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Freedom and the problem of society

We saw in Chapter 1 how Deleuze describes thought as problematic in the sense that its highest capacity lies in the constitution of new problems. Like Kant’s transcendental Ideas, the problems that define thought are never completely actualised in any given solution. Deleuze’s Ideas or virtual multiplicities are treated as problems of this order. They are defined by elements which ‘have neither sensible form nor conceptual signification’ (Deleuze 1994:183) and they may be incarnated in material as well as theoretical or conceptual solutions: an organism ‘is nothing if not the solution to a problem, as are each of its differenciated organs, such as the eye’ (Deleuze 1994:211). In terms of Deleuze’s differential ontology, everything

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that exists incarnates a problem of some kind, and there will be as many kinds of problem as there are distinct species of matter and thought, including physical, biological and psychic problems.

Languages and societies are solutions to particular species of problem. Language in general may be regarded as a solution to the problem of how to communicate an infinite variety of semantic contents using a relatively small number of signifying elements. The Idea of language as such, or the transcendental Problem of language, will therefore be a virtual structure which includes all of the sets of relations between signifying elements which may be actualised in particular languages. Determinate sets of relations between phonemes will be incarnated in the particular languages which are solutions to the problem of language as such. Similarly, human societies may be regarded as solutions to the fundamental problem of the survival and reproduction of the species in the form in which this arises for human beings, namely the constitution of a mode of production of necessary means of subsistence. Marx showed that social relations are, in the final instance, a means of solving this problem. The Idea or transcendental Problem of society as such will therefore be a virtual set of indeterminate relations between means of production, direct and indirect producers, and consumers, while particular Ideas of society will involve an actual set of determinate social relations. These relations, in turn, will determine the ‘synthetic and problematising field’ (Deleuze 1994:186) to which that society’s economic, juridical and political arrangements constitute solutions. The crucial events which mark the history of a society will represent the emergence of actual solutions to its economic or other problems, or the replacement of one set of solutions by another.

Political theory is not a primary concern of Difference and Repetition (1994). Nevertheless, some political themes emerge in the exposition of the metaphysics of difference. In many cases, these are consistent with aspects of Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche while at the same time prefiguring aspects of the overtly political theory in A Thousand Plateaus (1987). One such theme emerges in connection with the conception of particular forms of society as solutions to the problem of society as such. Deleuze’s conception of society implies that, while the specific political problems that confront a given society are the expression or incarnation of the ideal relations which define a given Idea of society, these do not yet express the transcendental Idea of sociability or social organisation as such. The truly differential or ‘transcendent object of sociability’, Deleuze writes, cannot be lived within actual societies, but ‘must be and can only be lived in the element of social upheaval (in other words, freedom, which is always hidden among the remains of the old order and the first fruits of a new)’ (Deleuze 1994:193). In other words, while some Idea or other is immanent in every empirical form of society, the properly transcendental Idea of society is only actualised during those periods of transition from



 

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one solution to the problems which define a society to another. In short, ‘the transcendent object of the faculty of sociability is revolution. In this sense, revolution is the social power of difference, the paradox of society, the particular wrath of the social Idea’ (Deleuze 1994:208).

On the one hand, this celebration of exceptional moments recalls the selective character of Nietzsche’s eternal return and the manner in which this doctrine privileges the higher forms of existence, where these are understood not as a particular human or social type but rather as the active and affirmative forms, those that go to the limit of what they are capable of doing or being. In the case of social existence in time, these higher forms are realised only in moments of ‘creative disorder or inspired chaos which can only ever coincide with a historical moment but never be confused with it’ (Deleuze 1994:54). On the other hand, Deleuze’s conception of such revolutionary moments, or freedom, as the expression of the transcendental Idea of society privileges processes of social transformation and metamorphosis in the same way as do certain concepts developed in A Thousand Plateaus. We shall examine in detail some of these concepts, such as becoming, line of flight, absolute deterritorialisation, nomadism and smooth space in Chapters 4, 5 and 6.


Date: 2015-01-11; view: 818


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