What I want to do is to work through three of Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts. Which will then hopefully expand into a discussion. So the concepts I want to address in turn are minor politics of 1990’s territory’s art and occupations and fabulation and agency
So I will start then with minor politics within the 1990’s bear with me as the relation might not seem so apparent at first. So a way through Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy is the notion of politics arises not in fullness of an identity, people of a collective subject. Politics rather arises in cracked spaces packages and impossible positions. The fact is among those you feel constrained. Now this is at once a very real experience in poverty, death or racism. But it’s also something that actively wills. When people trouble and deny reduction of identity to their perception of what is intolerable in terms of social relations. Warning off the identity off the demographic for example the good employees and so on. In major of molar politics are based on identities that are nurtured and facilitated social environment. As where minor politics, the politics that Deleuze and Guattari are interested in is a breach of such identity. When social environment are seen as a constraint and are intolerable.
Now if this is the case what is the substance of politics? Well, it can no longer be about self expression, about the unfurling of subjectivity of people because in this formation there is no identity to unfurl. The people as Deleuze puts it are missing. Minor politics is found on this notion that the people are missing. So instead minor politics is about engagement with and social relations that traverse us. The relations in which we experience are cramped, impossible and intolerable. By social relations I mean a gang of economic structures that have informed gender divisions of labour, the dead unemployment etc. What ever it might be in any one situation. In this individual formulation of intrigued as Deleuze out’s it is immediately social. Without any autonomous identity even the most personal individual situation is immediately comprised of social relations. It is constituted by the social relations because autonomous identity can result in problems. So Deleuze and Guattari write the individual concern thus becomes all the more necessary, indispensible, magnify because a whole other story operating within it.
And he has a very nice image to express this. He says that to be on the right, to be right wing, is to perceive the word starting with identity, with self, family and to move out in a series of concentric circles – friends, city, nation, continent, world... with a kind of diminishing affective return at each stage, diminishing affective investment in each circle, and with an abiding sense that the centre – the centre of identity – needs defending against the periphery. Now on the contrary, to be on the left as he puts it, is to start with this perception at the periphery, and to move inwards. And it requires not bolstering of the centre, but an appreciation that the centre is always interlaced with the periphery.
Now, there’s an important propulsive or motive aspect to this understanding of politics. For rather than (INCOHERENT AT 7.40) of particular political or cultural (INCOHERENT) forms, identities, habits, and so on, the act of warding off identity, the act of perceiving the intolerable works as a mechanism to induce continuous experimentation, ever drawing thought and practice back to a field of problematization where a contestation, argument, an engagement with social relations, ever arises from the intimacy of (INCOHERENT AT 8.14). This constitutive bustle dictates that there can never be an easy demarcation between conceptual production, personal style, concrete intervention, tactical development, geo-political events or what have you. They are all interlaced together, all the time, and there is plenty of space (INCOHERENT AT 8.40) in Kafka’s rather appealing description of migrant literature. Kafka writes in his diaries, ‘what in major literature takes place down below, here, in minor literature, takes place in the full light of day; what there is a matter of parting interest for the few, here absorbs everyone no less than as a matter of life and death.’ Now I want to make one very brief point before moving on to Occupy. I pointed to a range of social relations that minor politics might engage with; the range is potentially infinite. But for Deleuze and Guattari there is a dynamic internal to all of them, and this is the dynamic of capital. In a conversation with Antonio Negri the former says: ‘Guattari and I have remained Marxists, in two different ways perhaps. You see, we think any political philosophy will turn on its analysis of capital and the way it has developed. What we find most interesting in Marx is his analysis of capitalism constantly overcoming its own limitations (INCOHERENT AT 10.12).’ So to all of these minor political processes with very politically situated positions, there is an extent to which capital has been a key dynamic.’ So you might ask what has this got to do with Occupy?
Well if that’s the context that I have briefly sketched of minor politics, I want to turn to the problem expressed in Occupy’s slogan, ‘We are the 99%’. Now if this is a problem, then it is one with a number of component parts, and I’ll comment on just two here. ‘We are the 99%’ is an assertion that the vast majority of the world’s population are exploited by and for the wealth of the 1%. It names, in other words, a relationship of exploitation and inequality. And so, to refer to the point I just made about Marxism, the problematization of capitalism is central to this slogan. Second, ‘We are the 99%’ simultaneously names a breach in that relation of exploitation and inequality. Now, in neither situation does this slogan name a relationship of identity, of substantial identity. Rather, it names a breach in the social relations of exploitation. So it is minor political in so far as it turns inwards, problematizing the relations of exploitation which constitute anyone at any point. So this naming of a breach in capital is of course genuine. We might think of the 99% of something as a formula or a grid (INCOHERENT AT 12.27-12.40). Parliamentary democracy is for Deleuze a grid laid out across social space, a grid that channels specific forms and structures. So, he says, ‘Elections are not a particular locale, nor a particular day in the calendar; they’re more like a grid that affects the way we understand the procedure.’ Everything that is mapped on this grid gets warped as a result. Politics gets warped because everything is reduced the status quo, to the perpetuation of that which gave rise to politics in the first place. Now a fundamental aspect of this warping is the filtering out of problems of economic equality and exploitation from the realm of politics. This was of course Marx’s insight, one of his great insights. And it’s currently so acute that we see a widespread, even popular, recognition of such, as Greek unelected technocrats impose rule on the populous (<UNCLEAR), as the Tories privatize the NHS, claiming, in their words, ‘that it matters not a jot whether it is run by state or private candidates.’ Because the question of the economic has been filtered out of the political realm in both instances. This is why Occupy’s marked refusal (???) to make demands is so important and so much a product of our times. A demand that is precisely a reduction into the grid of democratic politics. A means of seducing and channelling the breach with capital right back into the institution that perpetuates capital. If that is the grid of democracy then it the grid that is constituted by the 99%, by the formula that we are the 99%, is very different. Rather than a mechanism of seduction into the status quo it’s a means of multiplying points of antagonisms or, in more Deleuzian terms, the extent to process and perceive the intolerable (???) and politicizing social relations. This does not occur in general, we don’t perceive the intolerable in general, we don’t politicize social relations in general. Rather it occurs in peoples’ concrete and situated experience, where the points of problematization might be housing reposition, the waste of public services, debt, and so on. And the tactics range from occupying social space, to the astonishing strike (Incoherent 15.47) public repossession. (Incoherent 16.00) there’s no singular movement there (Incoherent 16.05) So the grid of the 99% is a kind of catalyst (???) laid out across social space. But again, it’s not a catalyst because people come to recognise themselves in it as an identity, it’s a catalyst because they come to embody and express its problematic, of inequality and exploitation.
Now before moving on to my second point I want to just underscore three things from what I’ve said so far. First, I’m not saying that the refusal of identity is a refusal of collectivity, not at all. But it’s collectivity constituted through a politicisation of social structures. In this sense, Occupy is not an aggregating social body extending ever outwards (Incoherent 17.02)but an open ended grid where people and groups coming to embody and enact at any one point, at least in potential. (Incoherent 17.13). Of course it’s collective but it’s a collective in the process of politicization. And that relates to a second point. It’s not infrequently said by those involved in Occupy that in some sense it is creating the new world in the shadow of the old. The practices of collective decision, co-action, co-operation and so on, are all a kind of communism in miniature. And certainly all of these collective practices are crucial in understanding the pleasures of being involved. From a Deleuzian perspective, and from the perspective minor politics, the risk is that Occupy turns inwards, prioritizing its own forms at the expensive of an ever outward engagement in social relations. Occupy’s vitality lies in its extension of the problems of the 99% to an open range of political sites, for it is in and through these sites that the world’s population exists, and from which an as yet unknown set of possible futures will emerge. To limit those possible futures to the cultural realms discovered in Occupy camps would be at best naïve and at worst a conservative reduction of future potential to certain particular forms and identities. And third, I think this is a very important point, because there has been a lot of talk about the benefit or not of demands, having said that I think from a Deleuzian perspective there are few demands that make a lot of sense, we need to be clear that this isn’t the refusal to speak. On the contrary, to work through the problems of Occupy requires an incessant production of critical knowledge, knowledge that needs to be circulated in the extension and development of these problems. The point rather is that this knowledge production is immanent to Occupy, not a pleading for recognition from an external voice, and as such you can imagine Occupy developing slogans and decisions that are very clearly defined, that have a strong sense of what the movement might want.
To be Continued...
So I will start then with minor politics within the 1990’s bear with me as the relation might not seem so apparent at first. So a way through Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy is the notion of politics arises not in fullness of an identity, people of a collective subject. Politics rather arises in cracked spaces packages and impossible positions. The fact is among those you feel constrained. Now this is at once a very real experience in poverty, death or racism. But it’s also something that actively wills. When people trouble and deny reduction of identity to their perception of what is intolerable in terms of social relations. Warning off the identity off the demographic for example the good employees and so on. In major of molar politics are based on identities that are nurtured and facilitated social environment. As where minor politics, the politics that Deleuze and Guattari are interested in is a breach of such identity. When social environment are seen as a constraint and are intolerable.
Now if this is the case what is the substance of politics? Well, it can no longer be about self expression, about the unfurling of subjectivity of people because in this formation there is no identity to unfurl. The people as Deleuze puts it are missing. Minor politics is found on this notion that the people are missing. So instead minor politics is about engagement with and social relations that traverse us. The relations in which we experience are cramped, impossible and intolerable. By social relations I mean a gang of economic structures that have informed gender divisions of labour, the dead unemployment etc. What ever it might be in any one situation. In this individual formulation of intrigued as Deleuze out’s it is immediately social. Without any autonomous identity even the most personal individual situation is immediately comprised of social relations. It is constituted by the social relations because autonomous identity can result in problems. So Deleuze and Guattari write the individual concern thus becomes all the more necessary, indispensible, magnify because a whole other story operating within it.
And he has a very nice image to express this. He says that to be on the right, to be right wing, is to perceive the word starting with identity, with self, family and to move out in a series of concentric circles – friends, city, nation, continent, world... with a kind of diminishing affective return at each stage, diminishing affective investment in each circle, and with an abiding sense that the centre – the centre of identity – needs defending against the periphery. Now on the contrary, to be on the left as he puts it, is to start with this perception at the periphery, and to move inwards. And it requires not bolstering of the centre, but an appreciation that the centre is always interlaced with the periphery.
Now, there’s an important propulsive or motive aspect to this understanding of politics. For rather than (INCOHERENT AT 7.40) of particular political or cultural (INCOHERENT) forms, identities, habits, and so on, the act of warding off identity, the act of perceiving the intolerable works as a mechanism to induce continuous experimentation, ever drawing thought and practice back to a field of problematization where a contestation, argument, an engagement with social relations, ever arises from the intimacy of (INCOHERENT AT 8.14). This constitutive bustle dictates that there can never be an easy demarcation between conceptual production, personal style, concrete intervention, tactical development, geo-political events or what have you. They are all interlaced together, all the time, and there is plenty of space (INCOHERENT AT 8.40) in Kafka’s rather appealing description of migrant literature. Kafka writes in his diaries, ‘what in major literature takes place down below, here, in minor literature, takes place in the full light of day; what there is a matter of parting interest for the few, here absorbs everyone no less than as a matter of life and death.’ Now I want to make one very brief point before moving on to Occupy. I pointed to a range of social relations that minor politics might engage with; the range is potentially infinite. But for Deleuze and Guattari there is a dynamic internal to all of them, and this is the dynamic of capital. In a conversation with Antonio Negri the former says: ‘Guattari and I have remained Marxists, in two different ways perhaps. You see, we think any political philosophy will turn on its analysis of capital and the way it has developed. What we find most interesting in Marx is his analysis of capitalism constantly overcoming its own limitations (INCOHERENT AT 10.12).’ So to all of these minor political processes with very politically situated positions, there is an extent to which capital has been a key dynamic.’ So you might ask what has this got to do with Occupy?
Well if that’s the context that I have briefly sketched of minor politics, I want to turn to the problem expressed in Occupy’s slogan, ‘We are the 99%’. Now if this is a problem, then it is one with a number of component parts, and I’ll comment on just two here. ‘We are the 99%’ is an assertion that the vast majority of the world’s population are exploited by and for the wealth of the 1%. It names, in other words, a relationship of exploitation and inequality. And so, to refer to the point I just made about Marxism, the problematization of capitalism is central to this slogan. Second, ‘We are the 99%’ simultaneously names a breach in that relation of exploitation and inequality. Now, in neither situation does this slogan name a relationship of identity, of substantial identity. Rather, it names a breach in the social relations of exploitation. So it is minor political in so far as it turns inwards, problematizing the relations of exploitation which constitute anyone at any point. So this naming of a breach in capital is of course genuine. We might think of the 99% of something as a formula or a grid (INCOHERENT AT 12.27-12.40). Parliamentary democracy is for Deleuze a grid laid out across social space, a grid that channels specific forms and structures. So, he says, ‘Elections are not a particular locale, nor a particular day in the calendar; they’re more like a grid that affects the way we understand the procedure.’ Everything that is mapped on this grid gets warped as a result. Politics gets warped because everything is reduced the status quo, to the perpetuation of that which gave rise to politics in the first place. Now a fundamental aspect of this warping is the filtering out of problems of economic equality and exploitation from the realm of politics. This was of course Marx’s insight, one of his great insights. And it’s currently so acute that we see a widespread, even popular, recognition of such, as Greek unelected technocrats impose rule on the populous (<UNCLEAR), as the Tories privatize the NHS, claiming, in their words, ‘that it matters not a jot whether it is run by state or private candidates.’ Because the question of the economic has been filtered out of the political realm in both instances. This is why Occupy’s marked refusal (???) to make demands is so important and so much a product of our times. A demand that is precisely a reduction into the grid of democratic politics. A means of seducing and channelling the breach with capital right back into the institution that perpetuates capital. If that is the grid of democracy then it the grid that is constituted by the 99%, by the formula that we are the 99%, is very different. Rather than a mechanism of seduction into the status quo it’s a means of multiplying points of antagonisms or, in more Deleuzian terms, the extent to process and perceive the intolerable (???) and politicizing social relations. This does not occur in general, we don’t perceive the intolerable in general, we don’t politicize social relations in general. Rather it occurs in peoples’ concrete and situated experience, where the points of problematization might be housing reposition, the waste of public services, debt, and so on. And the tactics range from occupying social space, to the astonishing strike (Incoherent 15.47) public repossession. (Incoherent 16.00) there’s no singular movement there (Incoherent 16.05) So the grid of the 99% is a kind of catalyst (???) laid out across social space. But again, it’s not a catalyst because people come to recognise themselves in it as an identity, it’s a catalyst because they come to embody and express its problematic, of inequality and exploitation.
Now before moving on to my second point I want to just underscore three things from what I’ve said so far. First, I’m not saying that the refusal of identity is a refusal of collectivity, not at all. But it’s collectivity constituted through a politicisation of social structures. In this sense, Occupy is not an aggregating social body extending ever outwards (Incoherent 17.02)but an open ended grid where people and groups coming to embody and enact at any one point, at least in potential. (Incoherent 17.13). Of course it’s collective but it’s a collective in the process of politicization. And that relates to a second point. It’s not infrequently said by those involved in Occupy that in some sense it is creating the new world in the shadow of the old. The practices of collective decision, co-action, co-operation and so on, are all a kind of communism in miniature. And certainly all of these collective practices are crucial in understanding the pleasures of being involved. From a Deleuzian perspective, and from the perspective minor politics, the risk is that Occupy turns inwards, prioritizing its own forms at the expensive of an ever outward engagement in social relations. Occupy’s vitality lies in its extension of the problems of the 99% to an open range of political sites, for it is in and through these sites that the world’s population exists, and from which an as yet unknown set of possible futures will emerge. To limit those possible futures to the cultural realms discovered in Occupy camps would be at best naïve and at worst a conservative reduction of future potential to certain particular forms and identities. And third, I think this is a very important point, because there has been a lot of talk about the benefit or not of demands, having said that I think from a Deleuzian perspective there are few demands that make a lot of sense, we need to be clear that this isn’t the refusal to speak. On the contrary, to work through the problems of Occupy requires an incessant production of critical knowledge, knowledge that needs to be circulated in the extension and development of these problems. The point rather is that this knowledge production is immanent to Occupy, not a pleading for recognition from an external voice, and as such you can imagine Occupy developing slogans and decisions that are very clearly defined, that have a strong sense of what the movement might want.
To be Continued...