as it addressesthe his herself. is is It between itself to the the that or split the self that subject experiences and contradiction itself. is facilitates It link Schroeder makes between the this that the is thereby: experienced that which Lacan. Hegel and work of

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For something to be possible it must be actualized the failure of something eventually to become actualized means,in retrospect, that it had not been, in fact, possible. Something only retroactively becomespotential once it has been fulfilled. This is why the abstractperson as free will is driven to actualize its freedom potential as concrete freedom. But the dialectic works the opposite way as well. The logically later concept cannot exist except for the logical necessity of the continuance of the earlier, and the earlier cannot exist except for the logical necessity of the possibility of the later. The later concept is actuality, but

the earlier concept is the possibility which allows it to come into being. (Schroeder: 1998,31; my emphasis).

The subject slides between the abstract and the concrete. In the latter, the contradictions for (a in of abstraction self a self) are overcome a synthesis that still preserves the

difference of the former. Potential is negative all the while that it remains abstract: it is 2 This is the driving force towards actualisation: differentiation totally non-differentiated.

forwards The in order to go back: "Selfthe and unity of subject. subject must go free, but freedom it is be its totally to since negative, can only be consciousnessclaims freedom driven its in its It is, therefore, to to actualize order potential. retroactively prove At looking back involves: 1998,33). (Schroeder: this this point we can see what claim"

it is the activity of representation. In this senseactualisation is the acquisition of the faculties of memory and intelligence. Only then can the right of the subject be demonstrated. reasonably

2 "... it is, by definition, totally stripped of all distinguishing characteristics. " (Schroeder: 1998,31).

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For something to be possible it must be actualized the failure of something eventually to become actualized means,in retrospect, that it had not been, in fact, possible. Something only retroactively becomespotential once it has been fulfilled. This is why the abstractperson as free will is driven to actualize its potential freedom as concrete freedom. But the dialectic works the opposite way as well. The logically later concept cannot exist except for the logical necessity of the continuance of the earlier, and the earlier cannot exist except for the logical necessity of the possibility of the later. The later concept is actuality, but

the earlier concept is the possibility which allows it to come into being. (Schroeder: 1998,31; my emphasis).

The subject slides between the abstract and the concrete. In the latter, the contradictions for (a in of abstraction self a self) are overcome a synthesisthat still preservesthe difference of the former. Potential is negative all the while that it remains abstract: it is 2 totally non-differentiated. This is the driving force towards actualisation: differentiation forwards in back: The "Selfthe to subject. subject must go order go and unity of be free, but freedom it is its be to totally since consciousnessclaims negative, can only driven freedom in its its It is, to therefore, to actualize order retroactively prove potential.

back 1998,33). At looking involves: (Schroeder: this this point can see we what claim" it is the activity of representation. In this senseactualisation is the acquisition of the faculties of memory and intelligence. Only then can the right of the subject be reasonably demonstrated.

Z"... it is, by definition, totally stripped of all distinguishing characteristics. " (Schroeder: 1998,31).

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before, idea `complete' the that the ects and outside of, the subject can exist in is to that the the e showed subject motivated actualisation, abstract will of Schroeder highlights Following the this, realise potential, only via state. a very

facet of the state: property. Through property the abstractsubject becomes becoming by by Naturally tised those a subject recognised as such other subjects. : in is the that their subjects are equal partners sense own status as actualised subjects ndent upon the counter-recognition of those that they themselvesrecognise. Once dialectical fro, it is is the that the to requires a movement n and property and

(Schroeder: 1998,36). this of mutual recognition rument

(that hroeder that the which occurs at point at which an object understandsproperty as ; free in by (that has free is invested lacks such a way that subject which will) will) a ihich hree characteristics are present:possession,enjoyment, and alienation. Possession involves not just physical control of an object but also an abstract element whereby the law, in English For by invested is through the the example, possession. possessor object the doctrine of adversepossessioninvolves two elements: factual possessionand the 3 intention to possess. or animuspossedendi

This more abstract element is important becauseit allows Hegel and Schroederto differentiate possessionfrom mere contingency or locality and presupposessocial interaction: to what extent is my intent to possessadequatelyrepresented?And the keeping in However, the is it with correlative question: an acceptable representation?

3 For

Ch [ 1990] Moran Council County in Buckinghamshire intention v example, see the significance of

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retroactivity of the dialectic, the most important reasonfor insisting upon abstract possessionis the abstract nature of free will. If the subject `starts' in the abstract then the medium of property, by which s/he is actualised, must also be (primarily) abstract: "Property originates in the internal necessity of the will" (Schroeder: 1998,39). The issue of recognising a valid possessionis dependentupon the degreeof actualisation involved in it. In other words, possessionis gaugedby determining to what degreethe will of the subject is present in the object in question (Schroeder, 1998,40). This is not a reciprocal process,however. Investment in a thing cannot be met by the thing investing in the owner - there is no dialectic between subject and object in this sense. This is feature becomes the where second of property significant, that of enjoyment. Even if into fetish), `unhealthy' (e. this is not the sign of the enjoyment spills over something g. a

but improper investment by the subject who remains the sole object gaining a will, an possessorof will.

Enjoyment is understood by Schroeder and Hegel as essentially involving consumption: the subject usesthe object up. If the reverse should occur, if the object should use up the dialectic being has This is deviation the taken then place. not an example of subject, a dialectical the of process: reversed so much as an actual undoing

The danger of enjoyment is dependenceon the object. Rather than being the freedom), definition becoming (the her the to ends of person risks own means Because has the the the to of object. enjoyer ends only positive subjected her is is through of object, she enjoyment an addict who a slave to, and existence lives only for, the object. This is inconsistent with the free nature of the person

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and with the function of property to actualize that freedom. So long as the person remains fascinated- spellbound- by the enjoyment of the object, she cannot turn to others. (Schroeder: 1998,44).

This deviation must then be regulated by the fact of the subject's intersubjectivity and, in this way, the dialectic can be re-introduced in order that such perverse subject-object be relations can properly re-orientated: the subject is only an actualised subject to the extent that s/he is recognised as such by other subjects, which, in this case,involves form The the the recognition of proper mode of enjoyment of object. specific of this intersubjectivity is alienation: the ability to avoid being captured by the object.

Alienating property in this context can only be properly achieved in a particular manner: contractual exchange. Schroeder writes that neither abandoning one's property, nor

giving it away as a gift, is properly constitutive of the concrete subject. This is because not having property (i. e. a relationship to an object) precludes the subject from the intersubjectivity that is so necessaryfor his/her recognition as a subject, from other, The holders (other subject needsto possessthe object of property). recognised subjects in the acceptedmanner in order that they might move from the abstract to the actual. Abandoning property, like improper enjoyment, is a potential break in the movement of the dialectic: the subject moves from the actual to the abstractby abandoning property. Abandonment is a refutation of the dialectic, of the social, and therefore of the self as lack Similarly, the gift raises same problem: a a consequent of objects and making well. is different in However, it the interaction. that, a gift sense unlike abandonment, social does involve another party - the recipient. However, the recipient, by giving nothing in

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exchange for what they receive, does not take on the role of actualised subject at any point. The receipt of the gift does not require them to assertthemselvesas a properly actualised subject via their own ownership of property. The problem for the subject making the gift is that, while they exercise mastery over the object by alienating it, that mastery cannot be recognised as such by a recognisable subject. This is plainly due to the fact that the recipient never appearsas a property owning subject in the exchange: they can recognise the subjectivity of the giver, but for the giver, this recognition must always be inadequate. Thus, the giver has failed to properly actualise him/herself in the context of the gift.

Only through the exchange of property is the subject fully actualised: by exchanging property with another mastery over the object is demonstrated(proper enjoyment). In from for this the to the to the two reasons: giver move abstract concrete exchange, allows crucially, the mastery over things is adequatelyrecognised - the recipient is also a master due things to the very same exchange, so their perceived recognition of the original of

in is constituting that original party as an actualised subject. and acceptable party proper Secondly, becauseit is an exchange,both parties retain a relation to objects. They may have alienated the original object, but this has occurred through the receipt of a new in the the that again process of exchange and actualisation can occur object, ensuring future. However this is not so important as the act of looking back, by which the parties

be have to themselves take actualised subjects the who realised their to exchange can potential.

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SCHROEDER AND LACAN

Once her account of Hegel has been given Schroederproceedsto a description of Lacanian theory, in order to explore how the two might be linked together. The main for Schroeder, between Hegel Lacan through the use of point of connection and comes, Lacan's three interdependentorders of the real, the imaginary and the symbolic. The initial point of contact with Hegel is the retroactive perception of this order by the adult:

We will speak as though the infant actually, empirically passes through three

in fact, though these orders are, mutually orders of consciousnesseven constituting. Lacan retroactively imagines the infant passing successively

through theseorders, but as he passesinto the next order he never leavesthe 1998,66). (Schroeder: order. previous

Schroederdescribes this retroactive passagein parallel to the Hegelian subject. Initially the infant exists in the real with "no senseof itself as a self' (Schroeder: 1998,68). Indeed, while in and of the real it is impossible to have cognition or experience of either later Even the the encounters real, after subject when one's circumstances. oneself or having passedthrough the imaginary and the symbolic, the real remains impossible for his or her experience.

For Schroeder this is akin to Hegel's ideas about actuality and potential, with the actual It is logic imaginary the the the and the symbolic, potential and with real. equated with

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of Lacan's system that is very similar to that of Hegel's. It is the simultaneous positing of the real with the imaginary and the symbolic. What will be finally achieved, through the other two orders, is the mediation of the real: the subject can only encounter the mediated real. As Schroederputs it: "Awareness is not experiencebut the interpretation of experience" (Schroeder: 1998,69; my emphasis).

In the imaginary the infant is constituted through Lacan's mirror stage. The mirror stage is where, for the infant, an other appears for the first time (the mother), necessarily

indicating that the infant is a self in distinction to this other self. It is insisted upon by Lacanians that this self-other self awarenessis experienced as a loss. This is due to the dialectical process of the mirror stage: the infant is unified as an individual for the first

time through a synthesis of self and other self. The dialectic's preservation of all of the terms involved means that the retroactively imagined `wholeness' of the real continues to be a fact of existence, understood in hindsight as something that is no longer, or lost.

If the baby now experiences itself, in the mirror, as a unified thing, this unity is at the imagined the expense of wholeness omnipotence of a totality where nothing exists

beyond one's own limits. In unity comes the rejection of this wholenessto the extent that the mirror is an other - the other who allows me to sensemyself as unified, as a specific becoming lose being. In `me' I being the than my previous status whole of point of rather but it incomplete, I is As this which gives the now and such, am unified, of completion. loss. Wholeness is in dialectic the as now preserved subjectivity not negative grounds of I but I as what was. as what am,

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Two passagesfrom Schroederdescribe the consequencesof the mirror stagevery well:

Based on mirror images,the imaginary seesdifference in terms of simple negation - the sexesare imagined to complement each other perfectly as yin and yang, active and passive,autonomousand connected,individualistic and nurturing, and so on. In this mirror stage, the child starts becoming aware of itself as separate through the mediating function of sexuality. This is the

beginning of the subject/objectdistinction. (Schroeder: 1998,69)

And:

This cognitive stepof recognizing the existenceof another person as different identify, let before to take the alone evaluate, similarities to must place ability from The former imaginary differences that other person. mere and identification of identity and nonidentity - is purely dual in nature and must be

the samefor both the girl and the boy in the mirror stage. That is, in the mirror female, identify both Mother the with yet recognize stage,all children, male and their difference from the Mother. (Schroeder: 1998,71).

If the imaginary reflects the loss of omnipotence for the first time to the infant, it also impossibility it. This is both the the realm of the of regaining possibility and gives rise to

desire, transmitted throughout the domain of speechas that which cannot be satisfied, but It is in be the the relationship with of satisfaction. possibility that can only representedas for father in is infant from desire the the father the symbolic, out that played prevents the

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regaining completeness(as superior rival for the mother), while simultaneously 4 Schroeder As Name-of-the-Father. the promising completenessthrough observanceof writes:

The infant realizes that he is not the Mother's entire life. He has a rival; she desiresthe Father. The child imagines that he was once whole, in union with the Mother. Now that they are separated,by necessity,they must both be incomplete. The Mother's incompleteness or castration is confirmed when the

child observesthat his mother desireshis father.... He now realizes that Mother is not the all-powerful, self-sufficient, totally Other. If she were, she wouldn't desire. If she desires Father, Father must be greater than she, he must have

is for desire desires. The term this object of psychological whatever object she the `Phallus.' (Schroeder: 1998,78-79).

So we seehere a dialectical movement from infant to mother to father, that, retroactively, in infant the the the symbolic name-of-the-father, with synthesises abstractpotential of dialectic have And, the to also as continuously seen, we order produce a stable subject. Phallus, Lacanian here its the terms: paradoxically played out as as preserves original both the initial abstract state of wholeness, and the remainder consequentupon a is dialectic in it is The the this the symbolic castration: of sign synthesisof actualisation. have is, (that imagine imagine If that the that we the we phallus we phallus. other side of have a `core' or centre about which our subjectivity is built) we deny our castration, but

4 It must be remembered that if the father takes on the position of Name-of-the-Father (which he must in himself i. impossibility by is it to the father), to the be symbolic: submitting e. submitting only of order to being the father.

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at the cost of being ourselves,becausewe imagine ourselves to be re-fused with the real. In which case there is no longer a subject capable of possessingthe phallus.

Furthermore, in claiming the phallus for ourselves we deny our possession of it, and attest to our own castration. This is what draws us from the mother to the father: we demand a

return to the mother and wholeness (not castrated/possessingthe phallus), yet, the father intervenes as the obstacle to regaining the mother, so that the infant takes him to be the hence the key to regaining the mother. By so doing, our more powerful party, and demand, articulated through the dominance of the father and thereby our own castration,

becomesthe desire for the mother (castrated/lossof the phallus) (Schroeder, 1998,73-6):

the Phallus thus becomes the signifier of subjectivity. But the subject did not ... is, is it That Phallus Phallus the the a signifier as signifier. exist until recognized is because it is The subject nothing, a zero, which exists only without a signified. is, language brings Signification the the that order of symbolic signified. fiction of subjectivity into being by the trick of making zero count as one.

Subjectivity is createdwhen the subject claims to have the Phallus as the 1998,80-1). (Schroeder, signifier of subjectivity.

Becausethe father has made the sameparadoxical claim on his own behalf (i. e. to be in is in be Name-of-the-Father), that the to subjectivity the we see phallus possessionof infinity: is It indeed. the to chain of signifiers, of zeroes a chain slight many ways very function this to by the serve the can only which as master-signifier, phallus all anchored desire, is Lacanian This lacks the it concept of which can only that a signified. extent

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exist in the symbolic: we are drawn to a signifier only to find, once it is within our grasp, that what we actually desire is not so much the signifier itself, as what it signifies: another signifier. This re-iterates the impossibility of ever possessingthe phallus and the impossibility of not possessingit: in either case,there would be an end to desire and subjectivity.

This matrix of desire is likened by Schroederto the exchangeof objects in Hegel: the infant, motivated by the presence/absenceof the phallus, exchangesone sign for another by doing is implicated in the symbolic universe as a `real' subject. Like Hegel, it and so is a knot of exchange- something is given which is and is not the thing received: any claim to the phallus is given up by the infant in return for which s/he receives what the

father has: the phallus (Schroeder: 1998,82-3).

Importantly, Lacanian exchange distinguishes between the sexes, by giving women a

function. If have logic become The they then they a phallus particular cannot will one. between infant, father. father derives from is If this the the triadic of relation mother and the obstacle between infant and mother, and therefore the impossibility of regaining father is because Because is taken to the the the this possess phallus. only wholeness, imaginary, level infant is, the the the the the of at re-fusion of phallus with possessionof the mother, the two are elided: the phallus, at least in this context, is the mother, while at by is level the the symbolic mother also possessed the father. This is another facet of from is being However, the to this mother separation equal castrated. castration anxiety: does not favour male infants over female: "Castration is universal" (Schroeder:1998,86).

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If female infants experience themselves as castrated this does not set them apart from the male. As Schroeder makes clear, the difference is how girls deal with the fact of castration as opposed to boys. With the male, the fact of castration is rejected twice:

First, the Masculine merely denied castration, he claimed that he still does have the Phallus. Second,when he was forced to recognizethat he has lost the Phallic Mother, he claimed that he narrowly escapedcastration in the senseof the involuntary taking of the Phallus by his retroactive consent in exchange for a replacement in the future. (Schroeder: 1998,85)

However, the feminine does not deny the fact of her castration but seems to embrace it: if does have it is because is This involves its the not a phallus, she phallus. own she delusion because, as we have seen, it is impossible for the phallus to be anywhere, at least far in is Furthermore, the the equation the conspires concerned. masculine as symbolic as by Within feminine the symbolic, given the phallus. virtue of exchanging and phallus of the non-existence of the phallus, the game must be played out (if one is to be masculine) through the exchange of women, in precisely the same way as property is exchanged in

Hegel. This leads Schroederto equateproperty with the feminine.

This correlation between the feminine and property is closely tied to the element of in by Hegel, Schroeder As to out relation enjoyment of an object pointed a enjoyment.

5 This in itself is dependent upon another turn of the screw: to experience herself as castrated (and he is himself be that the the for to castrated), not phallus conflated convince must the with male similarly, difference between This is in the the the sexes. perhaps real weakest point apparent the of sign as penis it is dominance Schroeder brief the as upon of vision. gives a premised account of psychoanalytic account, it below. 94), to 1998,87 we will return and it (Schroeder: -

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subject is a crucial feature of property. However, it is also a dangerousone, inasmuch as the object threatens the subject through enjoyment: the subject must turn away from the object via the alienation of the object. For this purpose, SchroederequatesHegelian enjoyment and Lacanianjouissance. Thus, through Lacan, we are able to seethat jouissance is the feminine position: it is the moment of merger with the mother and repossession of the phallus. In short, a becoming-phallus and, as woman is the phallus, a becoming-woman as well. Jouissance is the return of the real; the achievement of the impossible:

The order of the real is that which is beyond, and therefore limits, the symbolic realm of language and law. Consequently, by submerging with the real, the subject loses her subjectivity in the sense of losing her place in the symbolic. She cannot speak to others and achieve the intersubjective recognition which is the condition of subjectivity while standing in the feminine position of

jouissance. (Schroeder: 1998,97)

Symbolic exchange is necessarily masculine, and thus excludes the feminine as beyond law beyond itself. Following Lacan, the or without symbolic and, as a consequence, also Schroeder points out that, from the perspective of the symbolic the feminine is not only impossible (in the sense of a re-fusion with the mother), but is also forbidden.

This is a

different circumstance becausewhat is forbidden remains a possibility - indeed is forbidden precisely because it is possible. So, by symbolically forbidding feminine

femininity is is It incest taboo, through the made possible. achieved via subjectivity, is, jouissance: law, the re-submerging of the subject the precisely, which transgression of

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in the real. Hence, impossibility does not suggestthat the subject cannot achieve a becoming-woman, but rather that it cannot achieve it as subject. The feminine is always at the cost of the subject. The Hegelian parallel is therefore obvious: jouissance poses exactly the sameproblem for the subject as the enjoyment of an object, where, through enjoyment, there is a turning away from other subjects. In the Lacanian system, this turning away is the turning away from the symbolic order: denial of both the law and

favour Other. The in the transgression other subjects, subject must submit to and of castration, and thereby give up the delusion of possessing the phallus precisely so that the

phallus might be re-possessed:"in denying the Feminine it (the Name-of-the-Father), in fact, createsthe Feminine as the possible - the not yet." (Schroeder: 1998,106; my emphasis).

DELEUZE, SCHROEDER, HEGEL

Through Schroeder's use of Hegel, property and the dialectic become intertwined. Now I

it by Gilles dialectic, is focus the why rejected and explaining will upon separating out Deleuze as an adequateexplanation of the world.

The dialectic is problematic for a number of reasonsthat I will indicate here, whilst leaving their philosophical grounding (in duration) until the next chapter. First it is an fashioned from is tool then technique, as a philosophical which applied, without, external has in it This is because it that nothing common otherwise with. to situations a problem logic. For Deleuze deprives their those situations of own autonomy and thereby

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Art, in important difference left the the something situation question. of gets out: literature, science, etc. are effectively reduced to the sameprocedures by the mechanism 6 dialectic: if in With become the they this of mind we must ask the all philosophy. dialectic is a useful way of describing or explaining the world.

Deleuze, following Nietzsche and Foucault, indicates that the truth of a situation is dependent from is that situation. always upon what one capable of achieving or creating Truth is a matter of meaningfully articulating the very fact of articulation itself. Truth is

formal, rather than a substantial content or proposition. In which casewe have moved to different a very senseof philosophy: a philosophy that is neither universal nor relative but singular. In relation to our articulations, that serve as so many linguistic and non-

linguistic expressionsof the world, we must ask: what do we achieve from such Schroeder From this that wants to express expressions? perspective, we can see back importance this to `common the to something about of private property, and relate 8 if However, Deleuze that you want to sense' experiencesof property. would suggest know about property you have to think it through in terms of property. Arguing for an hand, based dialectic is kind is the sleight on a of of where nothing understanding because dialectic itself. This is dialectic is the the not a real actually explained except

movement in thought.

At least, of a particular type: as Deleuze describes them, philosophies of `the long error'. By this, he history, Platonic through the of essentialism. On the overturning of Platonism see means perpetuation, (Deleuze: 1994,66-9). Perhaps one of the clearest examples of Deleuze studying and explicating the process of creation is his 2004a). (Deleuze: Bacon Francis study of 8 Hence the rather self congratulatory tone of Schroeder's prologue: "I had a successful practice as a finance lawyer in New York City for twelve years..." (Schroeder: 1998, xviii).

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The fundamental difference between real and abstractmovement would be the partiality of the former: it takes itself to be limited by the situation, but at the sametime, as capable of re-configuring that situation. An abstractmovement does not touch upon the reality of the situation it attempts to apply itself to, becauseit goes beyond partiality towards totality: it always seeksthe final explanation, resolution, conclusion or solution. It is confined to its own, limited reality and is always external to the situation under

It is consideration. only capable of re-discovering the sametruth, that of the negative, Such over and over again. a truth is retarding to the extent that it conceals the true

is is truth a question of what possible within the limitations of a specific problem, where dialectic We that the situation or case. might say reducesthought to the level of an 9 artificial intelligence, and has no regard for the truth of a situation. It is not interested in the real movement by which a painter has produced a work of art, or by which a judge has come to recognise a novel type of property. It is only concerned with its own truth: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

This brings us to a second problem that underlines the first. The dialectic, as an abstract fails fact it it is in to movement at all necessarily explain sets only, no what movement dialectic by is identical in We that the to proceeds extrapolating what out explain. saw the thesis and antithesis in order to produce the synthesis. We also saw that this sublation difference This the two terms, the of original even after synthesis. also preserved light in by is that the to arguing whole procedure can only come paradox avoided from back, looking by Only identify the the perspective of synthesis, can we retrospect.

9 Where the dialectic moves quickly through a closed, albeit very large, set of facts; and may even add new facts deducted from the set.

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Only in hindsight in the the potential of thesis and antithesis now actualised synthesis. can we differentiate the differences and the similarity where before there had been only difference.

Not only should we be cautious about `retroactive similarities, ' we need to be even more `retroactive differences. ' because differences More to these so with regard cautious are divides difference into Deleuze they two catagories,that again not real: are abstract only. we might call `differences between' and `unilateral difference' (Deleuze: 1994,28) A `difference between' is a differentiation premised upon similarity: it is a question of determining to what extent two similar things diverge from each other. The divergence is only a banal difference becauseit dependsupon something external to itself: the difference In two things. the of other words, would not exist without the two comparison things compared being brought together in that way. For example, if we want to know dogs has the that this one physical characteristics of we might note a snub muzzle, about

this one has black spots, this one has a long tail, etc. Such differences only exist in dogs One between (i. that to their of e. otherness), presupposes similarity. relation a for dog in because this the resulting a and an elephant way example compare would not, difference would tell us nothing useful about either. This is becausethey lack 10 difference is difference does On hand, that the not a real other unilateral similarity. depend upon any external support: it exists in itself as that which is different from itself. In relation to the dialectic the preservation of difference is not a real difference at all. Rather, it is the banal difference of two things made similar by the dialectic in hindsight.

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The claim made by Schroederfor the dialectic is that it motivates actualisation through this paradox (i. e. similarity and difference): but it is no paradox at all becausethe difference is a necessary function of the synthesised similarity.

is an abstract movement only

This is why the dialectic

difference has been new and added, unilateral - nothing

remains unthought.

The third problem with the dialectic, again related to the previous two, is the emphasis on hindsight.

If there is real difference, as Deleuze argues, the dialectic is in danger of

being overrun by a real movement. Deleuze shows that this real movement goes in many directions simultaneously: not just to and fro. In order to avoid this difficulty the dialectic is presented as necessarily retroactive. The importance of this is that it sets up a from describe dialectical to the specific position which process, and that this position then limits the movement in thought. In fact, it does more than limit: it covers real movement

is dialectic The that the thereby has an orientation with an abstract movement. problem by Schroeder. dialectic larger issue This to time: the not recognised only relates a about works in a linear time that is simultaneously cyclical, producing an upwards spiral. But the real movement of duration is neither: it cannot be cyclical becauseit doesn't return to itself as a banal repetition of the same; nor is it linear, because linearity is also a type of

future, in it the the to the past or put another repetition repetition of retroactivity, of future by The linearity is banal the the the the past. repetition of conditioning of way,

in draws beginning the the the satisfactory end, conclusion which all the repetition of initial strands together, apparently exhausting them, in a conclusive arrangementor 10This relation between similarity and difference is subject to all sorts of factors. Crucially, one may has in them: different similarity a appeared when e.g. comparing cats and dogs on the species compare

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narrative. This would then presupposethat what appearsin the future existed in a different form in the past, specifically as potential.

Dialectical movement is necessarily teleological it headstowards an inevitable conclusion. Real movement is a break in the movement of time: a crack in the circle and in line. back This Schroeder look is the a rupture can only at dusk: it allows her to why

ignore these breaks in order to produce a `coherent' story about what happenedin the day. follow In I Deleuze's concept of duration in order the the next chapter will course of to show how the real movement of duration contrasts to the dialectical, abstract movement.

The final problem with Schroeder's analysis has to do with the realisation of potential. We have seen that for her potential is driven to actualise itself by some inherent lack, be fact having been However, the which can only of not actualised. we again return to difference: banal `experience' it's similarity and why would potential non-actuality as a

lack? This can only be the case if potential feels a claim to something possessedby actuality. Thus potential `experiences' a similarity between itself and the actual, and Schroederarguesthat the `thing' actuality has, that potential lacks, is the fact of it is is Actuality to to the that the existing similar potential extent existence. Potential lack, its then experiences non-being as a not concretisation of potential. internally (becauseinternally, there is no lack), but externally, in its relation to something does Schroeder has is This is it this not explain why potential not. experience. else: what becausein order to do so, she would have to addressthe orientation inherent in the basis of their shared characteristic of being domestic animals.

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dialectic. As we have seen,this cannot be dealt with becauseit threatensthe directional truth of the dialectic, it's good sense. Again, this is why hindsight is important.

Schroeder uses the example of the film On the Waterfront to persuadeus of this: that the tragedy of Marlon Brando's character is that he never was a contender. If he had been, this potential would have been actualised. To try and claim that he had potential but that it was lost before he could actualise it, is to argue for the possessionof something which ' 1 had This is never existence. a good example of the terror of the dialectic: you are not but for the other - the dominance of the what you experience what you represent symbolic over the imaginary. This suggests a kind of essentialism that cannot be avoided by arguing for the negativity of abstract free will, because it is an essentialism exterior to the thing in question. The question of orientation is totally subsumed within the act of looking back. For Deleuze, potential and actuality exist co-extensively and are incommensurable. It is with Deleuze's theory of potential or, as he calls it, passive I look that turn to more closely at this philosopher's work. now synthesis,

" (Schroeder: 1998,31-2).

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CHAPTER TWO

DIFFERENCE

AND REPETITION

Schroeder's exposition of the dialectic reveals a dialectical time. I mean by this that there is a time-function implicit in her analysis: that of retrospect, of looking back. This is a fro linear in the the to time that, the and model of as argued above, combines and circular into future, be dialectic: the the projection of past motion of which should understood as teleology. In the present I can know where I have come from: I can look back and, future be day. The the the anticipated present the past presents of would crucially, order to come, based upon what has gone before. Common sense (and Schroeder) tells us that the future only exists in the present as anticipation. Thus, it is dependent upon the past: back. looking upon

Who looks back in Schroeder? It is the subject of the present, as s/he goes about the business of exchanging property. Within Schroeder's analysis, this is a function of in future. from but because Not law the the the to caprice, past perpetuate property it future be dialectic the that which currently the necessitates can only movement of difference: have If thesis in the the and antithesis. a of as we premonition present exists future, this is the other direction of the dialectic - we begin to discern a similarity, a itself is What the this actualise as that same. eventually will wrong with potential,

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common sense approach? What is wrong with the intuition of Schroeder and her lawyer friends? It is this: that such an assertion (that life advances through the dialectic) cannot explain the real movement of things in time. If the future were simply to be made from has what already past, it would not come and the present would not pass. If the present is between the abstract and the concrete it would stay there, unless there is caught something more to potential than Schroeder allows. Retrospect cannot explain the future it without reducing to the past. We will see from Deleuze that the past as potential is not the same thing as the potential of the future, and that this is why the dialectic is not a real but movement an abstract one only

Contrary to Schroeder's view that potential only exists relative to its actualisation, Deleuze posits three different types of potentiality, or passive synthesis, each both separate from, and interdependent with, the others, with none pre-existing the others.

DELEUZE

AND DURATION

Before looking at Deleuze's concept in more detail, it is useful to have a brief overview of how he constructs duration in terms of passive and active syntheses.

The passive syntheses structure the concept of being in Deleuze's Difference and Repetition. They are concerned with time, or more properly, duration. Each synthesis is duration: future. the the the of present, aspect past, and concerned with a particular However, these are not the present, past and future as experienced in day to day life, or as

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grasped through common sense. Each passive synthesis is a singularity in the sense that it is not determined by its relation to anything else. In other words, a singularity is not constituted by structuralist relationships but is, instead, a point of individuation or particularity, serving as a specific articulation or expression of being. These expressions encounter each other, and in so doing are productive of new singularities and expressions. This is what is meant by a real movement. There is no dialectical element involved, as we shall see, because such encounters do nothing to preserve the elements of the In this sense we can say that singularities are caused by relationships, but that encounter. these relations cannot explain anything about what they constitute. Once a threshold has been crossed and a new singularity brought into being it takes effect immediately, locally, in disjunction from and other singularities. Furthermore, the elements that constitute the by its transformed the singularity are event of coming into being so that, from the have identity function: that they the elements are not perspective of event, no separate or ' preserved but exhausted. We cannot then talk of progress, advancement, or telos, because these depend upon an orientation and outcome absent from the self-organisation of singularities.

Whilst each of the three passive syntheses is self-constituting, they enter into relations inability final their to achieve a closure of with each other as a consequence of future be finalised the themselves: neither can or completed, and this present, past, nor between liminal them. the point of contact openness serves as

11 will return to the concept of exhaustion in the next chapter.

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Also, along with passive synthesis, there is active synthesis. Active synthesis is not broken down into parts, although it has a specific effect in relation to each of the passive syntheses. The main point is that the active synthesis is not productive of anything. Instead, it is a type of emphasis or focus, which looks not to what is open in the passive but instead to what is specific to it in terms of its operations or process. This syntheses, specificity is then taken as completion or closure by the active synthesis, as something has identity in terms of both its sense (common sense) and direction which a constant (telos or good sense). In which case, the present becomes self evident, the past becomes future becomes expectation. the memory, and

THE SYNTHESES

OF TIME

THE FIRST PASSIVE SYNTHESIS: Habitus or the Present. The present is constituted by the contraction of two instants. An instant is the smallest duration draws instants the that two power of contraction element of possible within 2 together. The instant is the minimum quantum of durational matter, as, for Deleuze, interchangeable descriptions being (Deleuze: 1994,70 time, of matter, and movement are 3 However, by it be be `smallest' to to careful: referring a unit, could et seq). we need thought that Deleuze does start at a beginning. This would be a mistake, as from an

Here I am following Deleuze's analysis of Hume's insistence that, within the order of human perception, human beyond impression is which perception fails to perceive. The significance there always a minimal it is indivisible (Deleuze: 1991: 90). Following being is the this, we might say that smallest, that, this of its depends inhuman (in is terms instant of own constitution or contraction) that an upon the which perception or contemplation. In addition see (Deleuze: 1992). (Deleuze: 1989), and (Deleuze: 1991).

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4 ontological perspective, there is always something smaller than the smallest. This is why Deleuze never starts at the beginning - he is always already in the middles

An instant always occurs in a contemplation (Deleuze: 1994,70). A contemplation in this context does not suggest a subject who contemplates: "It is not carried out by the but mind, occurs in the mind which contemplates, prior to all memory and reflection" (Deleuze: 1994,71). Contemplation is the "contraction" of instants, and Deleuze talks of the mind "drawing out" difference from this contraction, indicating that the from diverges itself (Deleuze: 1994,78-9). Contemplation is the contemplation already instant be followed by another instant, and while each instant is An time. must passing of in itself autonomous and logically unconnected to any other instant, the contemplation in into brings be If them this the they there which occur relation. were not case, would no time: if there were only one, eternal instant nothing could come to pass. Rather than be there continuity. repetition would

So it is only in this process of contraction that time

Deleuze that passes. writes that contraction can appear as something

is by no meansa memory, nor indeed an operation of the understanding: forms it is Properly a synthesis of speaking, reflection. not a matter contraction does it instants A time than time. constitute any more causes not succession of of it to disappear; it indicates only its constantly aborted moment of birth. Time is in the originary synthesis which operates on the repetition of only constituted instants. This synthesis contracts the successive independent instants into one

' See Deleuze's discussion of the infinitely small and the infinitely large in (Deleuze: 1994,42). 5I will return to this in Chapter Three, through Deleuze's "method of dramatisation, " and in Chapter Four, both David Hume Henri Deleuze's Bergson. of and use of with a consideration

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another, thereby constituting the lived, or living, present. It is in this present that time is deployed. (Deleuze: 1994,70).

This is the first passive synthesis of time, and it gives rise to the present. But this is not the whole story of this synthesis, because Deleuze also explains how it relates to the past future. The past and the future are not `outside' of the present. The past and the the and future are internal to this present, because the present is the result of a contemplation of a instants. is It succession of perhaps easier to see why the past is internal to the present "the preceding instants are retained in the contraction" (Deleuze: 1994,71) but in contemplation two instants are contracted together: the past instant and the future instant.

Thus both past and future instants are internal to the present. The alternative would be to for argue a synthesis of either the past and the present, or of the future and the present. If it is argued that the past and the present form the synthesis then there is nothing to explain why the present passes; if the future and the present are synthesised then time begin is impossible. Therefore Deleuze the that will present and also with writes, "repetition tells us that one instance does not appear unless the other has disappeared... repetition disappears even as it occurs.... " (Deleuze: 1994,70).

This highlights why the smallest can never be the smallest. Because the instant disappears as it appears in repetition, the distance between the smallest and nothing is infinite: there is thus no beginning, but always something before, no matter how small. This is a difficult point to grasp, but an important one: it is helpful to look to Deleuze's

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book on Nietzsche (Deleuze: 1996b) where he also writes on this theme. Rather than obscure the text, I quote at length:

Nietzsche saysthat if the universe had an equilibrium position, if becoming had an end or final state,it would already have been attained. But the present moment, as the passing moment,proves that it is not attained and therefore that an equilibrium of forces is not possible. But why would equilibrium, the terminal state, have to have been attained if it were possible? By virtue of what Nietzsche calls the infinity of past time. The infinity of past time means that becoming cannot have started to become, that it is not something that has become. But, not being something that has become it cannot be a becoming it if it having become, it be is becoming Not something. would already what is infinite, becoming being becoming That to time say, past were something. indeed, final if it had have its And, saying that attained state one. would becoming would have attained its final state if it had one is the same as saying that it would not have left its initial state if it had one. If becoming becomes it is finished becoming long has it If something which ago? not something why has become then how could it have started to become? (Deleuze: 1996b, 47; my ) emphasis.

So the present is the contraction of the past and future instants, which, as a process, has instant is incapable In beginning this that means a given of addition, nor end. neither `being' the present without becoming an eternal present that would not pass. Deleuze draws two important consequences from this.

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The First Consequence. The subject appears only in relation to time. Deleuze is not saying that there is a time before the subject, but that the subject is the very contracting of instants, and thus indistinguishable from those contractions. This subject is a passive subject, having no intentionality, nor any pre-determined point of perspective. It is not a subject opposed to objects, but is instead made up of specific arrangements of contraction. The passive subject is a force of contraction. But why refer to it as a `subject? ' Because it is the initial ground of subjectivity as we think of it on a day to day basis: the self-aware active-subject who remembers and hopes. Like Freud and Lacan, the subject is a split subject for Deleuze, although the split is between the active and the is from This his analysis of Kant's critique of Descartes. passive. apparent

Descartes is well known for `I think therefore I am. ' Deleuze tells us that Kant's objection to this statement is the impossibility of knowing what `I am' means relative to `I think, ' or, as Deleuze articulates it,

it is impossible for determination to bear directly upon the undetermined. The ... determination ('I think') obviously implies something undetermined ('I am'), but is determinable by it is far how the `I that this tells undetermined nothing so us think.... ' (Deleuze: 1994,86-7; author's emphasis).

So Deleuze's point, from Kant, is how to make `I am' determinable, or knowable. For Kant, it is a question of the a priori existence of time (Deleuze: 1994,86). This takes us back to the contracting of instances as a passive subject. It is only in a relationship of by drawing be instants. Before the together constituted the can that of time subject we

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return to the first passive synthesis, it is worth taking account of what Deleuze says about time in this regard:

my undeterminedexistencecan be determined only within time as the existence of a phenomenon, of a passive, receptive phenomenal subject appearing within time. As a result, the spontaneity of which I am conscious in the `I think' cannot be understood as the attribute of a substantial and spontaneous being, but only as the affection of a passive self which experiences its own thought - its own intelligence, that by virtue of which it can say I- being exercised in it and upon it but not by it. (Deleuze: 1994,86; author's emphasis).

In other words, before the active subject says `I think, ' the passive subject lives this `I think' not as an intentionality or orientation ('not by it'), but as the fact of its own power it it. is dependent ' The `in then of contraction and upon active subject upon the passive, be but instead forever `I `I that think' meaning and am' can never stand reconciled 6 by from the a priori support that, paradoxically, connects them. 1 separated each other is Time the thinking this time. to thought, takes and of object exist myself as an object of the separation between my thinking self and what I think of (myself). By not taking

6 Deleuze

directly in Kant's Critical little Philosophy (Deleuze: I996a). To say this more a point explains `I think' means that I synthesise a manifold of presentations, meaning that I draw off from the difference of is This is `unified' of appears. an active procedure, giving the what re-presentation what appearing a

I However, this active process necessarily prethe sense. of what passively organisation particularity of To I I that that say synthesise of passivity. phenomenal process appearances means additional supposes an take, as an a priori, that which `supports' the appearance of phenomena - these `supports' being time and if because, level is by is This to time and of passivity what appears me supported an additional space. I by the the follows it that as site of active synthesis myself, of then what appears, am also supported space, is (e. be I the In to active synthesis also thinking). a phenomena words, other g. time and space. appear This is the additional passivity of `I am' - time and space being the linkage between the active (I think) and influence 14-7). Under 1996a, (Deleuze: the (I of Bergson, space will itself come to be the passive am) determined by duration in Deleuze's system.

45

account of time as that which makes the undetermined ('I am') determinable, Descartes is faced with a choice between infinite doubt or the guarantees of God.

The Second Consequence. This is the active subject. Unlike the passive subject, the active subject is not directly involved in the contraction of instances, but is a consequence it: it of comes after the passive subject. It is helpful to recall Schroeder at this point, for her argument would appear to be in agreement: there is the negative self of abstract freedom that is driven to actualise itself so as to make its freedom real and concrete. Schroeder stated that if the abstract were not actualised it would lack reality - that it was by being in look back the that only realised actual we could and refer to a potential. We from is is Deleuze Instead, that this the the already see not actually case. passive self a is becoming becoming beginning potential which realised without without actualised: a if immediate becomes: does become The the potential subject not or end. question inner drive lack, how does the active subject arise? through actualised some or

We must go back to the repetition of instants. Because an instant appears as it disappears (i. e. is not a continuity), it is a pure difference `in-itself, ' as it is only the repetition of difference that can mark it as repetition. Otherwise, it would merely be a continuous and instant is if instant. This treated as the minimum quantum of time, that an means constant between instants. is difference This two the minimum quantum of significant must occur because it demonstrates how difference is therefore responsible for opposition: opposition is two instants distributed by the difference between them, and not a difference between similarities.

Deleuze writes that a continued repetition of instants is also experienced (or

46

7 contemplated) by the passive self, as a continued repetition of pairs of instants. Rather than experience the sound produced by the workings of a clock as tick, tick, tick..., we tend to experience it as tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.... (Deleuze: 1994,72). This suggests that the process of contraction is actually more complex than initially thought: it involves not one series (tick, tick, tick) but two (tick- tock and tick-tock, tick-tock, ticktock). The active subject is delineated in the inter-relation of the two series constituted by tick-tock as a single case and first series in its own right, and a second series constituted by the repetition of cases. Each tick-tock is then both closed, in the sense of being a discrete case, and open, to the extent that it is one case amongst many.

The two series set up a structure that ramifies them. Just as there is the repetition of instants which are contracted, the repetition of pairs is also treated in the same way: each instant for further pair serves as an a series of contractions, and so on. However, the is introduction in terms the of opposable any particular series, crucial point - not merely but also between the series as well, for this is the root of the active subject. Opposition sets up a "temporal space" where,

The past is then no longer the immediate past of retention but the reflexive past of representation, of reflected and reproduced particularity.

Correlatively, the

future also ceasesto be the immediate future of anticipation in order to become

the reflexive future of prediction, the reflected generality of the understanding. (Deleuze: 1994,71).

7 The acuteness of this experience will depend upon the power of the contraction involved.

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The minimum amount of difference sets up series in opposition which allows for the development of prediction or memory, and understanding or intelligence. Thus the active is subject initiated through powers of contrast and comparison derived from a presumption of the same. To be clear: the active-subject operates through the same, but only as a consequence of the drawing off of a difference through contraction, which can in only occur relation to a passive subject that brings unconnected instants into relation.

One final issue needs to be touched upon regarding the first passive synthesis. This has to do with the relationship between the first synthesis and learning. Learning is the by level develops in the procedure which subject on either relation to the milieu within it distinction be fact That the an object/subject can only ever after of which must act. is clearly seen when Deleuze writes: passive subjectivity

Every organism, in its receptive and perceptual elements, but also in its viscera, is a sum of contractions, of retentions and expectations. At the level of this future in lived time. the present constitutes a past and a primary vital sensibility, Need is the manner in which this future appears, as the organic form of form heredity. in The the of cellular retained past appears expectation.

(Deleuze: 1994,73).

Learning is not a thing which is actively undertaken, but is instead the very repetition of bodies have learnt how to breathe, to In this sense, our the contractions themselves. knowing it how But to more specific abilities also cover can such as to sleep, eat, etc. how is Learning by instrument. to think. the how to play an procedure which we read,

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develop a habit: "In essence, habit is contraction" (Deleuze: 1994,73). The active subject is also important to learning, serving as the material to be transformed by it, becoming more capable, and even, in the proper Nietzschean sense, more forceful. However it should be emphasised that the power of the active-subject is totally dependent upon that of the passive.

This again highlights the inadequacies of Schroeder's account: the potential of the subject doesn't disappear in actualisation. Rather, the concrete and the abstract exist side by irreconcilable but, despite their non-equality, continuously penetrating each other, side, learning. Hence, wrapping round each other, repulsing each other:

It (psychology) asks how we acquire habits in acting, but the entire theory of learning risks being misdirected so long as the prior question is not posed habits it is that through the we acquire on acting or whether, namely, whether ... it Psychology is it through regards as established that contemplating? contrary, the self cannot contemplate itself. This, however, is not the question. The itself is (Deleuze: 1994, is the a contemplation... self or not question whether

73).

If wheat is a contraction of sun, rain and earth, if oil is a contraction of vegetation and do love, (Badiou: 2001), if humans science, politics and art are a contraction of pressure, is is because in Deleuze's This duration in the reply no. of a present? they result same be limited there will contemplation a specific contracting and power every situation of a isn't just it It longer that the takes to tree to than case. a grow a unique of contraction,

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weed, or that a human lives longer than a fly: in all cases there is an existential difference in duration itself.

The duration of an organism's present, or of its various presents, will vary according to the natural contractile range of its contemplative souls. In other words, fatigue is a real component of contemplation. It is correctly said that those who do nothing tire themselves most. Fatigue marks the point at which the longer soul can no contract what it contemplates, the moment at which contemplation and contraction come apart. We are made up of fatigues as much as of contemplations. (Deleuze: 1994,77).

As every human has differing capacities for contemplation, each is a different power of contraction. Schroeder was able to argue for an equal starting point for all humans via Hegel's abstract free will, but contingency tells us that humans are not equal - not only in terms of geography, politics, economics, and so on, but in their very beings as human has different Therefore, souls. each a capacity contemplated, and contemplating, for learning. Learning, dependent as it is upon the interrelation of the active and passive is learning is It not a matter of everything, or more subjects, not a question of quantity. than someone else, but the quality of the power to learn.

The maximum power of learning would be that which contemplates the whole in its in direction This indicated by is this two points question a whole? already entirety; what does Why is What the in the the present synthesis: pass? and, passive moments The is fatigue? `the ' to three answer all questions past. consequence of

50

According to Deleuze the past is the second passive synthesis of time. We have already encountered the past in two ways: first, as an internal instant of the contracted present, being which, passive and internal, could not be represented: in short, it was the past to the difference that extent a pure could be drawn from it in conjunction with a future instant (habit). Second, because the minimum contracted difference effectively distributed two instants in opposition, we saw that the past is also an active point which by its very nature is representable, along with an anticipated future (memory and intelligence). For Deleuze, this active past raises a specific problem, because the first passive synthesis "does not tell us what constitutes memory" (Deleuze: 1994,79). Memory is the looking back of the active subject, who considers a past-present in the present-present. We may pose the problem in this way: how is it that when we remember, we know that we are 8 be There than a present-present? must something remembering a past-present rather is but Deleuze that which allows us to assume a position of more, says, unrepresentable, distance from the past, and to then be able to recognise it as such.

THE SECOND PASSIVE SYNTHESIS: Mnemosyne or the Past. Therefore, the problems raised by both the first passive synthesis and the active synthesis, first in This the through can and which pass. presuppose a second passive synthesis but in in is "the the past past general... which each second passive synthesis not merely former present is focused upon in particular and as a particular" (Deleuze: 1994,80). It is

8 Of course, this faculty can break down - e.g. dementia where the subject might become unable to order , past and present.

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an a priori past, in and through which "a given former present is reproducible and the present present is able to reflect itself' (Deleuze: 1994,81). Deleuze writes,

Whereas the passive synthesis of habit constitutes the living present in time and makes the past and the future two asymmetrical elements of that present, the

[second] passive synthesisof memory constitutesthe pure past in time, and former the makes and the present present (thus the present in reproduction and the future in reflection) two asymmetrical elements of this past as such.

(Deleuze: 1994,81).

This seems a difficult thing to grasp: what is this `pure past' and what is its significance? As we shall see, Deleuze delineates this pure past of memory as four paradoxes, drawn from the philosophy of Bergson. However, the initial thing to bear in mind is that Deleuze is not talking about a past made up of former presents actively remembered. A former present is only a representation in the present-present, the result of active former following the the present and the reflection above, a reproduction of synthesis, or, is heralding in thus the that then the constituted as passing: a present of present-present future. In active remembrance, the past-present is not made present, but is reproduced in the present-present. As a consequence, the present-present itself is reflected in the pastknow is from I in the the that that present: past present separates past element present as is because to happening the act of remembering separate past and present. of part now not

So if a former present is reproduced, it cannot be that former present itself, i. e. it cannot is in former Rather, the be the past. present presented and through passive memory to the

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active memory as a former present. The representation of the past occurs via the past in general. This is the core of Deleuze's observation about what constitutes memory, and follows from the question: what makes the present-present pass, to become a past or former present? Deleuze's response to this is that a present-present can only pass if it is simultaneously the past present that it was and the present-present that it is. We saw a similar point made relative to the instant - that if it were to become absolutely the present then time would end, but (as we saw with Nietzsche) this cannot be because the past is infinite.

We begin to see the true nature of this infinite `past in general': it is the totality

but immanent from former to the the of past, not constituted presents, rather existing as present-present (Deleuze: 1994,81).

If a new present were required for the past to be constituted as past, then the former present would never pass and the new one would never arrive. No it is it `at time' the as present; no same present would ever pass were not past first it `at be the same time' constituted constituted unless were past would ever it is 1994,81). (Deleuze: as present.

i) First Paradox. This is the first of four paradoxes Deleuze explores in the relation of past and present. The paradox is that the present-present is present and past at the same time. Once more, it is for Schroeder things: too taking not a question simplistic view of a we must criticise because do in to that back' to actuality `looking as an so means potential realise order of Rather than thesis the and antithesis. past as anything more one avoids taking account of

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the past is currently present in a real and material manner, ensuring the continuous repetition of the present.

The answer to the question `where does the former present go when its present-present is ' passes? that it does not go `anywhere. ' The present passes, but not the former present that it already was. If that passes into the past as well, then there can be little difference between the former present and its present-present, and we would return to the same question: what makes the former present pass? The answer must be that each new its former but ' `self, also, each new own present not only exists simultaneously with present (and thus each present) co-exists with the whole of the past in its entirety.

ii) Second Paradox. This is the second paradox: the past does not pass. However, neither is the past added to, former does initial how back to take this present pass a our question: us straight as would into the past? Rather:

the past, far from being a dimension of time, is the synthesis of all time of it dimensions. We future that the the say was. cannot are only present and which It no longer exists, it does not exist, but it insists, it consists, it is. It insists with forms it it former the a pure, new or present present ... the present, consists with it is In that time. effect, when we say general, a priori element of it that the was, we necessarily speak of a past present contemporaneous with formed it 1994,82). `after. ' (Deleuze: which never was present, since was not

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iii) Third Paradox. This brings us to the third paradox. We have moved, with impossible logic, from the fact that the present co-exists with its own past `self, ' to the fact of the present's co-existence with the whole of the past in its entirety, to the third paradox that, as it is impossible for a former present to pass, it must be the case that the past already exists in its entirety. So the second passive synthesis demonstrates that, as it is the element in and through which the present passes, the past must pre-exist that present (Deleuze: 1994,82).

iv) Fourth Paradox. If the past not only co-exists with the present-present that it was, but also, as Deleuze in degrees "whole itself, that then the says, pre-exists present, past coexists with varying is fourth (Deleuze: 1994,83). This the of relaxation ... and of contraction" paradox: that the whole of the past is not a smooth continuity of `equally past,' but is in a relationship being in being itself degrees In the general. other words, while of past with of varying it is differs from itself Some the not a unity. parts are quite whole, past nevertheless Thus although the past may pre-exist the contracted and some parts are quite relaxed. because it is in be but it is itself repetition that repeated, not a continuity, must present, difference. leads is This Deleuze the the of repetition contraction contraction can occur to state that the second passive synthesis has a very particular relationship to the present 9 (Deleuze: 1994,82): unlike the first passive synthesis, where the present was the involves instants, the the two second synthesis repetition and contraction contraction of being in then the the the present present contracted with most point the of general, past of following Bergson, being like is Deleuze, talks is time the tip This of a cone why past. -

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this most contracted point, while the base, the most relaxed, is "the repetition of

successiveinstants."

Thus the designation of a `first' synthesis and a `second' is potentially misleading, in that the second synthesis is not dependent upon the first. Equally, the first is not really dependent upon the second because the first synthesis is only concerned with the contraction of the present, and not with its passing. So there is nothing dialectical about the relationship between these syntheses: they both exist autonomously from the other. To highlight the point, we again see how Schroeder was mistaken in thinking about potential - this potential not only exists, but to use Deleuze's words, it insists and consists lacks in its It formed Habit as well. nothing own state. and memory are not around from but different `missing' levels the something subject, are of contraction and different is in lack This `need' to the sense commonly relaxation responding needs. not deployed, because it is a question of fatigue, 1°or the demand of the present " is for be The to to thing that needs occur a contraction made. circumstance. only

The two passive syntheses are necessary because, while not pre-supposing each other, they are pre-supposed by the active subject - that which is aware of time passing - but is in is the the active subject not the passive syntheses mind of what represented does However, Deleuze because talk of the passive they themselves, are unrepresentable. by being "penetrated" the active subject: synthesis of memory

9 Deleuze pursues this relationship more fully in his book on Bergson. 101will return to this idea in the next Chapter, with Deleuze's concept of exhaustion. 1 Deleuze writes: "Need expressesthe openness of a question before it expressesthe non-being or absence 1994,78) (Deleuze: " of a response.

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How can we save it (passive memory) for ourselves? It is more or less at this point that Proust intervenes, taking up the baton from Bergson. Moreover, it

seemsthat the responsehas long been known: reminiscence. In effect, this designatesa passivesynthesis,an involuntary memory which differs in kind from any active synthesis associated with voluntary memory. (Deleuze: 1994,84-5)12

The point is that in reminiscing we remember the past not how it actually was (i. e. some former present recalled in the present), but rather, we remember the past as it now is. "Reminiscence does not simply refer us back from a present-present to former ones ... from our lovers to our mothers" (Deleuze: 1994,85). It is not simply a matter of looking back, of retrospect, and neither is it a story the self tells itself to explain where it has come from. It is rather the sheathing of time or what time slides through:

The present exists, but the past alone insists and provides the element in which the present passes and successive presents are telescoped. The echo of the two forms presents only a persistent question, which unfolds within representation like a field of problems. With the rigorous imperative to search, to respond, to from However, the elsewhere: every response always comes resolve. is is It Eros, town the a erotic. always of a or woman, reminiscence, whether in itself, this to this virginal pure penetrate past noumenon, who allows us is 1994,85) (Deleuze: Mnemosyne. repetition which

12Also see (Deleuze: 2000)

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3 first If the be Eros' is habit, then that the a third synthesis must second memory, and of in Deleuze Why is As this necessary? passive synthesis. explains we saw above, and detail habit is (Deleuze: between difference 1994,83-4), the some and memory a difference of contraction facets of the instant in the present-present and the different is Memory, the past-present. as pure past, a network of contractions and relaxations containing the past in its entirety. This entirety is referred to by Deleuze as a destiny: life' different levels" "plays `the (Deleuze: 1994,83). By each present out same at using this word, Deleuze is not talking about determinism (the inevitability of any given but it is impossible look back definitively that to rather about potential: and say present) `what happened,' because there was always something present other than the `active' difference) `event' (the There the at the various causes. was also passive repetition of levels of habit and memory, and this explains why we continue to be ourselves: we are is it fact is lost be The that that might of repetition simply our potential not repeated. blocked, we may suffer - but humanity cannot be sufficiently denigrated to make it because destiny be 2001) defined (Badiou: `victim' repeated and time will will as utterly not end.

We say of successive presents which express a destiny that they always play out the same thing, the same story, but at different levels: here more or less relaxed, there more or less contracted. This is why destiny accords so badly with

determinism but so well with freedom: freedom lies in choosing the levels. (Deleuze: 1994,83)

I' Unlike Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Deleuze does not oppose Eros and Thanatos, but rather former, breaks Eros it that binds the latter so together. apart within simultaneously the as contained as sees See (Deleuze: 1994,1 13).

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`Choosing' is precisely a question of power, the ability to contract, rather than any active choice. This is the third passive synthesis: the repetition of repetition itself.

THE THIRD PASSIVE SYNTHESIS: Eros or the Future. The internal movement of the second passive synthesis produces a number of related in problems, much the same way as the first passive synthesis did. The first problem is, if the former present co-exists with the present-present that it was, in order that the present is may pass, what the status of this former present, on the passing of its present-present? As already mentioned, it doesn't go anywhere, and nor is it added to the past, as we also in its former is Instead the that this saw past already exists entirety. present the by is It the continuity of repetition: ensuring passing present, a new present will come. the very discontinuity of the present - the difference itself. We have moved into a totally different realm in that case: the former present that the present was is not past and will for it is to come. not pass,

The full significance of this cannot be grasped until the other `problems' have been indicated. We saw that not only does the former past co-exist with its present, but that former This in its the present, as no present can the past pass. with entirety co-exists from is for the Bergson, the the that perspective of passive memory, present, most meant, is drawing difference, If in the the a contraction out of past general. contracted point of do By I different it has the is this, that of past. the point not mean then the present most difference. is This for is it intense but the the active difference, that `more' most why,

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subject, the past in its entirety is the element through which a former present is recalled as the past. Thus, it is the seed of opposability which allows the memory and intelligence of the active subject to blossom. This means that the present is dominated by the past, and that the past in general is the ideal by which the present can be judged. Here, we are in the world as Schroeder describes it: dusk falls, we look back and judge by contrasting. It is an inescapable labyrinth or eternal circle. This indicates other `problems' with the second synthesis: by pre-existing, it comes to be represented as a before -a judgement of the to and fro; and by its various degrees of relaxation and contraction, it provides the impetus for the movement around the circle, forever.

This is the problem with reminiscing for Deleuze: it orders the present in relation to a in itself from has Deleuze the past general which withdrawn present. writes

it [the second synthesis as a `problem'] still remains relative to the it It that elevates the principles of representation grounds. representation immemorial it identity, treats as an model, and resemblance, which namely, image: irreducible Same Similar. is it It the the to treats and as a present which the present and superior to representation, yet it serves only to render the infinite The the ground or circular shortcoming of representation of presents .... is to remain relative to what it grounds, and to be proved by these. (Deleuze:

1994,88)

The ground is disrupted or ungrounded by the future. The future, or Eros, is that which breaks the circle so that it might be re-grounded. The future is not concerned with the

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Same or the Similar, nor with the judgement of circumstance against such criteria. While being totally distinct from it, the future, as a third passive synthesis, recalls the first synthesis and the drawing off of a difference. We saw that such a drawing off was a 14 contemplation, which is why Deleuze says that wherever there is a contraction, there be must a self. We touched upon this specifically with the subject - that in time, the determined ('I think') and the undetermined (`I am') enter a relationship of determinability. 15 But what does this mean and what is this determinability?

It is not the

but the power of contraction: time "as an empty and pure form" (Deleuze: contraction 1994,88). This is the articulation of habit and memory and so constitutes the mechanism itself be of repetition, which can only repetition. Repetition can only be repeated, and this repetition of repetition is Eros or the future.

But why is it not the Same or the Similar in that case? Because the repetition of be (eternal Deleuze, to the repetition of a pure, can only repetition return) according difference. Similar The Same the are ultimately active continuities, even primary and though they `result' from the first two passive syntheses. The future repeats the only thing which can bear repetition, the only thing which is not ruptured by it - the rupture itself: difference. This is the key to `I think therefore I am: ' the pure and empty form of time is the split in the subject, the gap forced between `I think' and `I am, ' making `therefore' possible. The future distributes `I think' and `I am. ' Deleuze writes,

14Seep 41 above 's See footnote 6, p 45 above

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The (third) synthesisis necessarilystatic, since time is no longer subordinatedto 16 movement; time is the most radical form of change,but the form of change does not change. The caesura,along with the before and after which it ordains (Deleuze: 1994,89) once and for all, constitutes the fracture in the I ....

The future adds to potential, without necessarily actualising it, by re-distributing the past and the present. The future cannot be simply equated with the present because the present is also past (habit), and it cannot be equated with the past, because the past is (memory). The both third the present and the past, complete passive synthesis arranges being them and makes capable of added to. It makes all of the passive syntheses cut for human across each other, as well as across active synthesis, and allows new sensibilities, experience and thought.

DELEUZE,

SCHROEDER,

LACAN

A) Penis and Phallus Deleuze offers an alternative way of thinking about being, one that draws a distinction between potential and actuality but in a manner quite different from Schroeder's Hegelian influenced approach. For Deleuze, potential is not something that is either actualised or being from different is instead but the actual, and one that of register a non-existent, is dependent it. More interacts than the this, actual upon potential, upon with constantly the three passive syntheses of time that make memory and anticipation possible. It is thus

16The movement Deleuze refers to here is the abstract movement around a closed circle of time.

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appropriate to return to Schroeder's analysis in order to gauge what might be at stake in the difference between duration and mutual recognition.

Using Lacan's tripartite system Schroeder writes that it is only in the imaginary that the female male and sexes can be considered as two halves that complement "each other perfectly as yin and yang" (Schroeder: 1998,69). How does a sex become a matter of correspondence to another sex, and structured as it's opposite?

If we follow Julia Kristeva's concept of the semiotic, the imaginary, by itself, does not give rise to the two, opposable sexes (Kristeva: 1984). Accordingly, for Schroeder, it is later in human's development life the that the two take the only psychic sexes on mental that determines them as fixed opposites. Sex is of the symbolic, and it is in the symbolic, is that the as a realm of signifiers, necessary structure of opposition established.

Thus, we cannot imagine sexual difference until after it has been symbolically dialectical imagine half Schroeder For this two movement: we constitutes a established. is by looking back There in imaginary `through' the the symbolic. no sleight of sexes hand here because the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic are all constituted it is developed by is Schroeder, The this, that the three as problem with simultaneously. parts of the system are nevertheless given a retrospective orientation, with the is dialectically. the that sexed subject understood consequence

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We have already seen that the dialectic is incapable of explaining anything but itself it is an abstract movement only. Applying the dialectic to the development of the sexed subject means that this subject must have an inherent and presumed (dialectical) orientation towards being either one sex or the other. The imaginary rendering of two halves perfect necessitates an orientation towards the Same or the Similar, because it is the unity of the sexes that provides the `proper' function or destiny for each half. The sexes, as two halves, find their purpose in their synthesis, so that `male' and `female' are inherently retrospective designations.

Furthermore, it is not surprising that, once the

dialectic is brought to bear, one sex is prioritised as `thesis, ' while the other takes a secondary, reactive position as `antithesis. '

The problem then becomes: how does the orientation of dialectical sexing work to ensure that the sexed subject (gender) finds its proper target in biological sex? Schroeder deals with this as the problem of aligning the phallus with the penis. She writes,

The Masculine lies and claims not to be castrated, to still have the Phallus. The `proof of this is that he has a penis. (Schroeder: 1994,82)

And also, She can never fully join the community of castrating Fathers because she, and they, conflate her lack of the penis with the inability to have the Phallus. (Schroeder, 1994,84)

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Schroeder points out that this all occurs in the imaginary, but again, keeping with her other point that the imaginary only appears retrospectively through the symbolic, it is clear that the two (imaginary and symbolic) are overlaid: the symbolic is needed in order to be able to draw a distinction between penises and vaginas, while the imaginary invests this distinction with the power of the phallus. Again, it is clear from Schroeder's account that sexual orientation can only be explained by another, pre-existing sexual orientation that grounds retrospect.

This raises two points: why the penis? and, why is the vagina not a thing? The first Schroeder does touch upon when she writes, "Why not the beard, or the deep voice? " (Schroeder: 1994,89).

Her answer is to suggest that the selection of the penis is

impotence: be influenced by but the the that this occurrence of selection might arbitrary, both be likened is in to the presence and thus performance, and can penis unpredictable imaginary: it is This the the the and symbolic phallus. still an overlaying of absence of does not explain how the penis takes on this significance in the first place. The lackflaccid in but the the symbolic, what makes erect and penis only occurs presence of is in By become this way? what grounds the penis entitled to noticeable penises does Schroeder the not answer this point. phallus? represent

This takes us to a second, more interesting question: why is the vagina not a thing? Tentatively, I would suggest because it is not visible, or at least, should not be visible. And if it is visible at all, it is only as a scar. This means that the vagina is produced as a be by Schroeder. it is Again, to but accepted this clear that production seems non-thing -

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the symbolic and the imaginary produce a circle of self-referentiality,

so that the whole

issue becomes treated as a matter of dialectics, rather than sexuation. To put this in Foucault's terms, it is a matter of power. Consequently, the vagina can only have a secondary existence, dependent upon the primary existence of the phallus-penis. Of in course, this sense, Schroeder is right because two opposing and complementary sexes be in can only structured an afterward-ness. Where she is wrong is in thinking that there 17 are only two sexes.

B) Becoming-Woman What is given up in the feminine, and thus also in property, is the symbolic subject: by have let dialectics Of the to merging with other, we ourselves go. course, monitors the by is let in (the there that to the whole process making sure something go of subject) in form (the This the gives us a politics of sexuality of the process of enjoyment other). has the the the phallus; the woman taking a penis exchange of penis: man giving a penis is the phallus. The whole exchange is `motivated' by enjoyment orjouissance, in which become feminine both at the expense of their subjectivity: necessarily, parties must

[B]y submerging with the real, the subject losesher subjectivity in the senseof losing her place in the symbolic. She cannot speak to others and achieve the

intersubjective recognition which is the condition of subjectivity while standing " This function [Lacan] language in back Lacan: "He be the to traced placed and structure of error can ... the forefront of psychoanalytical theory and practice. And ... unlike many other post-Freudian analysts, he feelings, importance the the little theory to and affects, or of of pre-verbal structures. " B any place gave Benvenuto &R Kennedy The Works of Jacques Lacan: An Introduction (London: Free Association Books, 1986, at 167). Julia Kristeva, while giving language a central position, nonetheless gives great importance her imaginary, in the the (pre-Oedipal), on maternal, work and the semiotic. In so doing, to the pre-verbal

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in the feminine position ofjouissance. This is becausethe moment shetries to describe her experienceofjouissance, she is no longer in an unmediated relationship with the real. (Schroeder: 1994,97)

To follow this line through: the phallus only exists in the real, where it is inaccessible, yet it is imagined as being possessed and thus structuring the subject of/to the symbolic (Schroeder: 1994,97). Because the symbolic is dependent upon the phallus, it is masculine. However, to the extent that the phallus is real, it is feminine. As such, it can in be feminine it is `experienced' the the symbolic. exist only via real, cannot which, as Furthermore, as Schroeder equates property with the feminine, it must therefore be a bodies, in (of thus, property, or words) penile economy of exchange and any exchange the subject simultaneously is and isn't. This paradox is stabilised, via the dialectic, by from the perspective of retrospect. the terms overlaying various

The feminine is then marked as being transgressive in that it is the outside of the subject, feminine is jouissance. The he the outside only such to real via or she merges with where the extent that it is structured as opposite to the masculine inside. This is the overarching imaginary fixes It Schroeder's the the are real and what analysis. symbolic structure of human biography The linear in through the of experience. a subject, capable of affecting infant imagines itself joined with the mother; then there is the implicit separation from into father the symbolic; then the the the entrance and the mother; then obstacle of jouissance and the transgressive loss of self: all of this only makes sense in hindsight, by

by Lacan, become to topography, where affects not emphasised crucial subject she opens up another formation. She names this the semiotic. See (Kristeva: 1984).

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marking what we have come through and then evaluating, with this backwards glance, our propriety and our fitness: the truth of our suffering and guilt.

This means that Schroeder's explanation is dependent upon an unstated orientation (or telos) enabling the gravity of the phallus to stabilise the orbit of the subject. As a is is defined happens here that the to consequence, pleasure something as the real me, and loss of self. This structure means that the real as such is relative only to the subject. It is is forbidden impossible is to the through the this made what subject and, prohibition, is is is Or But the real the the subject possible? possible. really measure of what imaginary line instead, the that than carries something more merely crossing a and, which billion towards tiny sexes and passive the to the the a and symbolic off ends of universe, contemplations?

Here, it is useful to draw a parallel, and presume, superficially at least, that the psychoboth With is Deleuze's the real and the the to passive. concept of analytic real akin beyond lived life dealing it is that the that goes element of with a question of passive limit itself. With the the the the stands at of real psycho-analysis, subject experience of drawing We is to the that out might say, subject. prohibited which structure, as Schroeder's analysis, that the subject exists within the symbolic, the origin of which is fact in include However, is to the that imaginary, the order the real. and the end of which itself between (the `I think' and `I am') is to gap the subject not phenomenally present into (as the that as posits real entered which, when within this structure, psycho-analysis jouissance). undoes the self, and negates the symbolic. However, the symbolic is

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recuperated by bending the real around to meet the imaginary again: in the real (jouissance) I (regardless of biological sex) am re-joined to the mother, gaining mastery at the expense of my symbolic self. I achieve the impossible - but this impossibility must be immediately re-forbidden, via the Name-of-the-Father, so that I re-enter the symbolic. The Name-of-the-Father

is in fact present throughout as the very limits or horizon of my

jouissance. In this sense, it is the Name-of-the-Father that stands as the unexplained orientation that stabilises the (active) subject, making it not merely the measure of the but the measure of all things. It is the vicious circle that Deleuze is careful to avoid, real, and the sadness of Nietzsche that the death of God has led man to do no more than himself. Him replace with

Against Schroeder's jouissance, it is necessary to forget the (active) subject in favour of the passive syntheses that constitute it, not to eventually re-articulate the active subject as intelligence), dialectical life but (memory a progression of accumulated experiences and life is The that stands as a singular experiment. passive not as something more: a self dependent upon the active subject (the latter is not the measure of the former), rather the fundamental is The the syntheses. a consequence of passive point active subject arises as that the passive is concerned only with functioning, with the production of possibilities for life that impact upon the subject, even though they might not be actualised in the be The Schroeder taken as the measure of that active subject cannot articulates. sense is life: Man The it (to the not at centre of existence. put another way) of existence, or between but do `I `I think' they the and am', gap not rely upon passive syntheses cause this gap for their existence.

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In their Capitalism and Schizophrenia works, Deleuze and Guattari reject the Lacanian separation of the subject and the real by refusing the psycho-analytical consequence of dispensing with such a distinction.

The refusal is neither regressive nor psychotic

because regression, psychosis and the feminine are all produced as functions and are not dependent upon passing through, successfully or unsuccessfully, so many stages. Furthermore, in the passive there is no possibility for transgression because there is no into: transgress to exterior contractions are always immanent. An exterior is only created with the active subject, as the limit of what s/he is capable of - as fatigue or exhaustion. The jouissance of the subject is then always within the boundary - its enjoyment is not something beyond itself. In which case transgression, understood as the founding identified is by Schroeder, The to the simply a re-affirm status quo. negativity way be inherently transgression, the must understood as an notion of of outside-feminine, legitimate idea: that the coercion and the playing out of prohibitions conservative production of particular types of subject.

'8

C) Forgetting Psycho-analysis posits the exterior as something lost, to be regained only at the expense of the symbolic subject, and therefore as something that the subject can never regain. When the active subject is taken as the proper perspective from which to evaluate being, there follows the unfortunate tendency to presume that mourning and suffering are fundamental to the subject. Retrospect is then a sentence, a condemnation and precisely

18In Pic History of Sexuality. Foucault points out that a prohibition against masturbation in a school broken. it be (Foucault: 1984,28-9). in that imposed is the will dormitory expectation

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the accusation of failure; the failure to realise potential. It is also worth noting the moralistic resonance here of not wasting anything, expressed very simply by Schroeder in her references to the film On the Waterfront as if the actual were the only level at which 19 be Schroeder's analysis gives priority to the actual in its anything could registered. both femininity. of understanding property and

Contra Schroeder, we can think of property as dependent upon a passive relation whereby 2° linked two terms are contracted and together, so that, before there is the active subject, there are the passive subjects. To be more precise there is an objectivity that grounds the in dialectical but subject, not any sense, rather as a matter of the passive syntheses of duration. This is already clear from habit - it is not self reflexive, but a contemplation filling itself perfectly (a passive subject, without a phenomenal dimension). This would indicate that every subject is an object, depending upon the level of contraction in freedom. is longer its By Hegel, Unlike subjectivity no premised upon very question. itself in be free it be to that the a manner cannot present would subject cannot nature, free from for it be its being in the that cannot need entirety, meaning encompass 21 freedom.

It is ironic that Schroeder should insist upon a forgetting from which nothing at all can be learnt. Deleuze's analysis of time indicates that remembrance is inextricably linked to forgetting, wherein the whole of the past is repeated in the (passing) moment, so that the

19See p 36 above 20We will return to this in Chapter Four and Hume's concept of association. 21See the analysis in the next chapter.

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22 itself is past made a priori - it was past before its present was present. So what of Schroeder's forgetting? We might say that Schroeder has forgotten how to forget: it is the nature of a structuralism to remember everything, in order to be able to account for it... to put it in its proper place. Structures are always seeking to expand, not merely content to add terms but much more significantly, to add the differences between the terms as well. Indeed, as Schroeder's refrain of negativity makes clear, the only important thing is the addition of the differences between the same. In the end, the is is key dialectics. be the that the to that negative only way everything can remembered: As for the equation that Schroeder makes between property and femininity, this is be line by both line. Not that the the might so possible placing on other side of a forgotten, but for the very opposite: so that it might all be remembered. This for for is the the making the phallus the principle, exteriorising motivation remembrance line, By the the this-sidedness of the the crossing subject. symbolic and absent centre of the subject is established, is fixed and remembered, accounted for by the metaforgets Schroeder `beyond': the the woman. property, negative, of a symbolisation feminine. To be clear, this is not a forgetting in any dialectical sense. Rather, it is a total forgetting, a complete denial of a feminine position, because her remembrance is opposed but it. Not describes Deleuze the to memory as reminiscence of a past which never was, the committing to memory, the sentencing of the past, to a vicious circle of the same that is. always

22See above at p 52: remembrance is the reproduction of a former present that is no longer, and the through forgetting substitution that of remembrance. past present of the simultaneously

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The consequence of Schroeder's forgetting is the extra-solidification

of the symbolic.

The symbolic, as a type of meta-symbolic, contains the imaginary (via retrospect) and the (as line between). Now we can see why: on Schroeder's analysis there can only the real be structure, there can only be the symbolic. This is why the feminine is given such it is ambiguous status; an attempt to have ones limit and transgress it. However, there is nothing very surprising about that - it is the very function of the real as the forbidden to limit its demands Schroeder However, the precisely posit a at point of a surpassing. banal has be line the to return, or more accurately, a repetition, whereby re-crossed - the forgetting, clearest moment of and we remember that we are not women after all. Instead be Such likened to a rod of the the phallus. a phallus can we are same, expressions of iron: Schroeder's reference to impotence is entirely unconvincing - this phallus always how it, No its impotence. matter even own works, making everything revolve around back. jouissance `he' the always comes subject undergoes, much

Against this, Deleuze and Guattari posit becoming-woman. It would be a mistake to think that they were trying to valorise the feminine - that would merely be negativity it in legitimate does However, to that way. the that question of why refer pose again. There are two obvious reasons. The first, and most important, is that the language Schroeder's in Despite is this case psycho-analysis. adopted targeted at something: being the simultaneous and non-being attempts towards a rhetorical gesture, concerning have to that this feminine, a non-being pure and simple. all amounts seen the we of first is being That in there the be this There cannot a man. set up without a woman is Schroeder thus to that correct say speaking always the and symbolic, orientation of

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necessitates adopting the masculine position. However, this position is not dissolved via the real or the imaginary - in fact, this is where it is reinforced. This reinforcement is retrospect, the process by which psychic life is graded and valued, and the phallus becomes the measure of all things even its own impotence. So, in opposition to this, Deleuze and Guattari are interested in a unique femininity, one not understood in terms of masculinity at all: another sex altogether, something alien. Not the symbolic becomingbut becoming-woman. woman, a real

Becoming-woman is a becoming-passive, and

stands as a rebuke to the centrality of the phallus.

23

Secondly, Deleuze and Guattari use this phrase to describe something which occurs in all contexts of creativity.

However, the substance of creativity is dependent upon the

procedures involved: creation is not the same for a scientist, artist, or philosopher, form be (the Similarly, is the there although empty will repetition of repetition). creation for is becoming-woman The the not same women and men - so who actually aimed at? 24 is it is Guattari's has been This Deleuze that part of and suggestion aimed at men. work feminine, feminists25 deny its by the to or co-opt criticised some as an attempt unique fact. it be But that there two the are only sexes after characteristics. should remembered Just as every contraction is a passive subject, we may also refer to it as a sex, not in itself: difference it in but the the to sex of and of makes, a some other sex, opposition

23 Differing from Deleuze and Guattari, Julia Kristeva describes the phallus as being dependent upon preher In this the the my view, makes one of semiotic. most radical readers calls she which oedipal structures, 1984). (Kristeva: See Lacan. of 24Thanks to Anne Bottomley for this point. 2 See, for example, (Jardine: 1986)

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multitude of sexes. Finally, we might add another reason for `becoming-woman: ' provocation.

After all, we don't yet know what a sex can do. 26

For Schroeder there is just one phallus and it corresponds to the penis. On this basis, she distributed, but co joined at the point of a phallus that then belongs two argues, sexes are entirely to neither. Specifically, gender is made a dialectical problem. However, she does draw close to the perspective of Deleuze and Guattari when she asks why the penis instead of the beard or the deep voice. In some cases it may well be the beard or the deep further However, the voice! mistake Schroeder stumbles into is that she would then if by isomorphic `phalluses' these them the other phallus: as the rectify making all with beard or the deep voice had no consistency by itself, but were merely the sign of the be. is Schroeder But Now things they to this to that appear not say are always as penis. distributor far in the to too penis as of sex. structure everything around goes attempting Sometimes the penis does act as the phallus. And then again, sometimes it is the beard, the voice, the vagina, a look, a tone of voice, a gleam of reflected light, and so on. The `phallus' is highly variable, so that while there might always be a phallus as far as the is Furthermore, it is is there the same phallus. not always active subject concerned, is in distributed between the two that the genders, any way phallus, as nothing to suggest the same phallus. Rather, we should pre-suppose that all phalluses are incommensurable, lacking any exterior negativity by which they could be reconciled into the one, common begin Lacan Hegel: it is to the Otherwise, that people equate and surprising not phallus. looking for (non) that thing to necessarily requires we go what one reduction of all things

26Here, I paraphrase a favourite quote of Deleuze, taken from Spinoza: "We do not yet know what the body can do " (Deleuze: 1988.17) ... 75

is right in front of us on the pre-condition that we will not find it. It is the same, folding the evening into the morning. But Deleuze and Guattari point out that the morning star and the evening star are not the same event.

Any given structure is good only for a particular time. That time is the power of difference it is the contraction: able to draw off. The advantage of Deleuze and Guattari's is it demands that that we begin again and again and again: it is the repetition of approach difference that is crucial in actually erecting the phallus in the first place. Only through the erotic or the future can a centre to anything be established. Once established it functions in addition to what it conditions, not in absentia. What is conditioned is in no future by future it in the to the the to the way unified adds element of unity addition difference that it already is. There is no looking back, there is no sense of completion beyond fatigue, there is purely the starting again, not from the start but from the middle. Once the time is finished, then it is time for a new centre, the form and substance of future be So be that the to to that particular sex. repetition, will unique unique which will briefly, dissolves it, but beyond only so a new centre or structure and seethes around and habit fresh be distributed... for to a new and a a new structure singularity may appear `like' Singularities totally they are always unique and another, not one are memory. demand creation, not the banal repetition of the same...not the phallus again... not the penis again.

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CHAPTER THREE

In this chapter I look directly to Hegel's Philosophy of Right. The reason for turning to the work itself (after considering its presentation by Schroeder) is to clarify the by Hegel. The purpose is not to critique Hegel in the sense to significance given property find internal to trying of some contradiction in his system,but instead to evaluate whether or not Hegel can be said to exhaust the issue of property. To put it another way, is the Hegelian system the inevitable destination of any philosophical investigation of property? If not, then the way is open to construct other understandingsof property which do not depend on dialectical mechanismsand mutual recognition. Furthermore, if Hegel is be feminine between in to this then the the needs relation property and avoidable context, reproblematised.

' Deleuze is resolutely anti-Hegelian. Despite this, none of his works involve a sustained for both likely by Hegel. There depth in this, two reasons pinpointed are critique of and Michael Hardt. First, it is probably the casethat Deleuze considered Nietzsche to have 2 Second, Hegel dealt that this to the the extent was necessary. problem of already with that Deleuze had no real need to confront Hegel becausehis point of intervention, in the history of philosophy, is with Kant. In this sense,Hegel merely compounds the but it Kant Hegel. If Kant by to the taken critique making necessary not misdirections direction in developed, is Kant that to off a one veers never needs go of proper critique 1See Catherine Malabou in (Patton: 1996)

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through Hegel, opening instead new possibilities for the history of philosophy (Hardt: 1993,27).

An additional point, and perhaps the more profound one in terms of Deleuze's own philosophy, is that one is only able to confront Hegel in terms of the problems that Hegel himself sets. These problems are absolutely not Deleuze's problems, and it is noticeable that, with the exception of Kant, all of Deleuze's history of philosophy books are on philosophers with whom he does share similar problems, and can thus enter into relations 3 What, then, is Hegel's problem and how does it differ from Deleuze's? with.

Deleuze himself provides the answer. Hegel's problem is to determine "what is it? " or

"what is this?" (Deleuze: 2004b, 95). By way of contrast (and following Nietzsche) Deleuze is concerned with the problems of "who? how much? how? where? when? "

(Deleuze: 2004b, 94; emphasis in original). Deleuze calls this the method of dramatization. By approaching philosophy in this way one is no longer concerned with

the problems of essence,identity, and recognition, meaning that one no longer subjects difference to the dominance of the same and the similar. To put this in terms of Difference & Repetition, the method of dramatization is concerned with the particularity

`act (by the out' contemplating) the relationships passive subjects who of contractions, of that duration constitutes in Habitus, Mnemosyne,and Eros. One considers movement in these terms, as that which distributes points, rather than the abstract, dialectic movement

2 See Hardt's point that, for Deleuze, an understanding of certain of Nietzsche's writings is dependent upon Nietzsche (Hegel) (Hardt: 1993,27). writes an awareness of against whom 3 As Deleuze memorably put it, he was able to take these writers from behind, in order to give them a 1995,6) (Deleuze: monstrous off-spring.

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of a teleology that seeksmerely to arrive at proper identities or essences,and understands movement to simply occur between fixed points. For this reason, in this chapter, my engagementwith Hegel is one that seeksto subject him to unusual problems. Not in the sensethat the subject of the problem, of what it addresses,is unknown to Hegel but following Nietzsche, that the manner in which the problem is set is peculiar or rather, and even uncanny as far as the Hegelian system is concerned. In short, I have attempted to dramatize the critique of Hegel.

In so doing, I have incorporated two other Deleuzeanproblematics that seemto me to be particularly relevant in setting out a non-Hegelian thinking of property. The first of these is the earth. I do not mean by this the Romantic vision of a lost earth, which Deleuze and Guattari are so careful to differentiate (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988,338-9) from their own future, both but Eros the territory the the the of place where concerns, rather earth as ' & Protevi: `new (Bonta earth, grounds and ungrounds, and consequently establishesa 2006,80-1) allowing for new modes of life and expressions of subjectivity.

Rather than

from Deleuze the earth, enablesus to consider consider a circular movement abstracted the earth as a matter of contingency, without beginning and end, but rather always in the middle.

4

The second problematic, closely related to the first, is that of exhaustion. Exhaustion By I than telos. this be other mean that exhaustion understood as something should it is the to limit the at necessary point which create a new earth earth, the of marks

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becausethe possibilities of the old have been utterly depleted. It might be that we can think of exhaustion as the dramatized version of telos, where the identity of the earth is fixed by its boundaries, but rather any such boundaries indicate the point at which the not 5 longer itself. middle can no sustain

As we saw in the first chapter, the problem set out by the dialectical method is necessarily connected to the same,and not difference. The same introduces the dynamic that takes real difference (the earth) and renders it as a matter of contradiction. But for Deleuze and Nietzsche difference is the category that involves no self-contradiction, because difference cannot be in contradiction.

Rather, difference is, in this sense,

from derive difference, and owe their actual identity to things that exist univocal - all

6 their emergencein difference. However, difference simultaneously exists in itself, free it. it be dependence have Even to thought that that things the so, should not relative all of difference exists `apart' or `beyond' what is actualised. Rather, difference is the duration

in it those things to the that things, partialities. express extent of and only exists

This

is

is identity: it is thing the than think to an actualised rather of exhaustion, more useful why

its sum of exhaustions.

4I will return to the idea of the middle in the next chapter. There, I will consider it as a `circumstance' in Deleuze in his to, Hume's referred and what philosophy, own project, as empirical relation to 1994,56). (Deleuze: transcendental empiricism 5 This idea of exhaustion is based upon Deleuze's essay on Beckett The Exhausted in (Deleuze: 1998). 6 The reference to emergence here is drawn from Bonta & Protevi's consideration of Deleuze and I describe difference having to In they am referring three what that as context as theory. complexity determine regions of state space ('basins of attraction') toward which `attractors', "1. which characteristics: 2. `bifurcators' (singularities of parameters...; themselves), a range their enter states tend once systems flip between 3. 'symmetryof state one region space and another...; systems where which are points

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HEGEL

A) Property

For Hegel, property is only secondarily about ownership; primarily, it is an issue about freedom. In considering property, Hegel begins by writing

"A person must translate his freedom into an external spherein order to exist as Idea." (Hegel: 1942,40)

This requires some explanation, but for the moment it is enough to consider the point that freedom is related to itself (Hegel: 1942,20). This is understood to mean that freedom is the ultimate goal of human being, while simultaneously, human being is already free. This seeming paradox is of course due to Hegel's dialectical method, by which, as we in Schroeder, in two the a third that opposing points are combined analysis of saw reconciles them:

That is to say, when analyzed the new category is found to contain them both. But it unites them in such a way that they are not only preservedbut also in the new category only with their they or contained are preserved abolished... This their modification of sensesrendersthem no modified. senses original longer self-contradictory...That is becauseit rendersthem no longer contraries, in longer their self-contradictory virtue of reciprocal therefore no and bifurcators in `zones sensitivity' where of breaking events', which occur cluster and amplify each other's

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containment...Hegel understand(sic) each step of this whole processto be necessary. (Forster in Beiser: 1993,132-3)

In order for freedom to achieve itself as freedom, it must go through the `modification of sense' that will contain both the person and his externalization. It is the object which is but it is external, only posited as external in its modified sense. Unmodified, the object is that which lacks freedom -a thing. Lacking freedom, the thing is not motivated to freedom. By what necessity?therefore, does the thing become an object? externalize Lacking freedom, being pure externality (Hegel: 1942,40), it is only the necessity of freedom, the drive of the person, that can account for the modification of sense.

It is the person who transforms the thing into an object by appropriating it (Hegel: 1942, 41). In so doing, we touch upon Hegel's notion of the Idea, which is the dialectical union

ideal, Idea is In its this the the most achieving sense of a concept and actualization. freedom totally. This is plain enough (that the concept of freedom is not as ideal as its fact freedom itself. by becomes but the that actualize must complicated actualisation) This is the foundational problem that we must addressbelow. For the moment, it is far is that they to the they that extent a person are concerned, person as a as apparent freedom things. the through their of appropriation actualise

It should be understood that Hegel is talking about property in an entirely abstract way. He is not concerned with the nature of the property (what the thing is), nor is he

is " & 2006,20). (Bonta Protevi: bifurcators produced effects so that a new set of attractors and .... is by in M Forster A (Beiser: 1993) below. `necessity' account given good very We will return to

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interested in the particular need that it satisfies, rather he is interested in what is universal in the nexus of property: the processwhereby I am a person only to the extent that my freedom objectifies itself. Hegel's procedure is one that is bound up with the relationship of the same: I am free to the extent that I have freedom. My status is my relationship to that status,providing that it is purely abstract and free of content. Again, the dialectical reversal is obvious: my status of freedom is dependentupon some content, upon some freedom is freedom from. bounces back Therefore, that my my status of external object dependentupon some particular instance of appropriation, specifically some difference. It is important to note that the same (universal) actualisesitself only through the different (particular). It is the same only to the extent of its difference. However, given the is it difference in this the clear that, process, actual nature of a particular unimportance of

is important is far Hegel the same - the universal or the element most concerned, as as freedom. This is apparent from his remark to Paragraph 49:

The demand sometimes made for an equal division of land, and other available

in intellectualism is that the at too, and superficial more empty all an resources the heart of particular differences there lies not only the external contingency of but also the whole compassof mind, endlesslyparticularized and nature differentiated, and the rationality of mind developed into an organism. (Hegel:

1942,44)

Here the dialectical inter-relation of the same and the different cannot be canceled out by difference is does This basis that different the more same. not mean of on the treating the important than the same,but rather that it is less important, and is merely the sign of the

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differentiating itself same as it moves toward freedom of mind, differentiated as an This is from the addition to this paragraph: organism. also clear

Of course men are equal, but only qua persons,that is, with respectonly to the from source which possessionsprings; the inference from this is that everyone must have property. Hence, if you wish to talk of equality, it is this equality which you must have in view. (Hegel: 1942,237)

In the same addition, Hegel points out that "right is that which remains indifferent to it difference is (Hegel: 1942,237) that making very obvious only a particularity" secondary effect, albeit a necessary one, of the self-differentiation

of the same (freedom).

While freedom in actualizing itself requires the person to become an owner, the problem then becomes one of determining what ownership means. How is a thing appropriated? Clearly, it has nothing to do with the particular thing in question, but rather, for Hegel,

appropriation only becomespossible under the gaze of another:

Since property is the embodimentof personality, my inward idea and will that it is The is be to to embodiment make my property.. not enough mine something . its involves by (Hegel: thereby others. attains recognizability which my willing 1942,45)

Therefore, there are two necessaryrelationships: not only the person to the thing, but also On Hegel's `secondary' the thing. this to analysis to relationship person person relative

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of the recognition of the other is necessaryin order that any particular person might become a person proper, meaning that their specificity gives content to the universality of their being as freedom. By themselves,neither taking possessionnor use of a thing is for its both between In the person the appropriation sufficient as property. cases, relation is the thing and ultimately subjective inasmuch as it touches only upon an `action' by a Hegel in his Although (Hegel: 1942,46). to person, relation particular need specific from is (Hegel: 1942,46), to possession use envisions a progression neither stage by is both itself In to there the really nothing to stages adequate establish person as such. distinguish the person from the animal, inasmuch as the simplicity of taking possession freedom freedom its is involves taking as and use no consciousness,and so not an act of goal.

From the perspective of the person the most significant activity of property, as far as from By is is that one's property, of alienation. separatingoneself recognition concerned, freedom is most clearly demonstrated. While this may initially seemparadoxical, it becomesclear once the dialectical method is considered. While freedom must take itself itself, it its thereby overcomes this objectivity, this objectify object, and as own freedom in its in from by itself, the the act of object refusal of exercising separateness However, that without anything more, such alienation merely returns object. alienating the person to the point from which he started out. The dialectical approach, as we saw, Therefore, the alienation of property requires the requires a modification of sense. Hegel is This form apparent when writes: specific of exchange.

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A person by distinguishing himself from himself relates himself to another person. And it is only as owners that thesetwo personsreally exist for each other. Their implicit identity is realized through the transferenceof property from one to the other in conformity with a common will and without detriment to the rights of the other. (Hegel: 1942,38)

B) Contract

Contract is the essential articulation of freedom becauseit unites two contradictory procedures:alienating property and possessingproperty. Only in this processwith an other am I recognized as owning property: only at this point do I exist as holding rights and thus exist as free. I am seen to be free and so I am free (Hegel: 1942,58).

Importantly, I am a property owner throughout the processof exchange:

Since in real contract each party retains the sameproperty with which he enters the contract and which at the sametime he surrenders,what thus remains identical throughout as the property implicit in the contract is distinct from the external things whose owners alter when the exchangeis made. What remains identical is the value... (Hegel: 1942,59)

This is important in that it emphasisesagain that what is significant here is not the thing be but in its to the thing appropriated and alienated. object role as an as such,

These two procedures of appropriation and exchangeare inseparable in understanding distinct. independent Within dialectic but the they are and nevertheless property, remain

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immanent, meaning that each is internal to the other, so that within alienation we find appropriation, and within appropriation we find alienation. Nevertheless,this does not from is It that the two the way Hegel structures to mean sides are equal each other. clear his writing that nothing could occur without the initial act of appropriation. Similarly, form exchangeand value another immanent pairing: value promotes exchange,exchange confers value.

Value is explained by Hegel in the context of the use of the thing. The specific nature of the thing is obviously crucial in terms of its use to me: only certain things can satisfy a

determines its in for food, for So the thing meeting usefulness example. quality of a need particular needs. However, this difference between things is also subjectedto a dialectical process, in which quality is subsumedby quantity. Hegel achievesthis by if For things to the they needs meet. example, I am hungry, contrasting various relative foodstuff, be by type of and so, abstractly, the various any my need can satisfied foodstuffs are comparable to one another, but not in terms of their quality, but their quantity:

A thing in use is a single thing determined quantitatively and qualitatively and being its But to quantitatively specific utility, need. related a specific determinate, is at the sametime comparablewith [the specific utility of] other things of like utility. (Hegel: 1942,51)

What determines the quantitative aspectof the thing? Hegel is not explicit on this point, but it must be the case,following what he says in paragraphs61 and 62 on full and partial

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it is that the degree to which a thing is capable of satisfying a particular need. If two use, different things can both satisfy the sameneed in the same way, then a qualitatively between them is determined by a preference related to an estimation of which of choice them has the greater utility. Utility here refers to that which, by any standard, it is easiest determines This is to the quantitative aspectof the thing, acquire. what or most efficient be should understood as value. which

Thus, value is the abstract being of the thing, or the universal thing:

This, the thing's universality, whose simple determinatecharacterarisesfrom the particularity of the thing, so that it is eo ipso abstractedfrom the thing's specific quality, is the thing's value, wherein its genuine substantiality becomes

8 (Hegel: 1942,51) determinateand an object of consciousness.

The dialectical process, in moving the person towards his ideal actualization, recaststhe thing as being necessarynot (just) in terms of its specificity, but in its universality. In the 63 he to states, addition paragraph

In property, the quantitative characterwhich emergesfrom the qualitative is its in Here the the quantum and quantity with qualitative provides value. by it. in If is the as superseded we quantity preserved consequence as much look itself the thing the must on only as a symbol; concept of value, we consider it counts not as itself but as what it is worth. (Hegel: 1942,240)

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The value of the thing, despite being an effect of need and the specificity of the thing, is also the causeof the wanting of the thing. However, what has to be consideredhere (and what separatesvalue and need out) is the social context against which exchangetakes place. Once we move above a subsistencelevel what we consider desirable tends to broaden: we confer value upon a wider range of things. Again, this is the result of the dialectical method (Hegel: 1942,127).

C) A Legal Perspective

The obvious critique of Hegel's system, from the point of view of doctrinal jurisprudence, is that he confuses contract and property. Following what was said above Deleuze's lack about of explicit engagementwith Hegel, this critique is not the one that is investigation to of the philosophical understanding of property. To see most relevant an 9 this, we can turn to J. E. Penner's analysis in The Idea of Property in Law.

Pennercriticizes Hegel for his failure to keep property distinct from contract, and thus is Hegelian fundamental Hegel the of concernedto project. misunderstanding reveals a demonstrate,via the mechanism of the dialectic, the immanent relation of freedom to itself: if the person comes before ownership, this is only so that ownership can actualize the person. As we have seen,Hegel is not content with a simple relation of person to thing, becausesuch a relation contains no guaranteeof freedom and is merely a by by Only does become it the of ownership recognition another subjective assertion. 8 What confers value is need, while a thing is needed because of its value in meeting that need. This is its ' `genuine he to Hegel substantiality. refers means when what

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ownership proper. This error is compounded by Penner's reading of paragraph 71 of the Philosophy of Right. Hegel writes,

The sphereof contract is made up of this mediation whereby I hold property not merely by meansof a thing and my subjective will, but by meansof another person's will as well and so hold it in virtue of my participation in a common 1997,179) (Penner: will.

To which Penner responds:

This is an astounding position to take, for not only does it render the concept of by but it from indistinguishable of alienation makes no sense contract, property before is It two persons that, simply a matter of conceptual priority exchange. be to the things their they exchanged must ownership of own, can exchange what

be recognized; the prospective traders must recognize that each other's property If be interfered that were not the case,there of right. with as a matter must not 1997,179) for (Penner: basis be exchange. no would

10 is. In so Penner is trying to produce a final, essentialist definition of what property doing he overlooks perhaps the most important characteristic of property in Hegel's but in the thing the Exchange to the question of particularity relate might system: value. in dependent is freedom the thing the question, nature of abstract upon auto-relation of be from in Value `drawn the thing the Hegel to is cannot off' as value. refers which what 9 See chapter 8 in particular. 10For a general critique of (overly) essentialist approaches to law, see (Waddams: 2003)

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Penner implies, when he arguesthat contract and property are two essentially way distinct spheres. In fact, his example requires us to presupposecontract becauseonly through contract does one not only recognise another's property rights, but also (and fundamentally) more agree a value. Ownership cannot `pre-exist' the contract as some ideal, but only becomes apparent as a social relation expressedin some transaction, the model of which (for Hegel) is contract.

By looking to ideal essencesto define and fix legal categories,Pennernot only disassociatesproperty and contract in a manner at odds with Hegel's overall project (the freedom), fails due he to give consideration to the context in which actualisation of also how in is it It to this property exchangesoccur. context, and relates property Hegel's be that must now considered. system,

D) Morality and Ethics In a contractual relationship between two persons, the relation is only capable of carrying

it If if it is involved its truthfully. the task carried out as persons parties of actualising out is not truthful, then such a contract is merely a show and lacks any element of right (Hegel: 1942,65). To avoid this, contracting must occur against a standardthat makes it is The (contractual) determine truthful. the to parties appearance whether or not possible if their they can assert right, even one of them which concernedneed a context against fails (or intends to fail) in carrying out his obligations. This is what Hegel calls morality, writing that:

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The standpoint of morality is the standpoint of the will which is infinite not itself. for (Hegel: but 1942,75) itself in merely

is the point at which the will, having externalized itself (taken In other words, morality itself as goal while being substance), returns to itself as an exterior standard (Hegel: 1942,73). However, in so doing, what becomes significant is how this externalized Truth be is to applied. requires safeguarding so that a person can distinguish perspective his between (self-interest) his form (truth), in only particular content and properly order that he may perceive the truth. In making such a distinction, Hegel says that the person is transformedfrom a person to a subject (Hegel: 1942,75).

It is necessarythat some agency exists to enforce the application of truth, in order to help the personseehow a proper understanding of his self-interest corresponds to his being free and autonomous (that is, corresponds to his form in truth). In an essayexploring this Westphal Hegel's Kenneth thought, writes: aspectsof

The principles that define violations [of contract] are defined within the abstract in And system of property rights; they simply are the system of property rights. impartial define violations, punishment requires addition to principles that the it of recognition those application of principles, and requires common impartiality of judgement. (Beiser: 1993,249)

This need for impartiality is precisely the 6gap' within the abstract system of property

by be itself to applied subjects. rights- the gap within which the systemreturns to

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Within property, self interest, even though it is immanent to truth, is too close to itself to for the fullest actualization of the person. Freedom's self-regard can only take it so allow far towards itself (its goal) so long as we remain within the system of property alone. This is the functional paradox of the dialectical process: in order for freedom to be fully further actualised, a obstacle has to be inserted between the person and the subject, in for latter into being. However, we must remember Hegel's `modified the to come order by dismissing freedom, the sense': possibility of a pure without restraint, he makes it freedom that clear must be actualized. Pure, unrestrained freedom, is not freedom, for it can only take on a content once it is bound to duty. Westphal sums this point up:

The abstract systemof property rights is not self-sufficient becauseits maintenance and stability require impartial judges, but the capacity of impartial judgement cannot be defined or developed within the abstract system of property

rights. For this reason,the abstract systemof property rights must be augmented by moral agency and reflection. (Beiser: 1993,250)

Despite the move from abstract right to morality, freedom has yet to reach its proper degreeof expression. Morality introduces the need for reflection, but what remains to be formal it is less Even be is is than the person, the though to clarified what reflected upon. definite it begins While is to take too on a content, that content abstract. subject still determined formal in be the that the to all while reflection, remains gap, properly remains itself - i. e. devoid of content. To put this another way, the subject arises by the placing in freedom is itself). But be (and freedom that then context essentially what must context of determined is the content of this context. Westphal writes:

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If Hegel was right that objective principles cannot be justified on the basis of natural law, utility, Kant's categorical imperative, or conscience,then he had very strong grounds for concluding, by elimination, that the relevant standards be must social. (Beiser: 1993,254)

Social practices give content to the context of morality. This is what Hegel calls `ethical life'. The social and the ethical are both concerned with civil life in the state, and, in this is the sense, state the most actualized form of freedom, the point at which freedom meets itself as its own objectivity in infinity. Thus Hegel states:

Since the laws and institutions of the ethical order make up the concept of freedom, they are the substanceor universal essenceof individuals, who are thus related to them as accidentsonly ...It alone is permanentand is the power regulating the life of individuals. Thus the ethical order has been representedby mankind as eternal justice, as gods absolutely existent, in contrast with which the individuals business is (Hegel: 1942,259) empty of only a game of see-saw.

Only with ethics do we have a measure by which right can be established relative to the

differences of specific actions. Ethics is the crucial link making the universal immanent " to the particular, and vice versa. It is what distinguishes the subject as an individual. The inter-relation of these three levels of the person, the subject and the individual demonstratehow the dialectical method overcomes differences while positing them

11This is set out by Hegel in paragraphs 142 to 149 of the Philosophy of Right.

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simultaneously. This is the essenceof Hegelian immanence: while the individual only distinguishes himself against the social, at the very sametime the social is the universality of the individual, his very freedom. Hegel puts it simply: "In duty the individual acquires his substantive freedom." (Hegel: 1942,107)

The circularity of this immanence is well put by Westphal:

`Ethical Life' analyzesa wide range of social practicesthat form the basis of legitimate normative principles. Social practices, however, cannot occur without social practitioners, agentswho behavein accordancewith social practicesand who understandthemselvesand others as engaging in those practices. (Beiser: 1993,254)

This is a circle of immanence in which the individual, in assertinghis freedom, partakes dialectic but If freedom duty the the that that of actual. not only possible of renders for development the the of this system, the spiraling that as mechanism movement serves introduces the curvature of freedom's circle, what is it that servesas the force of this freedom. be is drive The to the to to this adequate concept of a movement? answer

Thus Hegel's circle of freedom is only an aborted form of immanence because,while fact it is in from itself, itself. immanent In initially to taking separated seems freedom itself as its own goal freedom is divided from itself and externalised as a proper destiny fundamental freedom Furthermore, this than reveals something as more or equivalence. becausefreedom is not free to refuse to take itself as its own goal. More fundamental

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12 freedom itself is non-freedom, this latter being understood as the earth. It is nonthan freedom that separatesfreedom from freedom, allowing it take itself as its own goal. Immanence is aborted whenever it is taken to be a type of teleological functioning or `organic mechanism'. This function or organism is representation,symbolic order, is before, that that everything mediation... properly comes after and not everything freedom freedom be By into cannot making a circle of causeand effect, unavoidable. free from itself.

I will return to this point below using the work of Nietzsche. Before doing so I want to function in Hegel's the the philosophy. of circle consider more carefully

E) The Hegelian Circle

Hegel begins the Philosophy of Right by distinguishing `the concept' from `the Idea.' The concept is not really the concern of philosophy in so much as it is a question of investigation be Philosophy of cannot satisfied with such a one-sided understanding. in "The ' Hegel `is. the the course of assumes concept shapes which writes, what merely its actualization are indispensable for knowledge of the concept itself' (Hegel: 1952,14). Therefore the subject of philosophy is the concept and its shapes- only the two, together, Hegel's In Idea. the words: constitute

Philosophy forms a circle. It has a beginning, an immediate factor (for it must is is Philosophy which unproved not a result... somehow make a start), something 12Without wishing to pursue this point here, the earth is understood as ( Deleuzean) necessity. This in Nietzsche Deleuze's the from of chance derives of relationship and necessity analysis necessity (Deleuze: 1996b, 25-7). See also, for an overview of this analysis, (Hacking: 1990,147-9)

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a sequencewhich does not hang in the air; it is not something which begins from nothing at all; on the contrary, it circles back onto itself. (Hegel: 1942,225)

The circle is dialectical movement - but what if, as a result of starting from no result with the intention of making it into a result, philosophy fails to go anywhere? But this is the very problem - how to become what one is? The answer is `the will. '

Hegel explains the will once again in terms of the dialectic; the movement that meets itself. Therefore, the will has three parts, three stages,unfolding in the dynamism of a logic without time. 13 First there is the will of "pure indeterminacy" which acts immediately to remove any external boundary. The pure self of the person in suspension or as potential14 only: "the unrestricted infinity of absolute abstraction or universality, the

pure thought of oneself' (Hegel: 1942,21). Secondis the positing of content. Again, as with the non-time of the dialectic, this occurs simultaneously with the abstract will, by

which, in taking itself as its own object, it necessarilyposits itself as an external object determinate, itself is determined "Through thereby: this as something positing of which the ego stepsin principle into determinate existence" (Hegel: 1942,22).

If the dialectic is atemporal, in the sensethat its three parts co-exist together, then the beginning must be elsewhere than in time. The absenceof duration meansthat `it was' is indistinguishable from `it is. ' Hindsight is then the true perspective of the dialectic and

13See TE Wartenberg Hegel's Idealism: The Logic of Conceptuality in (Heiser: 1993) 14See the analysis of Schroeder in Chapter 1.

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for this reason, for Hegel, philosophy must make a start somehow. As he remarks in paragraph 6:

This secondmoment determination is negativity and cancellation like the first, i.e. it cancelsthe abstractnegativity of the first. Since it is the generalrule that the particular is contained in the universal, it follows that this second moment is already contained in the first and is simply an explicit positing of what the first already was implicitly. (Hegel: 1942,22)

This "explicit positing" is the order of events. This order is freedom properly grasped:

the adequation of shapeand concept. In this third moment, the will is properly articulated as the synthesis of the two proceeding types of will:

The will is the unity of both thesemoments. It is particularity reflected into itself and so brought back to universality, i. e. it is individuality.

It is the self-

determination of the ego, which means that at one and the same time the ego

posits itself as its own negative, i.e. as restricted and determinate,and yet remains by itself, i. e. in self-identity and universality. It determines itself and yet

binds itself together with itself. (Hegel: 1942,23)

The third moment is the result that turns back to the start, the effect which servesas its own cause.

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What must be grasped here is how freedom is its own curse, its own non-freedom, its This necessity. necessity is the root of the problem, the key to the Hegelian system. Necessity, freedom, non-freedom are all the same,and this samenessis truth: "The will is then true, or rather truth itself, becauseits self-determination consists in a correspondence between what it is in its existence (i. e. what it is as objective to itself) and its concept" (Hegel: 1942,30). What constitutes right follows logically enough from this: right is "by definition freedom as Idea" (Hegel: 1942,33). Right is the point at which concept and actualization meet, so that the will is successfulin achieving its goal of freedom. What standsoutside the circle of the dialectic, as its propulsion or force, is the necessity of freedom.

Freedom, being both present and absent in the sensethat it is substanceand goal, imposes the measureupon that to be measured. The problem is that measureand measuredare the freedom. freedom The idea is that where concept and actuality thing: truthful of same

correspond,but this correspondencebetween measureand measuredis the same; i. e. freedom. While freedom may motivate the inter-relation of concept and actuality, it is becoming? freedom does in itself: More the why same unfold not clear what motivates than this, the sameis presupposedas being anterior to becoming because,before becoming, there is freedom (abstract right). Only the dialectic seemsto explain this becoming - but this merely shifts the problem: what is the necessity of the dialectic?

Michael Forster attempts to provide some elucidation about the motivation for/of the dialectic. He states:

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The problem here lies not so much in Hegel's idea that, having discoveredtwo contrary categoriesto be mutually implying and therefore self-contradictory, one might find some new category that eliminated the self-contradiction by unifying them in a manner that in a sensepreservedwhile in a senseabolishing them.. The . problem lies rather in the suggestionthat the transition to this new category might be necessaryone. (Beiser: 1993,145)

For Forster the dialectic is simply a process of abstraction or simplification (Beiser: 1993,

146) in which dynamic forces resolve themselvesinto their lowest possible state of excitation. We might say that necessity is simply a coming to rest, or return to what it

was: the return of the same, achieved via the path of least resistance:

A more satisfactory definition of the necessityof the transition to the `negativeof the negative' would, then, be that it consists in the category's unifying a given implying pair of mutually contrary categories by, in a sense, preserving, while in

a sense,abolishing them, thereby eliminating their self-contradictoriness, and being the one known category that does so while remaining closest to them in 1993,148; (Beiser: author's emphasis) conceptual content.

The manner in which any one category is self-contradictory necessarily implies it's dialectical (Beiser: 1993, the the triggering of system whole process opposite category, 133). The notion of the opposite immediately dependsupon the unspoken: the measure being in dynamic This defines as a state of that opposition. categories all rests as which does itself, but being to idea that so much seek express not rather to rest: to upon the 100

in endure the lowest energy state possible. The samecan be the only measurehere: to do extent what categories differ from each other and thereby diverge from the same? What is the minimum required to make them the same? There must be one who measures,who thinks, who wants truth and this is why Hegel is concerned, in the Philosophy of Right, to not only begin but to begin with the person. The person, as individual and subject-to-be, is the ultimate abstraction of freedom: "Hence the imperative of right is: `Be a person and respect others as persons" (Hegel: 1942,37). But if a single category already implies its opposite, is it right to begin here? Is there not fundamental be before beginning? difference In than this more short, mustn't something the same? Not as a difference between (becausethe difference subsistswithin the single becomes difference in itself. This is Nietzsche but particularly useful as where category), Hegel. ' `writer against a

ANTI-HEGEL

A) Difference

The benefit of Nietzsche's work, as it is read by Deleuze, is that it provides us with a it is things, the the that, of thinking middle earth and as with concerned manner of force (Deleuze: it from `the the of objective person and recasts as a matter separates will' 1996b, 49-50), so that we might say, from the perspective of property, that it is in fact the in it is invests furthermore, that the the that, `possesses' object and that will object dramatises "larval" is that is the What subject thus significant pre-personal or subject. being (Deleuze: 2004,98) and thereby makes the subject capable of promising

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(Nietzsche: 1998,41). Such dramatisation always occurs in relation to the earth, or more specifically to the other meaning of terre: land (Bonta & Protvei: 2006,80-1). Land is the actualised earth, the earth that has taken on specific identities and characteristics so that the question becomes: what might grow from such a land? As Nietzsche puts it:

it was by meansof the morality of custom and the social straitjacket that man was really made calculable. By way of contrast, let us place ourselvesat the other end of this enormousprocess,at the point where the tree finally bearsits fruit, where society and its morality of custom finally reveal the end to which they were the means: there we find as the ripest fruit on their tree the sovereign individual, the individual who resembles no one but himself, who has once again broken away from the morality of custom... in short, the man with his own independent, enduring will, the man who is entitled to make promises.

(Nietzsche: 1998,40-1; author's emphasis)

The distinction from Hegel is apparent:not freedom articulating itself in the course of pursuing itself as its own goal, but rather difference existing temporarily and for its own purpose. Becoming is the movement of difference as it moves from land to earth. This in inequality. is It has therefore always movement always singular and unique, and no necessity beside itself and, lacking any standardof the sameor truth, continues to exist difference. it in To Deleuze's in becoming terms, the of put actualisation only as 15 difference exists only as its own repetition. This is the basic dynamism: being cannot

15See (Deleuze: 1994). It is also worth noting this comment from Deleuze on Difference & Repetition: "... I finished the book - on repetition and difference (they're the same thing) as the actual categories of our 2004,142). (Deleuze: " In thought.

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be static, cannot be the same. Being without becoming is a frozen point of eternity, i. e. non-being.

This is what should be understood by `exhaustion.' Exhaustion is the point at which the land becomesindistinguishable from the earth and, in so doing, takes on its singular expression or character. In other words, becoming is always already exhaustedfrom its very beginnings, existing only at the limit where it ceasesto be capable of sustaining itself. This is the point at which it is actualised, so that actualisation is always the becoming, product of of passive durations. In this sense,exhaustion is akin to contraction.

Exhaustion is also significant because it stands in opposition to any sense of telos or

Exhaustion is begin dissipate, because the things to proper outcome. point where not of but limit have To lack, because the they they of what are capable of. reached some in little detail how develops idea. it is Deleuze this this, considering a more worth clarify

B)Exhaustion

Deleuze's essay The Exhausted (Deleuze: 1998) is a variation on themes derived from the television plays of Samuel Beckett. Deleuze maps four processesof exhausting, these functions language. four The being three types themselves of of processesare: processes "forming exhaustive series of things; drying up the flow of voices; extenuating the dissipating image" (Deleuze: 1998,161). the the power of potentialities of space; and

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Each of these corresponds to a language, save for the last two which are both found in Deleuze what calls `languageIII. '

Language I is that which seeksto exhaust the possible with words (Deleuze: 1998,156). Deleuze distinguishes exhaustion from tiredness on the basis that tiredness always presupposesthat something more could be said or done, while exhaustion is the extraction of everything that is possible in a given land so that one must leave it and encounter a new earth. In this sense, exhaustion is to have done with the land.

However, as Deleuze writes, "if one hopes to exhaust the possible with words, one ... must also hope to exhaust the words themselves; whence the need for another

metalanguage" (Deleuze: 1998,156). This metalanguageis languageII, a languagethat is not a language of words but of voices and flows (Deleuze: 1998,156). If languageI is thought of as the attempt to exhaust the present by saying everything that could be said (an exhaustive series of things), language II is the exhaustion of the past, where the past 16 In this sense, the is the pure past of reminiscence that would exhaust memory itself

is dried Mnemosyne, think the up and exhausted. of as voice of voice, which we might

The danger of both these languagesthough is that by exhausting words (and thereby the by designate), they things and exhausting the material that supports the which series of 17 flow), becomes kind doubling (the the the themselves exhausted a of and voice words

16See footnote 22 at p 72 above " On my reading, the voice and the flow are here to be understood as the senseof what is said. `Sense' is from different language I, Deleuze, by that to structural a meaning would quite relate given a specific sense 1990,28-35) See (Deleuze: things and words. and the series of

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and perpetuation of these two languages. Through exhaustion, languagesI and II merely reverse themselves, and now mark themselves as loss, absenceor referent, these marks forming now a kind of presencethat is yet to be exhausted. As Deleuze puts it, these two languagesgive rise to an Other "who speaks" and, in so doing, opens a field of new possibilities. To finally exhaust possibility it is necessaryto have a language III that Other the constitutes while simultaneously exhausting it.

Language III is that which grounds and ungrounds and, for this reason,can be thought of ' 8 This is a language of the earth rather than a languageof the as the language of Eros. land, yet it acts to ground the land in the first place. Behind all land there is the "hiatuses, holes, the of of convulsion earth, made up or tears that we would never notice, did if in to tiredness, they or would attribute mere not suddenly widen such a way as to

from 1998,158). (Deleuze: the outside" receive something

This stretching of the earth dislocates all of the landmarks, turning them into singular images "freed from the chains in which [they were] bound in the other two languages" (Deleuze: 1998,158). The earth is therefore difference itself, the point at which all words determined by intensities images become things and resonances points or singular and land Only identities through these than can a singularities and correspondences. rather be actualised, which is why, for Deleuze and Guattari, a deterritorialization always involves a related reterritorialization (Deleuze & Guattari: 1988,509). What is important

18Seep 59 above at 105

here, as Bonta and Protevi appreciate, is not a possible new land, but a new earth which exhaustion has put things (as images) in touch with (Bonta & Protevi: 2006,80-1). 19

C) Partiality

Exhaustion is difference in itself. This is quite a different relation to the limit than that of dialectical teleology. There, the limit of an expression is its proper destiny, that which it its identity differentiates it from all other expressions. However, a singularity gives and is a particular zone of consistency that can only be a matter of affect or individuality, identity. The than rather specific character of a singularity is dependentupon how it differs from itself, how it exhausts itself as the fullest expression of what it is.20

While the dialectical process seeksthe lowest state of being, the point at which the balanced in lowest its become tirednesses their out possible state of elements respective difference itself through an exhaustion that necessitatesthe maximises of excitation, being is has being. No that of able to encompass one expression partiality of everything being in its entirety, so that something must always remain unsaid. While this `unsaid'

it is is it When it then land, to the to earth, related exists as a possibility. relates a lack but impossible, is the opening onto a that as as a not understood which exhaustion: in is it to necessary speak a new way. new earth where

19Again, we can relate this to Deleuze's earlier work, inasmuch as the land corresponds to the mixture of land, the hand, to that is, on while the is attributed bodies or things, while the earth the event that one on 1990,184). (Deleuze: See land. it is that the other, expressed of

20Deleuze and Guattari refer to the specificity of a singularity as `haecceity,' following Deleuze's analysis 1988,226-7). Guattari: & See (Deleuze & Repetiton. of Duns Scotusin Difference 106

It can be concluded from this that the whole of being constitutes non-being, because such a wholeness would have to exclude the passing of time (duration) from itself, in order to be a whole. Without duration, a whole would be an eternal and fixed identity. Yet it would be incomplete becauseit lacked duration, but would not be able to include duration into itself without ceasing to be whole. Duration is that which opens the whole 21 UP.

A singularity is always partial in terms of its shareof being there is no singularity that could encompassbeing in its entirety. Being is both univocal (Deleuze: 1994,35) and multiple: being is indistinguishable from becoming. Expressions of being are therefore always partialities, but such partialities are not `incomplete' as a consequence. They cannot be incorporated into a larger unit of expression without becoming something else, without passing a threshold that would change their function from what it had been. Addition (or subtraction) does not complete but transforms. Furthermore, such from indistinguishable duration, and cannot then be incorporated into a partialities are complete whole of time. There are only mixtures of expression, such mixtures themselvesbeing singular expressions of being. Partiality meansthat any expression can be exhausted,but also that it only exists as a partiality to the extent that it is being languages III it being dramatised I II. Language is through that occurs at and exhausted,

21This is quite different from structuralism. Structuralism does attempt to conceptualise a completed whole by including within itself this opening effect of duration. However, by internalising the open, it becomes incompletion `present lack, that the marks of the structure while simulataneously absence' as a cast as a itself description (See Deleuze's inevitable it the of to conclusion/closure of structure an elevating it land On hand, 2004,170-192)). in (Deleuze: though the the grounds exhaustion, even other structuralism is languages land. As Deleuze's its the limit to three always radically other show, the possibilities, of as land itself has been done the is when with. reached exhaustion only

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that point where the land is no longer able to sustain the drama that unfolds on it, where drama becomes a `symmetry breaking event.'22

D) Promising

What is a human? This question can now be put in another way: what is an actor? For Nietzsche, in The Genealogy of Morals, a human is nothing more than the capacity to promise: to promise is to act. Such a promise is fundamentally different from contract and exchange becauseit is not given in expectation of any return. Promises are given freely as a commitment to the future, not in the hope of gaining anything thereby, but rather as the articulation of one's self as a force at the limit. The promise is that which exhausts the promisor, and only in this action can s/he take responsibility for him/herself

(Nietzsche: 1998,39-40). 23

For Nietzsche this is a matter of entitlement - who is entitled to promise? In this sense, entitlement is not a matter of occupying a land, but of claiming the earth. The promise cannot be referred back to a particular standing in the land, and, becauseit is a matter of its be the to anything except own enactment. The exhaustion, promise cannot referred

is being danger here is that the ungrounded, neverthelessreferred to a great promise, is Rather last there then a will than the a promise, ground - of nihlism. ground - perhaps 24 to nothingness. The will to nothingness is the deterioration of what is, an attack on difference in the name of the same and the similar. It wills all things into likeness, and on

22Seefootnote 6 of this chapter. 23Deleuze also relatesthis to the man who wants to perish. This is not a suicidal man, but one who seeks to exhausthimself and his capacities. (Deleuze: 1996b, 174) 24Deleuze maps this danger in his book on Nietzsche (Deleuze: 1996b, 147-156) 108

this basis only can it differentiate. How is difference differentiated? By imposing a uniform measure(nothingness), and then judging everything by that standard. This is standard the same as that of the dialectical process,where the desire for the lowest common state of excitation stands at the opposite extreme of the human capacity to promise.

Against this will to nothingness is the will to power (exhaustion), which Deleuze describesin the following terms:

what we in fact know of the will to power is suffering and torture, but the will to is power still the unknown joy, the unknown happiness, the unknown God.... The

other side of the will to power, the unknown side, the other quality of the will to power, the unknown quality, is affirmation.

And affirmation, in turn, is not

merely a will to power, a quality of the will to power, it is the ratio essendi of the is in It the ratio essendi of the will to power as a whole to general. will power from just the this the therefore as negation expels negative will, which and ratio from New derive to the the power.. . values whole will was ratio cognoscendi of

is to say up to the the that to present, affirmation: values which were unknown up 1996b, (Deleuze: `scholar'... legislator the takes the the place of moment when 173)

To promise is to affirm, to have done with what one knows of the land and commit to a new earth.

The promisors, the self-legislators, or the strong, negatethe negative on

is This their the affirmation of side other themselves that they also. negated are condition

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is in themselves. The weak want to endure while the strong want to affirmative of what perish, meaning that the strong one is s/he who does not seek to endure beyond his/her but rather serves as a herald of the wo/man to come. own exhaustion,

This is not a suicidal death drive all the while that the wo/man to come is lived now, is taken up and dramatised, through the promise, as a stranger in one's own land. Deleuze and Guattari write of becoming a foreigner in one's own language(Deleuze & Guattari: 1998,100-110), and this meansto take up what is open or partial in being so that new life and subjectivity become possible. As Deleuze and Guattari appreciate,the modes of here is is that experimentation, watchword so promising a matter of caution and creativity destruction & Guattari: 1988,282-6). (Deleuze and and not recklessness

"OWNING"

Is it really the case that we must begin with freedom? Nietzsche posesa different What does that the makes memory provides appear? wo/man question - at what point his/her entrance possible?

hurts in that it in, the branded which is only memory: Something so that stays (and the is oldest is of incessantly remembered' - this a central proposition Things never earth... on the psychology enduring) most unfortunately also . it to thought necessary blood, man when torture, and victims, proceededwithout forge a memory for himself. (Nietzsche: 1998,42)

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This is the institution or the legislation from without. Wherever legislation comes from is institution there that acts as the source of what forces man. What is an without, here (as Deleuze will highlight) is that the human is forced. The institution is affirmative that which provides the framework for experimentation, by linking the individual to the This linking is what createsthe land, so that the land itself is nothing but an earth. its institutions, assemblageof yet the institutions are nothing but expressionsof difference, of becoming.

What does it mean to say that difference is the ground of the institution? That one denies Hegelianism: not to begin with `equality, ' nor `abstract right, ' nor free will, but to begin in difference (supreme inequality and localization); it also means not to begin in contract (exchange and recognition). differential.

Before contract there is value, to be understood as a

Thus `abstract right' is never equal for all persons because it begins in

disequilibrium, a whole spectrum of values of the strong and the weak. In other words, it begins in the middle. The human's free will does not invest the object so much as s/he is

invested by it. The object ('pain' in the quote above) gives the human his/her will but it is not given freely!

his is human, that forcing than Pain, or the man and presuming much more simple of the his ' `lack, for (his inadequacy his have the task first, to explain only to will comes for joy it Isn't for if and ' his `other') `fissure, a cause sorrow. as this were a cause is This become? the positive that to might one so perish oneself willing affirmation, bears lumbering the it the who one of to endurance senseof what means endure, against

impossible load, who says `yes' to unattainable perfection so that s/he might tire him/herself out without exhausting anything? What Nietzsche calls the ass,meaning those that say `yes' but cannot say `no,' when the real problem is how to exhaust this difference.

In the beginning then, lacking a will of his/her own, the `person' is indistinguishable from the thing, or that which lacks a will. Therefore, before he can be an owner, the human must be property: he must be `owned' (i. e. forced). This is the function of the institution. To think otherwise is to fall into three errors, outlined by Nietzsche in Twilight of the

Idols: 1. Willing is equated with causation, with beginning. As we saw with Hegel, what follows from this is the assumption that the will is in someway inherent to all and thus

" be in in "We believed the to act of willing... causal agents ourselves equal all: (Nietzsche: 1990,60) 2. Therefore, not only is all action `caused,' but it is motivated. As a result, willing is taken to be a teleological exercise. Hence the typical philosophical-moral procedure drama is from (the `ends' the dividing `means' of exhaustion). opposite of which of

However, action cannot be evaluated by ambition or motive but only by outcome. To be clear: it is not a question of accounting for what action causes,but rather of does. evaluating what action for is (the it 3. From the `fact' of motivation, seemsthat the ego subject) responsible is but land However, land. the the is, the nothing is the that causeof what thinkable: forced, be human the meaning made institutionalisation of the earth, so that might

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capable of promising. In this sensethe land wills the subject, so that the subject is but nothing a property of the land.

From these errors, Nietzsche concludes:

Man projected his three `inner facts', that in which he believed more firmly than in anything else, will, spirit, ego, outside himself he derived the concept `being' only from the concept `ego', he posited `things' as possessingbeing according to his own image, according to his concept of the ego as cause. No wonder he later always discovered in things only that which he had put into them! - the thing itself, to say it again, the concept `thing' is merely a reflection of the belief in the

ego as cause.... (Nietzsche: 1990,60-1)

This blatant anti-Hegelianism is not merely a rejection of a particular theory of property, but more fundamentally it is the rejection of an entire conceptualization in which the human is construed as equal, reasonable, and contracting. However, Nietzsche does not function in how it is how is for here, to to the a made pain used, stop question arises as

have left free We human the that of promising. capable will render specific way, a way hence free. S/he for human far behind the s/he was always already owed, was never will always already owned.

Pain, or forcing, does not seek to create a free human (for what would it mean in such a for human, instead but ) to the be `free'? to open new possibilities re-create situation to how s/he lives. It is a question of drawing off what is affirmative in a given situation -

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it, but it, to exhaust it, to be used by it. This is the positive to to not preserve or protect forces human. institution, it Nietzsche the the that of singles out pain as the basic aspect forcing, in force `social' Rather, is this to to contradistinction of a contract. mechanism to evaluate, calling out of the body an unspeakablepromise.

The healthy institution seeksout this promise, but does not demand that the promise is him/herself. it is in human is it. Rather, to to the to promise a process which made made What is this promise? The human promises to realise what is human about him/herself -

debt human 1992). In is (Nietzsche: become to the the this to owes a way, what s/he debt is, to the that that owes s/he a promise constitutes not s/he meaning object him/herself, but rather a debt to the human s/he will become.

To begin in the middle means that one is already obligated, that one is already indebted. This debt can be the source of guilt and nihlism if it is linked to a moribund institution

(i. e. a bureaucracy), as Nietzsche appreciateswhen he writes:

had even the slightest have the previous exponentsof the genealogyof morals ... from `guilt' the very material inkling that the central moral concept of originated 1998,44) (Nietzsche: `debt'? concept of

To becoming. in institution linked to an Yet this debt is also a source of creativity when debtor, `contractual' and relationship of creditor this end we can distinguish between a human debt the that owes be the promissory and compensated, where the creditor must debt is latter in Only the credit. becoming. in the without is case human that to the s/he

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When the institution takes its primary role to be that of a creditor, stupidity abounds, leading finally to an infinite debt that can never be repaid (Deleuze & Guattari: 1984, 235-7). Deleuze writes:

God put his son on the cross out of love; we respondto this love to the extent that we feel guilty, guilty of his death, and we redressit by accusingourselves,by interest paying on the debt. Through the love of God, through the sacrifice of his

son, the whole of life becomesreactive. - Life dies but it is reborn as reactive. (Deleuze: 1996b, 153)

When interest becomes payable then we have the presence of a creditor the reactive type who is parasitic upon those who pay. In the positive sense, the debt, without interest and without credit, is a gratuity, a `from nothing, ' with nothing dialectical about it. It marks out the ground of the human as s/he who owes, and, on this basis, there can be no distinction between `person' and `thing' - the human is already a thing, subject to a will

human him/herself difference is is him/herself. The that the to to able seize only exterior human Only by being be the to positively owe, and owned can exhausted. as an object in `Overcoming' being human debt this the through owned. overcome such a can only

in It is ' have done `to the the to active clearing away of with, or exhaust. casemeans favor of the passive synthesis. It is the point at which the passive takes up the active so localisation doing, in it the the of the passive, active as reconstitutes as to negate - and so the very partiality of being.

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CONCLUSION

What we have done with here is the Hegelian teleology: man's purpose. Free will does itself its because, lacking purpose, there cannot be any standardby take as own goal not judge its to the to which wills proximity goal - itself. Certainly judgement will appear, but only after the formation of a land:

He [man] is not the result of a special design, a will, a purpose;he is not the subject of an attempt to attain an 'ideal of man' or an `ideal of happiness'or an `ideal of morality' - it is absurd to want to hand over his nature to some purpose is in it lacking.... invented `purpose': We the concept reality or other.

(Nietzsche: 1990,65)

Without purpose, without truth: the nihilist will embrace such a situation and use it as

In human. impossibility life, the the the case which the of of of worthlessness proof of being. `person-subject-individual' the the of category constitutes ego remains, and Against this, Deleuze emphasizesphilosophy as the multiplicity of passive subjects. 25 Before the beginning there is difference or value. Exchange is the consequenceof from Hegel from the differentials of value that come the middle and not, as suggests, beginning and the end.

'5 Contrary to Hegel, value here means passive subjectivity, or the power of contraction.

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SECTION TWO: PROPERTY, IMMANENCE, BECOMING

CHAPTER FOUR

In the previous section I have taken a critical approach to ideas of property developed in the work of Schroederand Hegel. The critique of these writers did not seek to prove that they were internally inconsistent, and thus badly formed. Rather, the critique was how developed to these the wrong problem, a problem set out concerned show works and ' dramatised determining `is, than the property rather problem of a of what property dependentupon both a territory and its actors. The dialectical process, in my account, is following it fails because, Deleuze, to that the type one necessitates wrong of problem

account for real movement, understood as duration or becoming. In this section I will largely forgo critique and, instead, undertake the development of a non-dialectical understandingof property. My starting point is Hume.

It should be noted that, although I begin my analysis of Hume in this chapter with a his his A Treatise Human Nature, my use of work overall reading of certain sections of of is influenced by Deleuze's own reading, which I turn to more explicitly later in the chapter.

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HUME THROUGH DELEUZE

Hume sets out the problem of relation: his philosophy demonstratesthat thought cannot be closed and that, as a result, it is not so much concerned with essential identities and form in the that them relations practice. In other words, it is a question of similarities as how relations are dramatised. From this perspective the most important type of relation for Hume is causation (Hume: 2002,59), becauseit is the only type to go beyond what is experienced. Relations of resemblance,identity, time and place, proportion in quantity or degrees dependent in any quality, number, and contrariety are all upon a given experience impressions, but is As the this not casewith causation. we shall see, or relation of beyond is dependent impressions, but it is that the only relation can go causation upon

them. In so doing, it is able to leap between two terms and forge a link between them.

Deleuze describesthis function of causation in relation to the classic question, `How do I know that the sun will necessarily rise tomorrow? ', writing:

' ' ' `necessarily, `tomorrow, `always, that convey something such as expressions ... becoming In isn't in be today... tomorrow given without cannot given experience: beyond I I is the to given; go other words, causality a relation according which 2001,40) (Deleuze: is than or giveable... given say more what

This ability to say more than what is given is the basis of Hume's philosophy. Hume begins by setting out two problems for interrogation:

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First, For what reasonwe pronounce it necessary,that every thing whose existence has a beginning, shou'd also have a cause? Second,Why we conclude, that such particular causesmust necessarily have such particular effects; and is what the nature of that inference we draw from the one to the other, and of the belief we repose in it? (Hume: 2002,53; author's emphasis)

Before we consider Hume's responseto thesepoints, it is worth pointing out his use of the term `beginning,' which is used in a particular senseto mean the beginning of that beginning being, the and not of being itself for, as we have seen in which expresses ' Chapter Two, being did not begin. Human nature is, instead, endlessly inventive,

indeed, Hume says of the human that it is `an inventive species' (Hume: 2002,311).

Hume answersthe two points quoted above with the sameargument, simply that "'tis impossible to demonstratethe necessity of a cause" (Hume: 2002,56). Hume rejects the possibility that the link between any given causeand its effect can be definitely and how it The is that we come to experience a particular objectively proven. question of human than other phenomena as an effect can admit of no prior or exterior explanation 2002,58). links (Hume: it is this experience cause with effect which

But if humanity is

the `inventive species,' in terms of the experience of causeand effect and the ability to fashion relations, we are confronted with an immediate danger: that of a boundless from delirium. indistinguishable forging involving madness or creativity, of relations a How is the power of the imagination then to be limited, so that the relations which are made are practical? 1See 43 p above

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For Hume it is memory that limits the imagination. The interaction of imagination and memory combine in order to allow the inventiveness of the human while simultaneously its ensuring practicality. Hume writes:

Tho' the mind in its reasoningsfrom causesor effects carries its view beyond those objects, which it seesor remembers,it must never lose sight of them entirely, nor reasonmerely upon its own ideas,without some mixture of impressions,or at least of ideas of the memory, which are equivalent to impressions. When we infer effects from causes,we must establish the existence of thesecauses;which we have only two ways of doing, either by an immediate perception of our memory or senses,or by inference from other causes;which causesagain we must ascertainin the samemanner,either by a present impression, or by inference from their causes, and so on, till we arrive at some

object, which we seeor remember. 'Tis impossible for us to carry on our inferencesin infinitum; and the only thing, that can stop them, is an impression of the memory, beyond which there is no room for doubt or enquiry. (Hume: 2002,

58)

Hume rationalises the distinction between memory and imagination in terms of affect. Ideasin the memory can be distinguished from those in the imagination by a difference in force or intensity. Ideas in the memory carry more force than those in the imagination precisely becausethey are linked to some past or current experience (Hume: 2002,5960). However, this in itself requires another foundation, for it is quite possible for

humansto be in error about their senseof ideas, becausethey are capable of mistaking 120

the intensity of their ideas and thereby confusing memory and imagination. Hume gives the examples of ideas that become vague or even lost to memory, as well as the liar who believe his own lie. Such confusion is avoided, and memory and imagination to comes by belief: separated,

the belief or assent,which always attendsthe memory and senses,is nothing ... but the vivacity of those perceptionsthey present;and that this alone distinguishesthem from imagination. To believe is in this caseto feel an immediate impression of the senses, or a repetition of that impression in the memory. (Hume: 2002,61; author's emphasis)

Yet, belief must also have its own foundation becausebelief, like any other human be invented, activity, must making it susceptible in its own way to error. The cause of belief is experience, or more accurately, repeated experience. Hume argues that our

is discrete perception of objects always and that we have no way of perceiving the cause from the perception of the object itself (Hume: 2002,61). We only of an object merely perceive a causeto the extent that an object is continuously perceived by us in a "constant conjunction" with the object or circumstances taken as cause. Hume gives the example

of heat and flame: we take the flame to be the causeof the heat to the extent that the two (Hume: 2002,61). Even in though are always perceived a relationship of conjunction the two objects are perceived as being cojoined there is nothing, Hume argues,beyond the perception or impression itself upon which such a conjunction could be established. We may repeatedly experience flame and heat together, but we have no reasoned flame heat, the the to causes and we could say that the philosophical explanation as why

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best science can achieve is a description of a process. The repetition of the perception makesus think of the two phenomenaas related in terms of cause and effect although, as Hume writes, nothing in our experience reveals the `necessaryconnexion' between cause and effect.

If experiencedoes not reveal the connection between a cause and its effect, reason also fails to shed any light on how they might be connected in actuality. Hume writes:

fails us in the discovery of the ultimate connexion of causes and only not our reason ... effects, but even after experience has inform'd us of their constant conjunction, 'tis

impossible for us to satisfy ourselvesby our reason,why we shou'd extend that experience beyond those particular instances, which have fallen under our observation.

(Hume: 2002,64)

Reasonis inadequateto the task of explaining the conjunction of causeand effect and, more significantly, it is not the primary processby which the conjunction takes effect is human The such that, after the continual upon perception. effect of conjunction perception of A with B, we would consequently imagine B even if A alone were

is in its B, Hume that this physical absence, not the even presented. echo of argues 2002,65). is involuntary because it (Hume: the consequenceof application of reason Instead,reason itself is dependentupon the reflex or habit formed by a repeated imagination in is B. It A that the constant conjunction originally the conjunction of and becomesembedded,and it is from the imagination that reason is developed. The

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into by imaginative "We the thus the of parameters reason are set reflex, cannot penetrate reasonof the conjunction" (Hume: 2002,65).

Imagination, in forging the link between causeand effect, is itself dependentupon is it through the memory of cojoined objects that we come to imagine a memory, and 2 between is However, be them. that to memory we would relationship wrong conclude therefore prior to imagination because,while imagination grows from memory, memory is the result of the habit of imagination. In other words, what we remember is the act of the imagination in cojoining two objects in the first place (and subsequently).

Belief is therefore closely tied to this pairing of memory and imagination. Imagination, by itself, can never give rise to belief: it is only via memory, that is, the recalling of some

believe idea determine impression to that that to a particular able we we are experienced be the case(Hume: 2002,68). Experience limits what we are capable of believing. What force is believable, impressions, thereby to or and renders experiencecontributes our vivacity:

An idea assentedto feels different from a fictitious idea, that the fancy alone it by feeling I different And to calling a this endeavour explain presentsto us: This of firmness, force, variety or or steadiness. or vivacity, or solidity, superior

is intended only to expressthat act of terms, which may seemso unphilosophical, fictions, them to than to causes us more present mind, which rendersrealities

2Following Deleuze's analysis of memory (see Chapter Two above), we should understand the memory of it through inasmuch reflection. through not and be reflex operates as to memory, a conjunction a passive

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weigh more in thought, and gives them a superior influence on the passionsand imagination. (Hume: 2002,68; author's emphasis)

To ask why experience makes an idea believable is not a philosophical question - this is forced is descriptive Hume language when it comes to articulating the to to appeal why difference between ideas of fact and fiction. This difficulty of describing how belief distinction between fact fiction be be back to to the a and allows made should related in Chapter Two, that any expression of being is always a partiality, made earlier point 3 being (if it could be expressed as such) would be non-being. meaning that the whole of

In Hume's philosophy, the significance of belief is to make total certainty impossible, By thereby to thought any closure. and exclude attempt posit a premised upon repeated

from from derive impression it, ideas those the that the resulting experience, and impressions, gain in intensity. The intensity of an impression or idea is what determines is belief it. is impression idea in As total the truth of an or our such, certainty absent:

incapableof being verified beyond its application within a specific context. For this dependent beliefs, intensity Deleuze truth thought, the that the are of our of reason says

beliefs (Deleuze: by having be thoughts such and upon what can practically achieved 1995,117). Belief calls for experimentation as the foundation of knowledge.

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HUME AND PROPERTY

A) Recapitulation of Schroeder's Theory of Property

Returning once more to Schroeder,she writes:

Both property, according to Hegelian philosophy, and the Phallus, according to Lacanian psychoanalysis,serveas the defining objects of desire that enable us to createourselvesas acting subjectsthrough the creation of law. The parallel roles reserved for property and for the Phallus in the political and psychoanalytic

philosophies of Hegel and Lacan are the reasonthesemetaphorsso frequently recur in discourse about property law. Just as we conflate the psychoanalytic

concept of the Phallus with the male organ and the female body, so we use these anatomical metaphors to describe the Phallic relation of property. (Schroeder:

1998,107)

Schroederpoints out that just as Lacan's objet petit a is never the primary object of desire,so too Hegel's theory of property demonstratesthat it is not so much the thing which is significant, but rather the reciprocal estimation of others of my relation to the thing. In both cases,desire and hence property, are defined by displacement. While this is obvious in Lacan's work, it is not so, I suggest,in Hegel's. While the dialectical processcan be understood as one of displacement through sublation, such displacement is not meant to split the subject so much as lead him/her to his/her proper status as a

At p 107above

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4 The system Hegel in in Philosophy is Right their to sets out people person. meant put of displacing fall into the they places, errors would otherwise without state supported proper `ethical life. ' However, Lacanian displacement is concerned with the displacement of the itself, displacement from itself the meaning subject and, more provocatively, displacementfrom reason. Hegelian displacement is rather concerned to establish reason forms is behind If Lacan `what the the proper of rationality. we ask of and displacement? ' then we only find another displacement, and so on in an infinitely

In Hegel's is begin, if he is to chain. contrast, regressing concern even aware of the impossibility of avoiding presuppositions entirely: the dialectical process is concernedto beginning in beginning the the retroactively, critique resulting and the an equalisation of end.

However, if, like Schroeder,we insist upon a link between Hegel and Lacan in the analysis of property, it becomes clear that we desire something other than what we desire displacement is in The the things that such question. everyday we want are merely -

for for for impossible, desire thus the end: for Lacan, ciphers completion, our real, and the re-(e)merging with the mother (assumption of the statusPhallus); for Hegel, absolute freedom or pure negativity.

In Schroeder'sreading the differences of desire are thus erased,making desire nondesire, desire If the then the the real objects of specific. are not everyday objects of desire favour in desire is human's the of return - return to of particularity of each effaced the mother or return to negativity. The perspective by which humans come to be viewed 4 Seep 81 et seq above

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is from have the they to no responsibility very same perspective which appear asequal for what they desire.

What is at stake in this case is `the subject' or, to be more exact, the primacy of the Why is From this the the perspective of primacy of subject necessary? subject. Schroeder'stheory of property, it is the insistence upon the distinction between subject This is the axis around which her theory revolves: subjects own objects (by and object. investing them with their will), therefore, subjects cannot (and should not) be treated as objects. But what does it involve to not treat a subject as an object? It deprives the subject in question of everything which makes him/her distinct and responsible. Every human is special, but only in an entirely abstract and negative way.

The consequence of this constant displacement of the subject's specificity is the degradation of the world, in favour of a world beyond. To reverse this, the assumptions Schroeder makes about the primacy of the subject must be undermined and the question

land? If is if is to the this the constitution of a question asked:what subject not central directed to Hume's philosophy, it becomesnecessaryto construct a new image of property.

B) Grounding a Land

Hume's theory of property is basedupon the relation of causality; the relation of objects that constitutes, and is constituted by, human nature. This focus on relations meansthat

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Hume is not concerned with the beginning of property rights, nor the establishment of a social contract:

if they please,extend their reasoningto the suppos'd state of philosophers may, .. it fiction, be they to provided allow a mere philosophical which never nature; had, and never cou'd have any reality. (Hume: 2002,316-7)

The social contract was never entered into once and for all, although contracts themselves,in the form of promises, obviously arise constantly. For Hume, there is no founds that and legitimates all that comes after. Legitimation is an on-going one moment process without beginning or end. The ground constantly shifts under our feet and it is

theseshifts that determine the useful fiction of an originary social contract, in all of its for fiction fictions, Whilst Lacan Hegel the they and recognise need produce a variations. form fiction, but is fixed They do the of which and over-determined. not play with instead institute subjectivity as `the fiction. ' This is the reverse of the social contract in

the sensethat the subject is elevated to the primary position, above the social. It is an locked into fictive (the imposition tragically the subject), abstract of an entirely category

freedom. demand for fiction forever desire the the the of negative phallus, same -

In grounding a land, Hume distinguishes contract from convention, describing the latter in the following terms:

It is only a general senseof common interest; which all the membersof the induces them to regulate their conduct to and which society express one another,

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by certain rules Two men, who pull the oars of a boat, do it by an agreementor .... convention, tho' they have never given promises [contracts] to each other. (Hume: 2002,314-5)

This quote shows Hume's concern for practical interrelations, with the always already human is that character of experiencedcircumstantially on the ground, nature social legal is from This transcendentally than as a not to say that power applied above. rather does in legal does influence it have that power not exist, nor a considerable sucha not how experienceis actually experienced,but rather that legal power presupposesthe prior formation of a network of social relations to which it then pertains. Law is not referable back to a grounding and legitimating norm that would be the transcendentalevent of law, but rather depends upon the specificities of given social networks for both its grounds and the conditions of its exercise.

Furthermore,convention should not be understood as involving any exchange. It does for be in but to that not require given another return a reciprocal gesture, rather something

Social interaction is both being to premised upon, and an ethic of related oneself. responsiblefor, the individual undertaking without any senseof obligation to an other this would be a promise or contract. Therefore agreementor convention is the relation between humans, but rather than providing an obligation towards another it instead

imposesan obligation owed to the self.

The nature of this obligation is to pursue one's own self-interest. It should not be thought that, in making this distinction, Hume is suggesting any senseof natural or inherent

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justice in the human: he is quite clear that justice is an artificial phenomenon (Hume: 2002,315). That the human is an inventive speciesis highlighted by this situation humansmust invent the relations between themselveson the basis of their own individual being, motivated by self-interest:

In general it may be affirm'd, that there is no such passionin human minds, as the love of mankind, merely as such, independentof personalqualities, of services,or of relation to ourself. 'Tis true, there is no human, and indeed no happiness does in creature, sensible, whose or misery not, some measure, affect

brought in to when near us, us, and represented lively colours: But this proceeds from is sympathy, merely and no proof of such an universal affection to mankind, since this concern extends itself beyond our own species. (Hume:

2002,309)

Social relations are in the best interests of the human. Conventions enable the individual human to increase her power, even if this means using other humans as a means to an end.

However something more is required in order to stretch the human, to make it capable of justice is just than the this more and contract, which serve establishment of self-interest: breaks immediate in transformation the convention premised as of upon constant selfinterest. It gives the human a superior form of self-interest, beyond contingent

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5 It is justice in that not so much arises responseto the abuseof convention, satisfaction. but rather in anticipation of it. What is the causeof this anticipation? Simply that the humanrelation is not stabilised. Humans have commonality to the extent that they live, but they have difference to the extent that they want - this is recasting Hume's point be love for for love love to mankind cannot mankind and of self: a above,with regard it impressions, flux influence. Human is the and of experience relied upon as a stabilising is through habit and memory that this flux of relations is solidified, although never

for human be definitively (new conventions experience cannot anticipated completely, be Some by impressions be memory and made seized upon will will always necessary). the basis of new law, whilst others will pass unnoticed. However, to pass unnoticed by the legal apparatus does not mean to pass without an effect upon it - most obviously, the law itself This is Hume rejects the social enforcement of must rest upon convention. why

fiction. be Contract than occasionally cannot contract as anything more an useful premisedupon contract.

Extrapolating from Hume, the essential difference between convention and contract (contra Hegel) is that convention is inherently neutral in terms of the interaction between individuals: I do not act under convention in order to recognise another's rights, rather I

Convention interests. is thus neutral in the sense further to act under convention my own that it does not give an inherent value to individuals: each individual is a possible means Convention far individuals allows me to give a value to others, as as other are concerned. but only in terms of my own self-interest. On such basis it is possible to love another

5 We have

he how it is is Nietzsche that to process when asks a similar a memory refer already seen See become in human, of that capable promising. above at p 110 et seq. might the s/he cultivated so

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individual while treating yet others as slaves, becauseconvention does not, and cannot, it level by In defined `mankind. ' this way, value, whether as and operateon an abstract be the value of things or of other people, is determined in the same way -I value what is most useful to me.

However, becauseof the way in which Hume characteriseshuman nature, the use of has Humans interact by through convention another side. convention precisely others becauseinteraction is only possible (i. e. my aims can only be achieved) if I have some idea of how to achieve them, which is why expectation is also important. Developing become (the to out of experience an expectations relation of causeand effect), allows me The in far, because it the take actor world. expectation of convention will only me so lacks a sufficient degree of certainty regarding what I can expect from other individuals, insufficient develop is I thus that the and an guarantee expectation will occur. This is

because, in human simply a matrix of relations made up purely of value and self-interest, there is no reason why the sum of all self-interests should coincide. While some

be in to membersmight very close each other what they value, so that co-operation can likely between than them they to be arise convention, are without anything more marginal. Dealings with others cannot rely upon convention alone, particularly as society becomeslarger and the provision of what is required to meet expectations becomesmore in specialisedand more remote source.

Contract is what is added to convention in order to make the ordering of human experiencesufficiently stable so that individuals are able to effectively pursue their self-

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interest. Convention is not necessarily chronologically prior to contract but it is always it. Before before to the to the need to give and receive prior need exchange, affectively is intense the there and affective need to constitute the mind as, and through, promises, is for Relation by human it is, Hume, institution the not sanctioned any relations. inescapablefact of being human.

While we will often find that convention and contract exist together, the possibilities for the composition of their inter-relations are endless. This is apparentfrom Deleuze and Guattari's work in Anti-Oedipus, when they track the development of society from the 6 is finally is barbarian, What to the the to apparent that while and civilised man. savage, dependent is is (meaning the towards that upon contract motivation contract convention beyond itself is towards any abstract goal not orientated convention), convention Guattari Following Deleuze its and we achieving own specific and empirical purpose.

can say that the relation between convention and contract is one of disjunction: convention causescontract but does not lead to it - exchangeis only possible once value has been established.

Therefore contract is not the actualisation of convention. Convention is a separateand for be Hume This that prior order or articulation. self-interest can only restrained means by self-interest. Convention is the direct consequenceof its own self-positing in its own because be that self-divergence-a self-divergence arises convention cannot stabilised beyond the immediate circumstancesof its own dramatisation or becoming.

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In saying that `self-interest limits self-interest,' it should be understood that self-interest is an inorganic or inhuman power, constituted through both (the passive synthesesof) habit and memory. By bringing self-interest into the analysis there is a temptation to think of it in a more political context, particularly in terms of gaining more possessionsor influence, but on the passive, inorganic level, no such thing appears. Putting it in Nietzscheanterms, there is only force relating to force. Three points can be made as a drawn from Hume himself, but Deleuze's not so much reading of rather consequence, him:

1) Self-interest is `motivated' to limit itself in order to avoid becoming a pure death drive desire for By itself be to the self-interest would a maximum or will nothingness. identity. This it appropriation, with an active subject claiming all as a complete whole or limitation is is there the though of selfa superior self-interest: whole non-being, so 7 interest, the refusal of death. This is the most intense example of the limiting of selfinterest being in the best interests of self-interest. An expression or interest cannot

because being interest they can only achieve the total the or expression, achieve status of There is by (tiredness into therefore than rather exhaustion). closure non-being entering

for interest ideal that others. would stand as a reference no complete or expression or The limiting of self-interest is a limit of pragmatism and touches only upon the specific in Self-interest in order that the singularity requires a non-totality articulation question. being limit being. Beyond is the expression proper of any of an expression can endure as limit it degraded, the of the necessarily eventually evaporating entirely as approaches 6 See the

Guattari in Deleuze the next chapter. and analysis of

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ideal, or the whole of being. Thus the totality of being is non-being. Non-being is an being that to arises posterior error only, through the setting of improper questions or (Deleuze: 2002,15). problems

2) Self-interest, by limiting itself, is distinguished from other human characteristics on that basis. Limitation of a characteristic is the bounding of it's specificity, and the fact of its singularity. However, at the sametime, the fact that self-interest must work upon itself also shows that not only is it different from other characteristics, it is firstly different from itself. Being is only being through its own self-limitation.

As Hume

writes,

There is no passion, therefore, capable of controuling the interested affection, but

the very affection itself, by an alteration of its direction. (Hume: 2002,316)

Being is the `alteration of direction. '

3) The identity of a characteristic is purely accidental. It's being is premised upon its singularity through limitation, but this specifies a characteronly in passing. By focusing upon singularity it becomesclear that what is significant is the immanent difference of a its being forms it is the this that as expression. By going power, and uniquenessof which in the opposite direction, in order to fix a power as the identity of the same,the death drive is re-activated as the movement towards closure understood as a totality -a

' See for Malraux, is following Andre death. Deleuze's that that art which resists assertion, example (Kaufman & Heller: 1998,18)

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knowledge as regards what a body is capable of, and not a limited pragmatism mistaken in regard to what it will be capable of.

What becomesclear from thesepoints is that self-interest encapsulatesthe properly inhuman aspectof relation: self-interest is the form of relation inasmuch as it forges an immanent relation of itself to itself. I want to expand a little upon the immanent nature of develop the three points made above by considering the influence of self-interest and Bergsonupon Deleuze, becauseBergson goes further than Hume in addressingthe problem of relations, to consider them beyond human nature (i. e. as inorganic).

BERGSON BEYOND HUME

Hume argues that it is through self-interest that the individual and the species are brought into relation (Hume: 2002,313-4).

However, such a relation does not stand as the

`completion' of the human, nor does it determine the `best' or `most good' way of life for him/her. The relation is purely formal, which is why Hume limits his investigation in the fact beyond human in he He does does. the of associationism, of way not go which his/her making of relations, premised upon self-interest. These areformal criteria that

cannot be given, philosophically, any substantive content.

Bergson goes beyond Hume on this point: not to uncover any substantivetruths but to doing, In it is being. human formal so necessaryto go extend our understanding of

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beyondthe `human,' by which I mean, in the Nietzschean sense,that which is otherwise human Beyond understanding there is the inhuman, non-subjective all-too-human. incomplete forces We the or whole. of encounteredthis non-subjectivity in matrix ChapterTwo in relation to Deleuze's concept of duration. Beyond the human there is the inhumanity of time, or Bergsonist duration.

As Deleuze points out in his book on Bergson, it is a matter of selecting the correct or true problem, which itself must be determined by the present circumstances (Deleuze: 2002,15). We are, then, already concerned with duration once more, for the problem has being in two forms: the problem is invented first, meaning that the future aspect of the present (Eros) redistributes the circumstances of the present in a new way, giving "being to what did not exist" (Deleuze: 2002,15).

Then, once the problem has been brought into

being, it is a matter of uncovering what does now exist - the problem's solutions (Deleuze: 2002,15). 8 The pursuit of solutions is the active form of time rather than the passive form. That solutions will be uncovered is inevitable - at least until their problem is displaced by the invention of a new problem, and the pursuit of a whole new set of solutions.

This problem of problems offers a new perspective on Hume, at least as far as property is concerned. For if we restrict ourselves to the observation that property occurs via the associationof terms or events in the minds of humans (convention); and that these associationsare then themselvesregulated by a different order of associations

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(contract/law), we still have to explain how it is that the human is different from an its In that territory. marks other words, we have to explain why it is that animal associationism,as causality, gives us an understanding of human nature, rather than simply nature.

We have seenthat Hume's solution to this (the difference between convention and found is be in self-interest, and the need to maximize self-interest by limiting to contract)

self-interest. What we can explore more fully now, via Bergson, is the properly inhuman aspectof such limitation, becausethen we can start to understandhow property can begin to be thought of in a new and current way, contra the theory of property developed by Hegel and Schroeder.

PREMATURITY

For Hume, while the human is not the only animal, s/he is a special case in the sense that his/her needs and his/her abilities to meet those needs are uniquely asymmetrical:

If we consider the lion as a voracious and carnivorous animal, we shall easily discover him to be very necessitious;but if we turn our eye to his make and temper, his agility, his courage, his arms, and his force, we shall find, that his In his hold wants. ... man alone, this unnatural advantages proportion with 8 Here

we could develop a whole other divergence between Deleuze and psycho-analysis: before the unconscious is to be revealed, it must be invented, and it is this invention that would have to be a philosophical problem, rather than a psycho-analytical one.

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its infirmity, in be of necessity, greatest of and may observ'd conjunction 2002,311-2) (Hume: perfection.

This is a problem for philosophy rather than the natural sciencesbecause,in highlighting (contrary human's being, it be to the that the the the necessityof social must case did begin human from, feeds into, the that that not and results sociality), common sense from nothing but was already in the middle of being. It is a philosophical problem of God, breath humanity did Rather lack the than thereof: the of not start. origins, or rather therewas simply a spark of pure chance.

To cast this in terms of Deleuze's relation to Bergson, we can consider it thus: that associationism,without anything more, leaves us at the level of habitus and mnemosyne. The forging of relations proceedsin a manner that can be described as automatic, in the same way in which the behaviour of any animal can be considered as 'automatic'.

We

could say that through contraction a habit is formed, producing the passive subjectivity of an automaton(Deleuze: 2002,67). This contraction also necessitatesthe production of a 9 dreamer (Deleuze: 2002,66). past and of reminiscence, with the passive subjectivity of a

As arguedin Chapter Two, taken together these two synthesesproduce a vicious circle in which they continuously refer to each other in a banal repetition. Here there is only a motor-tendency (Deleuze: 2002,67), a purely mechanical functioning, pre-programmed

in habit and memory, that equateshuman with animal.

9 See

also G Deleuze To Have Done with Judgement in (Deleuze: 1998)

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Prematurity,understood from Hume as the "unnatural conjunction of infirmity, and of duration: 2002,312) for human (Hume: to the a reserves a special relation necessity" future, be is to the to which not equatedwith anticipation, with probability, nor relation form is human learn likely (animals is the this through all of conditioning, and with what hope),but the future as the crack in the human, the gap between `I think' and `I am' that be inventive Not him/her to the only species. a political or rational animal so allows much as a risking animal.

That the human is premature has two consequences:first, the animal consequenceof the lacks; food, human for In the second, and more water, etc.. other words, need shelter, future, in being human is is to the the profoundly, premature not yet complete: s/he open

to Eros. The human's special relationship to duration is his/her relationship to the future in its passivesynthesis,and it is this that differentiates him/her from the animal.

SOCIAL EXPRESSIONS OF THE FUTURE

The human must be kept premature if s/he is to avoid becoming an infant incapable of responsibility. This is recognised by Hume with his theory of self-interest, because such

interestis a tendency that must be folded back upon itself, by itself, for it's own selfinterest. It is also akin to the significance given to cruelty by Nietzsche, in that through

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human becomes body, the the capable of promising. the trials of

1° To be able to promise

immature. be not one must premature and

is becomes human institution is the that It through the capable of promising, made following in by Deleuze is described The institution immature. the prematurerather than terms:

The institution, unlike the law, is not a limitation but rather a model of actions, a invention invented a positive means or system of positive veritable enterprise, an institution base indirect Placing the the signifies at of convention of means ... indirect, is institution by the that the a system system of means represented only oblique, and invented - in a word, cultural. (Deleuze: 1991,45-6)

By describing the institution as positive, rather than limited, Deleuze is making it clear

that the institution does not operatethrough (a social) contract. The law does not arise through the restriction or limitation of human activity, but rather provides a means for the carrying out of human activity, while simultaneously (and again in distinction to contract)

remaining open and subject to variation: in short, the institution is, on Deleuze's reading " Hume, the product of the imagination (Deleuze: 1991,48). of

It is the institution that ensuresthat the problem of dramatisation ('what can it do?') is constantly re-articulated, producing new problems distinct from the closures of answers and identity ('what is it? '). More accurately, the institution is that which renders a 10See p1 14 above

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distinction between dramatisation and identity indiscernible: a problem is invented in function `what (broadly the to problems of put, present relation a circumstance as a it '). The the a singularity problem gives circumstantial nature of currently confront us? in from identity from differentiated identity; is indiscernible is that and yet singularity an false becomes by The true the a termsof the setting of problem problem. error which a discreteness (i. is identity true to take the e. circumstantially as and problem's problem future is It the affective orientation of the present problem that relevant) character. be dramatisation. in/as at stake should always

To be clear: identity and discreteness (that is, the active syntheses of the problem) are not to be dismissed as merely wrong or of no consequence. They are crucial, and form part of any problem: we saw this in Chapter Two where Eros redistributes the past and

12 the present. The point is that these aspects(the identical and the discrete) cannot be taken as the determining elements of a problem. The problem might involve a retroactive question such as `what went wrong? ', but it can only be a relevant problem if, beyond this, there is the greater question of `what can be invented? '

PROPERTY AS MEMORY

The institution is a strictly human circumstance, as it is dependentupon man's special relationship to duration. There are no animal institutions, even though there might be animal societies,packs, kingdoms, and so on. The defining character of the institution is

11I will return to the open character of the institution in Chapter Five 12See above at 59 et seq.

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discussed both That is, it acts to preserve memories so that in the time, senses of above. they might be used as the basis for future action (the active). At the sametime, it goes beyondmere preservation in order to open the present up and redistribute the past as a function of the future as it currently exists: openness,partiality, articulation, etc. (the 13 institution is invents The the that and problems, which uncovers solutions and passive). does it is is Deleuze This this that the of writes that at which work why point subject. "The subject is defined by the movement through which it is developed. Subject is that

doing, in develops itself' (Deleuze: We 1991,85). the subject also that, so can add which developsthe institution.

Along this line we can understand this movement, this question of the subject, as one that is indiscernible from the institution of property. This is because the subject, as a subject of duration, is only the sum of durations that constitute him/her at any particular time. To ask `what can a body do? ' does not mean that everybody has the same capabilities or potentials. This question is still too abstract so long as it remains divorced from the real circumstances that would give it force. Rather, this question must be made into a problem - to stand as a provocation, a possible instigator of creativity and invention. What the question might mean (or more accurately, what the question itself might be able to do) depends entirely upon circumstances and their duration. All of this highlights what

we encounteredwith Nietzsche: a body is only its effects, and there is no question of a causebehind theseeffects that could explain them. Similarly, there is no owner and owned: there is only an inventory of effects that, arbitrarily, can be divided into subject 13Here I am using 'institution' as a generic term to encompass, in an abstract way only, various conceptpairs found throughout Deleuze and Guattari's work: reterritorialization and deterritorialization; state

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is body A dialectical beginning that. the this of caused movement: andobject, allowing from its but its is itself indistinguishable properties. thereforenothing property, which

Furthermore,the subject and property are intimately tied because,as a particular forces the matrix or articulation of a particular set of problem,property standsas being. In into its this type of subject: property calls owner productive of a particular forces is in duration that the the to produces passive syntheses, which senseproperty akin but is human determined by This is agency, recognition not arerecognisedas property. force: is before inhuman it the subject, a the an production of a sensibility or affect

perceptionwithout perceiver. The subject, who perceives, is the closure of these passive future: What is s/he perceives, primarily, relations. a remembered past and an anticipated this is the first step towards property taking on the legal forms we recognise today.

Without remembranceof what has been, and without the anticipation that what has been might ceaseto be, there would be no need to institute a law of property. To return to the dualistic nature of the problem, of the institution: the subject is exposed to cruelty in order that s/he might become responsible and open to the future. Yet, at the same time, that future is closed to the extent that the institution demands the recognition of the past in the future: what has been will be again.

This meansthat the subject cannot be divorced from the object. To attempt to make such a distinction, in the classic manner of Hegel for example, is misguided. In his work,

Deleuzeis sometimesconcerned with the subjective, at other times with the objective, and in either casehe addressesthe sameissue, the difference in terminology being the apparatusand war machine; major and minor; molar and molecular; arborescent and rhizomatic; etc. 144

He Sometimes is it in difference case. more appropriate to consider things subjectively. saysof the subject:

I infer the existenceof that which is not given: I believe... At the sametime and . ... through the sameoperation, while transcendingthe given, I judge and posit know. I I Therefore, the problem of truth than affirm more myself as subject. itself. be the of subjectivity presented and stated as critical problem must (Deleuze: 1991,85-6)

That the subject affirms more that it can know returns us to the point of the premature. It is only because the human is premature that it is able to affirm more than it knows: it is the result and cause of it's openness to the future, the fact of it's being an inventive species. Such affirmation can be thought of in terms of an assertion or claim, in distinction from an appeal, in the sense that the claim refers to nothing beyond its own autonomy14or risk.

Deleuze goes on,

We are also subjects in another respect, that is, in (and by) the moral, aesthetic, judgement. In this sense, the subject reflects and is reflected upon. It or social extracts from that which affects it in general a power independent of the actual exercise, that is, a pure function, and then transcends its own partiality.

Consequently,artifice and invention have been madepossible. (Deleuze: 1991, 86)

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-

in institution, the uncovering of probable the In the operation of closed aspectsof an of the to is tied content specific to not solutions,the subject able extract something more, in insists them but judgements, that something the particular moral, aestheticor social inventing form, Eros, problem. the a new their of or possibility pure only passively: is Deleuze Hegel. from difference immediately clear this the However, we must note of The is interaction not concernedwith mirrors and mutual recognition. that social institution provides the means by which the individual goes beyond itself, to affirm more in dialectical the for but, gaze knows, it object the as a not of clarity, purposes than again

What force: but the we must self. passive as a pure objectivity understood as of another, being its before is Schroeder, Hegel that and after and rememberabout the subject, contra body it is thing affected. a a self, -a

Now Delueze's problem can be brought into relief: "how can a subject transcending the 1991,86). " (Deleuze: be in the given? given constituted

Here, we face the problem of

How is how the the subject posited as open. structure of structuralism, and specifically

in Deleuze foundation? This is its the addresses stating question can a systemact as own this problem. However, he does not begin with this question but immediately changes it, in order to make it clearer. He now asks: "But what is the given? " (Deleuze: 1991,87).

This shift meansthat we move beyond structuralism, in the sensethat we are not content to ask how it is that a structure can be made consistent via the inclusive bracketing of the inconsistent,but rather we ask how it is that the inconsistent or open can transform the structure of the institution. 14I mean 'autonomy' in the same sense as Joan Copjec's discussion of Lacan's analysis of Antigone, although she arrives at it by a very different route. See (Copjec: 2002,40-47). Against this, an appeal is

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It is more correct to say that Deleuze is dealing with a singularity rather than a structure, being facet facets, is a variation of each in which a problem constituted with a number of is to In there way right a any given circumstance the problem set -a possible solution. Deleuze ') is ('what In writes, the the to given? the question new response state problem.

It is, says Hume, the flux of the sensible, a collection of impressions and images, being is It that the totality which equals appears, of which or a set of perceptions. law. (Deleuze: identity is it or also movement and change without appearance; 1991,87)

How is it that there are impressions, sensibilities, and so on, that are capable of being Deleuze leading `given', is This to continue, the the problem of perceived as such?

In fact, its principle, that is, the constitutive principle giving a status to idea from impression' is is derives `every that an whose sense not experience, is `everything distinguishable but that separable and every rather only regulative; distinguishable is different'.

(Deleuze: 1991,87)

It is the `distinguishable' that causes the given to be the given, in the sense of something

if In capableof perception. other words, we substitute the word `circumstances', the given is the way in which a circumstancediffers from itself, its lack of identity, that

always made in reference to something external to it, on which it is then dependent.

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that be Thus is time it than passing: the given nothing more perceived as such. allows to distinguishable. is is the given time passes,that the present not eternal, what makes

The principle of perception, the guiding thread of any collection of images, is the difference between those images. Why is this so important? Because, without

difference, there would only be one image, one perception. Such an image or perception for lacking be (and the original perception continuous any memory or recollection) would be have be automatons and changed: we would with us still, and nothing would would dreamers. Such unity, such oneness, can only be understood as death: nothing can is There force, desire, is there simply the no no no presence, no absence. emerge continuous perception of the same, in which subject and object are one.

First, there was difference, meaning that first there was a past: memory. To put it in Hume's terminology: first there was relation. Furthermore, the relation was between in the middle of something: only then could the subject appear. objects always already Because of the difficulty of this idea, of the non-starting of the beginning, it is worth giving further attention to precisely what Deleuze writes:

We must begin with this experiencebecauseit is the experience. It doesnot it. It is else precedes and nothing not the affection of presupposeanything else an implicated subject, nor the modification or mode of a substance....The mind is identical to ideas in the mind... (Deleuze: 1991,88; author's emphasis)

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Even though perception is always the relation of differences, it can never amount to the is include Rather, a collection of perceptions cannot all perceptions. a perception whole: itself is even within specific complete or centre of gravity, a zone which singularity, a dependent is it is upon the totality though this though not of all, and even completeness is being The `open-endedness' the collection the collection as a whole of open-ended. difference it: `founding' the the the of the result of separableness of perceptions within

the collection as a whole, its difference from itself. The perception is not at this point an by but immanent the an perception: act of perception, perceiving of perception habit the of habit. perception,

Thus, as far as property is concerned, it is first and foremost a matter of the distribution of memory and habit because these are also the processes by which perceptions are be that the secreted, so subject might called into being. In other words, property is not a matter of whether or not an assertion of legal right is in itself right or wrong (it is not a matter of legal validity), but is entirely a matter of locus standi, the production of a

first is subjectwho capable of making the assertion.

However, without anything more property will be incapable of fully distinguishing the owner from the owned, and, to the extent that it can so distinguish, it will do so simply through reference and status: it is the Hegelian model or a `proper' collection of perceptions. The future aspect still needs to be considered, because:

[t]he mechanismof the body cannot explain the spontaneityof the subject. By itself and in itself, an organ is merely a collection of impressionsconsideredin

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the mechanismof their appearance.... we always return to the sameconclusion; the given, the mind, the collection of perceptionscannot call upon anything other

1991,89) (Deleuze: themselves. than

PROPERTY AS ACTION

The institution can tell us histories of property and, in so doing, set out expectations In future like future be this the the the sense, any past. of property as well: will about

institution is a collection, a collection of the perceptions that form it as such. However, there must be something in addition to the collection, because property must be able to distinguish claims, meaning that there must be a `founding difference' that enables

its be through threatens that, to also property perceived and as a consequence, property difference, calling the very practice of property itself into question as something that differs from itself. This should not be understood as a structural relation of difference - it is not the point that `cat is not bat, ' but is instead a passive difference that contracts

instantstogether and produces singularities: that which is different not in relation to that different. is is internally it, but that to which external which

An institution, considered as a collection of perceptions, is founded by something which is not in the collection itself, something which is not perceived, and is indeed

imperceptible. In terms of difference, it is the smallest possible difference, understood not in terms of scientific objectivity, but rather in terms of a properly philosophical objectivity:

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bodies to that things appear than the there smaller smallest are many undoubtedly impression is fact is, the than though, that there the nothing smaller our senses; 1991, (Deleuze: ideas form bodies, have them. the that these of that we or we of 91)

instruments Even though sciencemay allow us to view the ever smaller with ever refined because the the untouched remains objectivity of empiricism of observation,nevertheless, it beyond difference, it limited in is the which can smallest what can perceive as mind human it but human Science believe. touch transforms cannot experience, certainly only in (Humean) this sense. nature

Following Hume, it is the experience of space and time that is an addition to any

first found in is imperceptible) (that to that the collection place, while serving collection

A sensible point or atom is visible and tangible, colored and solid. By itself, it

hasno extension,and yet it exists.. It is not extended,since no extension is itself . an atom, a corpuscle, a minimum idea, or a simple impression. `Five notes play'd on a flute give us the impression and idea of time; tho' time be not a sixth impression, which presents itself to the hearing or any other of the senses.'

Similarly, the idea of spaceis merely the idea of visible or tangible points distributed in a certain order. (Deleuze: 1991,91)

How do time and spacefound the collection in the first place? Here, time and spacehave to be understoodin terms of action (Deleuze: 2002,68).

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have does is involved: do I that an end By action, not any sort of goal action not mean beyondits own acting, meaning that action is its own motivation - effect without cause. Action is not reactive but is instead en-active, meaning dramatised through the invention by The the the present present, which passive sheathing movement problem. of a new in is is by itself, the time the sensed condition of action, movement which passeswithin its smallestdifference as the minimal unit of action. This is the limit of Hume's thought, the point beyond which empiricism will not go: action is the forging of the smallest is fundamental This be in its the relation. shift which must grasped possible

imperceptibleslide, whereby we move from the fact that perceptions of relation give rise to the impressionof time and space,to the incompatible yet seemingly identical fact that relation can only occur within time and space. This shift is why the given already includes within itself that which is not given: the given and the ungiven are the same. This paradox is the least we can say about human nature.

Action can then be thought of as akin to contraction, to the extent that contraction is itself dependentupon the passive future. The effect that two points may have on each other is dependentupon many things, making it impossible to state any general law or rule beyondsaying that the human must believe and must invent. At which point, we are beyondthe institution as mere collection: belief and invention are what cannot be given by the institution. However, we should be careful: following Nietzsche it is correct to say that the institution makes the human capable of belief and invention, but what it cannot

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in is belief What invention. for is the the positive content of specific and provide institution is therefore purely formal.

To put this in another way, we can say that the institution, while forming collections of is foundation depends that them perceptible as such, upon a perceptions,and rendering itself imperceptible. This foundation is time and space. In this way, time and spaceare knows. it invention belief human than the to more and subject can affirm equivalent -

What it knows is the institution that, presenting itself as a complete whole, nevertheless because it in To be is time therefore counter the must endure and open. cannot such We institution human into being the the to to must call subject act akin an owner. open,

it that the might say ownership regulates owned, giving the appearanceof closure. However, this is merely an abstraction. Both the institution and the subject are caught up

in time, and therefore always on the edge of transformation, of becoming, through new ways of believing and inventing. Status is not only always faced with disruption, but is itself formed by disruption.

As the preceding paragraphindicates, and as we have already seen in previous chapters, Deleuze,following Bergson, arguesthat, of the two, time is the true or superior form of the a priori, and that spacederives from it. 15 As Deleuze puts it, it is possible to perceive without having an impression of extension (Deleuze: 1991,92), but that it is not possible to perceivewithout an impression of time. Time is the imperceptible with all perceptions,becauseperception is always changing. We might say that if spaceis the 15For an interesting discussion of this in relation to Deleuze's work on cinema, see (Rodowick: 1997), particularly chapter 2.

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between between is those distance time same two the points, movement smallest smallest the distance inasmuch While two the remain points as serves as a constant, spatial points. instance, is distance variable. changing movement a constantly at any given apart same Movemententails a constant change of position that is smooth and uninterrupted. By this I meanthat movement is a passive contraction that can only be broken down into static but digital, in Time analogue continuums. and movement are not constituentparts space.

However if movement is understood in this way (as uninterrupted) it neverthelessserves to disrupt perception so that, paradoxically, perception can occur: time is the difference in be be the there that things to perceived as such, otherwise would only enables perception death is This is time superior to or non-movement. why one-wholenon-perception of but impression of extension, space:we can perceive without an we cannot perceive without an impression of time. Time is the dynamic ghost that must be present with all

if be they to perceptions are perceived at all.

Action should then be thought of as the minimum difference from difference, the least amountof difference necessaryfor perception to be establishedas the perception of that which changes. Without this minimum difference there would not be change, but simply a closedcollection that could not be perceived - in other words nothing, not even death. Again, we must be careful

is does bring into this the things not solipsism: subject not -

being by perceiving them, rather the subject is brought into being as a consequenceof a perceptionthat distributes both poles of object and subject acrossthis smallest difference in time. This is human nature, where action and being are indistinguishable.

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1991, (Deleuze: "the Deleuze time" For this reason, synthesis of refers to the subject as his back his he to certain aspectsof 93). Going on to explain this statement, works way it impressions, between is As in two the to relation relations. regard point starting by it impressions itself is to follows that the relation which refers: always exterior to the into by the in impressions entering the changed question are not essentially themselves, it because different Hume is is This types to the of relation, outline careful why relation. is necessaryto understandthat the quality is in the relation and not in the impression, nor the idea of the impression.

We have already seenthat relation is a matter of self interest, and that self interest is itself For itself, this reason selfthe to type or relation of relation. of relation: related a special interest can be thought of as a passive synthesis, of a power of articulation prior to the

distinction between subject and object. That self-interest works upon itself to limit itself is akin to a singularity, in that it necessitates its own partiality as the condition of its

being: self-interest seeksto exhaust itself. Unsurprisingly, there is a strong link between Deleuze's study of Hume and the formulation of his own philosophy in Difference &

Repetition. If we think of an institution as formed by its habits and memories the questionbecomes:what is the desire of the institution?

We have seenhow, in relation to the passive subject, Eros is the empty form of time, without content. A notion of Humean desire becomesapparent when it is assertedthat the sun will rise tomorrow: here we see anticipation as the direct consequenceof habit

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This desire, habit is that to the extent conjunction of memory and andmemory. ideas. `invest' habit things to the or memory and as sensualmix of anticipationreturns As Deleuzewrites:

ideasare not designatedwithin the mind without the mind becoming subject -a Ideas ideas designated, these to are are a subject who speaks. subject whom designatedin the mind at the sametime that the mind itself becomesa subject. (Deleuze: 1991,101)

Desire is the designation of the subject. However, rather than a subject who speaks,it is better to think of a subject who claims: it is human nature to make claims. At this point,

is in property action the sensethat it involves modes of subjectivisation that go beyond institution. Only disruption the property as of time can account for the subject and as a consequence,only the disruption of the institution of property can found that institution not in the first place, but in the first time that is already a repetition, already a starting again. Otherwise the institution would simply (non) exist as a closed whole, free of

difference. Together, the institution and the subjectsthat make it up are a "circumstance" (Deleuze: 1991,103).

Therefore,everything hinges upon two facets of the present: on the one hand, passivity gives us a formal present, one that can only be understood as the present as it passes(its facet of memory), and the present it will be (its facet of anticipation); and on the other hand,there is the active present, which takes the form of a demand, or of something to be achieved. Only at this point do we encounter law. However, both are dependentupon the

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for from future futurity is that the pure irreducible of time, responsible of the present: the distributing both the past and the present. There is no active equivalent to Eros - the The by hope, desire is future the specific content of only shaped circumstance. active is instead but do hope, human has future only to concerned nature nothing with of passive hopelessness. with risk, or a creative

GROUNDS AND LOCUS STANDI

Propertyis the reciprocal determination of the passive and the active, through which, in the former, an institution is both grounded and ungrounded (and thus kept 'open'), while

the latter provides for a specific content or establishedmode of life. It is an undeterminedpower on the one hand, articulated via a claim where more is affirmed than is known. On the other, it is an active right that can only be utilised as an appeal the future that the appeal should be like the past. This distinction between the claim and the appealcan be mappedfrom Deleuze's work, in the sensethat the claim is made in first place,and the appeal made subsequently:

To participate meansto have a part in, to have after, to have in secondplace. What possessesin first place is the ground itself. Justice alone is just, saysPlato. As for those whom we call the just, they possessthe quality of being just in second,third or fourth place ... or in simulacral fashion. That justice alone should be just is not a simple analytic proposition. It is the designation of the Idea as the ground which possessesin first place. The function of the ground is

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then to allow participation, to give in secondplace. Thus, that which participates for The is degrees in less a calls claimant necessarily a claimant. varying or more Laying denounced (or be claim the groundless). as claim must grounded ground; is not one phenomenonamong others, but the nature of every phenomenon. The 1994,62)16 (Deleuze: is test.... a ground

This is exactly the problem which concerns Hume: who is the subject who is able to the Hume this most problem, of the good examples some very gives claim? valid make is how Deleuze being that the ownership of an abandoned also makes use of: one striking javelin, has between decided be the and a gate with to city struck a claimant who city fn Which 73). 2002,326; finger? his (Hume: has touched the gate with anotherwho basis between the the thing the claimant: on which and action establishes proper relation is the assertion of property to be satisfied?

In posing the problem as one of relation, it becomesapparentthat the distinction made betweena theory of property which, on the one hand either valorises the relation between personand thing (for example Locke); or on the other, valorises the relation between persons regarding the thing (for example Hegel), is really the wrong way to go about a

properconsideration of it. To do so tells us very little about what is at stake. Whilst it is correctto say that the claims must be judged by the inhabitants of the ground, the participantsof justice, it is just as correct to say that their decision is informed by the natureof the thing itself: its objectivity. This has nothing to do with essentialism, rather, 16We also seehere how the passive (claim) and the active (appeal) appear together in reciprocal determination. The problem is again one of dramatisation: which is the soundest claim?; meaning can it be

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is itself by of the is accumulation the thing of relations: an accretion what understood taken Nevertheless, as those the relations perceptions. of collection memoriesand justice favour in will to the thing whose solid enough condition are of characteristic decideand, in this sense,the thing has a power that extends beyond any one claimant, is There first in a it is is ambiguity, the an to place. claim make a necessary which why

for in be to achieve satisfaction. order a claim endured, must risk which

by following by demonstrated the The constraints of relation as thing are example given

Hume:

Supposea German, a Frenchman, and a Spaniard to come into a room, where there are plac'd upon the table three bottles of wine, Rhenish, Burgundy and Port; and suppose they shou'd fall a quarrelling abount the division of them; a impartiality, his for to show chosen umpire, wou'd naturally, person who was give every one the product of his own country... (Hume: 2002,327; fn 75)

However, this is so only if we consider the claim in the context of what has already been established as the ground of the claim, which Deleuze refers to as the first possession that

establishesa ground, according to which an appeal can be made.

This first possessionis limited in the context of justice though, which is where Deleuze breakswith Plato: a claim is impossible if there is no distinction from what has gone before: a claim must be a claim to something not currently recognised as valid but that dealt with within what has already been institutionally established, or must it go beyond what the institution

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having into being is the the entered proper associations, of nevertheless capable if is here: holds Hegelian Possibility the even real, claim no sense of validity. possibility it provesto be wrong. A legal argument that fails before a judge is still a legal argument, despitethe fact that it is decided against, that it is found wrong or wanting. The fact that it becomesnecessaryto make a claim in the first place, that it is required that ownership be established,is due to the failure of the first possession(justice) to occupy the ground in its entirety.

For this reason,Deleuze rejects any philosophy premised upon model and copy. The but be but is to third their claimants might simulacra, appeal not some model, secondand to a further simulacra and another relation. If a claim is made, then the ground quakes: "It is as if the ground rose to the surface, without ceasing to be ground" (Deleuze: 1994,

28). Thus the claim cannot be settled only by recourse to the present or circumstances: the presentmakes the demand,but it is a demand due to a sudden awarenessof ignorance knowing is If be by the of not what a claim capable of achieving. claim could settled -

referenceto the present,then the claim would not arise: there would only be the present, and the whole of being (non-being). Bringing the claim will give rise to the active

subject,and wherever there is an active subject, someonewho remembers and hopes, thereis a claim. The claim itself dependsupon the existence of a memory, or institution, while the subject emergesfrom it so as to problematise (or dramatise) it. Therefore, as soonas there is the active subject, there is a return of the passive subject as well, not in the form of Habitus or Mnemosyne, but now as the invocation of Eros, becausethe solution to the claim is always in the future. Bringing a claim is then a type of promise, currently is, thereby transforming it (the institution) through the creation of a new ground.

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becauseit is a claim to belong to what the institution will be. Only in this way can the difficulty of the relationship between a person and a thing be settled.

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CHAPTER FIVE

in legal it has theory Pottage to that Alain general, and when comes pointed out institution' depend `the in to concept organising theory an as upon particular, property ' far In leaving danger the term to too of the my use clarify order much unsaid. of runs `institution' in relation to property, I want to link it with the work of Deleuze and Guattari in their book Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus - not to give line Deleuze formalise it. but In to the term to and with my usage of rather substance Guattari's understanding of capitalism, my use of `institution' as a term of property is 2 law. My the than to argument, passing through closer algebra any actual content of Deleuze and Guattari, Pottage, Hardt and Negri, and Foucault, is that increased formalisation is the substanceof property itself. What has changed (what is historical in the very loosest sense)is the relation between form and substance (or content), understoodnot as the difference between what constitutes a form and what constitutes 3 a substance, but as the contemporary tendency of form and substanceto be more rapidly reduced to each other. This rapidity of equalisation is, as we shall see, the essenceof contemporary capital.

"... academiclegal referencesto `institutions' are as hollow as they are resonant." See (Pottage: I998a). 2Which is not to disagreewith, nor answer, Pottage's point.

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DESPOTS

ChapterThree of Anti-Oedipus is perhaps the strangest chapter of the whole book, as it is there that Deleuze and Guattari undertake what they refer to as `universal history.' In so doing they state that they are going to follow Marx's rules very be history is from to the that the of understood perspective meaning strictly, developmentof capital and the `final' appearanceof the capitalist state. For the history is immanence, is "universal the they this as explain, a question of authors history of contingencies, and not the history of necessity" (Deleuze & Guattari: 1984, 140). To undertake `universal history' therefore, one must understand that the state, and in particular the capitalist state, is there throughout history but for most of the time as an horizon, an organising principle in the senseof something to be avoided like a bad dream. It is there as a limit, and never more so than when it actually in history i. it is If is appears e. when actualised. such an actualisation something specific, founding a particular `time, ' then its uniqueness is in its relationship to its own limit as the end of expulsions and the beginning of transgressions.

With `universal history, ' Deleuze and Guattari are providing us with an image of thought (or dramatisation), rather than a recounting of what has been and a description of what is. An image of thought: a model for the activity of thinking understood as the perpetual encounter of knowledge and non-knowledge. Consequently, we must recognisethat capital and philosophy have something in common, inasmuch as both are determined through an encounter with their own limits: so too with my use of the institution, understood as an arrangement of

perceptions. The specific arrangements

3For discussion a of this see(Deleuze & Guattari: 1988), in particular chapter 5 `587 BC - AD 70: On

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be is limited: is to arrangement, and perceived each perceive necessarily able what of distinguishes has from This it institution, that the rest. a particularity each identity is (or that the gives an consequenceof a singularity contingency) particularity from the inside out. If I understand the uniqueness of an institution in terms of its difference from other institutions, this is only as a consequenceof a uniqueness from itself. It is basis institution's difference this the of a particular establishedon duration in internal immanence is that, the the of perception, relations of which Deleuze's philosophy, distribute perceiver and perceived.

Which is to say that expression, as a necessarypartiality constituted by chance is by limit. limit is important in This terms of always marked a not encounters, identity, nor even of constitution, but it is crucial as a point of fatigue, the point at which a specific singularity finds its power dissipating: not so much the end of a jurisdiction as its fading in an encounter with that which it is not. This is where `the institution' can be linked to Anti-Oedipus: how do institutions function in relation to their own limit? How do they imagine this beyond, this whole of being?4

Deleuze and Guattari distinguish three `historical' modes of arranging institutions, but it must be stressedthat these three modes only ever come into existence together, as the historical thought proper to capitalism. The first, the `primitive territorial machine,' I will not deal with here, as it is the other two that I want to use in order to clarify the structure of institutions, of perceptions, of the duality of being grounded and ungrounded, of being the same and different. SeveralRegimesof Signs.' I am not suggestingthat there is anything to be particularly valorised in the beyond: the outside is not a sourceof renewal if by this one meanssimply the transgressionof borders. To leave an institution is

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Hegel's has barbarian theorising `despotic The second machine' some similarity with by it but, image Right, in his Philosophy thought, exist cannot of as an the of state of itself. To suggest otherwise (that the state is enough to achieve the unification of the future, being is 1990)) (Pottage: in to to condemn an abstract particular the universal divorced from the vitalism of duration. It is, following Nietzsche, still too moral. Furthermore, to take note of a point that Deleuze and Guattari make generally (and despots): just about not

[S]ociety is not first of all a milieu for exchangewhere the essential would be to circulate or to causeto circulate, but rather a socius of inscription where the essentialthing is to mark and be marked. There is circulation only if inscription it. & Guattari: (Deleuze 1984,142) requires or permits

In this we can seethat what is rejected, in terms of being primary, is the word, in the 5 does sensethat one not enter the social via the exchange of things or of words, but through being marked first and foremost as a body and, as a consequence,as a problem of territory - that is as a problem of the imperceptible, of space and time. It is the problem of the distribution of perceptions that, as Deleuze and Guattari go on to explain, might enter into relation with issues of exchange on all sorts of levels but 6 for doing has been only once the territory so cleared.

not to enter into unmediated being, into the artistic life, into the feminine, but means simply to enter another institution, provided that one has the strength or ability to do so.

5As Pottage points out, for Hegel it is through both property and languagethat one enters the social. See(Pottage: 1998a;343-4). See their reference to Jacques Derrida, (Deleuze & Guattari, 1984,202-3).

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is despotic barbarian it is Hegel, machine premised So, unlike not so much that the from forcing inscription, the it is marking away of a particular upon as upon exchange & (Deleuze favour in writing bodies and territories, voice alignment of of an and of Guattari: 1984,202). However, my project is not to outline the problem of briefly but Guattari, by Deleuze developed to a quasipursue and as representation in is despotic The Hegel. that relation exists the one machine of ghost with encounter being limit function, basic the its limit this horizon that organising to an serves as or for beginning is it is Right, the in Philosophy As the that the state end and the of state. by Guattari by Deleuze barbarian despotic and the machine, a point made clear dream Urstaat. the to this as referring

However, before going on to consider how this Urstaat functions to arrange institutions and perceptions, it is necessaryto spend a little more time on the question is If (socius) the not characterised as a state social organisation of state generally. form, then what is it? It is, of course, society. In relation to both Hegel and Deleuze and Guattari, a useful analysis of this distinction between state and society is found in 7 Michael Hardt's The Withering of Civil Society.

Hardt describesHegel's schema as being (unsurprisingly) tripartite, involving relations between nature, civil society and the political state. It is this third term which is particularly significant and marks Hegel out from thinkers such as Hobbes, who understood civilisation merely as a process for the overcoming of nature. For Hegel there is an additional idealism inasmuch as man, and not merely nature, is also something to be overcome. For Hardt, following Hegel, it is man as labourer who

In (Kaufman & Heller: 1998)

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brute in free individual between the the the of a of nature state and stands for Hegel, State & Heller: (Kaufman 1998,25). Hardt that, explains universalising labour takes on a specific characteristic in the `between' of civil society, and is then distinguished from the `savage' and `uneducated' practices of self-production found in nature. The sublation of the brutish. involves a reorientation, a streamlining, so that labour ceasesto be separatedand isolated in terms of the needs it meets and begins to become `universal,' or geared towards a more progressive way of being (from labour) in is "educative to the an concrete abstract process whereby singular transformed into the universal by negation, by abandoning itself' (Kaufman & Heller: 1998,25). The importance of education also means that in civil society there is a much greater inter-relatedness between individuals as a consequenceof their more sophisticatedlabour practices.

Why is this not a good enough explanation? Why is it necessaryto go beyond civil society? Philosophically, we can respond in this way: civil society, by itself, is still too unsophisticated inasmuch as it really concerns only the production and circulation of things. It might, from the perspective of labour, be a more efficient way to exploit nature, yet it is still too tied to the limits set by nature itself: it makes man a more efficient brute, but it does not yet make him free. If we think about Hegel's concept of property, the mutual exchange of things is not enough to establish the free and ethical person - exchange must occur within the state, the latter acting as a kind of dialectical guarantor of those exchanges. All this so that man can realise what was

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he form by but him, was in the the state orientation without provided which, already 8 his best interests. to not able access:

It is only the state form, the political state, that can integrate the activities of men and Hardt life. As highest in their makes to mode a proper ethical enablethem achieve (nature, humanity is it society, state) not a question of making each stage of clear, disappear:as the dialectical process demands, each is subsumed in the other it For to to this say means what see are able yet preserved. reason, we and overcome that the state haunts society. As Hegel understood, and as Deleuze and Guattari it is just beginning, before there the the as nature, at very state was already agree, there at the very end, even after itself, in the strange suspension of time marked by his highest actually achieving potential: universal man

9 freedom.

Here we are on the verge of a false problem: the mysticism of the dialectic. A false because from it ideal the problem arises nature of the state and suggeststhat an end of history is not only achievable, but desirable. We should therefore turn directly to Deleuze and Guattari:

The State was not formed in progressive stages;it appearsfully armed, a master stroke executed all at once; the primordial Urstaat, the eternal model of everything the State wants to be and desires. (Deleuze & Guattari: 1984,217)

8 It is worth briefly noting here how this self-interest differs from that of Hume. With Hume selfinterest takes an immanent form inasmuch as it must be bent back upon itself in order to limit itself. Within the dialectical process, self-interest is exteriorised, meaning that it now comes from without, to inform man of what he did not otherwise know, and thereby make him capable of what he could not otherwise achieve. All of this is only on condition that the empiricism of what is to hand (at its best, understood as civil society) is overcome or sublated in the ideal of the state form. When Nietzsche speaksof the overcoming of man he should be considered closer to Hume than Hegel for the same reason: Nietzschean overcoming is not dependent upon the state form.

9 "The State,Hegel

says, is not the result but the cause..." (Kaufman & Heller: 1998,29)

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does Hegel, the not produce anything state In a manner that we can perhaps align with in Deleuze and Guattari's view, but is rather concerned with organisation and it it is there bureaucracy,seizing what already and organising - giving an orientation. Certainly for benefit the is the of man. However, we cannot say that this necessarily is from benefit is a particular perspective, eminently and, state concerned with it basis is is its it that However, that crucial and on own perpetuation utilitarian. it for is the life. The proper allots organising: arranging and a machine state organises Hardt in deserves. It the therefore to manner educates share each, and as each describes,taking hold of nature in order to transform it into civil society, giving the latter its proper destiny. In this the state already haunts itself, is already fearful of its becomes (late) that tendency tendency, capitalism. only apparent under a own

The specificity of the state as despotic barbarian machine is that it functions through `overcoding' (Deleuze & Guattari: 1984,199. See also 195-6). This refers to the stateoperating by taking what is already there, gathering up pre-existing modes of production, in order to restructure them to despotic functioning. In this sense,the statedoes not produce anything new, but draws off from what is already produced. What it draws off is a surplus, made possible through `education' and `interrelatedness.' However, such a surplus is not necessarily a profit (indeed, the despotic statecan be very wasteful in its operations, at least from the perspective of capitalist production): rather the surplus is predominantly symbolic.

However, to say that it is symbolic does not mean that we must understand the state as a linguistic structure: rather, the state involves an incorporation in the sensethat it

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it doing In into so (via itself production. of every aspect overcoding) incorporates it. due is to but by it, is that everything also that produced everything appearsnot only it think disciplines to of illusion the is that subject Precisely,the state a transcendental 1984, Guattari: & destiny (Deleuze both beginning the and source as end, and the as In 10 debt: infinite it brings the owing-owned. about the 194). Following Nietzsche, been has debtors: "... functioning its in implicated something as this manner, all are " (Deleuze life... judge it to life from that the possible make will earth and withdrawn & (Deleuze is judgement The wealth & Guattari: 1984,194). measure of this 11 Guattari: 1984,197).

DESPOTIC TENDENCIES OF THE INSTITUTION

There are a number of points to draw from this.

1) To say that the despotic state seizes on what already exists in order to bend it to its own desires, is not to suggest that there is some form of authentic or nondespot. Rather, `universal life the the to coming of mediated or existence prior '2 history' requires that the state was already there, even as a ghostly horizon. (Furthermore, as we shall see in the next chapter and the work of Marilyn 10In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari will explicitly link the despotic function to a linguistic organisation, one that depends upon the Phallus as the anchoring signifier through which all other signifiers are relayed. See (Deleuze & Guattari: 1988) Chapter Four `November 20,1923: Postulates of Linguistics' and Chapter Seven `Year Zero: Faciality. '

Seealso the distinction betweenproperty and wealth in (Pottage: 1990). This has also been touched UT!n abovein ChapterThree in terms of property and value. So that in the end one no longer really knows what comes first, and whether the territorial machine doesin fact presupposea despotic machine from which it extracts the bricks or that it segmentsin its turn" (Deleuze& Guattari: 1984,219).

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Strathern, to consider `primitive' functions as in someway transparent and incorrect). is unmediated utterly 2) The state is a dual tendency: on the one hand it organises production through however, functions its the integrating to on ends; own all such overcoding, disintegrations integration), (and of there the are also correlate of such as other disintegrations. by bringing Overcoding, these about productive practices. is This them. then achieved through the expulsion of certain overcode must (As dangerous, deemed inappropriate, harmful, that and so on. are practices Orwell made clear, the despot must have an enemy, a theme dramatised by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, in which the despot is '3 counterposedto the scapegoat). 3) Increasingly, the thing to be expulsed by the despotic state is its own tendency to overcode. Therefore the state is split between a current function that tends to incorporate persons and things and, at the same time, tends to disincorporate them so that "all that is solid melt[s] into air." This is the fatigue of the despot encountering the capitalist.

It is the second of these points that I want to use here to refer back to the institution. From the perspective of the despot the institution is a formation that organises perceptionson the basis of overcoding, and it is this aspect of the institution that stabilises,and thereby brings a specific character to, a particular collection of perceptions. It is that mode of perception that links the perceived/perceiver in networks of the same and the similar, of analogy, repetition and association. However, the specificity of the despotic institution is that all associations, all

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itself. despotic In they pertain all the or another sense state one analogies,proceed via despot despotic The and the to, causality upon seizes state. relevant all to, and are due is it the him: to if tomorrow, through the insiststhat all associations pass sun rises despot. the graceand generosity of

However, as we saw in the last chapter, the institution is not merely concerned with founding dependent is itself Such the upon a a perception the perception of same. difference, that of duration, that threatens to sweep the edifice of the despot away in a despotic becoming, becoming. In that to to torrent of and make sure order counter-act difference, difference be by itself is must rendered as the same. power not usurped This is achieved through expulsions - by making difference dependent upon the same, like those that are as and who not us, and who therefore stand as a threat understood and a danger. Difference is made to pass through the despot, to emerge as the enemy beyond. At this point, the outside takes on its greatest significance. From this point invoked on, whether negatively as something to fear or positively as something to is to, the aspire outside always an empty fetish.

The problem with this function of overcoding is that it can only have a limited lifespan. Indeed, from the very beginning, it is already breaking down. The reason for this is that as the despot attempts to perceive the whole of being, he attempts to renderthe imperceptible as a perception. But, in attempting to bring the whole of being into being (to express being in its entirety), he rushes towards his own dissolution. Even if it is in order to expel it, difference cannot be rendered

13This themeis also significant to Foucault of course, in his descriptions of pre-penal punishment. See Part 1 of (Foucault:1991).

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14 be It in to to the subtle a more play will up capitalist a manner. such expressively game.

CAPITALISTS

If the despotic state is a process of overcoding, then the capitalist state is a process of decoding. There is nothing inevitable about capitalism, but the fatigue of the despot be his inasmuch decoding involves the radical success, as can perhaps equated with judgement life: the the cost is that such speed of miniaturisation and acceleration of longer and reduction of process can no afford to pass through an overcoding centre. Decoding, as a distinct and separatefunction, causesthe inside and the outside to becomeindiscernible as a consequence. The reason for this, following Deleuze and Guattari, is that the capitalist formation enters into a never-ending series of relations with ever renewed internal limits. In this way institutions are not so much differentiated within the society/state, as stretched across its entirety while simultaneously reduced to the smallest range and application as processes of `normalisation.'

If the despot is a ruler, capitalism is a `normaliser. ' This is apparent from the work of Michel Foucault, in particular the series of lectures given the College de France at published in English as Abnormal. The novelty of Foucualt's work as this stage is the concernfor techniques of individualisation that revolve around the correction of 14On Deleuze's analysis, Nietzsche had already identified the folly of such nihilism. See Chapter Four

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has is that, abnormality The once ' to precisely capitalism connection `abnormalities. the of for than source once and religion, rather psychiatry becomea matter is delirium, instances everybody than linked is of to rather childhood abnormality 15 So 2003,304-5). too (Foucault: under to another or abnormal some extent is, to in that some terms: these but everybody accurately more perhaps capitalism, the For means normalisation capital, unprofitable. potentially another, or extent degree highest ' `error, the of to this ensure of correction wherever possible Foucault is, It for time. from as the of amount maximum person every profitability ' `Governmentality, lecture and his in convenience of translated a matter as says 2002). (Foucault: efficiency

Capital is a process for overcoming its own limit. It must overcome its own tendency is institution furthermore, falling the also a potential toward a rate of profit and, burdenbecauseit involves the articulation of a particular specificity. As a particular it has (a institution that, the while consistency) a viscosity arrangementof perceptions barrier despot, by be to capitalist production and the acts as a can usefully overcoded its institution is it Therefore, to the of specific necessary empty consumption. least its to to whomever will profit all, at characterand make perceptions applicable by them.16 This emptying is what Deleuze and Guattari mean by "decoding" (Deleuze & Guattari: 1984,222). Perceptions, production, institutions, no longer pass through a particular point in order to be either included or excluded: rather they merely have to be adjusted so that they might render the maximum wealth possible -

of (Deleuze:1996b),where Deleuze describeshow the desire for such wholeness,understood as a will to truth, is indistinguishable from the will to nothingness. 15See also at 58, where Foucualt talks of the `undecidability' of the status of abnormality. 16To return to Michael Hardt: "The State. Hegel says, is not the result but the cause;Foucault adds, not a transcendentbut an immanent cause,statization, immanent to the various channels, institutions, or enclosuresof social production." (Kaufman & Heller: 1998,29).

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to They is seek themselves. they that automatically adjust which of a requirement in the their some of name of specificity, themselves regardless profitable, render 'efficiency'. `convenience' they auto-normalising. are or mysterious ..

The by to I the the is the This what meant at reference algebra. chapter start of longer is institution as no or arrangement of a particular content or substance formula. is its it the that that of represents: significance significant as the value Deleuze and Guattari point out that this problem of value is nothing new (it exists long before capitalism appears),but in non-capitalist arrangements (specifically in despotic arrangements)value is itself a type of institutional perception, organised in distributes institutional the that to perceptions. also all of other relation a centre

17 The

triumph of capitalism is to make value immanent to all perceptions. The state form is 18 longer horizon: it is the no on everywhere.

THREE CHARACTERISTICS OF CAPITAL

To clarify, Deleuze and Guattari do not argue that capitalism is inevitable the despot did not have to fall. That he does is merely a matter of chance, of the right relations forming at the right time. The transition to the `civilised capitalist machine' involves the coming into relation, in the right way, of three specific characteristics:

1' Thus suggestingan answer to the question Deleuze and Guattari ask, following Braudel: "why Europe,why not China?" (Deleuze & Guattari: 1994,224). 18This correspondsto Hardt's analysis: "Not the State but civil society has withered away." (Kaufman & Heller: 1998,35)

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displaced. is The 1) concept of exchange for of the purposes to longer things that other each the case are related It is no `likedespotic of exchange For the an are model under wages example, exchange. for-like, ' even though the determination of this equalisation occurs through a despotic the (the money of value of guaranteeing state's specific power relation is levels). Under determination exchange capitalism, wage the of and in functions is finance. The that this money to point of significance subordinated (which for function it the purposes of exchange two ways: while continues to it basically occurs as the payment of wages and the purchasing of commodities), longer is finance. Exchange level functions as no of speculative a second on also `money for investment, the of use of money significant or as profitable as begetting money.' Thus money ceasesto have any quality (for example, via the decoded becoming link to and, as a consequence, a gold standard), symbolic is investment) brought into (through it is exchange or relation with everything that is Money & Guattari: 1984,226-231). decoded (Deleuze the actualisation of also the universal.

2) Emptied of any qualitative substance,money is a pure formalisation. The capitalist economy cannot function on the basis of codes: codes serve as institutional points of consistency or thickness, the sole purpose of which, under capital, is to be emptied out (decoded). However, to prevent a descent into absolute schizophrenia (in other words, to prevent the always doomed attempt to expressbeing in its entirety), the universal is regulated by the application of `axiomatics.' Axioms, as pure formalisations, arrange being on a temporary and profitable basis only: once the maximum profit has been drawn off, an axiom is

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dependent itself by that the of portion of upon specificity one, new a replaced being to now be emptied.

19 The consequence (as noted above) is that capitalism

its limit, but its own rather continuously encounters never reaches own absolute internal limits, which are neutralised and pushed back by the deployment of & Guattari: 1984,239). (Deleuze axioms

3) Axiomatisation is achieved through antiproduction. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the capitalist (unlike the merchant) doesn't horde, he invests. Indeed, hording and saving a profit is the same thing as making limits be displaced If to profit all. are perpetually so that capitalism might no at immanence be than transcendence, then achieve rather all profit must re-invested, to make sure that it only exists virtually and is never actualised. This is why consumption itself becomes productive and marks the point at which the individual corrects his or her behaviour in line with the normalisation of consumerism. At its simplest, antiproduction is the production of false needs: "Not only lack amid overabundance, but stupidity in the midst of knowledge and science" (Deleuze & Guattari: 1984,236).

THE CAPITALIST STATE

In a sensecapitalism is a kind of return to nature, of brutish and savage isolation, with eachpursing his or her own independent interest. It is a kind of free-for-all, but for

19For Deleuze and Guattari's explanation of axioms, see(Deleuze & Guattari: 1984,245-250).

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is intensely or than arrangement social other regulated any this very reason more field immanent it is have does the to This social a centre not regulation machine. itself, causing Michael Hardt to write that it is not the state that has withered away, if is the three 1998,35). However, & Kaufman: true (Heller this only but civil society the structure. social entire above, now permeate capital, outlined of characteristics kind becomes is that the This permeation called the state, meaning of a state dynamism under capitalism: "The capitalist State is the regulator of decoded flows as Guattari: & (Deleuze in insofar the they axiomatic of capital" are caught up as such, 1984,252). The capitalist state is the realisation of the dream of the despotic state, but only through the replacement of transcendenceby immanence. The fetishising of the end of history is eminently capitalistic in this sense,as it proceeds on the basis that the promised land has been reached and it will be `now' forever.

Within this context, the capitalist state is not concerned with distributing and mediating between various classesand competitive interests. Rather, it tends to encouragethe victory of the most cynical on the basis that "there is only one class, a classwith a universalist vocation, the bourgeoise" (Deleuze & Guattari: 1984,253). The meaning of capitalistic normalisation is that everybody should at least aspire to a kind of middle-classness, so long as this is understood to mean not a particular way to live or enjoy life, but rather as a specific structure of consumerism: the antiproductive 20 life.

Michael Hardt's analysis of Deleuze and Guattari is useful here: writing of the capitalist state in connection to Deleuze's description of societies of control, he

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he by means a which describessuch a state as one that tends towards anonymity, in kept is life. Civil of state a society of social to refusal particularise any one section it is in a as that, through retained the axiomatic manipulation, sense retardation Hardt formalisation writes: to the money. of capitalistic empty subject virtuality,

Elaborate controls over information flow, extensive use of polling and innovative techniques, social use of the media thus gain and monitoring functions Control in the the plane of on power. exertion of positions prominent the simulacra of society. The anonymity and whatevernessof the societies of & Heller: (Kaufman them their smooth surfaces. control are precisely what give 1998,32)

Under the capitalist state civil society is reduced to a `whateverness': anything is now for belief is long life lifestyle possible, any acceptable, so as one suspendssocial options and accumulates `experiences', the collection of which now define the successful(normalised) life.

CAPITALISTIC TENDENCIES OF THE INSTITUTION

Capitalism is extremely un-institutional, nevertheless it must retain an aspect of the institution: its form. Any perception can now be equated with any other perception, thanks to the decodings of (finance) money; however, we have already noted that capital does not go quite so far. It does not plunge into the death drive of an absolute 20"The bourgeois he the sets example, absorbssurplus value for ends that, taken as a whole, have

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in displaced but and presents a multiplicity rather of expressions always expression, by referenceto an internal limit. This limit is the form that is retained from the institution. Rather than view the limit of the institution as a mere consequence of its is limit institution, the that the the made very essence of as which enables singularity, by it. Under be the transgression to of capitalism something generated profit be by institutions `new' achieved can always simply undoing and allowing apparently flow 'free'. to perception

Capital taps into the immanent difference of the institution: rather than attempt to difference in despot, involves this the the the expulsion of manner of capitalism expel the specificity of expression (of the particularity of a given distribution of perceived in loose founding institution, to the the the very order and perceiver) set opennessof partiality of its expression. The state regulates these perceptions, subsuming all institutions within it, so that finally it is lived and experienced as the beginning and end of life as Hegel envisaged. From the village to the globe.

THE HISTORY OF PROPERTY

Under capitalistic control, property should not be thought of as centred on a `thing' (whether this is understood to involve the relation of owner and thing, or the relation of owners to a thing). Rather, it must be understood as a dynamism, a power. Under capitalism there is a certain clear sightedness, inasmuch as ownership of property gives way to the control of the power to define and locate property (for example, the

nothingto do with his own enjoyment... " (Deleuze & Guattari: 1984,254)

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from follows This if it function information as property21). were to make attempt investment it is Guattari the Deleuze of power capitalist money: about say and what invested is in defines property, not the specific terms of what actually that in a sense immanentisation is investing itself. Investment the of but in the of process very rather 22 is This immanentisation the of property. say might we consequence as a and money but its longer is terms, to external an empirical reversal: the relation of association no is inside. It from linked the internal, is that value all perceptions are now so rather but (actual) linkage as exchange value that makes this possible, understood not as (virtual) control value: everything is the same and all associations are possible, 23 regardlessof experience.

However, we must be careful: from the perspective of a universal history, the distinction between material and immaterial property is a false one. Any regime that involves value is dealing in immaterial property. In other words it is dealing with a disciplining, the and control of those rule, whole nexus of perceptions and been immanent: has has In tied to the this always what perceptions. senseproperty changedis how this fact is made use of in relation to property itself.

Alain Pottage has most clearly demonstrated this in relation to English property law and in so doing has constantly disrupted the more `traditional' attempts to theorise 21See (Lessig: 2002).

22This function finance of might resolve Hume's problem with regard to the ownership of the abandonedcity - it is simply a matter of investment, not in order to identify the proper owner, but to allow us to think of the city as potentially ownable in the first place. It is this potential that investment is concernedwith, inasmuch as it relates to specific practices rather than particular `things.'

`3 Equally

we might think of the last words of Hassan I Sabbah, often quoted by William S Burroughs: "Nothing is true, everything is permitted. " In this sense, investment is important as a type of belief, but a belief set free from the confines of Humean experience, and also quite at odds with the highly moral character of Burroughs' usage. Unrestricted (that is overcoming its limits) belief is able to believe in anything at all. This delirium is rendered profitable through the axiomatisations of insurance and risk.

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24 describes Pottage's being thing. work some specific category about of as property him by is ' `property to be that termed shown effect, meaning a property what might be the consequenceof a series of interrelations or strategies that unfold across a whole for least (at institutions time) a category of a productive and perceptions, of range be in highly functions `property' that a contingent manner, and certainly cannot being, by tendency recurring a and universally, properly as any positivist extrapolated proprietary thing.

25 A loose trilogy of papers by Pottage are useful in relation to this. The Measure of Land locates a property effect at a knot formed of various strands: family land local use, contract, methods of memory, social stratification, arrangements, description, and map making. It is not so much that the thing `property' is transformedby these relations, but rather that the property effect thereby produced is in some sensesingular and unique. Pottage is concerned to demonstrate the fallacy of being in legal the thinking that simply variations on a conceives variations property as a theme behind which an essenceendures. The specificity of property effects suggests,on the contrary, that there is only a universal variation of property lacking any (historical) constant whatsoever.

For example, the use of maps as descriptors of land for conveyancing purposes does not seemunusual from a contemporary perspective (Pottage: 1994,374), but Pottage showshow this only became possible as a consequenceof the right conditions arising is The from land that to process of as a abstraction matter of contingency. map was See,for example, the contributions of F Ewald, I Hacking and J Donzelot to (Burchell, Gordon & Miller: 1991) 24Seefor books by J. W. Harris Pottage's of and J.E. Penner in (Pottage: 1998a) review example,

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in through tendency property which capitalistic or quasi a nascent of parcel part and been: it had from different into what land was transformed something quite

To be more specific, land was rediscovered through the estate map as a form of interpreted drawn in as topography and and notation were thematic map, which indicators of the economic potential of the estate. This way of seeing topography in economic terms may to some extent be explicable in terms of the origins of the 1994,371) (Pottage: estatemap.

This highlights the concept of universal history developed by Deleuze and Guattari, inasmuchas it is impossible to tell which came first: the land, the map of the land, or the economic evaluation enabled by the map. It is only after the event (of capitalism) that it becomespossible to talk of an inevitable and necessary line of

26 development.

In re-problematising the orders of land, map, and value, it is necessary for Pottage to inter-relationship This his to the throughout trilogy, and contract. return, of property is because,in adopting a dynamic approach to the understanding of property, he must determine how ownership and the transfer of ownership interact by exploring, for example, how the map facilitates ownership and/or transfer:

Ownership can be treated as a purely `formal' attribute - freed from the intricacies of the local market - only if `land' is effectively reduced to `paper.' (Pottage: 1994,383)

u The Measure Originality Registration The 1994), (Pottage: 1995), Land (Pottage: of and of Proprietary Strategies: The Legal Fabric of Aristocratic Settlements (Pottage: 1998b).

26Again, Pottage's is here Harris (Pottage: 1998a). Penner relevant and review of

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from distinct be that treated as especially It is a matter of an effect of property cannot (amongst in the practices of contracting and conveyancing the problems encountered from different As Pottage `formal' here is a shows, a no attribute other things). `fictitious' one, but it is precisely this fiction that produces the effect which itself goes it is how is dealt `property' In influence this to a matter of with. specific example on least devolution (showing title) the or at of good correspond, problem making inventory description (now the problem of understood as an economic resonate,with but land) 1994,383). is (Pottage: This theme the a new way of not a variation on a of doing business, "to facilitate an entirely new way of dealing in titles" (Pottage: 1994, 375).

This theme is carried further in The Originality

here introduction Registration: the of

by (produced title the practices of of registration of replaces one property effect conveyancing) with another (the administrative function of the land registry27). This from shift one effect to another is all the more interesting becausePottage suggests that, in terms of the practices of conveyancing common before the introduction of the land register, nothing was particularly problematic or in need of fixing: those practices worked well enough for the purposes to which they applied. However, the story usually recounted in law schools today (at least those that recognise the significance of the introduction of registration), tends to describe the great difficulty and uncertainty involved in proving root of title, and the potential disruption of the enjoyment of legal title by equitable interests protected by notice. On the contrary, Pottagesuggeststhat these were not inevitably great problems in practice. 28 In which

27Pottagehighlights the use of postal searchesas being particularly significant here. See (Pottage: 1995,377). 28(Pottage: 1995,385): "it is important not to exaggeratethe problems causedby the fact that one could never achieve 'complete' theoretical proof. " As Pottage makesclear, the theoretical difficulty

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like leads 1925 is it that to the the which, events events of scheme contingency case for involved the scale of abstraction property exploitation, an economic mapmaking, fact. the of which would only make senseafter

Pottagegives particular emphasis to the insurance function of the registry: insurance by `mirror', the the which to means an accurate reflection of register as acts guarantee between `old' by identifies decisive Pottage held the shift a and whom. property was function insurance `new' the that the the to served: extent property effect and

foundation for titles. The latter had no justification or support other as a new ... than the authority of the register and the warranty offered by public indemnity. Property was no longer grounded in a practice of `social mnemonics' - the rich but in (Pottage: administrative practice. medium of practical social memory 1995,386)

It is possible to see in this new administrative practice a clearing of the ground for the investment function of money29and, from such a perspective, it would seem that the risk of land as investment was sufficiently noticeable that the state was prepared to offer some safe-guard by shifting from private protection to public (Pottage: 1995, 387). In which case, the insurance function of the register could be viewed as a particularly successful axiom for decoding (and thereby constituting) the flow of landmoney. This is a decoding of the specificity of each piece of land so as to render a universal standard (i. e. an axiom) by which any one piece is comparable to any other

could be overcome in practice by recourse to contract as a means for the parties concerned to create "their own criteria of validity. " It was the nexus of contract and conveyancing (and everything that supported them in terms of local knowledge, etc. ) that was productive of the property effect.

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(Pottage: 1995,389), so that, by abstracting land as a series of quantities, the insuranceand investment risks of any one piece could

30 be determined. One could

in basis (or believe the the then not) odds, on of the accretion and repetition of the land registry's administrative practice.

Registration of title enabled new practices of land use (that is, economic exploitation) basednot upon the particular land's integration into a specific locality and history, but 31 basis it Therefore, the process of the statistical of a analysis of what could yield . on decoding but itself, `thing' the also of the previous not only of registration enabled a integration of that `thing' within a particular place. "The rich medium of practical formal (Pottage: 1995,386) axioms so as to memory" was emptied via purely social

make social memory as productive as possible (even if this meant `antiproducing' them), making them resonate with a whole flux of desires and investments that, prior to capitalisation, would have had very little in common with such social memory. Again, we are reminded of Hardt's point that it is civil society that withers away. Under registration each piece of land is almost entirely given over to the requirements of the capitalist state; requirements that are both tactical and logistic.

The significance of Pottage's third paper, Proprietary Strategies: The Legal Fabric of

Aristocratic Settlements, is to show how land use has always been implicated in a whole range of differing practices and to suggest how property, as effect, is not 29Pottage is careful to point out that insurance of the land register is not quite the same thing as insurance practices more generally, describing the registry as operating the fund with a "very crudely p°ragmaticsense." (Pottage: 1995,386) Although it must be stressed that this aspect of registration, by itself, would not be enough to make land `capitalistic. ' Rather, it is only in the context of a whole range of society-wide transformations and relations (i. e. contingencies) that land would cease to be a matter of codes to become a problem of axiomatics. What Pottage's paper shows us is the effect of such changes - precisely, a novel property effect. 31See I Hacking How Should We Do the History of Statistics? in (Burchell, et al: 1991)

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the history is, but English with co-extensive rather, of to period particular any unique landed Even itself. the was the estates of apparent certainty property very concept of diverging by cannot which fact strategies, and in of uses range a whole criss-crossed 32 be harmonised around a particular constant.

Thus, in the context of the rules for interpreting contracts to settle, Pottage writes,

be because indeterminate, they applied or might themselves the rules not were .. basic because but in different their stuff or substanceconsisted ways, obstructed in a liquid principle of practical, strategic, logic. (Pottage: 1998b, 175)

And again, in regard to the payment of portions,

Outside court, the payment of a portion was negotiated according to practical, inter-family, understandingsand performances of settlements; inside the fabric into legal judges import to the the tried same of understandings courtroom, doctrine. Of themselves,legal forms and structures generated no clear answer to the question of enforcement. (Pottage: 1998b, 180; my emphasis)

All of which indicates that property has to be grasped as a question of enforcement, so long as enforcement is not understood as the reduction to a specific concept (such as the right to exclude), but rather grasped as a highly specific problem within particular family relations and judicial interpretations. If themes recur it is on the basis of how the particular problems of property are distributed throughout a society, rather than as an attempt to impose a universal law or rule in that society. In other words, it is the The particular constant in relation to this paper is a specific feminist critique of the strict settlement

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is Pottage is determines the effect of a rule, which why that distribution of perceptions be institution If in regardless closed, this cannot talk an context. to strategy of so right for is longevity with there then manoeuvre its room always status, and apparent of it. distributions of perceived and perceiver within regardto the

despotic The is institution, in This is not to say that, any given anything possible. disrupt difficult it incredibly the institutions to of order make would of arrangement despot, fall history, in tells the the us tracing of universal nevertheless, perceptionsbe Pottage the I impossible. that, is it to within even arguing that understand not interpretation (in the this and of rules case confines of patriarchy, perceptions interpretation of rules) could be manipulated in various ways, depending upon the juridical, (familial, institutional the geographical, arrangements particular opennessof found ) oneself etc. one

33 in.

What this clarifies is that, from the institutional perspective, the machinic despotic Guattari designated by Deleuze as and capitalistic are arrangements and themselvesmeta-perceptions: they are not additional institutions, but purely abstract 34 from institutions. They their effect arrangementsof gain no particular substance or content but from the formal arrangement of institutions, and they serve as metaperceptionsin relation to what an institution is capable of: under despotism, the perception of institutions as overcodable; under capitalism, the perception of institutions as decodable. Civil society is, then, the particularity of the collection of as being primarily concerned to prevent property coming into female hands through succession. 33Particularly important here is the juridical fiction of settlor's intention. This enabled judge's to develop a number of open-ended techniques for the interpretation of settlement documents. (Pottage: 998b, 180-1).

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institutions is these the are the institutions, while meta-perception of what state despotism) (understood Within at endures space strategic as a patriarchy of. capable finally laws denies to heart that any attempt of the most specific rules and the very locate a particular set of practices as being inherently and consistently proprietorial. Even though the despot comes from without and overcodes, nevertheless he cannot Rather, be force this a constant state of war. alone, as would rely on the exercise of he he if is despot that to must constantly rule, meaning the must exercise power 35 This is strategy. convince us.

CLAIMS AND APPEALS

An appeal is a consequenceof the deployment of a particular power. A claim is not but deployment the production of a new arrangement, the concernedwith of a power including the resulting creation of a new power. In this sensethey can both be related to duration in that an appeal refers to a memory of the past in order to prove its validity, while a claim refers to the creative aspect of the future in order to assert its actualisation (with consequential re-distributions of the past in general). The appeal is a solution, but the claim is the problematic creation of a field of solutions.

The despotic machine tends to base its power upon the past combined with the present as a strategy for expelling the creativity of the future, and thus erects an image of

'' In this sense,despotism and capitalism are diagrams for the exercise of power. In the former case, the diagram tends toward a transcendental position, in the latter toward (non)positions of immanence. See Hardt in (Kaufman & Heller: 1998,31). 's For example, G Burchell Peculiar Interests: Civil Society and Governing 'the System of Natural Liberty' in (Burchell, et al: 1991,119)

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future is into in transformed the an eternal present that also subsumes thought which 36 How is a claim made in such circumstances? the past.

First, a claim can be made within the context of a single institution: becausethe institution is nothing but a collection of specific perceptions (understood as both has is difference immanent the potential that there always an perceivedand perceiver) is institution Within be there the to activated via a potential assertion of a claim. an for the redistribution of certain of its perceptions, allowing for the generation of new basis be Second, the of the claims may made on perceptionsas a consequence. between institutions, bringing into them certain a new consequently relationship function did before. despotic Such is that to the not exist relation a claim much closer itself, in the sensethat it acts as a centre for a new arrangement of institutional relations.

In practice, it is difficult to imagine how one of these processesof claiming could be madewithout the other: even within a solitary institution the assertion of a new order of perception, however small, is likely to be influenced by (and in turn influence) a whole range of factors coming from outside the institution itself. We need only to refer back to Pottage's work to get a senseof this. In terms of land as property, the property effect he describes is the consequenceof a whole range of institutional penetrationswhich form an entirely new claim - that is, an unfounded assertion that, through contingency, is able to produce a new perception or range of perceptions. 37

36As Deleuze and Guattari show, the despotic state founds itself upon an origin myth that has been recreated in the present, either as the arrival in the promised land (and therefore the requirement to protect and purge it), or the promise of such an arrival (with much the same consequence! ) (Deleuze &

Guattari: 1984,219). 37As I noted in the previous chapter, a claim need not be successful. It is enough that a claim is recognisedas giving rise to a new problem - what we night consider a non-vexatious claim in law in -

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it but inasmuch it can kind is perceptions, as arranges of meta-perception, The claim a in its function to beyond new perceptions. this produce entirely potential go

in does just is that not and However, to the extent that a re-arrangement of perceptions in but in terms think of a claim itself give rise to new perceptions, we should not implementation is `proper' In the the of already this appeal sense terms of an appeal. is itself, being Rather the than a appeal generative and practices. rules existing If to the a claim. a consequenceor reaction consequenceor reaction - precisely, is being the in present the within effectively undecidable of asserted process claim is `conclusion' that to to the generates new past rise a give of claiming circumstances, is We be discovered. the the that then to appeal say might a whole set of solutions 38 transformation of a claim from a pure form of law to a specific content.

In any casethe claim and the appeal, although distinguishable, appear together, institution described in We duality the the the can reflecting previous chapter. of hypothesisethat the despotic state would stressthe appeal as the most stable aspect of the institution, in the sensethat it merely discovers solutions. Nevertheless, if the despotovercodes institutions this is only becausethe institution is never a complete whole and is always generatedthrough immanent difference. It is this difference that enablesthe overcoding of the institution, by providing an opennessthat can be exploited by the despot. But this exploitation, based as it is upon the ungrounded, meansthat the despot himself must make claims, although, through discipline, he is

order for it to be valid as such. The success (or otherwise) of the claim has consequences for the specific social arrangement, but this is in terms other than itself. In such circumstances, it is a matter of apeal. On this point, see DW Smith The Place of Ethics in Deleuze's Philosophy: Three Questions of lifmanence, in (Kaufman & Heller: 1998,255-6).

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his into to own through appeals as and appeals often transform claims such ableto power.

This is also why repression is fundamental to despotism: the attempt to actualise The being. is its in the the being partiality of repression of entirety simultaneously despoticappeal is made in regard to essences,the ideal of identity as a specific set of despot describe Guattari Deleuze the and perceptionsthat remain stable and closed. by but, he because `essences' repression, victimised everywhere sees as a paranoiac he can only ever provisionally determine whether these essential institutions are friend or foe. Despotic overcoding is always a process that seeksto bring an end to if dynamism. Rather (although this than always occurs, even strategy processand behind the throne), the despot prefers the illusion of `things,' meaning that he prefers instability identity. He the of things universal, self-same would rather not consider becausethis suggestsnot only the instability of his own position, but more broadly the 39 instability itself. the very of state

CLAIMS AND AXIOMS

39This brings back Hegel: to the dialectic is a particular solution to the problem of state instability, us onethat attemptsto stabilise the stateby degrading movement-duration to a secondorder occurrence determinedby the abstractmovement of synthesis,or freedom actualising itself. The dialectic is

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is despot, by the the despotic made when even claim, arrangements In the context of institutions in incomplete is is It the what of use strategic strategy. of matter a always involves for risk, this always strategy reason and claim, that a enables andperceptions 40 Capitalism hope. be operates that with equated cannot uncertainty unavoidable an Landa's De Manuel following in however: one which, in quite a different way bleeding the out think as capital of can we technologies war, the of of analysis double-headed into it of both problem transforming a ends, strategyof the claim at deal 41 because to tends with it is First, capital tactical logistics. problem a tactics and becomes Deleuze (as perpetually maintains) power finer and finer distinctions so that 42 is field, that claim the any consequence the with entire social modulatedacross in In instance this a rise sees immediate capital sense, application. to of restricted an its in is own fall in of need but and exceptional now case appeals: each a claims, but ' final `decision, it is indeed, can to any require unlikely specific arrangementDeleuze As basis hoc and to manipulation. axiomatic subject on an ad proceed Guattari point out again and again, crisis is not a problem for the capitalist machine. This miniaturisation of arrangements,from discipline to control, marks a shift away from strategic deployments to tactical ones.

Second,the extension of capitalism across the whole field of operations through by (and helps the to people replacing exclude civil society proceduresof modulation43

therefore a repressive strategy, one that functions through the exchange of `things' but only to achieve

the transcendentaleffect of recognition. In this senserecognition can be equatedto overcoding.

40For the in failure it involves `strength' is hope the sense that one appeals to of that a reason reactive involves in its The a superior (and passive) something external to oneself. very undecidiability, claim, strength, generated out of itself. 41

(De Landa: 1991.57 et seq.)

42Postscript 1995) in (Deleuze: Control Societies on 43On the for Our Requiem Prospective in Dead B Massumi (Kaufman & modulation of power see also Heller: 1998,57-9)

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44 is At the institutions) this the with a with population. concerned point state their the as constant modulation of an ever varying understood population a careof despotic ' Unlike `knowledge. the that state, encountered people and statistical institutions as specific formations to be either incorporated or excluded, the capitalist distribution `resources' is the the statistical across concerned with of ultimately state is logistical is for in its It the this claim a reason entirety. enterprise, and population field: it function in the entire must relation to this state wide also maximised across deployment. Capitalism logistics the tactical as well as minimal spacesof problem of is the immanence of tactics and logistics.

Capitalism therefore favours the disruptions of the claim over the appeal, but only becauseit is able to absorb such disruptions axiomatically and thereby (re)arrange them as instancesof antiproduction. It constantly (re)invents the same problem, 45 by disrupting the past in general; claiming to bring an end to history; and proceeding harnessingthe future in a reduced form. Rather than the full transformative potential of the future (posited as schizophrenia within the capitalist regime), the future is 46 by insurance. Even more, reduced means of risk assessmentand methodologies of in terms of the trading of derivatives, it reduces this aspect of duration to a particularly antiproductive commodity. As a consequence,one can no longer follow Nietzschein talking of a commitment to the future. Capitalism is grounded upon the

'''; See Governmentality in (Foucault: 2002) 15That is, it dams the qualitative power of the past (Deleuze's second passive synthesis of time), and usesits force to generate currents of nostalgia and sentiment. We might term this the commodity form of memory. It is then also disruptive of Hume's associationism because associations are no longer formed through the encounter of particular impressions. Instead, associations are broken (de-coded) and then arranged axiomatically, meaning that they are internally linked through value. It is this axiomatic process that provides a `new' associationsim. Just as associationism is a process of production, this anti-associationism is a process of anti-production. 46See the contributions of Ewald, Hacking, and Donzelot to (Burchell et al: 1991)

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future, (re)assessment the necessary the tactical-logistical modulations and of constant it. to neutralise

THE COEXISTENCE OF THE DESPOT AND THE CAPITALIST

Deleuzeand Guattari situate a third social machine `before' the despot, which I have hardest is This far to the territorial the machine machine. primitive examined: not so deal with becauseit tends to be marked by a high degree of specificity from society to be institutions interaction the cannot really of primitive society and, as a consequence, difficult do described is in It to therefore very any general way. meaningfully history in `first' to this machine, and we will see some of this relation universal difficulty in the next chapter when we encounter the work of anthropologist Marilyn Strathern. What we can say however, is that from the perspective of capital, such societiesare properly labelled as `primitive', becausethey have not formed a full and proper relationship to the universal and even arrange themselves against the 47 emergenceof the state.

The point that needsto be stressedis that universal history is not a linear causality of temporal causeand effect, but rather a matter of inter-relations that cut across the ' This is the position of Pierre Clastres for example, whose work is used by Deleuze and Guattari. See (Clastres: 1987). To the extent that resistance to the state form is a transcendental principle common to 'primitive' societies, it must be the case that such societies are being understood retroactively from the perspective of universal history. This is why they can still be creative of non-state effects even after being subsumed within the state form. Paradoxically, their transcendentalism takes on aspects of immanence in relation to the state because they focus entirely upon the production of specific institutional arrangements unrelated to the workings of the state itself. See Deleuze and Guattari's development of such 'nomadic war machines' in (Deleuze & Guattari: 1988), in chapter 12 `1227: Treatise on Nomadology ' The War Machine. -

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despotic does it is If this that no not mean contains capitalistic a society present. functions or primitive functions. Similarly, if it is despotic it will still contain functions from the other machines. In as far as a society is marked as being one rather is is in it by terms this able to of a superior power only which than another, dominate destroying them. the tendencies other without necessarily successfully Universal history, as the history of capital, is a kind of virtual co-existence of all that is describe but its has been, before: to purpose not rather to map what actually went the potentials of critique and resistance. As Daniel W. Smith has written of despots, capitalists and nomads: primitives,

None of these formations exists in a pure form; each type simply seeksto mark out the consistency of a concept and is valid only to the degree that it provides a for tool critical analyzing concrete assemblagesand modes of existence, which by definition are mixed statesrequiring a `microanalysis' of the synthesesand lines they actualize. (Kaufman & Heller: 1998,261)

That no single regime is ever able to appear by itself follows from the difference of being, from immanence. In order to pursue this line, and to understand how capital producesand distributes property effects, it is useful to turn to the recent work of Hardt and Negri and their uses of, and resonanceswith, Deleuze and Guattari.

PROPERTIES OF CONTROL

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Hardt and Negri use the term multitude to describe the productive capacities of human life: it is not the case that human life possessesa capacity for production, but rather humanlife is co-extensive with this capacity, so that there is no distinction between humanlife and its productive activity. Here, there is a clear correspondence with 48 Deleuze's concept of immanence, which marks the common interest that both 49 have in Spinoza. 1 understand the multitude to be nothing but the Deleuzeand Negri it is process, movement, and the creative autoproduction of perceptions: differentiations of duration. It is the imperceptible or the inhuman expressivity of being that makes human understanding possible.

In terms of the despot, the multitude would be the productive capacity that is 50 overcoded,while, under capitalism, it is the productive capacity that is decoded. The axiomatic process of decoding is the inverse of the multitude itself, which is

termed `empire' by Hardt and Negri. Both despotism and capitalism are marked by their different relations to the multitude: indeed, without the multitude neither arrangementcould exist. Contra Hegel, it is the case that such labour capacity does not require the state form to realise its `true' nature or potential but, instead, the state form is that which separateslabour from itself, in the Spinozist senseof separating a body from what it can do: of making a body incapable of promising. 5'

In Hardt and Negri's analysis, contemporary global capitalism has to be understood in terms of its relation to the multitude, which is marked by a constantly modulated 48As well as Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the body without organs. 49See(Montag: 1999) 50This is be between loose linked Foucault's by Hardt Marx, that to can considered relation also a so theoryof discipline, Deleuze and Guattari's despotism, and Marx's formal subsumption of labour. Similarly, societies of control resonatewith the civilised capitalist machine, and the real subsumption of labour (Kaufman & Heller: 1998,33).

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directly line logistics In that tactics to with are and relevant effects. property of range links be Negri Hardt that to citizenship can and property, the tradition of statecraft detailing inextricably that tied to the set of effects a property are empiric as read decodingof multitudinal production.

The tactical-logistic adjustments of the multitude is termed `control' by Hardt and Negri, which comes from Deleuze's reading52of the later works of Foucault, the 53 importance of which has been somewhat elusive for the English reader. Hardt and Negri describe their usage of the term in this passage:

in which We should understand the society of control that society as ... ... mechanismsof command become ever more `democratic,' ever more immanent to the social field, distributed throughout the brains and bodies of the citizens. The behaviours of social integration and exclusion proper to rule are thus increasingly interiorized within the subjects themselves. Power is now exercised bodies through machines that directly organize the brains toward and a ... ... stateof autonomous alienation from the senseof life and the desire for creativity. (Hardt & Negri: 2001,23)

We encounteredthis before in terms of modulation. In order to clarify this term, as well as Hardt and Negri's description of control, I will highlight four aspects of their work which are, I shall argue, constitutive of a property effect of control. 51See above at p 108 et seq.

52Postscript on Control Societies in (Deleuze: 1995). Although Deleuze traces the term `control' back to the writer William S Burroughs. See Having an Idea on Cinema in (Kaufman & Heller: 1998,17), and also (Burroughs: 1979). 53Important texts by Foucault in translation that touch upon this theme are contained in Power: The Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984 Volume 3 (Foucault: 2002), Abnormal (Foucault: 2003), `Society Must Be Defended' (Foucault: 2003b), Technologies of the Self (Martin et al: 1988), Fearless

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1) Biopower. A term obviously derived from Foucault, Hardt and Negri deploy it in indicate different deployment to the tactical-logistical through way54 of power a quite dealt it is level. In with on a micro particular, which questions of population are life. individual her in his the the profitability of or every aspect of concernedwith Becausethe core of the capitalist machine is antiproduction, the profitable individual is not necessarily a worker (it is not the factory model of discipline), but rather the determined by is individual a set of relations concerned with the profitable he is his her the or or she capable affects - precisely control of what normalisation of highest function life is invest feeling: "The through and through, this to of power of 55 is life. 2001,24). " (Hardt & Negri: its task to administer and primary

Hardt and Negri link the possibilities of biopower to communication technologies: the field is the achieved through the use of all modulation of control across entire social fact is The that this often mass media, used to media as a process of normalisation. highlights functions highly achieve of control on a micro-level, specific and unique the tactical-logistic nature of control. They write:

The political synthesis of social spaceis fixed in the spaceof communication. This is why communications industries have assumedsuch a central position. They not only organize production on a new scale and impose a new structure immanent. justification Power, it its but to as adequate global space, also make

Speech(Foucault: 2001), The Hermeneutics of the Subject (Foucault: 2005). Also important is the collection (Burchell et al: 1991). saFor Citizenship Biological &C Novas N Rose their at a critique of use, see http://www. lse.ac.uk/collections/sociology/pdf/RoseandNovasBiologicalCitizenship2002. pdf 55In other words, control is control of the perceivable.

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produces, organizes; as it organizes, it speaks and expresses itself as authority. (Hardt & Negri: 2001,30)

2) Intervention. Because there is no longer a centre as there was under the despotic following from the previous point, the exercise of control is its own regime and, legitimation. There is no external reference or symbolic authority to ground control, which is why the appeal tends to become redundant under control. Modulation, is the speed as at which control exercised and the specificity of its understood is is, ' by (Reason `reasoning that there means no possibility of application, analogy. 56 by the reasonable). For the sake of `convenience' and anyway, replaced `efficiency, ' control is always in the form of an adjustment. Control does not rule or discipline: it simply intervenes (Hardt & Negri: 2001,35) through the creation and deployment of axioms.

3) Exception. The intervention of control is always exceptional: it is ungrounded, and therefore akin to the claim. However, it diverges from the claim to the extent that it does not involve a true, Nietzschean risk, in that it refuses to take responsibility for the unforeseeable, and instead subjects the unforeseeable to risk analysis and insurance. This is another aspect of the previous point: control is auto-legitimating,

is this the natureof its exception. It is the exceptionof the internal limit of and

56Modulation is the process by which life is organised on the basis of perceptions that are too small to form an adequate impression in the mind of an individual. Again, we see how control goes beyond human understanding as this is understood by Hume - see Chapter Three above in order to become a matter of affects. This increased speed and specificity by which control is deployed is at the heart of Virilio's critique of the anti-human consequences of militarised communications technologies. For example, see (Virilio: 1986).

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its is limit. In the true this the of exception external appeal sense, capitalism, and not 57 itself. by (Hardt & Negri: 2001,38-41) limited to an appeal control to

4) Immaterial Labour. Immaterial labour is perhaps the most problematic concept Negri's Without into detail Hardt in the the work. going and of some of cogent used 58 have been it, 1 describe this to that of understand made concept a criticisms dominant tendency within capitalist states in terms of the organisation of labour: it by individual bodies the their the which productive capacities and process of marks i. made efficient and convenient; e. normalised. affects are

Hardt and Negri describe three types of immaterial labour (Hardt & Negri: 2001, 293). First, and most controversially, the increasing immaterialisation of material labour (specifically agriculture and manufacture), achieved by linking such labour `informatization' tend to to that organise material production processesof aroundever finer regimes of control-59 Second, the production, manipulation and circulation of information itself. Third, the "production and manipulation of affect", including both caring and therapeutic work, as well as entertainment. The significance of these three types of labour is, as Hardt and Negri point out, that they dependupon co-operation and communication. More exactly, rather than producing a commodity to be distributed, the production of the commodity is "completely immanentto the laboring activity itself' (Hardt & Negri: 2001,294). It is the

57In this sensethe true exception would be that of the nomadic war machine. For a different perspectiveon the exception, see (Agamben: 2005) g See for

example N Dyer-Witheford Cyber-Negri: General Intellect and Immaterial Labour and K Surin `Now Everything Must be Reinvented': Negri and Revolution both in (Murphy & Mustapha: More 2005). (Boron: generally see 2005).

59For a specific example seeHardt and Negri's discussion of the genetic ownership of seedsin (Hardt & Negri: 2004,112-3).

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is in the that the the of co-operation of networks and use sense commodity production being generative of value. of

Theseare not four separatephenomena, but rather four different expressions of tactical-logistic modulation which together constitute property effects of control. Under such circumstances property has to be considered as a non-unified process of 60 keeps diversification that the `thing' owned in a state of non-determination. Nondetermination is significant because it captures the core difference between despotic despot If is those the and of effects capitalism. concerned to repress the property (via constitutive of a property effect overcoding), with the consequencethat processes least (at theoretically) to be a stable thing, then control moves in the property appears direction. To the extent that a property effect appearsto be a thing, it is of opposite little value to capital: it might be exchangeable, but it is not yet properly investable. It be broken must open (decoded) so that the processual effect can be revealed, not to actualisethe process in a different way, but to keep it `virtualised' in a state of imperceptibility.

This imperceptibility

is specific to the `thing' (institutional

assemblage)in question, meaning it is a tactical issue. However, becausethe `thing' is virtualised, it is also a logistical issue (a `whatever' thing), the effect of which is linked to the statistical spread of population control. It is a matter of the generation and distribution of value, not as a consequenceof exchange, but rather as a consequenceof investment and capitalistic delirium (anti-associationism).

60Massumi's description is here: "The object of capitalist power does not of non-determination useful pre-exist the exercise of that power. Productive power is exercised on points of indeterminancy: on molecules of genericness fusing singular atoms of sociality in an unstable primal soup of power. The figures are determined enough to be perceived and to attract the attention of autonomic apparatuses of power. But they are not determined enough to fall unambiguously into an already codified procedural

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despotism between between difference and capitalistic control, and strategy and The is is difference intensity. Capitalism from in the this a perspective tactical-logistics, despotic the tendencies the of quasi-capitalistic within proliferation of consequence is is that threshold body until such a concentration reached a crossed, and the is The and miniaturisation established. consequent meta-perception capitalistic difference is in (the Hardt's the the state analysis) ubiquity of expansivenessof power betweendespotism and capitalism, as well as the difference between discipline and control.

If a property effect can be stabilised within despotism this is due to the particular keep institutions they though that, open the possibility of strategic even ordering of in manipulation, are embedded such arrangements and networks that any such is Through is the to apparently process overcoding strategy still subject overcoding. is despot, this the stabilisation a consequenceof power's and stabilisedaround implication in what Pottage refers to as `the rich medium of practical social memory. ' This social memory is an institutional complex that is able to find solutions that tend to resembleeach other. The space of strategy opened up through the technologies of resemblanceand analogy61is utterly transformed under the new problem of capitalism. Mirroring Hardt, it is this social memory that withers away under for foundation that the the considering property effects capitalism with consequence or political category. They are unqualified, nonspecified. They are not yet determinations, but determinabilities. " (Kaufman & Heller: 1998,54). 61This in legal be terms First, of understood, should resemblance raises a number of related points. strategy, as the resemblance of a particular strategy to (a fictive) intention, this being itself, as Pottage points out (see above), a fiction established to instrumentalise the strategic nature of the claim actually being asserted. We see here how the claim and the appeal are implicated in each other, but it is the claim that is crucial because it seizes upon what is currently unknowable in a (legal) perceptual arrangement. Secondly, resemblance is directly implicated in the despotic functioning of overcoding. For detail of this see Deleuze and Guattari's analysis in A Thousand Plateaus considering the image of thought grounded in `analogies of proportion' and `analogies of proportionality, ' (Deleuze & Guattari:

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is `things' to being and universal stable completely undercut. somehow related as What is absent in strictly capitalist arrangements is that element of the property effect its if limited (even to thing status as effect, so as appear as a that actually represses inter-subjective identified is The the to thing as right exclude62). capitalistic this is openly processual: ownership gives way to control. effect property

It is therefore possible to consider four tendencies within the capitalistic property effect:

does Capitalistic life into the object of property but makes property not make a) life. is lives but It the the that to object of property not case one accumulate, in living is inextricably implicated in that rather one property effects. The

is both intensity the novelty under capitalism extent and of such an implication. The distinction between owner and owned is effaced because of the non-determinancy of the capitalist social field - the point at which subject becomes object cannot be discerned becauseinvestment is not able to mark this difference. Rather, it responds only to specific capacities and arranges perceptions on the basis of axiomatic decoding, in which the field of objectssubjects is virtualised into a non-determined space of potentiality. This future is to statistical risk. Life itself becomes the the potentiality reduction of an investment opportunity - indeed, through immaterial labour, it is the investment opportunity. b) The property effect is not something `exercised' through rights of ownership, but is a matter of intervention. Intervention is necessaryto correct and adjust

1988,233-239). Finally, the image of thought that goes by way of resemblanceis itself a strategy for

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distribution, form logistical takes the the and of specific spread of risk in `property' to order to ensure adjustments particular circumstances of deployment This decoding. bodies tactical as might mark particular efficient being related to a specific set of effects, but this should not be considered a bodies certain ownership: rather are connected to particular matter of best decoding in is However, that thought a manner of of as control. examples in but in is (even is determinable or part) only control not permanent absolute the specificity of the actual processesof decoding. The selection and deployment of bodies is entirely contingent, and dependent upon convenience 63 Furthermore the bodies in and efficiency. question are themselves simply elements within the more general process of decoding. c) There is no universal form to property other than those of capitalism itself: investment, internal transgression, and axiomatics. The modulatory processes of capitalism do not proceed through isomorphism or resemblance but are deployed only through exception, which does not mean that they are rare or uncommon, but simply that such processesattend to the specificity of any circumstance and develop tactical responsesentirely on that basis. Paradoxically, this is carried out to reduce everything to the same status (value), which again highlights the inseparability of tactics and logistics. d) The technological support for the exercise of biopower enables the potential control of every aspect of human being. As a consequence,and with property itself a matter of control, it is not inappropriate to view individuals as being is in (ideally) their the that property reduced to an sense every aspect of

the stabilisation of (in this case) property effects. 62(Pottage:1998a)

63Particularly is in this the early work of Jean Baudrillard, which we shall encounter in regard useful

the next chapter

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indistinct process of consumption-production, linked into networks of coIn has become this sense everyone a member and communication. operation disappearance bourgeoise, the the attendant with of class relations. of Foucault's analysis of power then reaches a new intensity in terms of being body itself, than through or rather exercised some ruling exercising decoded individual is The as a subject and revealed as a productive set class. of powers which are axiomatically re-integrated, simultaneously, as an autonormalising member of the set of population: producer-consumer of immaterial labour. It is therefore not possible to draw a rigid distinction between immaterial labour, the commodity that results from it, and the control that is exercised over it.

GENES

To clarify some of these issues I return to the work of Alain Pottage, this time on the exploitation of genes.

In Our Original Inheritance (Pottage & Muny: 2004) Pottage shows how the

is be `ownership' be discovered, if to the that solutions viability of gene must maximised, are not related to processesof overcoding (in which qualitatively different institutions could be re-aligned and innovation stabilised around a despotic centre), and for this reason it is wrong to equate the `ownership' of genes with the `ownership' of life itself. But such an equation is nonetheless crucial because it directly links a specific case or issue about such ownership into an indeterminate field, through which

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but between distinction is and owner owned the actively non-determined, only not is between subject and object as well. that

In other words, Pottage shows us how it is

functions debate to totally maximise the exploitation over ownership of genes that the forms for is the argument or against such of genetic resources, regardless of whether difference Rather, this of opinion about whether or not such ownership of ownership. is viable in whatever terms (ethical, legal, scientific, etc.), is itself a source of it (or to the modulation) comes exploitation of when convenience and efficiency geneticresources.

What is clear therefore is the complicity between the institutions of law and biotechnology in bringing about this non-determinancy, a complicity that makes use ' `humanity, (and the tactical-logistic with a consequent rhetoric of also enables) of from inheritance. This inheritor an emphasis upon genotype results and merging of be in individual) (i. this context which can over and above phenotype e. species over is decoding, the particular emptied of whereby understoodas a process of axiomatic its specificity in order to be integrated into the non-determined captialisitc field.

To understandthis it is necessaryto follow Pottage's argument closely. He draws a line, for analytical purposes, between law and biopower:

Whereasthe old `juridical' model of law was based on a set of basic structural law from from divided subject, and nature, ruler asymmetries, which norm from society, in the new bio-political society, these divisions are `disdivisions bio-political In these are the emergent effects society, embedded'. a of the articulation of power rather than the structural preconditions of power in divisions by distinctions is The which way are eclipsed relations.

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Bio-political deployed by the norms. norms are operation of exemplified legal kind or administrative regulation, and, of within a particular field in based the they upon a statistical map of social are paradigmatically, & Mundy: 2004,252-3) intervene. (Pottage they which

I read this as mirroring Deleuze's argument that we have moved from despotic discipline to capitalistic control: rather than the overcoding that structured institutions in law, decodes institutions the capitalism and perceptions aseither within or without inconvenient) despotic (inefficient the tendency that and renders untenable a manner division' despotic `emergent (i. `structural to that e. resemblances) are now subject so 64 distinctions' (i. e. capitalistic resonancesor modulation). There is no centre from be legitimated. juridical Instead, there power can measured and which an exercise of is only the exceptional intervention of biopolitical techniques that seek to tactically implicate the specific into the logistical `statistical map of the social field', and as a form. if We but law in that say might consequence re-appears a completely modified Kant identified a crisis in law, biopolitical control has more than come to terms with this crisis: the good and the best are replaced by the specificity of the efficient and the convenient, and morality gives way to the scientific and

65 technical.

The relation of law and biotechnology is one of reciprocal determination, meaning that neither should be viewed as having the `upper-hand.' Bio-political norms are to be read, in my opinion, as functioning in the same way as axiomatics: that is, they 61For a more detailed description of the difference between division and distinction seePottage's Introduction to (Pottage & Mundy: 2004).

65I don't it is technocracies: that societies mean capitalist are simply rather a matter of the different images of thought and the effects they have for how life might be lived. If capitalist societies are more scientific and knowledgeable, then they are also the most superstitious and ignorant. In this sense the great wealth of knowledge undermines itself to the extent that individual mastery of it is impossible.

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to the temporarily case or circumstance so as achieve to specific a arrange serve is This in decoding the that case or circumstance. miniaturisation possible maximum implicated becomes in it in the that the very smallest cases and the sense state of determine is law despotic If to then the the tendency the proper of content situations. 66 functions its form, law that to meaning as a normalising capitalism seesa return by is the that practices of enabled one only, process

67 biotechnology.

Together,law and biotechnology create possibilities for exceptional intervention, and between is distinguish that the resultant property effect precisely one cannot object it is inheritance' Perversely, `genetic the to or very reference a and subject. `patrimony,' made as a point against the ownership of genes, that is crucial for is If the tactical the right a particular such non-determination. problem achieving individual or grouping of individuals might have to the product of the exploitation of their genes,then the idea of a universal right immediately undercuts this problem by field. issue into logistical The specificity of the claimant's situation is the the shifting immersedin the broader, logistical problem of `humanity' (i. e. population).

Capitalism seizes this impossibility and uses it in the most cynical fashion: that is, it anti-produces it. For more on the correlate between knowledge and superstition see (Montag: 1999). 66A return in the sense described by Nietzsche, as read by Deleuze. The content of the law is always `stupid', but the form has the potential to civilise the human in the sense that it enables it to promise. For such a function it does not matter what the law actually is. Content becomes significant in particular cases but only as the material to be transformed by the assertion of a claim, which itself is a form of law rather than a content. However, capitalism functions to decode the claim by linking it directly to a statistical future. In other words it prevents the possibility of the human becoming responsible enough to promise. Baudrillard is right to see in this a state of perpetual regression: see (Baudrillard: 2002). 67(Pottage & Mundy: 2004,255-6). Here Pottage shows how the immanent field of biotechnology tends to re-articulate older legal categories, in this case inheritance. However his point is that this rearticulation does transform such categories, and that biotechnology infects them with its own procedures so that law is encouraged to a becoming-immanent itself, although not as any kind of will to truth. As Pottage writes: "... the affirmation of legal divisions articulates and sustains a mode of social action which is entirely misrepresented by any form of knowledge based upon these divisions. " At 257.

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because be if that that then arises one argues The paradox genes should not owned humanity is `property' Pottage the of all writes: common well shown when they are

The notion of genetic inheritance divides the individual human being into the two essential dimensions of inheritance: the patrimonial fund (the genome or its heir (the temporary or and custodian organism or phenotype). genotype) (Pottage & Mundy: 2004,258)

As argued above, as soon as such a distinction is made between human as fund and human as particular expression, then a tactical-logistic aim has been achieved inasmuch as it is the patrimonial fund that must determine the genotype-phenotype

individual Without `example,' this transcendence the specific of relation overall. there would only be mechanised transmission (Pottage & Mundy: 2004,259) and no for intervention law-biotech The scope and control. pair serves to create the conditions for intervention by re-incorporating

this transcendent element (humanity)

back into the individual in order to produce the immanence necessaryfor control. Rather than an individual understood as a specific man or woman with particular qualities, law-biotech decodes the individual so that a form is derived (the operator of rights and responsibilities68) that is linked to another form (genetic patrimony). The tactical possibilities of intervention are co-ordinated around a set of capacities (and whether these capacities derive from a subject or an object is beside the point) that are themselvesgeneratedby such tactical intervention. Out of the passive contractions of

68Pottage notes that such rights and responsibilities tend, juridically, informed consent (Pottage: 1998c, 763).

to revolve around the fiction of

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is derived to the that entire synthesis active appeals an expressions, genetic specific 69 field. genetic

70 This returns us to Deleuze's concept of time. If capital functions by decoding the future (through axiomatic manipulations of investment, statistical evaluation and insurancerisks), the problem of genes presents a case in point in the sensethat genetic future duration is in to the produce an eternal present, which patrimony short circuits deferredendlessly. This can be thought of as an anti-associationism: one now knows that the sun will not rise tomorrow because, instead, there will only be the light of a integrity fund for to the of a genetic ensure a generation that will never constantvigil descent intervene. The those than endless of who must watch and, rather act, come. As Pottagewrites:

As a result, the present moment becomes overloaded with a multiplicity

of

`virtual' temporalities. All of time is `virtually' contained in the present. This is precisely the kind of overload which makes inheritance less suited than insuranceto the securing of social expectations. (Pottage & Mundy: 2004, 279-280)

69Like the in Pottage's work on registration of title and settlements,this traced property effect synthesisis also a fiction.

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GENETIC PROPERTY EFFECTS

but being being in its (or always entirety) Capitalism approachesthe passivity of best is ' The become `schizophrenic. limit then its to displaces genome so as not invests. but fund in for fund which one as a exchanging, thought of not as a `Humanity' and `human dignity' are presented as non-negotiable, but these simply level is the to of through elevated genetic patrimony which of control, axioms as serve functions This 2004,271). & Mundy: (Pottage to not protect commercium extra res humankind, but rather to open up a new vector for its exploitation, and hence Deleuze `Protection' description the Guattari's specific of cynical. as of capitalism and individual integrates that individual into a field of non-determination, in which it is `separatedfrom what it can do. ' What does this example suggest about property as Pottage Life in Law The Inscription to think In two property ways suggests of effect? 1998c). (Pottage: effects

First, as an analogy between biotechnology and law. This is an extension of the in been has in his that caught up open-ended always property argument earlier papers (strategic) deployments (Pottage: 1998c, 749). More interestingly, the second (from is the perspective giving rise property-biotech relation one of cross pollination, bond "a through which proprietary strategies to of property) parasitic or symbiotic exploit the indeterminacy of biotechnological practices" (Pottage: 1998c, 749). What is gained by combining law and biotechnology in this way? From the perspective of Deleuze and Guattari the relation between law and biotechnology is one that enables a mutual decoding - their relation is axiomatic. By allowing the divided structure of

70See Chapter Two above.

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distinctions function, biotech, law is infected by be to the law to of able emergent intervention that serves not so much to tactically, as a process of exceptional both Precisely, law is itself, to to as able act upon adjudicateas adjust or modulate. 7' by be is be the tool to to this which achieved. worked upon and work the material Any particular legal problem depends not upon the strategic exploitation of fairly by despotic (i. but its `externalities' e. alignment) rather upon modulation, stablesocial its ' it `acts actions. upon which

Property effects are therefore no longer located at the outcome of a claim - such by interplay the generated strategic of various ungrounded are not effects `competitors' or relationships. Rather the claim and the property effect are elided, so that `ownership' cannot be construed as a type of possession,in which the objectdivision is brought into a new relief at the conclusion of each claim. The subject becomes immanent to its cause,meaning that it results directly property effect now from the tactical-logistic non-determination of would be object-subject distinctions. To own means to invest: a biopolitical intervention (always unique and exceptional) in the entire social field. The property effect is immaterial labour, meaning production-consumption, or, anti-production: not mastery of things, nor the production of a `finished' thing, but modes of assertion with regard to what the thing might be, achieved through control of the co-operative networks of immaterial labour.

CONTROL OF PROPERTIES

71Hence reflecting the practices of biotechnology: "one might say that biotechnological inventiveness spliceslife into life, dividing life itself into the two asymmetric registers of technique and object." (Pottage& Mundy: 2004.272)

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institutions in such a way that their specificity Capitalistic meta-perception arranges be law-biotech for the decoded: the be this as must relation understood reason can is this to tendency, relation external not another which of apparatus perceptual unified form immanent institutions together to brings two but the a completely new institutional lacks is (it This the necessary consistency), not articulation articulation. but axiomatic and purely formal or quantitative. Quality or substance are obstacles to it, but they are also what enable it to flourish.

It should not be thought that it was necessaryto develop biotechnology for capitalist decoding. is develop: to the to of subject processes science same property effects Capitalism proceeds through information and the technologies that support it, which

if for Indeed, (and the the of culture generally). axiomatisation science arecrucial has been it is because is the triumphant of civil society whole state under capitalism informational to reduced an complex:

informed, is When information you are a piece grouping of order-words. of a ... but believe. Not believe to to act as to told even you are what you are supposed ... if we believed. That is information, communication, and apart from these ... is information, there their transmission, order-words and no no communication. All of which underscoresthat information is precisely the system of control. (Deleuze in Kaufman & Heller: 1998,17)

To inform is to order, meaning that information must function against.

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CHAPTER SIX

KNOWLEDGE AND SUBJECTIVITY

Knowledge can be broken into two types: that which can be known and that which be known. distinction between We (in treat this the can as a empirical a should Deleuzean-Humean sense) and the absolute, and therefore as a difference between the institution and the state. The institution makes the human capable of promising because it provides a kind of resistance or friction, that enables the subject to `become what it is. " In the context of knowledge, this resistance is resistance to knowledge itself (nonknowledge), which is why an institution is quite ambiguous: it exists through the simultaneous grounding and un-grounding of what it knows. It depends for its creativity its upon partiality, or the fact that it is not the absolute expression of being.

In which case, what is the proper formulation of the problem of non-knowledge? Is it that ignorance is something that inevitably sub-tends the production of the knowable, so that the problem is to discover how to `activate' ignorance as a positive force (in other words to overcome it, at least partially and provisionally? ). Or is it that ignorance is something to be methodically exterminated, something to be overcome, in the end, in its entirety? Is it a qualitative problem or a quantitative one?

See(Kaufmann: 1974,442) and, generally, (Nietzsche: 1991)

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in it is is dependent is those that knowledge embedded if upon circumstances, something it does This is the to that never escape not mean say can qualitative. circumstances and its if it by but does it does its that, quality changing so, so production circumstances of is itself A into by that new circumstance a circumstance. a new relation new and entering but knowledge be not and non-knowledge, can thought of as simply a new assemblage of in a teleological sense. It is the product of other circumstances, specifically of the open is those other circumstances, and always the consequence of a qualitative and partiality of knowledge/non-knowledge To relation. ask why something circumstantial embedded happensin a particular circumstance that causes it to produce a new circumstance is a 2 historical question. Philosophically the question concerns the partiality of knowledge.

However, the `false' problem should not be underestimated. It results from the be described institutions, ambiguous nature of as a misperception of which can perhaps lies its beyond institution in it the that the the what consequence of own sense mistakes partiality. That something is partial does not mean, as I have described earlier in relation to Deleuze, that it is complete or (more accurately given the nature of this error) that it is capable of completion. Once the possibility of completion is taken up as a pertinent problem then the state begins to haunt the institution, in the sense that the institution tends to constantly displace its own problems in favour of ever more abstract ones. Consequently, the attempt to escape this destiny through `transgression' is simply to

2 See,for

example, the Braudel influenced approach of M De Landa (De Landa: 2000)

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3 is it is Whether the transgression or abstract state the always an affair. mistake: repeat information: displaced by is is `what ' knowledge this? transgression,

To clarify these points it is useful to consider Marilyn Strathern's use of the distinction 4 information information, between constitutive and regulative along with the work of Deleuze and Guattari. I understand Strathern to suggest that regulative information has two primary functions (Strathem: 1999,69). First there is a quantitative function (at the heart of control) in which regulative information is simply the amassing of information, "a duty to be well-informed. " However, there is as a consequence a problem of selection: from the mass of information gathered what is actually useful? Gathering and use are two sides of the same coin, because one cannot know in advance what will be useful and inasmuch is distinct There then to time, as one gathers as what will not. a relationship information from, insured be to much as possible so as or against, the well protected future.5 What is worth knowing? The difficulty is in the recognition and identification of something as information, because not everything in the present circumstance is necessarily worth knowing. Regulative information confronts the fact of its own ignorance in the sense that it seeks to separate knowledge from non-knowledge as a processof valuation. Regulative information shares the problem of causality: how is it to decide what is useful from the present in order to make use of it in the future? But, contra Hume, regulative information is not content to look to circumstances as the basis See,for example, Deleuze and Guattari on the impossibility of incest in (Deleuze & Guattari: 1984,161). 4 In (Strathern: 1999). 5This is clear from the end of Strathern's essay, where the openness of the future is invoked as a reason for an individual's right not to know (Strathern: 1999,84-5). On the other side, we can consider the CCTV footageof the London bombers practicing their attack in an earlier dry run. The substance of the image was not significant at the time. indicating that information is here to be simply amassed rather than put to

217

knowledge, it the Instead, total as knowledge. a non-knowledge, at without aim will of foreclosureof the future.

function is function there the Together with of a second of gathering and use in immanence, functions kind the Together the two apparent constitute a of presentation. function of presentation through which the following problem is set: how does regulative information present information to itself in a manner that enables it to be recognised as information? thus as potentially useful, and

With matters of regulation such a problem

into be. future Here from be the the we enter should assertion of what cannot separated knowledge, be information is because to a state revealed regulative an anti-associationism from differentiated know. be it is This to a must appropriate premised upon what know. it be knowledge to of what would useful practical, circumstantial

The despot seeks to exclude what should not be known - that is, he seeks to exclude nonknowledge altogether. However capital seeks to make use of non-knowledge, but not in any creative sense. It decodes the circumstance of knowledge and non-knowledge, thereby anti-producing stupidity in the midst of knowledge and lack in the midst of plenty. It could even be suggested that capitalism reverses the despotic trend and excludes knowledge in order to store up non-knowledge, pointing to the vast stores of information as an overwhelming proof that it is impossible to know anything other than that which it is convenient or efficient to know. Here the regulation of information involves its presentation en masse so as to openly conceal the very specificity of

any effective use. This example demonstrates a basic point: with information, one is never informed in time.

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formation for decoding becomes itself. Quantity the tactical-logistic of a knowledge quality.

6 Regulative information is always an aspect of state power in the sense Deleuze suggests. Regulative information is an order that discounts the ambiguous relationship of knowledge and non-knowledge so as to make it clear what should be done (which is why ignorance is never an excuse). More broadly, it follows the trajectory that Strathern sets itself itself information (it to as) a right cannot present cannot recognise out: regulative is irrelevant knowing is Precisely, know (Strathem: 1999,72). to and not worth what not know. be from knowing is to separated a moral obligation cannot what worth

What regulative information conceals (what it actually regulates) are the circumstances of broadly. its but knowledge It seeks to regulate, either more not only own production, of by overcoding or decoding, the relation of knowledge to non-knowledge.

It is power

information be brings This to exercised over what can perceived. us constitutive which, Strathern as makes explicit, is already `in' regulative information and, to an extent, determined by it (Strathern: 1999,72). Significantly, constitutive information is not so clearly marked by the distinction between knowledge and non-knowledge as regulative information is. Strathern makes clear that something is constituted (as perceived or perceiver) just as much by what is known as by what is not known (Strathern: 1999,75). The relation between knowledge and non-knowledge is much more ambiguous: whilst regulative information seeks to neutralise non-knowledge, constitutive information uses regulative information as a tool for keeping the realm of non-knowledge active.

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in is, Nietzschean the the information the of therefore overcoming sense, Constitutive in the transformation truth to It of the positive element as a will nihilistic uses regulative. know becomes it become to that possible the so re-constituted, that circumstances sense something new.

is it beneficial; is is kind, is neutral. rather This not to say that what new always good, or As with the claim, it is only afterwards that one can begin to develop the consequences of The be discovered. invention After the the solutions must of a problem, a new thought. is for: is it is itself in the formal is that the new allowed new which occurrence, new a difference itself, and it is this difference that constitutes the current state of knowledge the difference that allows knowledge to be renewed (or, more precisely, repeated).

Against this is the tendency to look for a substantive content to the new which is akin to final invention the problem, putting an end to the creation of any new of a asserting bring information however, its Despite an cannot regulative problems. own tendency, it bring because information to an end to the resistance that cannot end constitutive itself. is life This friction ignorance, first it function in the the why of enables to of place: constitutive information is in fact primary. Regulation applies to the regulation of be is is, (that to rendered as quantity, as specificity of a quality) which, under capitalism, a pure abstraction susceptible to axiomatic manipulation (value). Under capitalism, a will to knowledge or truth amounts to the control of the parameters or limits of knowledge, and is only addressed to the substance of knowledge to the extent that this is something to be decoded.

6 Seethe

end of the previous chapter. 220

for becomes The important? that, is Why this clear once one understands answer is isn't information (understood the Strathern,constitutive specificity of what and as known) is information constitutive of the subject. In this way she lays out for us an between the thinking relation subject and object or, more entirely new way of In to this, things. the the order pursue of articulation of persons and problem specifically, in it is begin to to to to effects, necessary subjectivity relation property understand and follow, for a short way, Strathern's use of the term `kinship. '

KINSHIP

The immediate point is that to consider kinship as the problem of subjectivity means that one is confronted with a range of forces or perceptions (the articulations and quasiarticulations of knowledge) constitutive of the subject. In other words, the subject is a synthesis; but to say that the subject is constituted by both knowledge and nonknowledge is not to revert to a dialectical progression. It is not a matter of discovering what was previously unknown, but rather of the production or creation of what is knowable. Knowledge is merely a causality that is necessarily provisional and, in this sense,non-knowledge is the condition for being able to know - it is, in other words, the partiality of knowledge, the inherent difference of perception that enables it to be perceived as such. By not knowing the human is able to affirm more than it knows and,

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is linked this Deleuze to the of process affirmation of clear, always specificity makes as 1991,103). (Deleuze: circumstance

Kinship, understood as a synthesis of perceptions, is then just as reliant upon what is not known as what is known. By putting it in this way Strathern implicitly avoids Hegelianism because she insists upon the specificity of ignorance, meaning the is known. is is Ignorance but, like knowledge, not of what not absolute particularity ignorance formally, knowledge therefore and circumstantial, and specific are, and always the same thing. This is what I understand the term `constitutive information' to information Whilst be found both regulative can on sides of constitutive encompass. information, I stress again their difference: regulative information seeks to exclude nonknowledge, while constitutive information cannot distinguish knowledge from nonknowledge. Putting it this way highlights a further point: there is no moral dimension to knowledge, constitutive meaning that it does not seek a transcendental solution to the problem of its own immanence (or, what it would be appropriate to know).

Thus, in linking Strathern's use of the constitutive/regulative distinction with Deleuze's philosophy, I am arguing for the primacy of constitutive knowledge, as well as a 7 between resonation the concepts of constitution and contraction. To constitute is to claim, and from this regulative information follows as a structure of appeals, of a right ordering that requires discovery. Regulations are the quantities that derive from quality. That these quantities effect new qualities is not to reverse the relation, rather quality gathersquantity up and re-articulates it. Constitution is the activation, the founding

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difference between The the two types of difference,of specific non-knowledges. information is precisely in the selection: a selection premised upon a useful and basis knowledge, the that of to very or a selection redistributes addition appropriate knowledge image itself, thought and producing a knowledge of constructing a new indistinguishable from the act of selection itself.

What does this mean for the subject? The subject as synthesis is the specific and singular for is kin. This `between' the to argue not articulation of relationships: relationships happy soul who just needs the familiarity of the same (such an argument would return us dialectics): death level lowest teleological the cosy to the wish of of excitation, Strathern's by the that experience and complexity of nature are swept aside projections of involve be from `kin' Nietzsche, have the As to most can seen already we analysis. is human However, this through made capable of promising. cruelty a extreme cruelties. This promise is an obligation, but one misses the nuance of this if one is conditioned to think immediately of contract. To be obligated, to promise, is a matter of convention, of the exposure to a specific circumstance regardless of any agreement. One is not is because it, but in because the middle of to already one obligated one consents believe I founds it is belief In that that this myself obligation - not relationships. sense, to be obligated, but that the very act of belief in distinguishing memory from imagination, from being is indistinguishable know, I than of affirming more obligated.

The fact of social being (the prematurity of the human) causes and necessitates embedded, circumstantial relationships of obligation and responsibility.

If these

SeeChapter Two 2233

decoded) has (i. Kristeva dis-embedded then, remarked e. as are perpetually relationships it is bringing by liability, 2000,5), the (Kristeva: with replaced responsibility so well function based of compensation. regulative monetary

8 In a tour deforce essay, Strathern highlights the importance of relationships for the founding of obligations, obligations which in turn serve to distribute persons and things. Her essay passesthrough a complex of inter-related themes, but I want to concentrate on just two here: the distinction between the whole and a part; and the distinction between individual. the culture and

RELATIONS: The Whole and a Part

At a certain level there is nothing to distinguish between the problem of `owning' body parts and the killing of a baby because it is too fat (Strathern: 1999,45). Problems are always problems of relationships: I stress this in order to keep the circumstantial nature of problems to the forefront. Europe and America have not reached the problem of ownership of body parts as the consequence of progress, but as a result of the particular circumstantial relations between capitalism, technology, and individualism.

This means

that there is no universal category of `property', but only the contingency of property effects. To seek a universal category is then to address the wrong (meaning irrelevant) problem. Rather, if property is understood to be a matter of potential (of the power to

8M Strathern Losing (Out On) Intellectual

Resources in (Pottage & Mundy: 2004).

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is it find difficulty be to that the of not surprising specific proprietary9) will what assert it is left is final Rather body than purposively open ended. a solution, parts of ownership in by be (future) intervention the parameters property can presently which a matter of destroying that through of course, potential an over-determined without, recognised, investment be (by to an matter an exchange matter). would reduced which resolution

'°

This is where the terminology of `parts' and `wholes' becomes indicative of the feed into language body The that the parts. problem of owning capitalistic circumstances is itself ambiguous and non-resolving because it reflects two incommensurable is length: logistics. Strathern It that tactics that of and of quoting at worth operations:

After all, why is the detached and now free-standing entity thought of as a `part'. Perhaps what is being fabricated is precisely the possibility of considering detachable parts of the body as `things' to which claims of ownership may be laid. Owning the whole person is unthinkable; owning the whole body is prohibited. In a wonderfully illogical but perfectly sensible way, at the very juncture when through detachment it could be regarded as having ceased to be a part of the body, the tissue or organ is reconstituted neither as a whole entity in itself nor as an intrinsic part of a (previous) whole. Colloquially, it is, somehow, a free-standing `part'. So what is kept alive in this nomenclature is the process of

detachmentitself: it would seemthat for as long as its detachability from the

9 Seebelow. 10Strathern quotes (author's emphasis): "`By adopting a scheme of consents ... [the Embryology Act 1990] awids vesting any property claim in the donor circumventing the need to resolve questions of property ... and ownership.'" (Pottage & Mundy: 2004,213)

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be it but lengths `thing' thought to the can of as of a not personremains evident 2004,215; & Mundy: (Pottage `whole thing'. my emphasis) a

Here a whole matrix of (non-)knowledge, perception, and imaging unfolds. Strathern body-parts in be the that thought of of a number open-endedness removed can recognises for despotic liberalism to the perhaps, seductively, as a problem related most ways of `sanctity' of the person and inalienable human rights. Strathern's essay implicitly shows how such interpretations, while functional, do not function so as to exhaust the problem. I suggestthat this problem is a problem because it makes explicit the tendency, identified by Hardt and Negri, towards immaterial labour: that is the tendency to reduce the worker to mere potential. Whilst there is nothing new in such a reduction, it is the extent to ideally, be decoded (precisely, that, which potential can not realised) under capitalism, so the population is a constant source of potential set free of the physical constraints of keep intensification bodies. Consumption to this actual collections of specific serves hidden as control: the modulation by which one is encouraged to be different, so that one 11 fit in body in becomes better. However, the might parts something all considering explicit, revealing the arbitrariness of liberal individualism: what could be a clearer manifestation of relationships than a body part being transferred from one person to another, whether as transplant or research material? The ambiguity of the part is the image of detachment, of decoding.

Decoding and detachments undermine the Euro-American perspective that posits the body as part of, and belonging to, the free-standing (whole) individual who enters into

226

Indeed, informed informed basis the the concept of an consent. very of relationshipson knowledge `whole' indicative is the and grain of parts running against of a consent individual detached, body Where 763 1998c, (Pottage: the or parts are et seq). partiality is decoded as immaterial labourer, then it becomes necessary to re-conceptualise the individual/body as a collection of (potentially) free-standing parts, the existence and is through only made possible networks of co-operation, of which articulation in kinship in (albeit short, a very specific capitalist communication and convention: distinction kinship Such the tend to that emphasis are ones not modes of mode). between `body' and `person', choosing instead to conceptualise these as aggregates of different free-standing parts. The body is therefore immanentised, purely on the basis of determined by decoding (consumption instrumentality as production). an

This means that, following Hume (and Nietzsche), to the extent that one is a body, one is is It both this relational in already relationships and, more significantly, of relationships. dependent labour, immaterial identify Hardt Negri that a process nexus as enabling and far body/individual the upon a certain ambiguity as as

is concerned.

What must be kept in mind is the specificity of ambiguity. Ambiguity is not a universal condition in which one ambiguous situation is equal to any other ambiguous situation. Rather, it is always dependent upon the specific elements of a particular circumstanceinstitution. This is why the instrumentalisation of ambiguity (decoding) is a tactical matter: when mapping the history of military tactics, De Landa describes the

111 will return to this more fully below through the work of Baudrillard.

227

developmentof the de-centralisation of tactical practices, in which specific military `distributed the take of on characteristics networks': engagements

If the war machine adaptsfluidly, dispersing friction and allowing transient eventsto "invoke" proceduresand capabilities, the man-machineassemblagecan hand, On the though, properties and order out of chaos. emergent other produce if friction accumulates it can generate a feedback loop, like a runaway explosion, in which uncertainty multiplies The net result of friction in a chain of .... increase in is an uncertainty about the veracity, accuracy or timeliness command data. (De Landa: 1991,78) the of

As De Landa shows, one response to ambiguity is to effectively remove the chain of locally, be to treated command, allowing ambiguity as and thus as specifically, as possible. In this way, tactics cease to be centralised to become improvised in response to the conditions of the circumstance in question. Whilst there might be success or failure at the tactical level, this is increasingly de-linked from broader strategic aims. Just as strategy cannot grasp the becoming-immanent that tactics has undergone, so too tactical incursion cannot be determined by strategic imperatives. 12

Two parties litigating over ownership of body parts cannot rely, strategically, upon the relative merits of their claim. Rather, it is the claiming itself that is responsible for distributing their strategic positions, as the issue is resolved at a much more specific level of selecting how parts and wholes will be imaged or perceived. Here, the problem is the

228

become tactical to and, as such, problems right way render ambiguity efficient indistinguishable from logistical ones.

The ambiguous status of the `part' is therefore a problem about information. information. it is the subject as a problem of particular,

In

Constitutive information is that

information difference the the as of subject. and assembles singular selects which Regulative information is the ordering and presentation of information as the identity of the subject. For the latter, it is a matter of identifying the relevant parts and then tracing their summation as a (regulated) whole. For the former, it is a matter of the interaction of less in both that they than a whole. are, simultaneously, more and elements such a way Constitution is something more than the sum of the parts because it is the affirmation of in is is is It than this than more regulated. quality rather a quantity and, restricted sense, a buy labour, is It that to than this capital potential capital seeks access: rather potential. invests in people.

When Strathern writes that "what is kept alive is the process of detachment itself', ... what is being kept alive is the question of whether or not the thing removed is a whole part (or not), and thus akin to property (or not). The capitalist property effect is not found in a final determination, but in the open-endedness of the process of determination itself. Not in right but in the assertion that it exists, or at least, that it will exist. Through this assertion, investment becomes possible because it folds the future into the `thing' in question, not as a creative force but as a regulative force.

12There are some good fictional examples: both Conrad's original (non-military) Heart of Darkness and Coppola's Apocalypse Now illustrate this de-linkage of tactics and strategy.

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INDIVIDUALS AND CULTURE

Strathern's work on kinship illustrates that, rather than considering the subject as forming is by the a number of regulated parts a predictable whole, subject constituted better thought of as a collection of wholes that function with the broader whole of social is However, `background' the of network social or relationships not a relationships. `context' against which, or within which, the subject acts. Rather, the subject is nothing lessthan those social relationships. What constitutes the singular nature of a subject is the contingency of such relationships - the contractions of duration. Thus the subject is is `part' not a of social relations: social relativity always already whole, regardless of what is added or taken away from it. Strathern makes these points clear when she remarks, "You can have an image of half something but, logically and phenomenologically speaking, you cannot have half an image. " (Pottage & Mundy: 2004, 217 fn. 48). She therefore gives a very precise meaning to the term `image. ' The image servesto make relations visible (Pottage & Mundy: 2004,216), and is just as easily a person as a `thing: '

Wealth items of the kind which flow in compensation payments objectify relationships

by giving them the form of `things' which can be displayed, such as money, pigs, and other valuable items. The samerelationships may also be activated through , persons'... (Pottage & Mundy: 2004,216)

Li0

13 discussion is image image institution: Strathern's the to link the the To my previous of is inextricable that the things a a perception of and persons, consequence of perception distributive effect carried out institutionally, as the specific localisation (expression or knowledge/non-knowledge; immanent articulation) of

in the or, which perception manner

in be distributed itself from Without differ to order as perceived and perceiver. must Strathern's in to any way subsume anthropology under philosophy, or vice versa, wishing in discussion the manner of thing and person, which any work offers a clear example of in through the so problem of relationships and, as well as object and subject, must pass doing, must address the issue of how persons and things are distributed as such - that is, the mode of their assertion or claim.

An image is therefore equal to constitutive information - the two are indistinguishable becauseboth involve the specific registering of a particular and whole effect. The specificity of social relations provides a specific regulative context, but such context is posited in and through the constitution of the particular image in question. This is why regulative information is secondary to constitutive information, despite the fact that both register simultaneously. The problem, as ever, is the problem of selection (i. e. dramatisation): is selection a matter of addition or transformation? To the extent that this is the same problem, how does it impact upon the invention of problems (qualities) and the discovery of their solutions (quantities)? Strathern casts a very interesting light on selection by considering the image in terms of intellectual property and commodification

13Chapters Four & Five above.

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both basis 2004,218 & Mundy: the to (Pottage of which serve make selections on et seq), of quantity.

Intellectual property is an excellent example of a process of quantification.

The basis of

intellectual property, for Strathern, is the essence of a thing, the idea `inside' of it, which identity. Here, the whole tabulation of resemblances and then stands as a matter of in be degree by to the out relation worked which a particular amount or samenessescan thing is like (or unlike) any other thing. Rather than the immanent difference by which a thing is perceptible (imaged), difference is externalised and thereby made dependent between images. differences is Intellectual the regulation of perception, property upon through which the constitution of a thing is determined by the ordering and mode of its presentation, relative to other things.

This is, of course, still a process of constitution (a given thing is either like another thing or not) but the point is that it is distinguishable from the transformative power of constitutive processes. It should not be thought that it follows that there are two types of constitutive information, accumulative and transformative, but rather that accumulation (quantity) always has a qualitative impact. The primacy of constitution means that accumulations always pass through thresholds, so that to add or subtract is always a transformative process. Precisely, for this reason, subtraction and addition do not effect the status of a thing as a `whole'. The problem is to do with prioritisation: if one prioritises the quantitative, then qualitative dimensions tend to be repressed in favour of a determination of the precise degree to which a thing is (or is not) like another thing. If

232

dimensions intensity displaced by is then the quantitative are specific quality prioritised,

former in The traps the thought thing. only problems of good and evil; a of or singularity latter allows for a thought beyond good and evil -a transformative thought through becomes former insists lineal The thinkable. time, new and upon something which in latter, the the to the present passes; attending manner therefore cannot explain why from itself, differs duration that the thing pre-supposes contractions of various a which 14 `cause' the present to pass.

At this extreme, `intellectual property' is nothing more than a meta-perception, a state formation, that separates a thing from its own embedded specificity in order to connect it to a universal `beyond' through decoding, thereby achieving a kind of capitalist transcendence. The `idea' inside a thing is the axiomatic arrangement by which that thing is decoded. Capitalism is not productive of images in Strathern's sense, because it doesnot make relations visible through images. Instead, it conceals relationships by '5 making ideas visible. Not a perception, therefore, but a meta-perception.

However, it follows from Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche' 6 that meta-perceptions, as a force that separates a body from what it can do, are capable of being transformed: regulative information can be articulated as constitutive information. progress,there is the multiplicity

Rather than

it is the re-articulation of these of partialities and

14SeeChapter Two. More from for L Lessig the that of problems arise specifically, see an analysis an over determination of intellectual property, and his suggestions for a more balanced approach between (individual ) right and (social) innovation, in (Lessig: 2002) 15See(Strathern: 1999,167-8 & 186) for Strathern's doubts regarding the ability of IP to protect indigenouscultures. However, in a fruitful reversal, Strathern considers IP from an embedded perspective in Losing (Out On) Intellectual Reources, and in so doing, shows how it is entirely possible to think of a personas `owned' (Pottage & Mundy: 2004,218 - 221).

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is identity) that (the than the that a matter of exhaustion rather partial assertion partialities in information. Information then registers a involvesthe transformation of regulative '7 This information. from is different the that order-words of regulative a way way, new finally displace finally (just as contract can never is why the state can never civil society by intensifies however the displace convention); which processes capitalism certainly is Strathern's This is offer on commodification where comments regulated. society civil further insight.

It will be recalled from the last chapter that despotism is characterised by overcoding, itself in back information it turn to order to regulate on through which seeks constitutive it. Despotic power is exercised in this way, and this is how the despot is himself bureaucratic from is indiscernible despotism regulation of a centralised and constituted: knowledge. However, capitalism requires something more: it is not enough that information is made hierarchical because this still places information `outside', as the Such himself. despot in dialectical to the an that opposition scapegoat stands future fails it lacks the to as a predictable spectrum of open up arrangement efficiency as is likely despots that the Whereas their to enemy eyes and pretend close risk analysis. are full dominance the not at requires a much more supple approach to the gate, spectrum future. Capital is a modulator, one that withdraws the maximum specificity from a deis it it de-constituting this of process circumstance, and, as noted previously, constitution that affords both profit and control.

16SeeChapter Three above 17Seethe end of the previous chapter.

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become future the equated through the mechanism of money. In this way, property and is inside `idea' the the the thing or pure abstraction of specificity, Investment money function is distributive, becomes It that the image. therefore apparent of money primarily is by future is Money logistics. the thus means which predicted and risk of a matter to the of circumstance gives way an evaluation of possible outcomes. contingency spread: Money reverses the process of problem and solutions, offering a final solution through become functioning the the to same, with money as answer all of problems all which them. Not, it must be stressed, as a medium of exchange but first and foremost as a by is imposed from investment, image which money as an without that medium of in force but despotic internally to the circumstance question as civilised not as registers '8 persuasion.

When applied to persons, money prioritises the quantitative aspect: the assessment of what a body is capable of (and thereby the assertion of what it will do), where regulative information acts as order-word. Strathern writes,

the proprietor's nephew had observed that with money as the medium of exchange .. women became like commodities: `money made women equal to anything and everything one might want to buy in a way they were not in the past' - not just equal to things, one might observe, but substitutable one for another. (Pottage & Mundy: 2004,221)

In which case, one no longer deals with the specificity of a particular woman (i. e. her quality) but with her attributes, understood merely as quantities. As noted above, quality 18We shall see below how Baudrillard describes this reversal, by which the subject is imaged as a specific

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determining, but being by here the are reciprocally complaint registered and quantity Strathern, is the emphasis of one over the other. Money allows a quantity to be assessed in a manner that displaces quality (where the latter is understood as a specific relation to a is that the so circumstance), person assessable globally, across the entire social particular field of capitalism. Quality is decoded, separated from what it is capable of, and rendered instrumental (bio-power).

The essential nature of capitalism is both the intensity with

it does it this, the and expanse across which stretches: that is, its tactical which investment in the very body of a person as a process of de-constitution, de-imaging, and de-futuring, simultaneous with its networking of persons into its entire field as money(investment). With potential money, even when one exchanges, one invests.

The image of the subject, therefore, gives way to the statistical idea of the subject under capitalism, meaning that capitalism no longer distinguishes between the individual on the hand, one and culture on the other. Instead, there is simply modulation through which any specificity (individual) is decoded as capital-money (culture).

This means that there

is a resonance between Hardt and Negri's approach to immaterial labour and Strathern's approachto intellectual property. For both, what is at stake is an attitude towards the future, in which we find the capitalistic subject, a subject that is a `whatever' subject, or a non-determined zone of production-consumption.

This is made clearer by drawing a parallel between Strathern's work and that of Jean Baudrillard. However, before making that linkage I need to clarify my use of Strathern's

(tactical) relation within the (logistical) system of objects.

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her juxtaposing by intellectual I the analysis of with pursue property will work, which Radin Margaret on property and personhood. work of

PROPERTY AS POTENTIAL

Strathern focuses upon what is at stake in intellectual property matters: the regulation of intellectual property - and it is regulation rather than law (Lessig: 2002,205) - is future. She the writes: regulation of

Potential becomes an asset, and establishing intellectual property is one way of securing control over the potential life of creative ideas with reference to both their production and their future use. (Strathern: 1999,162)

The right that exists through intellectual property is the right to intervene in the future of the `thing' to which the right presently pertains. This is the nature of capitalism as Deleuze and Guattari understand it. Intellectual property comes into its own at the point at which the more traditional problems of exchange become subject to a delirium of associations. In other words, the thing becomes an `asset' with a future life. Intellectual property regulates that future life in the present by setting the parameters for the assertion of the right itself. However, these parameters are never certain - in other words, they are never knowable in advance. Instead, they are only specific realisations of nonknowledge.

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function by future the Capitalism makes non-knowledge utilising as a statistical spread in future intellectual in that focused the question, as value. property property's probable In this way intellectual property is the clearest illustration of investment functions over invests because does know One functions. the precisely potential one not what exchange is forecasts, be. One but it is `has ' one a system, always what not value of an asset will known that makes the investment valuable. When the potential of a particular thing is known (i. e. exhausted), then there is no longer investment but only exchange.

This is why capitalism can be thought of as a type of associationism. However, it is a 19 disembeddedassociation ism, in that causality is set free from the circumstances to by from it developed. is it It an anti-association regulated which which pertains and is formal This the process of money under capitalist conditions: axioms. empty and believe in human decodes (disassociates) the that can potentially money and modulates so 20 Overall, it is this anti-associationism that posits the owning subject. anything at all. The controlled subject is a congealing of beliefs, a specific attitude defined in relation to future. beyond in Again, the specificity of capitalism, that a statistical goes a passage Strathern seesthis clearly:

Ownership re-embeds ideas and products in an organism (whether a corporation, culture or individual author). Ownership gathers things momentarily to a point 19This is one reason why there is some caution with regards to the appropriateness of intellectual property asa method for the protection of indigenous people. Intellectual property would disembed the very thing it is supposedto protect by extrapolating the general `idea' from the particular expression. (Strathern: 1999, 167). 20Money becomes immanent through investment precisely because it becomes its own cause - or at least, it makesit possible to believe so. As Strathern points out, intellectual property is not only found with the

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dissemination, halting in effecting an locating by endless them the owner, identity. We might even say that emergentforms of property signify new in lives integration bodily that for observers or corporeality possibilities 1999,177; (Strathern: dispersed. author's themselves tell are constantly emphasis)

is forms. It is in a problem of the selection of these emergent What is at stake capitalism knowledge between and non-knowledge, or regulative and constitutive the relationship from does the is is not stand apart information. Nevertheless, what clear that the subject be that and through Nor property orientates the a process valorised subject can object. dialectical. is if this from the perspective the subject, even of perspective state

It is not a

but beginning the the investment of problem the end, and/or the at of will problem of distribution in the middle of things.

PERSONHOOD

It should be clear from the above that what is problematic is not so much property as distribution for Euro-American is it is because the of this which capitalism, responsible distributive this is Property whether things. process, a personsand always an effect of distribution is achieved through kinship relations, despotic strategies or capitalistic tactical-logistics. In Radin's conception of property and personhood, she also traces a

developed: initially found in be idea be funding idea; it to to the that the relation original enables can also "money may be one of its own criteria for restricting claims to ownership. " (Strathern: 1999,170) ... 239

but is between in does thing, the and person manner so quite which she complex relation

different from Strathern.

The weakness of Radin's approach is that she does everything she can to exclude the for be, but makes a claim what property should/will qualifies processof selection: she isolation is ideal, that so property constituted as an this with a process of separation and This Radin judge to then than enables relationships as as a relationship. rather by (or ideal. Following to the the method of not) reference proprietorial sufficiently dramatisation, we can ask who wants to make this assertion or claim? What is the type of for be dis-embedded ideal? capable of arguing would such a personwho

Following Bruno Latour, the short response to this question is that Raclin is a `modern' (Latour: 1993). Radin's analysis, as I will show below, is one that follows the modem described by Latour, of separating out (and then keeping separate) processes of project, `hybridisation' and `purification'.

I understand Latour to define these two processes thus:

Hybridisation is a network of things. In this context `thing' should not be understood as being either object or subject, but instead as a different level or expression of pure objectivity. In other words, a `thing' is the singularity of forces: pure quality or infinite constitution. It is the distribution of perceiver and perceived, or the imaging of relationships.

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into into is it, Latour things the of Purification objects separation and subjects, or, as puts is Purification the regulation of things, their selection. humansand non-humans. is distributed It imaging the the ordering. perceiver of and and perceived, or presentation

ideas.

Modernity is a type of meta-purification in the sense that it attempts to separate out the hybridisation fact thereby the and purification and conceal of the processual processesof itself. natureof purification

However, Latour is clear that the two processes operate only

in relation to each other: purification acts upon hybrid processes, while hybridisation in is distinguishable from itself, differs the through sense of what purifications, or occurs in impure, forms. `purifieds' Latour writes: the together various new, networking

So long as we consider these two practices of translation [hybridisation] and purification separately, we are truly modern - that is, we willingly subscribe to the critical project, even though that project is developed only through the proliferation of hybrids below. As soon as we direct our attention simultaneously to the work of purification and the work of hybridisation, we immediately stop being wholly modem, and our future begins to change. (Latour: 1993,11; my emphasis).

In Chapter Two of his book, Latour describes how modernity acts through a `constitution' that enables any position to be adapted to the modern project by reversing, 21 I do not intend to pursue Latour's as necessary,the twin poles of nature and society.

,' In particular see (Latour: 1993.29-39).

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instead, Radin, it but here, this use will, of who provides an excellent example accountof in her work on property and personhood.

Thus, in using Radin's book Reinterpreting Property (1993), 1 am not interested in Hegel Kant `correctly', her and she uses not nor with whether or not use of whether or her legal law theoretical supports reasoning project to the extent that she claims. and case Suffice to say, for the moment that (after Strathern), I do not agree with Radin's distinction between person and property, nor with her further differentiation between fungible property and personal property (Radin: 1993,2-3).

1 will return to the reasons

for this disagreement below, after a consideration of the Introduction to her book.

Radin's book is a collection of essays written over an eleven year period. What is interesting about the introduction is that it is an exercise in regulative information in which Radin presents her essays as a collection. Of course there is nothing unusual in this, but Radin goes into extensive detail in regard to how her essays should be read. Specifically, she uses her introduction to explain how and why the works must be read from the perspective of `pragmatism'.

When Radin describes herself as a pragmatist, we

should read this as meaning that, in Latour's sense, she is presenting herself as a modern.

Radin selects knowledge in order to establish regulative information about property: she is concerned to identify a hierarchy for the registering of property as fungible property at one pole, and as personal property at the other. This division results from the idea that part of an individual's sense of self is at least partly constituted through relations to

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for is to For Radin, selfa continuous property the a relation significant more property. is held Thus, to it being that is identity, the closer merely to property personal property. defined be is likely is invested) little in to (and the as more self of which exchange enable fungible property. With any given property relation, the problem is one of selection and in from be to constitute order a relationship selected particular should presentation: what it as proprietary? How should this selection be presented in terms of the fungiblepersonal spectrum?

What is at stake with these problems is the level of recognition or support that society should give to specific property relationships.

22 Radin

writes:

it is fare better in legal interests the and political arena once may noneconomic fungible interest [a] business they that of are up against a merely made explicit

entity... (Radin: 1993,13)

Radin subsequently qualifies this by giving the fungible-personal distinction a quasiobjective basis. She terms this `consensus', meaning a "source of objective moral criteria" (Radin: 1993,4). Lest someone become too attached to a particular thing in a manner that is unhealthy or detrimental to `human flourishing', this objective moral consensus can serve as the basis for an intervention to restore the proper balance. We can

22It is worth briefly noting that Radin clearly departs from Hegel here, for whom the specificity of the property in question is ultimately redundant. Indeed, at the level of the absolute nothing is exchanged in the sensethat each exchanger retains what s/he always already had: recognition as an individual. In this describes Radin it. is in danger of reversing the subject-object relation sense,personal property as against the subject.

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justify by freedom property", individuality which we and then be "truer to the ideals of becausewe have "regulated ourselves normatively. " (Radin: 1993,6).

is idea from draw to is it that this the akin However, to property personal wrong information. fungible information, to property regulative and constitutive

The fungible-

discern information the is to attempts only, which of regulative a structuring personal pair be by true the recognised and property relation can which a essence proper of property, is If least that if the within present objective moral consensus. graded, not universally, at the case, what is the constitutive element in Radin's account? Is she, contrary to the title has in book, the to Latour's that the separate out sense she managed modern, of from the regulative-purifieds? constitutive-hybrids

In Radin's introduction, she expresses her own doubts about her earlier use of the phrase `objective moral consensus' (Radin: 1993,5). This doubt indicates the difficulty

of

between fungible hand duality: the one and personal on the not on establishing an active fungible-personal but between other, property and constitutive social relations. regulative For this reason Radin's introduction is framed by the policing and exclusion of social relations, so that she can appear to be modern. Her introduction attempts to conceal what it is that makes her concept of property possible possible, that is, in terms of her own 23 pragmatism. What is concealed, or purified, is the absence of any universal proprietary thing. What is positively excluded is the distributive relation by which person and thing immanence Modernity (as conceptualised by Deleuze) and refuses are articulated.

2' For

(Radin: Radin's 1993,3- 4) pragmatism, see of explication

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be demands Pragmatism that difference favour in creativity thereby refuses of the same.

just to the to reasonable. give way reason requires capitalism as contemporary expelled,

Thus Radin's later doubts about consensus:

I was groping for a vocabulary in which to expressthe pragmatic understanding for be that too to shared are, now, understandings entrenched of objectivity: from by by individuals individuals, and are experienced as coming reversible outside themselves. "Objective moral consensus" was a particularly unfortunate phrase in which to try to express this entrenchment because the foundationalist baggage attached to `objectivity' implied for most readers a kind of transcendent reality divorced from the activities of human beings. (Radin: 1993,5)

How are we to understand entrenched shared understandings but as a relationship - more specifically, as a constitutive relationship that renders property as an effect only, as a specific image of relations? In this quote Radin expresses a modern problem: is property (almost) naturalistic and therefore beyond any meaningful intervention by individuals? Or is it a social creation susceptible to intervention by individuals?

The modern response

is to keep these two aspects of the problem separate.24 Radin does so via four acts of purification, that operate so as to exclude the constitutive dimension of property.

First Purification.

The most important exclusion, if Radin's fungible-personal distinction

is not to implode, is the possibility of fungible property being constitutive of the person.

24See Chapter Two of (Latour: 1993).

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does, if become does distinction, to Radin's one On or, one money attached not one either leaves the objective moral consensus. What is specifically being excluded, then, is the investment function of money. For Radin, the future is only a pragmatic problem of is better individual happen, that the to able to plan. so trying accurately predict what will What she does not then see is the way in which such risk assessments serve to activate investment future in As is the to values. about order release what currently unknown decodes is in that the and previous chapter, such a value one noted above, and disassociatesthrough axiomatic manipulation, enabling belief to be set free from any by functions is basis. In the the of which case person constituted as much circumstantial is fungibility by heirloom its `whateverness') (by or s/he an or some other as very money sentimental property.

25

Radin achieves this exclusion in a noteworthy manner. Rather than argue that it is impossible or improper for a person to invest their self-identity in fungible property, she argues the (apparent) opposite: that it is possible for a nonperson (e.g. a company) to make a `personal' investment in its property and assets. The example she uses is the factory: closure of a

Controversies over plant closings make clear that sometimes groups (employees,

or whole communities) are "attached" in some senseto the old holdings. These groups may represent conflicting economic interests, desiring to maximize their profits instead of the corporation's. But they may also represent noneconomic

251do not mean to suggest that associationism provides the basis for a proper distinction between the fungible and the personal. Rather such a distinction only makes sense indeed can only emerge in the disassociationism. context of capitalistic

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interests-a noneconomicattachmentto a certain job, a certain group of co(Radin: 1993,12-3) workers, a certain community character.

What is then potentially more significant (and what the law should perhaps recognise as being more significant) is the personal in property, regardless of whether it is held by a fungible Therefore, "institutions than the or entities other persons". aspect of person or being in be but holdings cannot viewed as any way constitutive of personhood, such being fungible business (i. that think that we might of as property strictly e. rather have dimension but is that assets) can also a personal separate one always company from, and potentially superior to, the fungible: "this fungible interest does not carry the full weight of the standard ideology of property" (Radin: 1993,13).

Second Purification.

We have already noted Deleuze's description of the subject as the

synthesis of time. Similarly, we have seen that when Strathern talks of the imaging of specific social relations as kinship, this image can also be considered (in certain cases) as a synthetic subject. Radin's second exclusion goes to the heart of her modernity: she excludes the synthetic subject. Radin does this as a pragmatic move in order to establish at least a formal normative arrangement, within which the proprietary constitution of a specific person can be judged appropriate, or not, by reference to the objective moral consensus, or human flourishing.

As a modern, it is impossible for Radin to tell us what

this might mean in substance: if she were to do so, her whole project would be undercut

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by the registering of social relations in their broadest, and most immanent, effect. 26 Therefore she must exclude this potential through deferral.

Although occasionally recognising the lack of any real basis for the possibility of doing for liberal her The Radin the to subject analysis person as she conceives work. needs so, is bearer is her, It him the the separate subject who self-motivated abstract of rights. or of in into being to than, or and relations not, rather of as a subject, already chooses enter is Radin Through the use of rights, able to exclude the concept of such relations. by in both Strathern, I Deleuze the that, constitutive relations and which mean relations, for distribution the of persons and things, and thus of the rights and are responsible between be In Radin that them. claimed might we see the usual replay of the obligations social contract model, in which the conventions that must actually underlie, and extensively determine, any such contract are theorised out of the picture. Rather than from arising relations, contract is taken to be the cause of relations.

In this manner Radin is able to recognise the existence of other constitutive relationships, apart from property, but only on the condition that they register as regulative rights, and thereby distinct from any consideration of property. Thus Radin is able to keep property isolated from `welfare rights', `civil rights', and the right to `liberty'. rights

Indeed,

Radin argues that her distinction between personal and fungible property serves to restrict the scope of property generally, thereby protecting these other regulative rights from commodification.

She asks, in a way that seems incredibly naive for anybody who has

26"To these are what extent do `we' (sic) possessa persuasive conception of human flourishing? ... questions I would want to address if I began my project today, and that I hope will be addressed in the

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kidneys, "Do `own' Strathern, or our reproductive capacities our sexuality, our we read books? " (Radin: 1993,15) them as we sell so that we may sell

Third Purification.

This quotation from Radin also makes explicit the equating of

distinction Here Strathern's to the to exclude. right we return property rights with between the whole and the part: an image is always a whole, even if it represents is From how less (or this thing) than perspective, registered a whole. a person something depends upon the specific constitutive nexus by which a person is imaged in the fallacy benefit is it in The this that the of of approach reveals circumstance question. in liberal Radin's to type a specific case, as with restricting property relations in being the right to exclude. this type grounded modernism generally,

The difficulty of body parts arises as a result of the image of the liberal subject as a selfdirected whole

be does Or, Radin to this whole cease a whole? as at what point -

it: articulates

My present view is that many of our personal endowments and capacities associated with the body stubbornly resist conventional description as property.

They remain "properties" only in the senseof attributes, that is, and do not become"property" in the senseof severableobjects. (Radin: 1993,17)

What is being excluded here is the investment function of money. Property is concerned with those things that can be alienated, specifically through exchange, either positively, future, either by me or by others." (Radin: 1993,6)

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in the form of consideration, or negatively, as a right forgone in making a gift. In either in is delirium to the order purify of property of potential case,exchange prioritised investment - investment itself registers only as an exchange of obligations, with no to the the those taken practices necessary of realise obligations as control of account future. In this sense therefore, and despite Radin's recognition that the same property fungible in different by be the thought or personal of as either same owner could her into being in the project must exclude way which property rights come circumstances, 27 is through the assertion that they exist as such: to put it another way, control excluded.

Fourth Purification.

This purification is closely tied to the previous one: Radin meets a

judges deciding desirability the of whether a particular property concern about fungible for is have (and the this either personal or might an overrelationship potential determination of the distinction), by arguing that judges already distinguish, in practice, personal from fungible property. Furthermore they do not make the distinction arbitrarily, because it is made non-subjectively:

Whether or not something is appropriately considered personal property instead depends upon whether our cultural commitments surrounding property and

personhoodmake it justifiable for personsand a particular category of thing to be treatedas connected. (Radin: 1993,18)

27The exclusion or purification of control is not, as I hope is clear from the previous chapter, necessary for the functioning of capitalism. Contemporary capitalism is quite explicit about its control function. It is only in relation to modernity proper - that is, very loosely, despotism - that such an exclusion is necessary.

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Again, we return to the fundamental problem of the objective moral consensus: Radin

diviners faith in judges has but in the this the as of consensus, problem so obviously doing is the assumption that judges are a neutral repository of "our cultural by " degree they through to the are which able recognise proper or amount commitments, fungible. tends towards the the either personal or which a particular property relationship

I do not mean to suggest that judges are hopelessly subjective in their deliberations, but is has located it Radin in that the the objectivity problem wrong place, making rather, ideal democracy. In of participatory other words, she sticks to the coextensive with an despotic model, albeit as liberal despotism. She is concerned to enable a despotic bureaucracy (the judiciary) to assessclaims by reference to a standard of the same and, in judging, to overcode claims in the proper manner. Radin's great struggle with lies heart her is the the consequence of wanting this objectivity, which of modernity, at liberal-despotic account: on the one hand, society is objective and beyond individual intervention; on the other hand society is nothing but the product of the individuals that constitute it.

Objectivity resides on an all together different level, one that is purely formal and without substantive content: the passing of time. It is the future that is truly objective in the sense that it acts to distribute the present and the past, and to keep on distributing them in every instant. Objectivity is the open, meaning that ignorance and non-knowledge are inescapable. What matters is only how the selections and distributions of knowledge and non-knowledge are made, how things are presented (or dramatised).

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To saythat the subject is a synthesis is not to say that it is a `whole' made up of specific `parts', rather, this synthesis is one of pure difference, of the difference constitutive of in difference is it Only itself. then possible to talk of responsibility, because the time his herself. is What is therefore or present or select must good not to select so subject limit is be it is is being, to that one able exist at ones own and what one capable of rather, limit in itself. is It the own act ones very of selection at a matter of extracting the existing from `being the that relationships power constitute one, of worthy of what maximum happensto one' (Deleuze: 1990,148-153).

This is not to be taken in a glib self-help

for his it is the that treat example, a concentration or not case, camp victim should sense: her situation as a philosophical problem but, instead, such circumstances are the result of deprives his her that the subject of or a state power ability to select themselves, that it impossible for `worthy' the to themselves subject make of the events that occur makes to and in them. Precisely, such atrocities bring only shame -a universal shame, as Deleuze has said in relation to the work of Primo Levi, of being human.

In a more direct sense, this problem of selection is also evident in Strathern's article Losing (Out On) Intellectual Resources, in which a woman exchanged as compensation is placed between two conflicting images of herself: the image of herself as an independent person, trying to protect her sisters, and the image of herself as a member of her clan, and the mutual recognition and obligations that that involves (Pottage & Mundy: 2004,227). It is not a matter of trying to find a happy outcome for all in such circumstances, but a problem of how to take responsibility and avoid shame.

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Therefore, Radin's concerns about the appropriateness of judicial intervention in the distinction least (1) to three allow us map at exclusions: capitalistic personal-fungible favour in liberal despotism; (2) of excluded modulated property effects excluded control in favour of objective property; and (3) individual responsibility excluded in favour of an objective moral consensus.

The great difference between Radin and Strathern is that one attempts to find a for basis in is function law, the property what essentially constitutive regulative of whilst the other is concerned to map the articulations of property as a consequence of the interrelations of constitutive and regulative functions or information.

In other words,

Radin separates(i. e. purifies) what Strathern considers simultaneously (i. e. as hybridisation). Radin's approach maybe more appealing to legal theorists on a "gut level" (Radin: 1993,2), but it is an approach that ultimately confuses our thinking on property by arbitrarily excluding certain images of persons and things in favour of others. Contra Raclin, how persons and things are imaged is dependent entirely upon the relations in and through which they are constituted not as a matter of objective moral consensus human flourishing, but in terms of the immanence of constitutive force and regulative or power to one another: it is a matter of specificity.

Radin seeks the cut-off point of

specificity - the point at which one's specificity takes one outside of liberal practice. In Strathern's account we are able to go much further, and begin to see how control is developed in a manner that thrives on specificity, and links it to an objectivity of global proportions.

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In the final section of this chapter, I move to discuss, briefly, Baudrillard's System of Objects. This is because it presents an excellent description of how objects and subjects are arranged under contemporary capitalism.

SYSTEM OF OBJECTS

One of the consequences of Radin's approach in keeping separate immanence and transcendenceis that, within the context of property, she is unable to think the manner in immanence the which capitalism operates via of production and consumption. In other words, she cannot admit an approach to property (or to law more generally) that would take account of `biopower'.

Using this term recalls Hardt and Negri, and the manner in

biopower, by they theorise the which production as occurring at micro-level of supported 28 Following the the communication technologies of miniaturisation and networking. argument developed by Latour, the exclusion of biopower is of course necessary if Radin is to keep separate the human and the inhuman, so as to maintain the distinction between subject and object. However, to fully understand the `subject of property', it is necessary to admit the inextricable interrelations between persons and things in a manner that does not automatically prioritise the subject. This alternative approach understands the subject to be the consequence of invention and associationism (meaning the immanent difference of perception), rather than the simple precondition for property.

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We might therefore think of the subject as a simulation. From the perspective of Deleuze been falsity has the simulacrum, meaning ever only power there of or the affirmation of 29 `superior' Why the simulated or the or absolute reality. this world over and above any false? Because of the manner in which perception differs from itself, already falsifying itself in its very expression or articulation.

This falsity is the partiality of any expression

(its being openness), acting to combat the over-determined and closed model of of knowledge that would otherwise consider itself `complete'. Falsity (or partiality or is openness) non-knowledge.

However, this is a quite different concept of the `simulacrum' than that developed by Baudrillard. Whereas Deleuze's use of the term passes close to constitutive information, Baudrillard's usage is much closer to regulative information.

The dominance of

decode information, degrees that the specific, and amounts regulative of quantitative institutional qualities of perception, is a simulation in Baudrillard's sense.

What Baudrillard shows is that a society organised primarily around consumption-asproduction (antiproduction in Deleuze and Guattari's terminology), no longer consumes is irrelevant in basis its The the the an object on object particularity of of specific use. relation to its overall functioning: the specificity of the thing has a tactical role to play, inasmuch as it helps to ramify the appearance of difference (i. e. it multiplies differences referenced to an external formal idea of the same), but it creates a difference that serves

28SeeChapter Five above. 29See(Deleuze: 1990,263)

where Deleuze equates simulation with the eternal return.

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it investment, is This that true type. so appears of only as site a specific a a not as only indicates inasmuch `type' logistical function the term that as a parallel specificity, (who `type') in (as the to the consumes subject a proper circulation well as reduces distribution the across) and particular upon privileged networks as established registration `convenient' and the `efficient' (i. e. the normal).

The consumption of an object distributes the consuming subject across the various is longer Thus that that the support particular object. a subject no networks and series but is, instead, in inventory the analytic, subject sense of an or collection of synthetic images. is logistical The haunting subject a parts or non-person, a ghost unrelated fragments of axiomatically arranged perception: nothing but a collection of `life experiences.'

The system of objects acts to disconnect the subject from specific circumstances and relations, to put him or her `in touch' with capitalist transcendence. We might say therefore that the image ceases to be a whole: that is, the image that a person might register as in a specific relation is precisely what capitalism works upon and, in so doing, imagesthe subject as a collection of images that, understood quantitatively, always lacks wholeness, and thus functions as a motor of consumption -a `yet to be completed'. Unlike the social support that Strathern describes, none of these images is ever able to register as complete, rather circulating together as decoded, partial images which, taken together as a whole, are imaged as incomplete. The only `whole' image is an incomplete image. and therefore a lacking image. The system of objects serves to create and

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image lack, is form thus the this the the that partial and commodity articulates maintain

is is images What lack this that the this, about capitalism new and assigns subject. decoding and axioms, to the subject: a subject who is no longer responsible but through be (because `lack'). We a victim s/he suffers ever a might call this the only can in duration is decoded irreversible loss. subject, which open as an postmodern

CONTROL AND WASHING MACHINES

For example, in the context of interior design, Baudrillard writes:

This modem home-dweller does not `consume' his objects. Instead of ... consuming objects, he dominates, controls and orders them. He discovers himself in the manipulation and tactical equilibration of a system. (Baudrillard: 2002,27)

When Baudrillard talks of consuming, we should take him to mean something akin to use value, in the sense that a particular thing is consumed for a particular end. Thus, it is the quality of the thing that is significant, because this determines whether it can interrelate with other specific things, in pursuit of a goal or reason for consuming. In other words, consuming here addresses the singularity of the circumstantial relation of which the particular thing is a part. which is distinguished from the control of objects and their regulation within tactical-logistic capitalism. In consumption-production what is consumed-produced is the subject her/himself, via the proper regulation of things.

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Simply, the subject is the effect of the regulation of things, in which case it is more `subject `property than talk to effect' of a a effect'. accurate

Harnessedto the appropriate technology, capitalism is able to anti-produce subject effects far beyond differences intensity, human is the the smallest otherwise able to of great it human doing in: inhuman In believe domain the to so, gives something of an register. technological transcendence understood as statistical prediction or insurance risk.

30 A

type of memory (causality) of the future. That this logistical problem is inextricably linked to specific tactical ones, is apparent from Baudrillard's description of the decoding banal as as washing clothes: something of

Take the washing machine, for instance. In its form and operation it has no clear relationship to the clothes washed. The whole operation of washing has lost its it is intervention, in in timed time; specificity a minimal a procedure space and for detergent itself is the than which an abstract vehicle chemicals. water no more Functionally speaking, the washing machine belongs, therefore, to a relational field utterly different from that of the old-fashioned washboard or washtub ...

(Baudrillard: 2002,51)

This should not be read as a questionable nostalgia for `traditional'

domestic

technologies, but instead as an observation that capitalistic efficiency and control operatesvia the `creation' of specific surpluses. Anyone with a washing-machine nolonger has to spend time and energy in washing clothes by hand, and it is this surplus that

Baudrillard deals with this risk in terms of credit see below. -

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in. intervenes directly In labour less human task making task, any of a activity capitalism

becomesmore efficient and convenient. The surplus opened up by increasedefficiency is in that the surplus capitalism seizes upon order to anti-produce. This should be distributed (meta-)perceptions. Capitalism an anti-associationism as of opens understood field that connects the specific circumstance of cleaning clothes to an a relational field, dis/incorporating branding, finance, modulated obsolescence, energy absolute, interior design, design, prestige, and so on. efficiency,

Capitalistic efficiency does not register circumstantially: it is in essence a process for decoding circumstances. Baudrillard sums this up when he writes:

The reign of electronics and cybernetics means that efficiency, freed from the is henceforward dependent shackles of gestural space, upon a saturation of minimal extension, governing a maximized field, which is without common measure with sensory experience. (Baudrillard: 2002,52)

The efficiency of an object is the very process by which capitalist intervention occurs becauseit creates a blank space, a `whatever' space, that is effectively equal to any other such space. Efficiency-as-decoding distributes the subject logistically, regardless of his her is it logistical (or to that this or specific circumstances what means say a abilities) 'maximized field' is governed by a tactical `saturation of minimal extension. ' One's activities are presented as a series of partial images, linked through capitalistic control: where one moves from cleaning clothes, to environmental concerns over detergent, to

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financeagreements,to interior design, and so on. Baudrillard's discussion of credit makesthis even more explicit.

CONTROL AND CREDIT

Credit is an ordering of the future - in other words, it is an investment. Not just in the investment for but, the sense of an one who gives credit more straightforward investment for in it. invests In the one who receives receiving credit one significantly, an invests in in oneself as a debtor, as one who owes. Here the oneself a particular way: one is kinship, but an obligation to submit to the obligation of relationships or obligation not income, by fluctuations to to to control, an obligation work receive an an obligation abide in interest rates, an obligation, as Baudrillard shows, to consume. In this, one then has the right to receive credit, the right to be obligated, and, more extensively, the right to become a victim (Baudrillard: 2002,156).

There is a close link here to Pottage's writing on genes. Inheritance is no longer a matter future in be is be has the to to of past - what available generations considered what will the name of humankind generally. As patrimony is reversed so too is production, so that one consumes before one even `owns' the object in question, indeed "their consumption precedes their production"

(Baudrillard: 2002,159; author's emphasis). In a sense it is

impossible to exchange in such circumstances, if by exchange we mean the mutual transfer of things. Even when these things are representatives of value, rather than the

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is formal there relations, neverthelesssome concept of specificproducts of particular in However, does is transfers. with such credit one not exchange: one equivalence instead decoded, elevated from the specificity of circumstances (now reduced to lack) has In to transcendence. connected capitalist and of a sense, no-one structures because is have, futurity the that exchanging only value what one will a anything worth be (i. if it is to materialise e. capable of a circumstantial assessment) must never actually continue to generate value.

Just as the specificity of one's body is undercut when judged against the requirements of `future generations', so too one's property is to be understood not as a relationship to being is by One's `about' thing. the thing, or even as some property which some means it in is implicated the the modulations of control never-ending assertion of what one is history, is because be. If this the the will end of primarily contemporary capitalism future can no longer arrive:

If they [property-objects] no longer locate me in a relationship to a family or into brought I relation through them with customary group, am nevertheless financial large (the its order, the and economic society at and agencies fluctuations of fashion, and so forth). And I must pay for them over and over

again, month by month, or replace them every year. This meansthat everything has changed: the significance these objects have for me, the projects they

embody, their objective future, and mine. (Baudrillard: 2002,159; author's emphasis)

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The specificity of a thing, dependent upon how it is imaged in the context of particular its to mode of acquisition, a mode that attempts to short circuit the relations, gives way future by, as far as possible, making it happen now, as a subset of the present moment, determination. However, therefore this will only work to the capable of a current and future is indeterminable; is, is in knowledge the that that that there something extent insurmountably is non-knowledge. which

Credit functions in both directions at once:

tactically, to bring the future into the present, and logistically, to extend the present into the future, so that while things "are being paid for they are simultaneously wearing out"

(Baudrillard: 2002,157)

SUMMATION

In this chapter I have used Strathern's work to show how the problem of property must be distribute ' `backwards, that to the extended persons and actual and specific relations things. The significance of Strathern's work is that it demonstrates the absence of a universal, non-specific category of property, in the sense that this is often sought by legal 31 academics. Furthermore, Strathern's work reminds us that we cannot think of the person or subject as a given: the subject is not a black box that always functions in the in is in Rather, the to sameway subject caught up processes of relation objects. association and causality that serve as distributors of persons and things.

I have also argued that there is a resonance between the work of Strathern and Deleuze, in that they both utilise immanence as a conceptual framework for thought. In Strathern,

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immanence is the reciprocal determination of regulative and constitutive information that Deleuze's relationships; whilst reading of Hume finds a similar articulates social for (what have I knowledge the to reciprocity of referred as) necessity and nonknowledge. In both there is a shared relation to the future as a specific zone of nonknowledge that acts as the source of continuous re-articulations of past and present. 32 In this sense, it is the imaging of causality that determines particular property relations.

I then used Baudrillard in order to clarify this point in relation to credit in particular, and his concept of the system of objects more generally. In this system, capitalism separates the subject from what it can do by continuously decoding it, only to re-integrate it on an apparently universal level. This universal level is the system of objects and it is the object as commodity that decodes its `owner', articulating him or her as incomplete and lacking. In Baudrillard's work we see a reversal of causality, as capitalism dis-associates the specificity of any person-thing articulation in its attempts to make the future instrumental and (anti)productive.

I used Radin's work on property in order to highlight the specificity of Strathern's approach. I argued that Radin is a modern (in Latour's sense) because she is only able to presentproperty via a complex system of purification and exclusion. Specifically, she excludes the particularity of circumstances, by which I mean constitutive relationships, in order to produce an abstract and regulative property ideal. For this reason, I argued that

For example. see Pottage's review of Harris and Penner in (Pottage: 1998a). SeeChapter Two above

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in Strathern to who treats regulation and constitution she stands opposition is, immanence. that as problems of simultaneously -

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CHAPTER SEVEN

In this chapter I continue the consideration of the controlled subject begun in the previous focus link between doing I In feminine, the the so upon property and where the chapter. latter (picking up on the investigation of Schroeder's work in Chapters One and Two) is understoodas the primary mode of subjectivisation.

In societiesof control the feminine is at the cutting edge of subjectivity becausecontrol is intensively by life that through to attempts, modulation, exploit a system creating a `universal field' that is inclusive of as much of humanity as possible. It is not simply the casethat control, via immaterial labour, becomes in some sense `feminised', but much more importantly that the man-woman dualism stands as a universal axiom of

differentiation applicable to any aspectof civil society generally. By this I mean that the (logistic) tendency of control operatesonly through finer and finer (tactical) universalist distinctions:this is the meaning of modulation. Man-woman is an incredibly productive continuumfor the control of various levels of society, and is replicated in any articulated socialduality: rich-poor, white-non-white, adult-child, employer-employee, etc., in which control organises(banal) differences (premised upon the same) in order to decodethem (andmore specifically: in the processof decoding them). The man-woman distinction canbe thought of as an exemplary articulation that allows a distinction to be posited as an inequality, following which this inequality is decoded on the basis that, after all, one is just the sameas the other

family: human difference the the member equation of of -a

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legitimate is intervention, to inequality corrective enough so as to normalise with differenceby erasing it. In so doing, control must deny what is circumstantial including its because, implications it of own power thepolitical were explicit in presenting itself as it have `against', despotic to to would revert exercised a model of a power inclusion/exclusion. Rather, control must operate through a superior rationality of what is mostefficient and convenient (normalisation); even if this meansunleashing the most irrational, obsceneand destructive forces in the name of a `final' truth, a processwell Nietzsche (Nietzsche: 1968,9-39) by analysed

I begin this chapter by returning to Hume (and Deleuze's reading of Hume), so as to analysethe processesby which the subject is distinguished from the given. Through this analysisit becomesapparentthat the subject and the given are not so much distinct entities as they are two intense points or nodes within a continuum or field. This opens the way for further consideration of the subject under control, and particularly how such

controlled subjectivities are developed through zones of feminisation or becomingwoman. In considering the concept of becoming-woman in more detail, it becomes clear that this is a highly ambiguous construction, through which new modes of subjectivity are

possiblewhilst, simultaneously, it can be harnessedby control as an apparatusfor recapturingthe subject via organisations of inequality and victimisation. Finally, by then linking becoming-woman in its control aspectto a statistical mode of knowledge, I argue that subjectivity and property are coincident, under control, to the extent that both undergoprocessesof emptying out (decoding) as part of control's overall strategy of neutralisingthe creative force of the future.

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feminine between the the Therefore, similarity and property is not the result of an isomorphismor sharedessence(as Schroeder suggests),but rather follows from the in manner which control exercisespower.

DELEUZE AND HUME

In consideringthe subject we return once more to the problem of how it is that the subject is constituted in the 'given': the problem that Deleuze pursues in Hume's A Treatise of

' HumanNature. How is it that the given, understood as the totality of what is perceiveable, is transcended so that something (the subject) is able to perceive while

This become being (Deleuze: 1991,87). (objects) somethingelse perceived? capable of problemarisesin this way becauseit seeksto avoid, as part of its condition, the idea of causeand effect subjected to a beginning and an end. It does not address the question of what began or of what will end, but is only concerned with a causality that can, following

Nietzsche,be most usefully thought of as infinite. This is what Hume meansby `human nature'- the investigation of that which cannot have experienceor knowledge of itself as anything other than what it is, lacking recourse to the nihilism of a `beyond', of the true

modelor causeof which human nature is then simply a degradedeffect or copy.

1SeeChapter Four above.

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We must then return to associationism, and particularly the concept of causality. It will be recalledfrom Chapter Four that causality is a unique type of association becauseit involvesthe affirmation of more than is known. Hume describesit as probable, rather 2002,61-5), because (Hume: finally know A that one can never causes event thancertain future Experience in B B. that the only affirm as can probable event will again event follow event A. There are two important consequencesto be drawn from this observation is belief, how is First the this concerned with nature of and constructed as a asa result. how Hume's is to the reason; and secondly, philosophy of subject passionsuperior intimately tied to the concept of duration invented by Bergson and subsequently developed by Deleuze. In tackling these two issues, we will understand what it means to is that control an anti-associationism. capitalistic say

BELIEF

Deleuze identifies two principles at work in Hume's philosophy: the principle of is Only the two these the mind association and principles with of passion. principle

transcended(i. e. the given is transcended)by the subject. What, then, is the relationship between that which is apparently exterior to the subject (the given/mind) and that which

is interior (subjectivity)? It might be tempting to think that the subject is simply that which is able to register what is `out there' - that the sensesof the person are a `natural' phenomenain the sensethat they coincide with the perceivable in much the sameway as an animal relates to its environment. Obviously, the human body is, from one

2468

distinction but be between human body is the the must natural, made what perspective, how be (and humans is to taken certainly understand any such nature widely naturally divergent)and what it is capable of being. In other words, human nature should not be reducedto a naturally occurring organism.

However, it should not be thought that this indicates two human natures or two natures

is immanent Perception because is to there already nature only one nature, not generally. two: there is not a nature of the begun human on the one hand and the nature of her is the there on other; rather environment only that which these two natures received duration. be expressions of. would

Human nature is closer to artifice than any idea of the `natural. ' As Hume says, "mankind is an inventive species", and what enables the human to invent (or to experiment with modes of life) is belief. In belief more is affirmed than is known becauseit is the point at which knowledge and non-knowledge become imperceptible. It is the act of belief that marks the human, regardless of what is believed. However, the

but is believed in is belief is important. What contentof nothing problems, nevertheless andproblems are only relevant to the extent that they articulate a particular circumstantial arrangement: in other words, the specificity of non-knowledge.

The clearestexample of this is causality. Causality is never certain, no matter how many timesit is perceived in a particular case,but is always a probability in the important sense that the causal link between event A and event B is never apparentto reason with

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Reason (Hume: 2002,106) based can register relationships certainty. upon absolute differences but of quantity and and quality, reasoncannot know the link that similarities Rather, link be believed in, meaning that the of association. relationships can only marks derived from is indistinguishable knowledge from an associationism the specific nonany knowledgethat accompaniesit. If reason demandsknowledge of that which it is impossibleto know, as the condition of such knowledge, then knowledge is forced, following Deleuze, to confront the problem of duration. This problem is the very being; distribution is, that the of perception. problemof

ASSOCIATION AND PASSION

If knowledge is a matter of reason and belief, it should not be thought that they correspond to association and passion respectively: rather, one pair cross-cuts the other. However, all are grounded in the one, the univocality of being. This one is itself nothing but passion; and for Hume reason is subject to, and dependent upon, passion. What is meant by passion? In Hume's philosophy, passion can only be understood in terms of perception: passion is the intensity of a perception. Here it is useful to remind ourselves of how Hume unfolds this argument in his Treatise. The first distinction he makes is that between an impression and an idea (Hume: 2002,7).

Within an infinity of difference, an

impressionof sensationis the localisation of a particular difference in which a singular relation is established,for example between the retina and light. Before the particular beamof light and the particular eye there is only a potentiality or passivity that is not

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important In its by the an actualisation. the sense particular eye and particular exhausted because light they continue to differ from themselves:they are beamof remain passive inevitability. They logical There is happy nor an conclusion are singularities. not a not a between light, but derived from eye and only an ability or action correspondence differenceor duration.

However,all of this takes us beyond Hume who was not able to consider why it is that human'shave impressions of sensationas a philosophical problem (and indeed it is not if is finally discovering that thinks the truth about people2). The philosophy a matter of one

for impressions Hume is that they give rise to ideas, which of of sensation significance be impressions. Ideas impression thought the the of as echoes of such can are continued of a sensation once the relationship that produced the impression has passed - for example, the idea of red once the relationship between a particular eye and a particular

light haspassed. Thus we have moved beyond the simple relation of eye and light, to consider the mind as the condition of ideas (actually, this is always the case because the

impressionof sensationalready presupposesa mind in which it can occur). Again - not an organisation in the sense of an inevitability, but simply a serious of relationships.

If the impression and the idea are registered in the mind, then we can only understand the

differencebetween them as a difference of intensity: "The difference betwixt these consistsin the degreesof force and liveliness" (Hume: 2002,7). One perceives red and onehasthe idea of red, an idea that endureseven after the perception. However, the

2For example, the use made by some of the `truth' of a homosexual gene. As if that had any bearing on the deployment, use, or expression of homosexuality.

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is idea is that the linked such of to the current red associationism of not only nature is but that impressionof also related to previous impressions (i. e. other ideas) as colour, impression For idea trigger the a subsequent of example, red might of an earlier, well. different impression: I see a red car go by, and recall the red tunic of a soldier.

The senseof ideas and impressions is an inescapablefunction of human nature as far as Hume is concerned, to such a degree that not only do impressions give rise to ideas but

impressions, ideas impressions to themselves that give rise secondary or of reflection also (Hume:2002,11). That is, an idea can produce a sensible impression: for example, I burn my hand producing an impression of pain. Some time later I recall the idea of this idea is different from This intensity the original impression. I do not think, of a pain. when I recall the idea of the pain, that I am currently experiencing the impression of it. It might still hurt, but this is not the original impression that my idea pertains to. However, the idea of this pain can give rise to a secondary impression: for example, an aversion to fires, or at least an increased caution. My reason might relate fire and pain, but it is my passion that makes me averse to fire.

This passion takes me beyond reason, but in so

doing makesthe latter possible.

IMMANENCE OF REASON AND PASSION

Humerecognisesthat, if ideas and impressions are a matter of intensity only, it is very easyfor the two to become confused, so that one is able to potentially believe in anything

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dilemma is The this the is of that the particularity of a circumstance, rectification at all. (i. However, e. a particular associations set of of this returns us perceptions). set specific is between initial the relation what problem: perceiver and perceived, between the to the This is brought into by fact is the the problem that the given? and relief mind subject indistinguishablefrom the ideas that constitute it. The mind is not a faculty that receives ideas,but rather "The mind is identical to ideas in the mind" (Deleuze: 1991,88). The is how becomes then the the the given problem of of subject something more problem than the mind, or, to put it another way, how the subject becomes organised? (Deleuze: 1991,89). How do we move from the mind to the subject? (Deleuze: 1991,99).

Deleuze focuses, first, upon the principles of association. This principle is plural because,according to Hume, it has a number of functions, the most significant of which is causality. Broadly, the principles of association are one of two types: either certain, in the sensethat they give rise to an immediate relation that is dependent upon the nature of the two terms compared or related (resemblance, contrariety, degrees of quality, and quantity or number); or probable, inasmuch as the relation is independent of the terms

2002,15). In (Hume: (identity, temporal contrasted spatial and relations, and causality) both casesthe relation is always external to the ideas contrasted(Deleuze: 1991,99), and it is theserelations that are to be understood as human nature for, being external to their terms,they are not part of the ideas so related. This externality is the subject, that transcendsthe given by not being given. The subject is non-knowledge, the moment of ignorancewhich is able to organise around it the specificity of a particular knowledge.3

3To describe it

lack beloved loss is it the towards to or of some of sense not orientate as non-knowledge psycho-analysts,nor is it a negativity. Lack, if it comes, is a matter of circumstance, not of human nature.

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This indicates, as Deleuze makes clear, that associationism is not enough to explain how it is that things are related (Deleuze: 1991,101). What do the principles of association human is be First, that to ideas in various the nature understood as relating of explain? ideas impressions, Second, distinct that two types of sensation,are related and as ways. to eachother. Third, that we do not have an impression of relation, meaning that we finally have idea it is that connectsone idea to another: any idea is an of what cannot idea: to thus such associationsare only capable of any other connected potentially forming a collection, in the sensethat they happen to be mixed together. What needsto be explained is the event of relation itself: if all ideas are potentially relatable, how are (i. be distinguished from to those that are or relevant useful relations e. problems) incorrect or false?

This is where the principle of passion becomes relevant. Passion refers to secondary impressions or impressions of reflection (Hume: 2002,181), which Hume describes in this way:

An impression first strikes upon the senses,and makesus perceive heat or cold, thirst or hunger, pleasure or pain of some kind or other. Of this impression there is a copy taken by the mind, which remains after the

impressionceases;and this we call an idea. This idea of pleasureor pain, when it returns upon the soul, producesthe new impressionsof desire and aversion, hope and fear, which may properly be call'd impressionsof This point is perhaps clearer if it is described thus: non-knowledge is a relative slowness from which the

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deriv'd from it. These again are copy'd by the memory and reflection imagination, and becomeideas; which perhapsin their turn give rise to ideas. impressions (Hume: 2002,11) and other

Which meansthat first (at least from the perspective of the present reflection) the human is a collection of affects, a singular collection of sensationsthat are subsequently into Passion (the impressions arrangements particular capable of action. organised of binds ideas (as impressions together to ideas), thus passion is are what well as reflection)

thefeeling (i. e. belief) that two terms are connected. There is nothing mystical about it is belief belief: is itself formed by the circumstances in which a subject is that a such a for form nothing can produced, an idea unless it is ultimately referable to some `initial' impression, that is itself a characteristic of a particular circumstance. The circumstance secretesthe entire apparatus of perceived and perceiver, thus the circumstance is the perceivable, and because this perceivable is nothing but difference, the subject is

fundamentallyprobable. The subject is a believing structure.

Reasonis then that which delimits belief: it structures and orders the probabilities of belief. However, if reason is nothing but relation, then reasonitself is a facet of passion: reasonis nothing but a mode of passion (Hume: 2002,265-268). Passionlimits itself on 4 basis Here limits itself in its the of self-interest: self-interest we see own self-interest. moreclearly what the passion of reason is: it is that which ensuresthe limit of the subject,not to finally identify and fix the subject, but to ensurethat the subject remains a

speedof knowledge becomes perceptible. See (Virilio & Lotringer: 2005,76 and 82-3). 4 SeeChapter Four above.

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its being, being its in the of consistency sign expression of success not evaporating partial into the whole of being. Nevertheless,reason is only such to the extent that it depends know, ideas impressions it it those to of and cannot which what are not available upon (andthereforepassive or virtual, but neverthelessreal). Thus the subject is also imperceptible:as it consists, it also insists within a particular circumstance or zone that is but it, is We than certainly more not absolute. something might think of this as perhaps the subject-in-action,in Nietzsche's senseof `becoming what one is'; or as Deleuze 5 belief in it, "a (Deleuze: 1995,176). the as world" expresses

The principle of passion is a principle of immanence, one that enables the principles of into This them. whilst simultaneously entering a association reciprocal relationship with is clear from Deleuze, who writes of passion:

We can in fact see that there are two ways of defining the principle: within the collection [of impressions], the principle elects, chooses, designates, and invites certain impressions of sensation among others; having done this, it constitutes impressions of reflection in connection with these

electedimpressions. Thus, it has two roles at the sametime: a selective role and a constitutive role. (Deleuze: 1991,113)

Passionselectsand constitutes the mind and, in doing so, enablesthe mind to be transcended;that is, it opens up the space,through constitution, for the subject to appear

5We

should understand `world' to mean circumstance, of the specificity of affect or sensation, rather than the universal, ever-deferred climax of capitalistic transcendence, that allows the collection of `experiences' as so many commodities and displays.

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it to believe invent. the or, put another relates, to way, that enables which subject and as To constitutethe mind is to realise the non-wholeness of any collection, regardlessof from it, it. The is is human to the or subtracted added subject product of nature, an what This is through it the time. sensation to synthesis constructed of what means artifice is 'activated': itself, becoming organised, without the the transcends that mind mind say it be to what always already was -a collection or set of relations. ceasing

ACTION AND CIRCUMSTANCE

Deleuze says of action:

The essenceof action is found in the nexus between means and end. To act is to assemble means in order to realize an end. (Deleuze: 1991,124)

To act is therefore to believe: "If you believe in the world you precipitate events " ... (Deleuze: 1995,176). Whether or not one acts in an appropriate manner (whether or not

onedoesall that could have been done) is beside the point. To act is not to actualise: indeed,to act is to counter-actualise(Deleuze: 1990,150), meaning that through action onebecomesimperceptible, in a merging or blurring of actor and circumstance (i. e. dramatisation). One might have ends that one wants to achieve, but this is not a yardstick for the evaluation of the act. Ends are only useful measuresif it is kept in mind that the end itself, as well as the meansof achieving it, are nothing but belief: the belief that the means will be appropriate, and that the ends will justify the means. One precipitates

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doing, becomes in something of a thing oneself, ceasing in fact to be thingsand, so `oneselfin order to become a self. Or better yet, to invent a self.

All this is only possible in relation to a circumstance. The use of the indefinite article heresignifies that it did not begin: a circumstance is without origin. There is nothing `morereal' behind a circumstance, and the articulations of being are without morality. Passionis indistinguishable from a circumstance, the expression of a particular time that

hasnot lost anything, but can be made to loose something crucial if one acts in regard to it as if it were the time, the time of the chosen, of redemption, and so on. Such a belief doesnot really count as action; it is rather the attempt to bring all actions to an end, to institute an end so that an appeal can finally be made to the true origin. In which case, longer believes: does indicate? What terrorises, this one no one one wills nothingness. That circumstances are self-organising systems in which the subject does (acts) what it is capableof doing (acting). This is the consistency of mind productive of the subject: in action (that is, reaction to circumstances understood as the counter-actualisation of non-

knowledge)the subject "conserves itself' (Deleuze: 1991,133). Meaning that the subject is a subjectto the extent that it preservesitself from the whole of being, not mistaking itself for the subject: it is schizophrenic rather than paranoid.

IDEA AND IMPRESSION AS DURATION

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impression between idea is a matter of duration: an idea endures difference The and despitethe ending of an impression. The mind, as a collection of ideas, is then a matter is The it duration. though a present; even mind might consist of memories and of for One believes depending these this only a that exist present. or upon anticipations, form but future, the the the of past and understood as that which opens up circumstances, it thepresentand causes to pass,complicates the present,ramifies it, and activates the difference of it. The present is actually nothing but the past and the future as it currently 6 but Mnemosyne Eros. and exists: not memory and anticipation

Therefore the mind (understood as some particular thing of a given consistency, as this mind rather than that) is nothing but habit. Habit is to be understood as a matter of causality: on the basis of previous experience, one presumes that the future will conform. Formally understood this is habitus, the passive subject of the present instant that, in for future, is in its the the passing,allows present state of not yet past, past and and yet, already the past and the future or, more specifically, their contraction: "the thrust of the past and the elan toward the future - are, at the center of Hume's philosophy, the two aspectsof the same fundamental dynamism" (Deleuze: 1991,92).

Thusthe subject is a synthesisof time, and the principles of association and passion are two facets of the same function through which relations are formed. Human nature is that

which transcendsmind through the inference of causality, an orientation towards the future, or Eros. In short, it is risk not insurance risk but amor fati. The only question thenis whether one seeksto avoid risk, and make such avoidance an end in itself; or 6 SeeChapter Two

above 279

To it it is affirmation of are an risk. ends one's put another way, since actually whether impossibleto avoid risk: does one take responsibility for one's actions or does one seek for liability them? deny to

Thesubjectis that which transcendsmind by claiming, and the claim constitutes the mind throughthe assertionof a consistency that is ungrounded. However, the mind is ideas is that the the appeal,the up of are selected, made and selection nonetheless determinationof what does and does not belong. As we saw above, these actions of the 7 determinations: one appealsonly by referenceto what has been subjectare reciprocal in is to one claims only relation what in the process of being selected or constituted, and distinguished. All of this is ultimately ungrounded or rather, it gives itself its own it for itself, its claims a pure assertion, ground, as own consistency, its own conservation. It is a matter of its own repetition, understood as that which can only be repeated given a particular circumstance, so that behind this there is only another repetition, and behind

that another,and so on.

This is how Hume understands property: it is nothing but a matter of belief and invention within specific circumstances, an effect of such circumstances. Law is the artifice of

be laws 2002,314-5), (Hume: to property,right and obligation are only a solution and discoveredonce the problems that relate to them have been invented.

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HISTORY OF UNIVERSAL SUBJECT THE

Thereis nothing special about our own time: what marks the present as having a it Thus Virilio is the that problems are quality produces. right to say that the particular is is that this always a the condition of work of anxiety, criticism and of anxiety work hope(Virilio & Lotringer; 2005,72). One is prepared to believe and to invent against the inevitability `triumph' fact In the the this triumph is of present, of capitalism. apparent if is believing in believing in to the to one prepared stop possible world, only stop

If longer the refusal of associationism. one consequences no acceptscauseand effect but rather imposesan order (the assertionof law as absoluterather than invented, of an history), then such an assertionis directly contrary to the function of law as Hume to end it. For law Hume, understands acts to conserve society, and if law is no longer applied as in through a working relation to a particular circumstance, but instead is presented as a universal free of any circumstance so as to encompass them all, then law becomes a matter of non-being, the actual denial of it(self) as a possibility - this is what it means to

replaceresponsibility with liability. Following Deleuze, law has ceasedto be a matter of jurisprudence in order to become a matter of judgement: the reduction to the same. In which case, society is un-conserved.

This returns us to the concernsof the previous chapter: how does capitalism produce subjects?What might the subject be able to make of itself under such conditions - that is, under a circumstance that refuses its own reality in favour of an invention without end? Here, one no longer invents in relation to the problems of a particular circumstance Seeabove at p 157 et seq. 281

but, at the end of time, one is supposedto invent in relation to the solitary problem of a invention the Thus constant of circumstance: consumption or anti-production. universal be deprived is its to only produced of particularity, elevated into a universal theparticular in `touches (meaning Can that the subject at all) no problem some way us all'. problem information? still refusesuch

PRODUCING A SUBJECT

In ChapterTwo above, we saw that, for Schroeder,the feminine functions as a beyondthe-subject,where the subject is brought into contact with the real (jouissance) and, be important for Schroeder's However, just to a subject as such. as consequently, ceases reading of Lacan is the guarantee of a return-to-the-subject, through the Name-of-theFather, so that the subject is re-constituted and even redeemed. I argued that this model

it for because, than wasproblematic rather allow new modes of subjectivity, prioritises the same(i. e. the phallus) as the foundation of the subject. The subject is then condemned to a vicious circle of impossible jouissance and inevitable redemption.

Schroederlinks this to a concept of property derived from Hegel.8 Now I return, in a different form, to my earlier argument that this linkage, between Hegel and Lacan, is misleadingbecauseit functions through a static, abstractmodel of both property and the 9 for `property last have Contra (in I three the subject. this, effect', a chapters) argued

8 SeeChapter One above 9 SeeChapters One and Two above

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be the it I part as of to understood circumstances only can which relates, and now which how is function the its too explicitly subject more a analyse of circumstances;not to will between `true' but the the relationship property and subject, rather to argue that reveal bothof thesecategorieshave to be understood as expressionsof control. For this reason I Schroeder's Lacan influenced to agreeing with way model of the subject, go some becausewhat it actually suggestsis an axiomatic and modulated `whatever' subject, doomedto repeatedly follow the sametrajectory regardlessof the specific circumstances it To is draws finer and finer distinctions between this, a part. achieve control of which but subjectivity, of only so that they may be re-presented (in the narrowest sense) modes is to say as a victim. as a minority, which

What is a victim? An isolated mode of

lack deficiency subjectivity premised upon a or which is simultaneously understood as a `right' or status of 'deserving': in short, the refusal of responsibility.

WhereI also agreewith Schroederis that the subject has to be understoodin relation to the feminine, although I prefer Deleuze and Guattari's phrase 'becoming-woman'.

Why

is it necessary to begin with becoming-woman? The reason is that becoming-woman (as well as the feminine) functions as the constitutive non-knowledge that makes the actual,

banalsubject possible, a subject which, as is generally recognised, is still imagined to be male. Very loosely then, the male subject is the regulative subject that closes the 10 potential of the constitutive female subject. However, it will become apparentthat this seeminglyobvious dichotomy is much more complex, making Deleuze and Guattari's

10This distinction does is becoming-woman difference. There biological to a of sexual not correspond (biological) woman, just as there is a becoming-woman of (biological) man. Even further, although this will only be indicated in the subsequent text, rather than explicitly investigated, biological sexual difference only gains its sense through processesof becoming-woman.

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becoming-woman indeed. This is in ambiguous very of their not a weakness concept imperceptibility in how but it functions, in (and necessary a particularly as) concept, becoming-woman I treat by as a process two, will of subjectivation marked control. linked, articulations: a blocked becoming, where the potential of becoming is defeatedby be (re)captured (hence that the same might so obstacle, my partial agreementwith some Schroeder'smodel basedupon the phallus); and an initial becoming that must exhaust itself by opening onto more intense becomings, so that new modes of subjectivity might be claimed.

BECOMING-WOMAN

From one perspective, becoming-woman provides the diagram for the subject of capitalistic control. This is not to say that women are in control under capitalism, not by any measure. Rather, the capitalistic subject is a becoming-woman, one that has moved from the problem of circulating particular women. What is then meant by becomingon

womanin this case? It is the processof becoming other, where woman is still posited as the fundamental archetype of `otherness'. Becoming-woman is then the universalisation favour difference, difference) in its its (and thus the of of an absolute end of specificity

(non)-problemof the same.

The masculine and the feminine always already appeartogether, as reciprocally determining. Becoming-woman is deployed in order to break this vicious circle, so that it from Ambiguity being this the might open new planes of point: arises at and experience.

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dualism breaking the the masculine-feminine of of the vicious circle is perspective feminine because is the act, a masculine predicated on the relative stability of apparently If this is disturbed, such disturbance initially comes themasculine-feminine relation. 11 feminine disturbance the to the is itself the extent that the under sign of other; therefore is Becoming-woman the is, then, a circle achieved, remains unbroken. nothing having done with the masculine-feminine - paradoxical because paradoxicalprocessof becoming-womanis having done with woman (and thereby man as well).

For Deleuze and Guattari all territorialization has two facets: what is deterritorialized is simultaneously a reterritorialization.

There is no pure beginning, no tabula rasa, but

fact being in the middle of something, so one never escapes to an 'outside'. the always of Likewise, anything that is assembled is in a process of assembling and un-assembling. All being is becoming, or the duration of movement. 12 The present serves to mark the horizon of what is currently possible the present is the circumstance in which one finds one self. It is the middle of something, and also a passion. The present, in order to pass, must already be past, meaning that the past pre-exists the present: before a moment is present, it is already past. This movement marks one level of reterritorializationdeterritorialization, operating in two directions simultaneously: the deterriorialization of

the presentand its reterritorialization as past; and at the sametime it is the past that is deterritorialized in a reterritorialization

as the present.

11See,for distinction in in Cavarero Adriana the masculine-feminine constructs example, the way which Chapter One of (Cavarero: 1995). 12This is from Deleuze's have in Chapter Two concept of time. above, also evident, as we seen

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Here,we are talking of associationism: the movement of deterritorializationis ideas in the beyond is to constant associating of order go what reterritorialization The in habit differentiated from past accumulates a the recall of present. currently 1991,95) (Deleuze: future. The latter, Eros, is not towards the and orientated memory limited by circumstance(what has been does not determine what will be) but instead, the future seizes the present and the past in order to articulate itself in its own partiality. The

futureis always contingent and never inevitable: in its expressions(the re-distribution of thepastand the present), it is always limited, local, and partial. The future cannot be its it lacks in It is but determined as whole entirety, and yet nothing. expressed a whole, by its openness. Any assemblage, as Deleuze and Guattari make clear, is constituted only

by its lines of flight (Deleuze & Guattari: 1988,88-9).

Therefore any phallocentric assemblage is made up only of lines of becoming-woman (Deleuze & Guattari: 1988,272-286).

Within the circumstances of dominant masculinity

(even if those circumstances appear global) there is primarily a becoming-woman. This becoming-woman can be machined (or utilised) in a multitude of ways, but the mark of phallocentricism is the (masculine)

decoding performed upon the deterritorialization

becoming-woman carries out: phallocentricism is a meta-perception or anti-

associationism.

In the caseof despotism, the dominance of phallocentrism is obvious; however, under it in that becomes the it sense capitalistic control, something much more cunning,

isomorphism longer field. No the disperses itself modulatesand acrossthe entire social

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`head' family, the but the divergent ruler and of the supreme a of phallocentricism that distributive becoming-woman. through a operates

I will return to this point below when looking at Griggers' study of becoming-woman, for be becoming-woman it that understood should now, operatesaxiomatically as the displacement of any circumstantial masculine-feminine articulation, meaning continued that neither position can ever be adopted strategically. Control operates tactically, in de-centralisation to encourage order and increase differences, re-casting circumstances as

instancesof immaterial labour that are closer, generally, to a particular understandingof 13 the feminine, than they are to explicitly masculine, isomorphic structures. At the same time this tactical intervention also unfolds on the broadest level, through the appeal to human rights and the inarguable proposition that women and men should be treated equally. However, this equality should be understood as an equal and universal degradation: the successful subject is he or she who can tactically utilise circumstances to accessthe universal - the victim.

Returning to Baudrillard, capitalistic control not only achieves the simulation of equality by making inequality unimaginable, 14but also renders any such inequality as itself simulated. To put it another way, simulation is understood here as the possibility of

believing anything at all as being equally possible as anything else. Simulation is reversible (Baudrillard: 1994,14-19) in this sense, meaning that control is more than

13Most notably, (as I will argue below) the relational model developed by Carol Gilligan which serves as an excellent paradigm for capitalistic control. See (Gilligan: 1998). 14(Baudrillard: 1994,12-14). In in is it made unbelievable - not the sensethat one does not other words believe it, but rather that one is incapable of believing it (or not). One lacks the passion for belief.

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holding being a multiplicity whole of conflicting of circumstances as capable This is formula differences the be real or existing. equally of control: can nevertheless individually isolated while simultaneously `connected' to universal principles of equality Anti-production is humanity. the indeed, it is undoing of the circumstances and demand deny its difference that in order to better any circumstance should own axiomatic Therefore, decoding is by the the aspiration. universal with process comply which differenceis produced only to be denied.

THE DEPENDENCY OF BECOMING-MAN

In an interview, Felix Guattari talked of becoming-man in a way which shows its dependenceupon becoming-woman:

He hasconcentratedhis libido on - one can't even say his penis - on domination, on the rupture of ejaculation: `I possessedyou' `I had you.' Look at all the longer her. ' It's ' `I by `I like these no made expressions used men: screwedyou, the totality of the body's surfacethat counts, it's just this sign of power: `I dominatedyou,' `I marked you. ' This obsessionwith power is such that man in hand, On himself denies the order to exist as other ultimately all sexuality. body he is obliged to beg his sexual partnersto transform him a bit into a woman or a homosexual.(Guattari: 1996,48)

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Capitalismre-deploys the dualism `man-woman' as an axiomatic processof denial the differentiation and simultaneous of that differentiation. At the sametime, it how is feminine. demonstrates The the to that the masculine position secondary of also (the death (Cavarero: the of action, subject of subject event, of and of virility masculine 1995))is carved from a chaotic nothingnessthat exists as the limit function of the feminine limit is `outside' This is less but the that than either more or man, masculine. less doesn't because ultimately or matter more women are, after all, equal to whether 15 is be by This the a circle: man might constituted referenceto the woman, vicious men. but woman is then referenced back to the man. This is equality in action, and therefore the purpose, if one is to avoid the impasse of such dualism, is to go beyond it.

When Deleuze and Guattari write of capitalism's relative schizophrenia, we can internal less becoming-woman: be the than this to and nothing understand relativity development displacement the of new constant of capitalist subjectivity which prevents it is becoming-woman, life. Thus, subjectivities and new ways of when speaking of becomings. into beyond it to necessary go other, more creative

The need to go beyond `man-woman', and therefore beyond becoming-woman, stands as

done having feminist it because revolt as a continuous a greatprovocation, articulates has feminism. is that To mirrors what one with revolt not to end up with an assemblage

15Two in Freud, feminine the dependence the whereby given are the upon excellent examples of masculine S See Freud On the in himself to and woman-as-whore. male subject articulates relation woman-as-mother Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love (Contributions to the Psychology of Love II) httg://www. ncf. edu/hassold/FinDeSiecle/freud debasement. Also in (Gay (ed.): 1995)

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left behind,but precisely, to risk a completely new way of being. It is clear that, in these be limited by) it (nor least, to cannot a matter of equality. termsat

Guattariacknowledges,from a molar-political perspective, that becoming-woman is a (Guattari: 1996,47). This from fact concept the ambiguous ambiguity arises necessarily thatthereis more to becoming-woman than crossing the line between the symbolic and thereal: it is not the casethat one either speaks,and is therefore masculinised, or that one is otherwisein the realm of jouissance, and thereby feminised. Rather, becoming-woman is a process whereby one no longer knows whether it is a matter of words or sensation, be discrete identity in become to to ceases a one order where a singular difference; where breaking down is into little horizon. thousand that the one a pieces are carried away over It is the point where one no longer wills (telos) but is willed (risk), "an objective zone of indetermination or uncertainty, `something shared or indiscernible' " (Deleuze & ....

Guattari: 1988,273). 16

Becoming-woman is not then a molar strategy, meaning that it cannot be an imperative: there can be no injunction to `become women'; there can only be localised intervention in

a setof circumstancesthat seeksto unleash the difference constitutive of those circumstances. It is risk-taking, but not recklessness: to deterritorialise, to pursue a line

into flight, a of requires proceduresof careful experimentation, otherwise one slips becoming-death,a pure deterritorialization of schizophrenia in which one seeksto expressbeing in its entirety. One must remain local, even in the unleashing of cosmic

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forces. Deleuze and Guattari use the example of drugs to highlight these dangers. Whilst '7 drugs different to being, types experiment with of perception and onemight use once it is become drug has to them, dictates the that addicted to the user in a manner that one becomings. down Thus, drug possible other addiction is the death of affect, or at closes leastits subsumingwithin an endlesscycle of the same:score, get high, score, get 18 As Deleuze and Guattari write: high .....

Drug addicts continually fall back into what they wanted to escape:a for being the all more segmentarity rigid marginal, a territorialization all the

more artificial for being basedon chemical substances,hallucinatory forms, and phantasysubjectifications. (Deleuze & Guattari: 1988,285)

Similarly, it would be a mistake to think that becoming-woman could finally lead to harmony amongst the sexes, to a society of `beautiful souls'; in which case, to have done with feminism means that the work of feminism will never be done: the world will always have to be continuously transformed. To live will always mean to experiment, to become, and not to arrive at a total expression of being-as-sex or being-as-gender, 19 precisely because becoming-woman is not a form but a process. Being will only ever

16At the same time, Deleuze and Guattari do not seek to downplay or reject the significance of molar feminist struggles. Rather, it is a matter of forcing these struggles through to the point at which one has done with man, and therefore done with woman also that is the gamble (Deleuze & Guattari: 1988,276). " This is Today, drug is However, betrays book! this use the appropriate. the entirely example age of unlikely to be experimental: not only have the experiments already been done, these experiments have affected social arrangements more generally, meaning that there is no need to repeat them. It would also be right to say that in the 21" Century (unlike the 1960's and `70's), a culture of drug use has been established, the political-economy of which tends to reduce drug use to an empty (consumer) sign of transgression. 18Seethe drug In becomings taking. through S William Burroughs produced this recapture of works of on articular Junky (1977), Naked Lunch (1993), and Nova Express (1992). 9As Deleuze & Guattari: 1988, imitation (Deleuze is becoming Guattari not a matter of and point out, 274).

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bepartially expressed(one will always be a sex), but the point is to unleashthis in it the that different from itself: sex sexes already constitute as circumstantial

What we term a molar entity is, for example, the woman as defined by her form. functions organs and and assignedas a subject. Becoming-woman endowedwith is not imitating this entity or even transforming oneself into it. [becoming...

is] imitating female form, but emitting particles that the not or assuming woman enter the relation of movement and rest, or the zone of proximity, of a microfemininity, in other words, that produce in us a molecular woman, create the molecular woman. (Deleuze & Guattari: 1988,275)

For this reason, becoming-woman leads into other types of becoming that are more intense,more indiscernible and uncertain, in which the movements, rests, speeds, and slownessesthat we would experience as a molecular woman, move beyond issues of being. is Becoming become the to genderand sex very material of simply molecular, then concerned with passive subjectivity, with the inorganic and inhuman contractions of time and relations of micro-perception.

As Deleuze and Guattari write, a becoming-

vegetable,becoming-mineral, becoming-intense. This is passive subjectification, the Eros of time that brings forth what is new as the repetition of that which can only be

further It is this time. the the repeated: repetition of repetition '20 re-synthesisof becomingthat capitalistic control blocks, so that becoming-woman is constantly rearticulatedas a dead end.

20See(Deleuze: 1994), in particular Chapter Two.

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(with becoming-animal, becoming-woman beyond Even the and so on) -intense, becomingis still local: we have merely moved from solid form, to liquid movement, to being in its approaching without at any singularity, point entirety. This whole gaseous becoming-molecular, becoming-animal, forth, is in of the context and so always process has definite circumstances, and so always a and unique character that is of particular likely to be inappropriate for other circumstances. Indeed, to try to transplant a becoming from one circumstanceto another is really a despotic function: the overcoding of one becomingby another is violence, inappropriate to the original becoming becauseit is it. This is to not to say that various circumstancescannot come together to forge external becomings appropriate to all of them - this is what it means to emit particles. Circumstances release their immanent differences in becoming and these particles enter into relation and forge lines of flight appropriate and unique to these relations (contractions). However when a becoming is overcoded in despotism, or decoded as capital, it is hijacked and diverted into becomings of much lower intensity: becomingsame. This is phallocentricism and it is why any becoming must first begin with becoming-woman, 21the first movement towards discarding dualism. Becoming-woman is then the flight from `man-woman', the binary that is inherently masculine. When this duality is made to leak, then becoming-woman is activated as a unitary and unique sex,

outsideof any pairing, which then ceasesto be becoming-woman for this very reason, becomingsomething else altogether: the potential of a multitude of different sexesand genders.

211, becomings begin with and pass through becoming-woman" (Deleuze & Guattari: 1988,277). all ...

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Thephallocentric apparatusof capture that Deleuze and Guattari outline is one that focusesupon the body, but it would be a mistake to think that, by this, they simply mean is biology: body, but it is this just facet. the The body element an of or one anatomy finally determined, be do it be biology to and attempts so, whether or anything cannot it. The `what is it? ' is like bound foot of a the as constraints upon question act else, body is for) The (and is life but a matter of experimentation: a person geisha. not given for herself for it himself. We and are not born into a debt owed to parents or mustcreate duty' is despotism functions `do by `stealing' body the through the your and state: imposition of structuresof duality:

This body is stolen first from the girl: Stop behaving like that, you're not a little

girl anymore, you're not a tomboy, etc. The girl's becoming is stolen first, in order to impose a history, or prehistory, upon her. The boy's turn comes next, but it is by using the girl as an example, by pointing to the girl as the object of his

desire,that an opposedorganism, a dominant history is fabricated for him too. (Deleuze& Guattari: 1988,276; my emphasis)

Only through the body of the woman is the masculine created, and here we find a strong

22 echoof Strathern's concept of the person as the imaging of social relations. The apparatusof capture minimises social relations to that between the man and the woman, and then, through that minimisation, articulates the feminine and then the masculine as

naturaland inevitable images, as things. Masculinity and despotism must always go together.

22See above at p 230 et seq.

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BECOMING-WOMAN, BECOMING-CONTROL

Thesubjectis to be found only in the imagination, so long as this is understood in terms inextricable Becoming-woman its combination with reason. of only makes sensein a is in for being the in general. In other the subject which presented as model situation is be (regardless taken to the the subject model of creation words, of whether or not one is anatheist),and therefore the problem arisesthat, when confronted with at least two decide is false This the true must one which sexes, sex. problem only exists as long as be be the to to the means and/or ends of being. To escape considers subject one central, from the stranglehold of such religiosity, one must escape the imposition of sex, meaning that one must instead invent it, and invent it as only a sex, relevant to the difference of circumstance.

Thus what one must bring about is a new perception, the validity of which (if such is necessary)is entirely dependent upon circumstance. In this, then, becoming-woman is akin to invention and belief as found in Hume, not as an essence but rather as a

circumstantialrelation. Invention and belief are not inherently `feminised', but they are likely to be if one confronts, under either despotism of capitalism, 'truth'. Thus, within phallocentricism we can think of becoming-woman as the action of mind transcending itself in order to create the subject. Becoming-woman is the subject "constituted by meansof principles and grounded in the fancy [the imagination]" (Deleuze: 1991,127; ...

author'semphasis).

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Oncemore we return to the ambiguity of becoming-woman: control is control not becauseit seeksto deny becoming-woman and the new subjectivities this leads to. Controldoesnot seek to exclude or eradicate such subjectivities, but instead it aims to in Becoming-woman them them controlling, render and, profitable. servesas the control dead failed the subjectivity, rendering of subject as so many ends and anti-producer highlight it is Thus to possible a number of predominant characteristicsto experiments. be found in the controlled subject:

1. The subject is to be understood as a victim. In agreement with the analysis of Alain Badiou in Ethics (Badiou: 2001,10-11), this strategy is one that seeks to retard the keep by it in infantilisation, this and state of achieving eradicating any subject a notion of responsibility.

Here, control functions by identifying a `difference, ' for

between example one class of people and another, and then undertakes to eradicate

this difference in the name of equality. In so doing, the victimised are `protected' on the condition that they recognise themselves as victim. This recognition is the for in the one's condition, evacuation of responsibility - not sense of responsibility

but rather the impossibility of producing new ways of living independentof the status intervention: for figure Thus, there the the an exceptional of victim. victim allows of is no circumstantial basis for such intervention beyond the abstractlogistics of `equality' To put it another way, it is the legitimisation of control on the basis of its . own exercise.

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2. Control posits the subject as an affective subject. Therefore, rather than the more

despotism, of control takes the subject to be embodied, to the explicit masculinity to intervention in the body in that technological capitalise seeks control upon extent (and ideas to exploit) and sensations. Such ideas and sensationsare order produce in strictly controlled order to ensure the most efficient and useful affective and mental This is the of embodied valorisation paradoxically linked to an ideal of states. technological transcendencein which the actual specific circumstancesof the body's location in time and spaceis de-emphasisedin favour of a `global' subject who, ideal to the of a perfect virtual reality, is able to be anywhere at anytime. according On a more mundane level, control seeks to capitalise upon the life of the subject by transforming it into a matter of lifestyle options, consumer choice, and the 23 At both levels, through control, the accumulation (and recording) of 'experiences'.

biopolitical. becomes subject

3. The controlled subject is implicated in processes of immaterial labour. Specifically, immaterial labour allows for networked production that disperses various elements or in for the another time and components across assembly or constitution entire globe,

least One (Hardt & 2000,294-5). Negri: this practice, at place aspectof free dual time is those of space-times,such as symbolically, the erosion of various and work time, work place and home, entertainment and work, production and

does doing, in We that, not extend control so consumption, etc. should understand but into rather recastspublic spacepublic space-time what was previously private, time as private and personalised, tailored to the individual worker-shopper. The 23See the references to Jean Baudrillard in Chapter Six. 297

24 feel the to fearful, gives one threatened right not legitimating the statusof victim or (political) of public space-time within domestic (controlled) space-time. subsuming The office of the deputy prime-minister has recently made clear the gender distinction here:inaccessible/threateningpublic spaceshould be transformed into open, inviting 25 `feminised' space.

All threeof thesecharacteristics come under the head of becoming-woman for two First, all three are concerned with transformations of the subject. The subject reasons. itself (a recognise as victim should statusthat must be constantly re-translatedinto any given circumstance); and also recognise itself as the producer-consumer of affects and ideasthat re-articulate and re-modify the body; and that transformations are a necessary requirement due to the subject's relative and `privatised' position, in regard to the valorisation of immaterial labour over and above agriculture and manufacture (job mobility, de- and re-skilling, upward-downward mobility, monitoring and evaluation, etc.). Control requires the subject to constantly reinvent itself on every level, and, in so doing, enter into a becoming-woman understood as the axiomatic modulation and adaptability of the subject: a `whatever' subject.

24SeeTony Blair's speech from 10 January 2006 at http: //www. pm. gov. uk/output/Page8898. asp 25Clarie Newell's details 21,2005 in August Sunday The Times some of the suggestions put report of forward to John Prescott by groups such as Demos and the Women's Design Service, to make cities more "feminised". Some of the suggestions include: getting rid of cobbled streets that make walking in highheelsdifficult; reducing the size of hedgerows making it more difficult for would-be attackers to hide behind them; and the provision of toiletries and hairdryers in public toilets. Regardless of whether these are sensible suggestions or not, the point is that the `feminine' is presented as an auto-legitimating ground for the intervention and regulation of public spaces that, if not properly regulated, will inevitably victimize certain sectors of the population. See http: //www. timesonline. co.uk/newspaper/0176-1743811_1,00. html.

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Secondly,and more significantly perhaps,these characteristicsconform to a particular feminine. They the least from the despotic perspective, that, are of activities at concept havetendedto be labelled as closer to an organised femininity than an organising be described as a distinction between adaptability and coping masculinity- which could hand dominating the and achieving and one on the other. This dependsupon quite a on feminine, but is the this of concept not surprising given that control seeks to narrow

be. Thus Hardt and Negri describe certain to the or assert what subject will control, labour immaterial (particularly of aspects affective production) as being closely tied to "what feminist analyses of `women's work' have called `labor in the bodily mode"' (Hardt & Negri: 2000,293).

The best example of this is to be found in Carol Gilligan's

difference in In a Different Voice (Gilligan: 1998). to psychological approach gender

Gilligan's distinction between a masculinity marked by separation, leadership and action, and a femininity marked by collectivity, relational nexus and responsiveness, regardless of accuracy, well describes how control functions through modes of subjectivisation.

It

is the specific perception of masculine and feminine psychology as distinct in this way that opens up the arena of controlled subjects, in which feminine psychology is in constant danger of being subsumed within the dominant masculine values of "separation,

independence,and autonomy" (Gilligan: 1998, xv), against which it should be able to expressitself in its own terms, through values of connection (Gilligan: 1998,29), webs of relationships(Gilligan: 1998,32), the responsibility of response(Gilligan: 1998,38), communication(Gilligan: 1998,61), and so on.

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Not only do these feminine values correspond closely to those of societies of control (immateriallabour such as affective production, care, communication and co-operation), difference immediately how description illustrate the necessitatesan of a very they difference highlights it. Crucially it interventionto correct not a specific, circumstantial living, involve their to thatwould particular subjects and struggles produce new ways of but rather a generaliseddifference applicable to `humanity' as a whole. This is why difference for difference the purposes of the serves as archetypal masculine-feminine interventions necessitating addressed not to real problems of inequality and control, but to a whole pre-arranged matrix of axiomatically constructed subject powerlessness,

problemsarising stereotypically. In order to pursue this analysis further it is necessaryto 26 Camilla Griggers' book Becoming-Woman. turn to

BECOMING-WOMAN, BECOMING-CAPITAL

In the preface, Griggers writes:

Woman is the gatekeeperto minoritorian passings,standing vigilance in movie theaters,in fashion magazines,and on the television screensof commodified desires. And at the sametime, inside the American family and its "values," she is the battered,the raped, the incested,and the murdered. In any sacrificial economy, there are two types of scapegoat. The liminal, marginalized body living at the edgesof the socius and the 26(Griggers: 1997)

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bearing body the most the body closest and dearestto the seatof power 1997, (Griggers: both. is She xii) signifier. privileged and precious

falls the Deleuzean-Guattarian on is it more (loaded references) While this quote with as is the the despotic than resonance useful control, capitalistic capitalism rather sideof a Guattari's Deleuze is It the and quoting worth scapegoat. with of woman equation descriptionof the scapegoatfunction:

in form increasing the the of entropy a new represents scapegoat ... in "bad" it is that a given was charged with everything system of signs:

period, that is, everything that resisted signifying signs, everything that from different it the to through the sign sign circles ... eluded referral incarnates that line of flight the signifying regime cannot tolerate, in

other words, an absolutedeterriorialization; the regime must block a line of this kind or define it in an entirely negative fashion precisely because it exceedsthe degreeof deterritorialization of the signifying sign, however high it may be. (Deleuze & Guattari: 1988,116)

The scapegoatis the opposite of the despot, and in this opposition the despot is affirmed andable to function. The scapegoatis the excluded, the `other' - but an other always implicated in the functioning of despotism. It is no surprise if woman is this excluded other. However, as Griggers is careful to point out, this exclusion occurs twice: as well asbeing cast out, the scapegoatis also sacrificed. In this sensethe despot both eats and excretesit and thereby marks two boundaries or space-times:the absent centre of

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Guattari this Deleuze jurisdiction. pursue its and despoticpower itself, and the limits of his both incestuous to despot's relations in somedetail in Anti-Oedipus in terms of the the boundaries the is of The his these non-spaces that are point sister. motherand 27 feminine.

but despotism, hollow Underthe regime of control the scapegoatachieves a victory over Rather, the be the takes the it would wrong to say that position. central scapegoatnow basis the function intensifies the that allowing eradicated, are all positions on scapegoat however: doubled field. It be the no still remains entire extended across scapegoatto longersacrificed and expelled, the scapegoatbecomestactical and logistical. That is, the becomes anti-productive. scapegoat

Thefirst chapter of Griggers' book, `The Despotic Face of White Femininity, ' is a study of becoming-womanin the context of anti-production. Griggers points out, as we have alreadyseen,that becoming-woman is a very ambiguous procedure:

Becoming-womanimplies becoming molecular, fleeing facialization, defacializing, and even losing face in a politics played out between the perceptibleand the imperceptible. But as RuPaul and lesbian chic demonstrate, becoming-womanalso implies being facialized, undergoing facialization, and having one's becomingscapturedby the despotic face of white femininity. (Griggers: 1997,9)

27There is here link with Freud, referred to in this chapter at footnote 16 above, in also a strong which the

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involves it or the inasmuch remapping, becoming-man, as Facializationhere involves a (phallocentric) becoming-woman masculine a within of axiomatization, capitalistic Deleuze the Bacon Francis talks subjective, book of his In on apparatusof capture. head differentiated the of meat being to the face to objective, way made give stable, is the facialization here, Similarly 25). of 2004a, stabilisation (Deleuze: a `beneath' tacticalto differential in way body, gives the circumstance of specificity which actual logistics. Phallocentricism involves the stabilisation of becoming-woman, constructed as body). his his (his destiny femininity rupture, pleasure, rendered as male a

However,becausecontrol is a matter of modulation rather than despotic reference or is feminine-masculine between localisation the relay of regimesof signs, the specific both miniaturised and enlarged so that it is potentially anywhere (and anywhen). It longer is disorientating in it but that one no ways so embodies unusual and embodies, but feminine, rather statistically so. qualitatively masculine or

The feminine scapegoatfunctions then in two, inter-related ways: first, it serves generally humanity to the as articulation of a universal victim status applicable all of regardless of gender. Second,it acts as a type of celebratory or aspirational marker that projects the feminine as the locus of glamour, commodification and investment applicable to any and all bodies,regardlessof sex (as Griggers' reference to RuPaul indicates). It is through the feminine, understood as becoming-woman, that the regime of control renders the subjectas a `whatever' person, a subject that is not so much of a specific quality or type, but rather virtualised and, at least ideally, highly adaptable. woman-mother and woman-whore respectively mark the boundaries of masculine desire.

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However this adaptation is to a constant axiomatic re-manipulation

ensuring the continual

decoding of subjectivity. One adapts to anti-production and anti-associationism, unable to distinguish between a reason and an imagination otherwise differentiated through instead but combined in a line of flight involving a unified and transcendent circumstance sensory experience.

28 As

a consequence it becomes possible to believe in anything at all,

so that causality gives way to a risk assessedon an insurance basis - that is, as a projected The tabulation. subject is merged into the given, making it tend towards not so statistical but transcendence rather a collection that is now statistically modulated a of mind, much 29 as so many combinations.

Becoming-woman, at least as it is aligned on control, is then to be understood axiomatically as a process of capitalisation and anti-production of decoded profit (the delirium of investment). An example of this can be found in Griggers one that highlights the articulation of a difference and its simultaneous erasure. Referring to the magazine Elle Japon, she writes:

U. S. fashion journals marketed to Japan typically feature American and European models, making Occidental racial traits an integral feature of exported fashion. The U. S. fashion system sells the faciality of the White Woman as a commodity to Japan, including the landscape of signs in which her face takes on its full

28As Paul Virilio puts it. in the theatre each member of the audience seessomething different dependent upon seating relative to the stage while, in the cinema, each audience member seesthe same thing -a sensoryre-presentation that, in Hume's terms, is beyond `human,' corresponding to a machinic vision that is unified and non-differentiated (i. e. ideal). See, generally, Chapter Five of (Virilio: 1994). 291 return to this below.

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its is in This the signifier pure redundancy, emptied of all significance ... significance except that of its own privilege and repetition, and offered up for massconsumption to foreign markets. (Griggers: 1997,12)

The function of the face here is not to impose specific Western traits upon Japanese style

and fashion (although this might occur); rather, the crucial function is the representation of a pure power that acts as a signifier of privilege and repetition, marking the Japanese market as `other'. By this I do not mean that it is the West who looks upon Japan as other (although this obviously occurs), but the Japanesewho are thereby representedto themselves as `other'. The face functions, on the formal level, to exclude the Japanese. They are not excluded from anything in this case (i. e. it is not a matter of perceiving themselvesas different from Western traits), but rather they are produced as excluded by the auto-legitimising exercise of power (an exceptional intervention).

Such exclusion is unavoidable given the non-locality of power-as-control in the first place. One cannot enter the realm of power as anything but a sacrifice, and therefore accessto it is forever denied: one is only exposed to power, and perhaps made suicidal as a consequence. Crucially, one is excluded from power becausethere is nothing to be excluded from. From this it follows that, in relation to Eile, reading the magazine has much the same effect upon its domestic western readership as upon the Japanese:this effect is immaterial production, the labour of consuming one's own exclusion.

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THE INSURANCE FUNCTION

The tactical-logistic

transcendence of circumstance means that control has a special

interest in the future: specifically,

it seeks to replace causality and Eros with a future

in is (anti)productive that all cases,regardless of what actually occurs mode is described in This Francois Ewald's paper Insurance and Risk well circumstantially. (Burchell et al.: 1991). Here we see what it means to regard becoming-woman as a function, rather than a qualitative one. statistical

For Ewald, risk denotes insurance risk, which is closely tied to the emergence of a by described Michel Foucault (rather (Foucault: 2002,215). than a people), as population In this context, it is the anticipation of possible outcomes referenced to a spectrum of desirability, itself premised upon convenience and efficiency. The significant thing is that this very anticipation is generative of profit. To understand this it is necessaryto (as Hume's basis the theory of causality of human nature) with a new relation to overlay duration. Rather than the complex interplay of association and passion, regulated by a passion indistinguishable from circumstance, insurance risk moves beyond a belief that invention), (or temper associationism making it relevant only to a particular would it instead, makes and, possible to believe anything on the basis that this circumstance for infinite an exploitation, when combined with productive capacities resource opens up dominated by immaterial labour. The very immateriality of such labour (productionconsumption) makes it susceptible to constant axiomatic re-manipulation, once belief is

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separatedfrom invention. Invention then runs amok, reversing into the anti-production described by Deleuze and Guattari, or the concept of simulation advanced by Baudrillard.

Ewald writes:

[t]he particular form insurance technology takes in a given institution at a given moment dependson an insurantial imaginary: that is to say, on the ways in which, in a given social context, profitable, useful and necessary usescan be found for insurance technology. (Burchell et al.: 1991,198; author's emphasis)

The insurantial imaginary that Ewald describes is regulated by what is profitable, useful and necessaryin a given circumstance. However, my point is that this imaginary only into its own under the conditions of capitalistic control and that, in so doing, it is comes by hampered longer the needs of a circumstance or even a social context, but is no globalised and thereby extended across the entire social field. The world is subsumed in known, its the as well and well used, fiction of Borges (Borges: statistical map under 1998,325).

We gain a senseof this statistical turn when Ewald contrasts the attitudes of the judge and the insurer towards the problem of causality:

In the juridical logic of responsibility, the judge takes as the point of departure the reality of the accident or the damage, so as to infer the

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The judge in fault its of conduct. supposesthat there cause a existence of would have been no accident without a fault. The insurer's calculation

is

basedon the objective probability of an accident, regardless of the action of will ... accidents occur at a particular, specific rate. (Burchell et al.: 1991, 202)

If Deleuze is right to argue that when it comes to the problem of the subject and the is free-will least because it is, rather, a that the concerned useful question with given, in being then, the realm of insurance risk, the subject has the activated subject matter of leaving behind be into the to transformed only all, a problem at given now a ceased is The subject virtualised, a `whatever' subject, actualised only in collection of statistics. him/her. befall that to the accidents reference

This is a breakdown of perception becausedifference is no longer located at the centre of perception itself (as the distributor of the perceived and the perceiver), but instead difference is now perceived, in terms of control, as something that is itself statistically distributed: things are, numerically, likely to go one way or another. In this sense difference, and the perception it supports, is short circuited in the triumph of a present that now assertswhat the future will be.

If, as Paul Virilio argues, the invention of any new process, technology, or way of living also involves the simultaneous invention of its corresponding accident30(in a similar vein to the way in which the invention of a problem also involves the simultaneous invention

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which transcendent at insurance the point its as serves risk of solutions-to-be-discovered), The in accident. their a universal as aspect absolute are grasped practises all such in to happens fact it (the that places, the specific accident circumstantialnature of in is aside set time, causality) of expression a particular as a certain at people, particular favourof a virtualised distribution that is tactical-logistic in nature.

We can get a clearer idea of this by considering the three features of insurance risk describedby Ewald:

1) Risk is calculable (Burchell et al.: 1991,201-2): this is the difference between a risk former hand, In insurance the the the one and risk on other. understoodas amorfati on has basis being determined in to the nothing assess of risk upon, risk only reference one

to the immanent difference of a circumstance: it is not, therefore, recklessness,which would be an indifference to circumstance and an indifference to the world. Rather, such risk is the becoming caught up in the creativity of the future, and the appearanceof new waysof living. It is not possible to speakhere more specifically of this risk, as the proceduresby which it becomesactive depend entirely upon the circumstance in question.

In contrast,insurancerisk becomescalculable in reference to a statistical technology that, 31 defence is future. undercontrol, used as a Specifically, insurance risk is a against the

30See, generally, Virilio's exhibition of accidents, collected in a literal catalogue of disasters entitled Unknown Quantity (Virilio: 2002) 31Although it is worth noting that statistics is not necessarily limited to societies of control. See generally Ian Hacking How Should We Do the History of Statistics?, also in (Burchell et al.: 1991)

309

By linking to risk to a population we can think of it as a way managenon-knowledge. is that one not so much concernedwith if an event occurs, but spatialized calculation, in it occur, will which proportion of the population. One is thus no longer rather where

but saving every soul with rather with saving a sufficient number to make the concerned intervention worthwhile - that it is efficient and convenient. Non-knowledge becomes fact but the very motor of capitalistic control: to say that risk is an accepted not only ignorance is that means a certain necessarily distributed so that it might calculable function profitably.

Where an outcome is 100% certain not only is there no risk, there is

no value.

2) Risk is collective (Burchell et al: 1991,202-4). Insurance risk is only calculable when it is applied to a population, through which control decodes a specific circumstance 32 1991,203). (Burchell be "no than et al: a wager" more within which probability would The tactical-logistic nature of this decoding is well described by Ewald:

Insurance provides a form of association which combines a maximum of individualization. socialization with a maximum of

It allows people to enjoy

free leaving to them as exist still while the advantages of association individuals. (Burchell et al: 1991,204)

into also whilst population a universal is The individual simultaneously socialised it saw, previously determined we as although unit individualised as a specific and ...

32Although Ewald is here talking of the individual rather than a circumstance. 310

here 33 better be to think the individual. of gene rather than the The actual might herself him finds in an unusual situation: as a unit within a population individual or s/he death by that is told of chance a particular meansis statistically unlikely, yet, for that individual, the fact that calculated risk also produces simultaneouslythe incalculable risk is in fact in that means s/he equally the dark about the likelihood of of non-knowledge falling victim to the means of death in question. Whilst only 10% of the population die by be likely for to than one means rather another, the particular unit-individual might the chance is always, in this sense, 50-50. Extended generally, one thing is just as likely

believe it to anything at all. asanother,making possible

3) Risk is a capital (Burchell et al: 1991,204-5). Ewald writes, "[t]he indemnity will

1991,204), therefore (Burchell injury" be in and the to al: et necessarily arbitrary relation is Thus the subject also insurance is concerned with investment rather than exchange. illness injury limit the and of in risks in to invest merely themselves not to order expected

but, much more significantly, the risks associatedwith a poor consumer-producer the proper achieving of failure the to collect proper experiences, performance: the from failing to one's escape the be of lifestyle, and so on, that might risk summed up as own specificity. Risk only

is incalculable the becomes a capital at the point at which

Through it non-knowledge. as by arranging axiomatically made the motor of value in profitably, manages, be this manner and investment one presently assertswhat one will future. the incalculable: is what otherwise simply

THE MODE OF CAPITALISTIC SUBJECTIVISATION 33See p 206 above 311

The controlled subject is then not a matter of becoming, but a matter of statistical manipulation (modulation). Control ties the subject to becoming-woman,but blocks the for further becomings the this could give rise to. If, as Deleuze and Guattari potential becoming begins all assert, with, and passesthrough, a becoming-woman,control involves an intensified phallocentricism that uses becoming-woman as the statistical becoming, ordering of not to prevent becoming (overcoding) but rather to control it (decoding). Becoming-woman is cut off from its own incalculable potential to ensure that the subject, while becoming virtualised, is cut off from its circumstance so that such for virtuality merely allows a `whatever' subject, rather than the creation of new modes living. This is of not a side effect of control and, as Ewald's definition of insurance risk is heart it is the the that makes clear, at of anti-production production of such subjects itself, the source of its profit. Human nature gives way to an imposed and inhuman disassociationism, to the delirium of investment.

SUMMATION

be is This that cannot question Do property and subjectivity presuppose each other? a for it it, birth that to possible such a makes from gives the which circumstances separated

in it is the transformative circumstance which of thing to be asked. In turn, the question becomes be it this that possible only question To said can greatly, generalise appears. (the the the of situation subject of the that embodiment such are where circumstances has become Deleuzean (in it's sense), a materiality in subject specific space-times),

312

is longer that one no able to take the subject's locations and distributions problematicso for granted. In turn, to posit this problem as one of the subject and property is to alter to the extent that the question will be dealt with in a particular way, a way circumstances in which subjectivity is understood as a problem (at least in part) of property (and properties).

Equally,to ask if subjectivisation is a processthat necessarilypassesthrough the feminineis to presume a circumstance in which such a questionwould be relevant. What I haveargued in this chapter is that these two questionsonly find their maximum force andrelevanceunder those circumstancessubjectedto capitalistic control. The reasonfor this is becausecontrol utilises theseproblems in order to perpetuateitself: it actsthrough thesetwo problematisations.

Through Deleuze's reading of Hume, we understand the subject to be an artifice of invention and belief, ultimately grounded in passions that are themselves immanent to thus indistinguishable from a circumstance. The subject and the given are

indeterminate the as keep the other open and eachother, meaning that each acts to intermutual and for both, for becoming their auto-transformativity the condition of the different same (i. of expressions dependence. The subject and the given are unified e. the possible only are given and duration: the subject problem) in Deleuze's concept of becauseof the passing of

34 time.

34See Chapter Two above.

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Undercontrol, the subject and the given are unified through a different process,one that duration be for thought its own purpose and, consequently, of as using can as attempting back duration turn to upon itself. Specifically, it achievesthis be subsumingduration (andparticularly the future) within a statistical regime that, through the instrumentalisationof what is not known (non-knowledge)rendersthe future profitable ratherthan transformative; or rather, it attemptsto make transformationitself the motor of profit.

If the becoming of the subject is named `becoming-woman', this is becausecontrol still insists upon a dominant masculinity, albeit one that is a statistical aggregation rather than

a qualitative mode. At the sametime, this dominant mode is subjectedto a radical process of decoding, making it both precarious and inevitable: by positing a dominant mode (obviously adapted from the despotic regime) control is able to simultaneously activate the injustice of this dominance, so that subjects are more radically and inadequate, become has The before. decoded and this than ever subject extensively inadequacy is equated with victimisation; a process that dominant masculinity also fails In inadequacies. its this sense, own to escape as it is also, necessarily, confronted with

is to the everyday, decoding most that applied masculinity serves as an axiom of in tendency subjects are which mundane circumstances, as well as a universalising distributed as `whatever' subjects: adaptable statistical potentialities.

by is the that itself, mirrored ambiguity an Hence the ambiguity of becoming-woman be. This formulation of controlled property as the current assertionof what property will

314

inadequacy, is be' another mark of understood quantitatively as an incompletion, a `will lack,a loss, an uncertainty, etc., which simultaneously makessuch a mode of property investment insurance. The through between and the such as point of coincidence possible is forcing this control, under open which simultaneouslyprevents subjectand property, 35 Rather, demands is being from that there to more exhausted. control always anything bedrawnoff from both the subject and property, that both are not yet exhaustedenough, is is that the subject not yet weak enough, not yet nihilistic enough. andconsequently

35See Chapter Three above. 315

CONCLUSION

1)SUMMATION

Both property and subjectivity must be currently understood as functions of control. To insist upon this means that one must depart from Hegelian philosophy because, otherwise, the problem of control is not apparent: control cannot be perceived in Hegel's philosophy.

In Hegel's Existentialism, Merleau-Ponty identifies (at least) two Hegels: an early Hegel of the Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807; and a later Hegel that Merleau-Ponty dates at 1827 (Merleau-Ponty:

1964,64). Without wishing to discuss the technical merits of

such a distinction, it is the later Hegel that I am concerned with, the one described by Merleau-Ponty, following Kierkegaard, thus:

the late Hegel, who treated history as the visible developmentof a logical system, who sought in the relationships between ideas and the final explanation of events, and who subordinated the individual

This destiny. ideas, to life as a experienceof life to the appropriateto Hegel of 1827 offers us nothing but a "palace of ideas," to use

316

Kierkegaard's phrase, where all historical antithesesare o%ercome, but by (Merleau-Ponty: thought. 1964,64) only

This late Hegel is also the one of the Philosophy of Right: published in 18?1 it was Hegel's last major published work. In his preface, Hegel \\rites that "What is rational is is is (Hegel: 1991.20). As the editor, Allen W. Wood. actual what rational" and actual; in his Hegel did not mean to condone the status quo to this note statement, clear makes but rather to stress that reason is always dynamic (Hegel: 199L' )90), and in a process of becoming. Furthermore we can say that, in this brief formula, Hegel setsout the proper is is is he differentiating From to what of concern philosophy what realm of philosophy; he Thus, goes on to write: not.

For what matters is to recognize in the semblanceof the temporal and the is immanent is the which eternal and transient the substance which Idea, is the with For synonymous the which rational, since present. in it becomes actual by entering into external existence. emerges an its core surrounds and forms, shapes infinite wealth of appearances,and first resides. at in consciousness with a brightly coloured covering which inner find the pulse, in to order but which only the concept can penetrate beat within its detects even continued and

But the shapes. the external

this externality 'thin ww take shape infinitely varied circumstances which its and infinite material it. this itself within the manifests as essence

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organization, are not the subject matter of philosophy. (Hegel: 1991.201)

Philosophy must escape the particular perspective its of own practice so as to become truly objective; meaning that philosophy must take itself as its oN%n object of thought. Becauseof Hegel's realisation of this Merleau-Ponty credits him the first to "attempt as to explore the irrational and integrate it into an expanded reason" (Merleau-Ponte 1964. : 63).

Hegel's project is concerned with what is proper to the (dynamic) expansion of reason, meaning that (within expanding reason), one must discover 'what is', "for what i.s is reason" (Hegel: 1991,21; author's emphasis). Hegel is clear that -what is' is not concernedwith the future, which he understands in this context as the deduction of' an `ought' (in other words that, through philosophy, we could knoý\ \Lhat kind of state '\ e it is if le-el) (after 1991,22)); do (Hegel: have, no rather, should and what we ought to longer possible to do moral philosophy, it must still be considered ýtiNetherhe is right to basis thesis the of mý future exclude the as simply the realm of opinion - certainl`, in future that the way so the is another it is (following Deleuze) that possible to think of . future, while remaining amoral, is also creative: which ý\ould also necessarily mein that but that such its covering, `what is' cannot be separated from 'brightly coloured i`' 'What force expression. or that of in be covering' must thought another register: a insistence of the particularity of must be replaced by a method of dramatisation. of an

318

it for take of matter a not as thought that responsibility might one so philosophical is irrelevant Freedom to but judgement, and as effect. as one of partiality moral is be `what inactive; be innocent free be because to not'. to dramatisation and meansto

is is' `what (the Hegel, `what Merleau-Ponty's In not' are and early) reading of inextricably linked so that human consciousness is necessarily consciousness of death (Merleau-Ponty: 1964,67) -a consciousness that must be overcome ('interiorized') is to be anything more than empty and abstract (Merleau-Ponty: 1964,67).

if it

Here we

because dynamism) (i. to the consciousness problem of exchange and recognition e. return becomesauthentic through "contact with another, since under his gaze I am only an just he is (Merleau-Ponty: the object as merely a piece of world under my own"

1964,

68); and in this consciousness of objectality (of death), I am also in `contact' with the other to the extent that I am aware of the subjectivity that he denies me, just as I am also aware of the subjectivity that I deny him.

If I consider this through Deleuze, the initial questions that come to mind are: is my contact with Hegel authentic if I separate him in two, and differentiate an earlier from a later? If so, what would be the proper grounds for doing so? In which case, I no longer ask, `what is the Hegelian philosophy? ' but, `who speaks of the Hegelian philosophy? ' and `how do they speak of it? ', and `why? ', and so on. If Hegel is to be dramatised then what could be more appropriate than to consider him through the lens of the Philosophy of Right. because here is an attempt to consider what `ought' to be, even if Hegel

319

is particularly not This `ought', of morality, as a matter considered contendsotherwise? interesting;but considered as a particularity, as a certain situatednessor circumstance, interesting, devious, therefore becomes re-activating much more and `ought' much more Kierkegaard's criticism that

"This last Hegel has understoodeverything except his own historical his into he has taken own existence, account except everything situation; it because he is true the synthesisprecisely synthesis offers no and individual ignorance being the and a of a certain of product pretends (Merleau-Ponty: 1964,64) " time. certain

Consciousnessof death, even if it is grasped as the specificity of my death, is it differs from have discussed I too nevertheless abstract a concept of partiality: as what because it lacks non-knowledge' specificity.

Death only functions as an absolute by

being a generalised nothingness, a common attribute of that which is not. Instead, the development and expansion of knowledge brings with it the development and expansion of what is not known, so that an increase in knowledge is also an increase in ignorance. By knowing, one is ignorant of the condition of knowledge, of its passivity and contractedness: ignorance and non-knowledge do not reside somewhere exterior to knowledge, but are rather immanent to it as the condition of its possibility.

Reason does

not expand into what had hitherto been ignorance but constantly undergoes

transformationsand ramifications in which it is complicated and/or simplified. Here thought becomes action: it becomes a specific activity related to a particular

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is destiny One's the knowing. just is not know as as crucial to not where circumstance, (creativity). but one's particularity absolute

be found Hegelian to have I the approach not In considering property and subjectivity incapable is because ideas, illuminating in of considering these helpful reason primarily itself as a partiality.

In other words, it is unreasonable for reason to reason that it should

itself but itself (i. limit the to consider cannot reason unreasonable): e. admit upon a place is both being being, that the reasonable the of whole and of whole with co-extensive as be In (an more relevant which case, nothing could expanded) reason. and susceptible to (although is this the that reasonable the as most than reasoned as which state: not so much is certainly how the state presents itself), but more specifically as a matter of 'ought': the intervention of the state as that which polices reason (Hegel: 1991,260-270).

This is the basis of Nietzsche's criticism of Hegel in On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life. In this essay Nietzsche argues that if one is to act, one must be able to forget; if not, one would be crushed under the entire weight of history and hardly able to lift even a finger (Nietzsche: 1997,62). If thought is action then there must be a ground of inaction or non-thought, from which the former becomes possible. Even more, action and thought transform this ground by constantly re-articulating what is historical and what is forgotten: this is the future aspect of thought/action that I discussed in Chapter Two, in regard to Deleuze's concept of duration. In a similar vein Nietzsche writes: "the SeeChapter Six above

321

for health in historical the an of the equal measure necessary are and unhistorical " (Nietzsche: 1997,63; author's emphasis). individual, of a people and of a culture.

if fail: is thus Forgetting the point at which consciousness- and reasonnecessarily so be to capable of any effect at all. they are

However, this `failure' or forgetting is not to be equated with the consciousness of death: that is more akin to the feeling of the sublime, of a confrontation with that which is being limit be here to to their as partiality, mistaken as a common all expressions of in crossedand re-crossed a moment ofjouissance.

The mode of forgetting is always

be specific and singular, and can only understood in relation to a particular circumstance history, in or and not relation to an absolute - even if this has been expanded to include the `irrational' within its borders. The impossibility of the absolute is the impossibility of reasonto confront the unreasonable in anything but its own terms: that is, as a subset of the reasonable (of the same and the similar), so that, where reason is conflated to the whole of being within the totality of a history from which nothing is absent, history becomesthe history of nihilism history in the that the prevents present action name of a superior (because historically complete) `has been', which is no different from Hegel's `what is' (or the inability to forget). Furthermore, Nietzsche fully understands the implications of this forgetting: in terms of a total history, it is to act unjustly (Nietzsche: 1997,64) and thus unreasonably. With the correct balance of history and forgetting one is able to act; where history is over-determined, then becomes impossible because action thought has become un-circumstantial:

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Insofar as it standsin the service of life, history standsin the service of it thus subordinate, and, can and should never an unhistorical power, becomea pure sciencesuch as, for instance,mathematicsis. The life history degree the to the at all, which requires service of questionof however, is one of the supremequestionsand concernsin regard to the health of a man, a people or a culture. For when it attains a certain degree of excess, life crumbles and degenerates, and through this degeneration history itself finally degenerates too. (Nietzsche: 1997,67)

The Philosophy of Right can be considered a source of such degeneracy inasmuch as it seeksto understand man, people and culture solely as an outcome, as the consequence of is', `what a proper understanding of as the absolute expression of reason and history so that one no longer considers oneself to be of the present (and capable of action) but only as a consequence; and control affirms this through decoding and anti-production: the human is a consequence, meaning that it is the victim of its own partiality.

Necessarily

then, the human lacks and suffers. This is why Nietzsche calls the Hegelian philosophy `dangerous', going on to write:

The belief that one is a latecomerof the age is, in any case,paralysing and depressing:but it must appeardreadful and devastatingwhen such a belief by a bold inversion raisesthis latecomerto godheadas the true

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is this miserable condition meaning and goal of all previous events,when (Nietzsche: 1997,104) equatedwith a completion of world-history.

it dismissing future in is the the the simply as The state that which excludes past, name of `opinion'. As Wood makes clear in his editor's introduction:

But Hegel does not sympathize with Mill's notion that society should in individuals to engage all sorts of eccentric experiments with encourage their lives, in the hope that by trial and error they may occasionally find be between imitating. He their thinks choices must something worth integrated into life, the organic system systematically recognized ways of life be known life; to the should various ways of of modern ethical fulfilment lead dignity (Hegel: 1991, them. to those xx; who provide and my emphasis)

Thus the state's historical destiny is fulfilled through regulating: i. e. policing. 2 Policing is the action by which the future is over-determined and excluded (at least from thought). It serves as a corrective to what is unforeseeable and it is no surprise if, in order to better regulate the unforeseeable, control begins to predict it, in the name of those ways of life that are "known to provide dignity and fulfilment".

Hegel writes that "Through

2 Hence Michael Hardt's analysis that it is civil society. not the state, that finally withers away see Chapter Five above.

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become my of out passes which contingent matter a actions private this universal aspect, 1991, does " (Hegel: harm so. other people or actually or can wrong which and control is it intervention For this reason private actions are merely necessary; without 260). future. Nietzsche's the the threat to the of unforeseeable and contingent, giving rise it, is here like history the that, policing of can say we relevant so antiquarian comment on it" 1997,75). (Nietzsche: life, how how knows "it to to engender not only preserve state The preservation of life is the preservation of a total history (and the imposition of a knowledge increasingly itself limits) that as a quantitative understands reasonwithout (rather than limited, circumstantial and qualitative) which, under control, is activated statistically.

3

This is why Hume (and Deleuze's reading of him) offers another alternative to Hegel: "For Hume, the formula is this: to transcend is always to move from the known to the human is believe " (Deleuze: 1991,127). Because the to the unknown. of able unknown invent is but ism). (association However, this and not absolute, always partial unknown dependent it is is implicated the and of part: every upon circumstances which a unknown in the specificity of a circumstance, of a manner of believing and inventing. This unknown is difference, and for this reason cannot be reduced to a `same' or `similar' common to all circumstances. Hume terms the unknown `passion', and as we saw in Chapter Four, passion is that which determines reason. Hence, reason is not absolute but is itself dependent upon what is specific, the `brightly coloured covering'.

SeeChapters Six & Seven above. Also note Nietzsche's comment: "What, can statistics prove that there are laws in history? " (Nietzsche: 1997,113).

325

is is that to this However, passion therefore a matter of subjectivity where this suggest not

is takento mean a relational difference, or a simple `perspective'. Rather, the subject in it; be the terms to of circumstances which give rise of the objective must considered forcesthat formulate it and allow it to become as the `synthesis of time'.

Only passion

beyond is form itself 1991, (Deleuze: to thereby the go given, subject what and allows 130). Passions are the inclinations or affections of a mind (body), and are responsible for it but be it to the that passion should understood as an artifice extent constituting as such; is inextricably linked to means of articulation (such as satisfaction): "every individual in the presupposes, as an experience existence of a milieu a priori, which that experience is conducted" (Deleuze: 2004b, 19), and this milieu is artificial because it is not explained by, nor does its particularity follow from, the impulse to articulation (what Nietzsche calls `life') which is channeled or expressed through it (Deleuze: 2004b, 20); rather, it is a matter of contingency (difference), or even, to give it the broadest possible meaning, `convention'. 4 Passion does not begin, but is always in the middle, and this is why Deleuze writes of Hume:

a set of circumstancesalways individuates a subject since it represents a stateof its passionsand needs,an allocation of its interests,a distribution of its beliefs and exhilarations.

If the principles of ...

association explain that ideas are associated, only the principles of the

SeeChapter Four above.

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idea, is than that rather another, a particular passionscan explain (Deleuze: 1991,103) moment. associatedat a given

Deleuzeconcludes the chapter by writing: "If the subject is constituted within the given, is " fact, in there only a practical subject. (Deleuze: 1991,104). then,

The practical

is, be `theoretical `essential to the that the subject' subject': contrasted subject can dialectical Nor be the through towards to absolute. a movement articulated waiting be distinct from its thought this manifestation of as something practical subject should is it is it in that the constituted through practical very sense within a circumstance: rather, the specific practices of a circumstance; i. e. its institutions.

Practicality pertains to what it is practical to believe and invent, of what it is practical to know and not know: the problem of practicality is the problem of subjectivity.

However,

practicality is disrupted under control, and becomes overlain with a new mode of perception organised around efficiency and convenience. In many ways, efficiency and convenience seem similar to `practicality', and even to be refinements of it. However, this is only so from the perspective of a logic that imposes inevitability upon the history of control (all the better to `preserve' life). However, practicality is distinguished by being a mode of experimentation and encounters, and not an account of what is recognised as being the best way to live. This is why progress should be considered as

somethingother than an increase in efficiency and convenience; while these latter are useful, and create the possibility of the emergence of new practicalities, where they

327

first future thereby to and a statistical spreadand operate, dominatethey reduce the be done. to foremost,as moralities: of what should or ought

Also, it must be stressed that what is practical is always limited and partial, whereas inclusive: the the of as statistical modes, more efficiency, are all and convenience `population' that is included within them, the more `accurate' they become. In which behind differences (decoded) a are concealed case,practical and circumstantial demographic logic of `otherness', understood as a collection of interest or identity is become `whatever' Through this the to a subject of process subject evacuated groups. in adaptability and potential outputs; and the name of efficiency the subject undergoes in its its `outgoings' to processesof victimisation order reduce while maximising `incomings': what each person `ought' to have is collated statistically in terms of family, education, wage, aspiration, commodities, and so on, so that each person has a `right' to their lot at the minimal expenditure necessary. It is this drive to minimise the will to nothingness - that makes control nihilistic: the statistical mode of knowledge is one premised upon the attempt to `tame chance', meaning the clarification of what the 5 subject should not `suffer'.

The cynicism of control is to then act on behalf of the `other' an other that necessarily has no other, but rather applies to the entire population in the name of `humanity' encouraging the recognition of `differences' which are to be understood (for the sake of

328

has basis On inequalities. to the this make right control as efficiencyand convenience) is indistinguishable in intervention which a process circumstance, any anexceptional for (anti)production the decoding: of profit fromthat of axiomatic equalisation (consumption as production).

The archetype for this process is sexual difference; but

labour6 immaterial involves the over agriculture and becausecontrol predominance of (understood direct becomes (anti)production affects producing of a matter manufacture, by `right' the that information and, of sex? of all regardless are emotions) and as extension, regardless of specificity.

Simultaneously, the production of affects must

becomemore and more specific in the pursuit of productivity, so that it becomes possible is it is (logistically) the that everyone equal regardless case of course to say that globally locally (tactically) it is (un)just that time, the same of sex, race, religion, etc., while, at little his/her has to sexisms, racisms, phobias, and so on. a right everybody

The successof control is not so much to continuously add to itself and expand outwards, but rather to be able to modulate and adapt to any given circumstance in an expansion inwards, so that it might adjust itself to the most profitable (i. e. affective) perception loose In their strategic this possible within a circumstance. manner, circumstances 8 in logistically `equivalent': by becoming `exceptional' tactically which specificity and future from it do being from it by is the casea circumstance separated separated what can forgetting). is foreclosure (i. the the through already of action of e.

Not only is the issue

5 See for 2001) human (Badiou: Alain Badiou's also rights a similar argument critique of 6 SeeChapter Five above. At a different level, immaterial labour tends towards the feminine rather than the masculine due to a sexualdivision of labour that (historically) assigns `affect' to a feminine mode of production: see Chapter Sevenabove.

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is it the primary of subjectivisation: control mode under exception, no of property for future the is the through tactical-logistic current containing problem a property is' blockage imposed by `what the understood as reason, a statistical of application 9 is becoming-woman. The (restricted) of affect production most effective as property idea, it be: the the the or universal of absolute through of what will assertion current thus all universals.

2) INVENTORY

A) Deleuze's work as a philosopher and historian of philosophy allows us to think of the is how it is that the transcended. the given problem of subject as one concerned with I have argued in Chapter Two that, for Deleuze, this problem is one of duration: that the given is both constituted and transcended through the contraction of instants, these contractions being indistinguishable from `passive' subjects. The active subject flip is in intelligence (consciousness) the of memory and side of the many ways itself in if is in it the the that passive: a passive subject open sense exhausts contractions which constitute it, causing it to encounter a `new earth' (Chapter Three), then the active subject is the limit of a contraction and consequently it's closure: the fixed boundary of a territory.

The passive is a singularity while the active

is the identity: nevertheless, for Deleuze, while it is the case that the passive and the

8 SeeChapter Five above. 9 SeeChapter Seven.

330

former by identity, is it the the together, which, allows ungrounding active appear active to exist.

B) I have pursued this analysis as a problem of perception: how is it that the subject is how is it be the that the to to subject comes as a process given, meaning able perceive is it? Chapter Four In I interaction that to relevant set this problem which with of institution, it is institution the that the that acts to the arguing confines of within durations In through the collection and organisation of perceptions. articulate specific is keeps institution i. doing, that the the subject necessary as which open: e. that so is institution being In `institution' this that capable of perceived. an sense, ensures designates the point of interaction between the subject and the given, and also indicates that the subject is never confronted with the given in it's entirety, but only ever with it's partiality.

In which case, the subject is constituted through the

distribution of perceptions which are specific both in terms of what is known of them as well as what is not known of them.

C) That non-knowledge is specific, and not a generalised `absolute' or `nothingness', means that being is necessarily not something which can ever be expressed in it's entirety. Instead, being is only ever expressed partially, in and through the particular circumstances that articulate it. This follows not only from Deleuze's analysis of what makes time pass but also from his argument, following Nietzsche, that duration (understood philosophically as `becoming') did not begin and cannot end.

331

by knowledge I is determined Because the relations of and non-knowledge, D) subject Nietzsche) Six (through (through Strathern) Three in Chapters that the and argued boundary between `subject' and `object' could not be understood in universal terms, but only through contingencies productive of a `property effect' (Chapter Five). Rather than attempt an analysis that would draw a clear line between property and is is by does), I (as Radin that the argued significant process what which ownership `owner' and `owned' are distributed and constituted as such. Returning to Hume, the is how it is `belong' that thing to to a specific to a comes consider specific problem is but how becomes thing a perceptible as person: not what perceptible as property, do does) Therefore I (for Hegel that the state requires not argue example as property. but do I to the exchange and mutual recognition of owners, ownership as a prelude is how been has that the that this the recognise circumstances are such problem i. is that posited: e. private property generally construed as essential to a `sense of is that, the self; or via exchange of property one repeatedly recognised as a subject (becomes feminine).

E) In confronting the question of how it is that subjectivity and property come to be linked in these particular ways, I have argued that this follows from the regime of control, under which the subject and property are equated. In a sense, control carries the logic of linking property and subjectivity through to an apparent conclusion by treating both as potential capacities of (anti)production.

This also makes clear the

significance of duration to control: it is concerned with what both the subject and property will be, expressing this concern through a statistical knowledge that

332

intervenesin the smallest and most banal aspectsof everyday life, so as to regulate logistics, insurance, in efficiency and encompassing these the name of a universalised (ultimately) profitability - this name being `humanity'.

both feminine in to the the Furthermore, this F) relation problem of control re-articulates basis isomorphism, is However, this the of a shared not on the subject and property. but instead as an instrumentalisation.

I have argued (in Chapter Seven) that the

feminine can be considered as an archetypal process of axiomatisation (decoding), it its is the truth to through which subjectivity of what own potential as made confront is. However, control also marshals this potential to ensure that it is never realised in but (what amounts to the only as a source of profit and any creative, qualitative way, in further Chapter Five, I thing) argued this point through control: specifically, same Hardt and Negri's formulation of immaterial labour.

G) Potential is presented by control as a kind of void, as an absolute, that insists upon the subject as a victim: in need of regulation and with a (corresponding) right to avoid responsibility. In the final chapter, I used Griggers' analysis of becoming-woman to argue that control utilises the feminine as an instrument for/of decoding, through which new modes of living are blocked and prevented in the name of a universal lack (the suffering of the incomplete subject), which disconnects a subject from the becomings that actually constitute it. As argued in Chapter Five, the disconnected subject is arranged axiomatically so as to function as a site of productionconsumption of immaterial labour. However, in Chapter Seven I also stressed that

333

because, it is is concept becoming-woman an ambiguous while utilised as a means of if it is blockages is it through that the the carried or past which, process also control, function, `beyond' it to can open onto modes new of subjectivity a controlling reduce is From Humean: dualism this the perspective, entire problem the of man-woman. how is the becoming-woman subject activated?

Therefore: control is not the `end of time' it might like to consider itself to be; not only be brought duration to an end, the unhistorical remains possible all the while not can becoming-woman is capable of escaping control. To be clear, control can only control the deterritorializing tendency of becoming-woman, and not the reterritorializations

it can

leadonto: for this reason, control should primarily be understood as a system for the former latter. bring history If to the the the control seeks occurrenceof and prevention of to an end by assuming the absolute function of history in its entirety (this history being the basic raw material of its processes), then it is nothing but a `palace of ideas'; meaning a particularity that functions solely through the denial of its particularity.

334

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CASES: Buckinghamshire County Council v Moran [ 1990] Ch 623

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