Deleuze & Guattari's "Becoming Minority" as an alternative.

[justink]

Could someone please explain to me how D&G's becoming minority would function as an alternative within the debate round? Thanks in advance.

ATP 471

Once again, this is not to say that the struggle on the level of the axioms is without importance; on the contrary, it is determining (at the most diverse levels: women’s struggle for the vote, for abortion, for jobs; the struggle of the regions for autonomy; the struggle of the Third World; the struggle of the oppressed masses and minorities in the East or West…). But there is also always a sign to indicate that these struggles are the index of another, coexistent combat. However modest the demand, it always constitutes a point that the axiomatic cannot tolerate: when people demand to formulate their problems themselves, and to determine at least the particular conditions under which they can receive a more general solution (hold to the Particular as an innovative form). It is always astounding to see the same story repeated: the modesty of the minorities’ initial demands, coupled with the impotence of the axiomatic to resolve the slightest corresponding problem. In short, the struggle around axioms is most important when it manifests, itself opens, the gap between two types of propositions, propositions of flow and propositions of axioms. The power of the minorities is not measured by their capacity to enter and make themselves felt within the majority system, nor even to reverse the necessarily tautological criterion of the majority, but to bring to bear the force of the nondenumerable sets, however small they may be, against the denumerable sets, even if they are infinite, reversed, or changed, even they if imply new axioms or, beyond that, a new axiomatic. The issue is not at all anarchy versus organization, nor even centralism versus decentralizations, but a calculus or conception of the problems of nondenumerable sets, against the axiomatic of denumerable sets. Such a calculus may have its own compositions, organizations, even centralizations; nevertheless, it proceeds not via the States or the axiomatic process but via a pure becoming of minorities.


ATP Pg 292

A woman has to become-woman, but in becoming-woman of all man. A Jew becomes Jewish, but in becoming-Jewish of the non-Jew. A becoming-minoritarian exists only by virtue of a deterritorialized medium and subject that are like its elements. There is no subject of the becoming except as a deterritorialized variable of a minority. We can be thrown into a becoming by anything at all, by the most unexpected, most insignificant of things. You don't deviate from the majority unless there is a little detail that starts to swell and carries you off. It is because the hero of Focus, the average American, needs glasses that give his nose a vaguely Semitic air, it is "because of the glasses" that he is thrown into this strange adventure of the becoming-Jewish of the non-Jew. Anything at all can do the job, but it always turns out to be a political affair. Becoming-minoritarian is a political affair and necessitates a labor of power, an active micropolitics. This is the opposite of macropolitics, and even of History, in which it is a question of knowing how to win or obtain a majority. As Faulkner said, to avoid ending up a fascist there was no other choice but to become-black. Unlike history, becoming cannot be conceptualized in terms of past and future. Becoming-revolutionary remains indifferent to questions of a future and a past of the revolution; it passes between the two. Every becoming is a block of coexistence. The so-called ahistorical societies set themselves outside history, not because they are content to reproduce immutable models or are governed by a fixed structure, but because they are societies of becoming (war societies, secret societies, etc.). There is no history but of the majority, or of minorities as defined in relation to the majority. And yet "how to win the majority" is a totally secondary problem in relation to the advances of the imperceptible.

[retired]

Combine that with Hardt's Spinozian Democracy... sounds a like a critical, pratical alternative.

[tshuman]

Originally Posted by -JustinK-

Could someone please explain to me how D&G's becoming minority would function as an alternative within the debate round? Thanks in advance.

And when you're done explaining that to Justin, can you explain to the rest of us just what these two passages are supposed to actually, like, y'know, say and stuff...?

[Note to the humor-impaired: I'm not expecting an actual response here, nor would I be interested in reading one, since the original texts are so florid that a reader can claim they say whatever she/he wishes them to say...]

[Met4physica]

Originally Posted by tshuman

And when you're done explaining that to Justin, can you explain to the rest of us just what these two passages are supposed to actually, like, y'know, say and stuff...?

[Note to the humor-impaired: I'm not expecting an actual response here, nor would I be interested in reading one, since the original texts are so florid that a reader can claim they say whatever she/he wishes them to say...]

Reading any of Deleuze and Guattari might be a prerequisite to making such jokes funny.

[CrotchOfFire]

[Note to the humor-impaired: I'm not expecting an actual response here, nor would I be interested in reading one, since the original texts are so florid that a reader can claim they say whatever she/he wishes them to say...]

Now, now Shuman. As incomprehensible as D&G are it is possible to figure out what's going on in at least a somewhat deterministic manner; I know this because I actually succeeded with parts of Anti-Oedipus. The best analogy I can come up with for what it means to make sense of D&G is reading the proof of the Banach Tarski paradox (which says that you can decompose a sphere into three congruent pieces and construct another sphere of equal volume using only two of the pieces and rigid motions). Yes, it is possible to figure out what is being said and verify what is going on in the abstract, but that doesn't mean you believe the result you get in any literal sense.

[justink]

*ahem*

let's get back on subject here.

[retired]

out of the first passage, a few important things to note:

1. "However modest the demand, it always constitutes a point that the axiomatic cannot tolerate: when people demand to formulate their problems themselves, and to determine at least the particular conditions under which they can receive a more general solution (hold to the Particular as an innovative form). It is always astounding to see the same story repeated: the modesty of the minorities’ initial demands, coupled with the impotence of the axiomatic to resolve the slightest corresponding problem."

The "alternative" is real, this isn't just a demand for better pay, it is a new mode of organization that is not formulated by the pre-existing axioms. Thats what constitutes a 'becoming-', a new passage, a new connection.

and out of the second passage

2. Becoming-minoritarian is a political affair and necessitates a labor of power, an active micropolitics. This is the opposite of macropolitics, and even of History, in which it is a question of knowing how to win or obtain a majority. . . .Every becoming is a block of coexistence.

and here, what is now being alluded to is a politics of constitution, so the pratical question becomes not how develop a unified vision of politics from blocks of becoming, but how to use those connections to constitute an alternative political being to that of mimesis.

[Papa Smurf]

would you be using this as an alternative to a criticism of debate itself or to a specific criticism of some action?

i feel it's probably problematic to use debate as a "deterritorialized medium" unless you're attempting to detteritorialize it.

mind you my understanding of anti-oedipus is still fairly shallow.

[justink]

it is a criticism of debate, i'm working with what kevin started regarding the johnny 23 critique.

[Da Fightin' Materialist]

Originally Posted by -JustinK-

Becoming-minoritarian is a political affair and necessitates a labor of power, an active micropolitics. This is the opposite of macropolitics, and even of History, in which it is a question of knowing how to win or obtain a majority. As Faulkner said, to avoid ending up a fascist there was no other choice but to become-black. Unlike history, becoming cannot be conceptualized in terms of past and future. Becoming-revolutionary remains indifferent to questions of a future and a past of the revolution; it passes between the two. Every becoming is a block of coexistence. The so-called ahistorical societies set themselves outside history, not because they are content to reproduce immutable models or are governed by a fixed structure, but because they are societies of becoming (war societies, secret societies, etc.). There is no history but of the majority, or of minorities as defined in relation to the majority. And yet "how to win the majority" is a totally secondary problem in relation to the advances of the imperceptible.

I chose to read the 2nd paragraph only (arbitrarily of course) and this is the clearest it comes for me. Upon reading this, I am suddenly reminded of Hakim Bey's TAZ, the temporary autonomous zone, only in a more indefinite fashion, as Deleuze and Guatarri indicate. For Bey, the TAZ was a point which did not exist in the official cartography of space in which power flows and orders. He spoke of an immense secret network of arabic assasins early in the first milenium which could be seen as a small nation in itself, but did not register with any of the mappings of power. Deleuze and Guatarri seem to have the same thing in mind (they even speak of secret societies as being indicative of what they are talking about). Their argument isn't becoming-minotarian, because thats what they critique at the top of the paragraph, but becoming-revolutionary.

This would be something Zizek would mock until the bitter end because it goes against what he thinks it means to be revolutionary. For Zizek, the mark of a true revolutionary is his inexorable will to move through the abstract negativity of revolution and persist in taking full responsibility in constructing a new positive order of Being. Deleuze is kinda telling us to stop right there in the middle, and being Deleuze (& Guatarri) I imagine he would make claims of the fasicistic risks of bringing to fruition (if its possible in the first place) this new order. Deleuze seems to advocate a sort of revolutionary being which denies any re-ordering of the social space. The very existence of this being is both a source of hope for a better way and the demise of the current order. He never attempts to re-order things cause, fundamentally, thats the Status Quo, instead he leaves open gapping whole in the order from which we can think new things, whatever, blah blah blah. I disagree with this form of advocacy, but I think I did a job of describing it.

This would work strategically well in a debate round since in so far as the act of critique is all tied up with this becoming-revolutionary, one really doesn't have to defend an alternative, which moots a lot of offense. Plus, what D&G say acts as a DA to any sort of "reformism good", "action key" type args, or something like that. Anyway, thats my explanation.

[Lazzarone]

i love it when shumyn assumes that because he can't understand something it's incapable of being understood.

d&g are saying something quite definite in their 'becoming-minority' idea. first off, they're distinguishing themselves from what's called 'identity politics'. the logical conclusion of identity politics is that the black lesbian by default knows more about oppression than anyone else. d&g say this simply isn't so. it's possible in fact that they're more ingrained in the dominant monoculture than those considered whiter, straighter, and more normal.

simone de beauvoir writes in the second sex : "one is not born a woman, but becomes one". an infant doesn't know what sex they are. we're only gradually made aware of the significance of vaginas and penises through socialization, through the cultural construction of our subjectivity. everyone has different hormonal balances and everyone has different body contours - so why do we focus on the genitals as being central? why on every form you've ever filled out do you have to check either 'male' or 'female'?

d&g provide an answer, and it's not the one given by most scholars in 'culture studies'. the latter consistently revert to the binary of self and other, us and them, masculine and feminine, white and black, or what have you. d&g offer a new model - there's the norm (in their own culture, and maybe ours too, it's the white adult european male) and then there's degrees of difference from that ideal. this explains the racism directed at lighter-skinned blacks (by other blacks), for example. it's not an inside-outside model but a gradient, and it's much more useful. [1]

so a majority isn't defined numerically, and this explains why a small number of power-holders who conform to the ideal can oppress countless others who don't (e.g. south africa under apartheid). and likewise, one isn't a minority simply due to the color of one's skin or the nature of one's genitalia - one becomes minority.

in the movie focus, there's a respectable anglo-saxon protestant male. he's liked by his peers, held in high-esteem by his community, seen as normal, as someone who is 'one of us'. that is, until he buys a new pair of glasses which makes him 'look jewish'. he's then subjected to everything from suspicion to hate crimes by the anti-semites around him. he's distrusted. he loses his job. he's beaten by nazi-sympathizers. in this way he is more jewish than many jews (especially the rich fucks who run hollywood and the u.s. government [2]) - he becomes jewish. in the process he befriends jews and learns to open himself up to the jewish perspective. to d&g this indicates that one can be thrown into becoming by anything at all - in the above case, it's the elohim-damned glasses.

certainly this doesn't entitle one to start speaking for others, but sometimes we find that if our experience is real, and if we express it authentically, we end up speaking truthfully to things we have in common. this is far from a 'unified vision of politics' - it's still very much minoritarian. faulkner said, to avoid ending up a fascist, there was no other choice but to become-black. and he said this during jim crow. it's not enough to say, i'm white so i don't understand black people - that's trying to be neutral on a moving train. it's not enough to say, i'm white so whatever those blacks come up with, i'll be fine with - that's artificial unity. one must become black. this is what 'active micropolitics' means, and it's the difference between sympathy and empathy, between pity and compassion, which makes all the difference in the world.

or maybe you've heard after some catastrophe befalls a people someone will say, 'we're all <insert whatever>'... after 9/11, for example, folks around the world might say, 'we're all americans'. do they mean 'we're registering for our citizenship in america'? no. no more than faulker had surgery to change the melanin-density of his upper-epidermis; no more than the main character in focus actually discovered that his mom was a hebrew. we're not on the level of proper categorization; we're on the level of material experiences.

and no, this doesn't mean it's incomprehensible or illogical. in fact, it's very important. it involves a willingness to make oneself vulnerable, to transcend the normal confines of one's classifiable self and become something other. it's the basis of all commonality, which isn't preestablished, but is invented in the most seemingly trivial of experiences (perhaps debate rounds even).

for what's the essence of this becoming (in a kierkegaardian sense)? that in even the most anxiety-ridden, depressing, horrible of times, something gets made that carries one beyond onself, beyond the axiomatic [3] numerations so vital to count-up-the-votes/look-at-the-poll-numbers politics, and it's this excess, this height of feeling, this becoming-minority that we should focus on more. otherwise we get ensnared in the utilitarian-calculus which determines 'the way things are'. that's the status quo. it's death in clockwork payments.

and had the abolitionists given in to that in the mid-1800s, how much more shitty would our society be?... had they said, 'we're white, maybe blacks like being enslaved just like all these uncle toms are saying', then we'd all have lost a good deal of whatever it means to be american. instead they chose a path less travelled; they chose to become black like john brown. and so can you, even if it takes a few extra fucking minutes to look up some big words in the dictionary and become-french like d&g. .k (kevin.sanchez@gmail.com)

[1] modern-day oppressions/repressions aren't charaterized primarily by exclusion (or elimination of the other), but by varying degrees of inclusion - it's not you're black therefore let's get a rope (any longer, that is); it's you're black therefore we'll exploit you at this level and you had better stay there. again, this is where the identity politics crowd go off track sometimes. take new orleans: someone might say (in anger), 'bush wanted those blacks to die', when really it's more accurate to say, 'new orleans, being predominantly black, wasn't as high on the list of priorities as say, florida, or san francisco would've been had the big one hit there'. d&g would however agree with critical race theorists, for example, that this racism typically operates on an unconscious level since it's bound up with material/ideological investments that seldom recieve much second-thought.

[2] just checking to see if you were still reading

[3] if the axiomatics part of the above d&g passages gave you trouble, here's a post that might help to clear things up a bit : http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/ede...st/063046.html.

[VelCrowe66]

So, 'becoming minority' sounds like something only rich white people can afford to do.

[Lazzarone]

yes, that's it exactly velcrowe.... or that clarence thomas can afford not to do.

[Papa Smurf]

how would this function in a debate round? what minority would you become?

that's my only gripe.

[Lazzarone]

it's an alternative to identity politics and majoritarianism: when someone runs intersectionality, for example, you can say that even though their concept of identity is more inclusive, it's still static, whereas you're endorsing actually becoming-minority. to say john brown was blacker than clarence thomas means that merely helping those with darker skin will never be enough. in this sense, inclusion isn't always the best goal either: would you rather have more phony desegregation where racial minorities are still relegated to lower tracks or more all-black (all-latino, etc.) skools?

that's what the first card was referring to in relation to womyn's liberation: it wasn't the power of their demands, but of the cultural changes they spurred, even when they were greatly outnumbered. this also has implications for how the ballot is viewed in relation to social movements: it's not about 'winning a majority', so arguments like 'your movement will never catch on' or 'nothing is gonna change' fall to the floor - it's not 'we're gonna change the world', it's 'we're not gonna let the world change us' (or in d&g-ese: "the power of the minorities is not measured by their capacity to enter and make themselves felt within the majority system, ... but to bring to bear the force of the nondenumerable sets...").

and lastly, it also means looking for literary works and narratives that sweep the listeners up in an empathic process ("we can be thrown into a becoming by anything at all, by the most unexpected, most insignificant of things") instead of just another logocentric feminist or anti-racist kritik................. does this help?

[tshuman]

Originally Posted by Lazzarone

i love it when shumyn assumes that because he can't understand something it's incapable of being understood.

Just as I love it when Kevin assumes that I'm too stupid to understand "deep thinkers" like D & G. Actually, he simply proves the point I made earlier, that a reader can make those texts "say" anything she/he wishes them to say. For instance...

first off, they're distinguishing themselves from what's called 'identity politics'.

Okay, we'll start here. Which sentence in the texts quoted earlier in the thread makes this point?

[CrotchOfFire]

Which sentence in the texts quoted earlier in the thread makes this point?

That's like asking "Which sentence in the constitution establishes the foundations of a free society and protects it from tyranny?" I think Kevin was trying to situate the excerpts in a more familiar context because the overall goal of a text is an important part of its meaning. If you choose to continue this line of questioning I suspect you will catch somebody saying something that cannot be precisely justified within the confines of the material presented here (or - god forbid - any written work of Deleuze and/or Guattari), but before doing so perhaps it would be only fair to think about how many "mainstream" texts live up to this standard of clarity and completeness.

[tshuman]

Originally Posted by CrotchOfFire

That's like asking "Which sentence in the constitution establishes the foundations of a free society and protects it from tyranny?"

No, actually, it isn't (and I think you're smart enough to know that it isn't)...

I think Kevin was trying to situate the excerpts in a more familiar context because the overall goal of a text is an important part of its meaning.

Whatever THAT means. You say Kevin is "situating the excerpts in a more familiar context," I say he's just pulling extrapolations out of his ass. My argument hasn't changed: D & G are such masters of non-speak that their acolytes can "find" anything they wish to find within those cumbersome tracts...

If you choose to continue this line of questioning

Kevin isn't being cross-examined (although please note that he, not I, decided to get personal about things). I just want to know what makes him think that D & G are talking about "identity politics" AT ALL in either of the cited passages. I don't think that claim can be supported...

[VelCrowe66]

Originally Posted by tshuman

I just want to know what makes him think that D & G are talking about "identity politics" AT ALL in either of the cited passages. I don't think that claim can be supported...

Or even if they are talking about identity politics, how is 'becoming minority' fundamentally different?

The notion of purposefully 'becoming minority' seems to be more identity politics than identity politics itself (whether or not it's a good thing).

[Lazzarone]

i wasn't limiting myself to interpreting the above texts; i was situating those texts within the context of their entire philosophical project, in hopes that this would make what they're saying crisper and clearer. they are indeed saying something, and despite their citation of literature and their playful style, you can't twist whatever they write into whatever you want to say. (it wasn't my intention to 'get personal' per se - i like to poke fun and felt i was replying to your dismissiveness in kind.)

ok, identity politics. it's true they never used that term in the two volumes of 'capitalism and schizophrenia', at least not to my knowledge. the french word used is 'identitaire'; the task they set out for what they call 'nomad thought' is to 'conceive of individuality free from the confines of identity [identitaire], to think difference in itself, without any reference to the Same'. (the closest english word is apparently 'identificatory'.) or take this quote: 'there are many regimes of signs. our own list is arbitrarily limited. there is NO REASON TO IDENTIFY a regime or a semiotic system with a people or historical moment.'

in any case, if you read the works as a whole you see that d&g continually run up against the problem of how to synthesize a lot of different elements without sacrificing hetereogeneity. though scholars were reluctant at first, many are now readily using d&g to escape the confines of what we'd now translate as 'identity politics'. consider how whatever any member of a racial minority does is said to be representative of that minority; this is exactly the kind of representational discourse d&g refute constantly - they affirm being black on its own terms, as something even white folks can do (john brown), or black folks can not do (michael jackson ).

next?

[Papa Smurf]

Originally Posted by Lazzarone

it's an alternative to identity politics and majoritarianism: when someone runs intersectionality, for example, you can say that even though their concept of identity is more inclusive, it's still static, whereas you're endorsing actually becoming-minority. to say john brown was blacker than clarence thomas means that merely helping those with darker skin will never be enough. in this sense, inclusion isn't always the best goal either: would you rather have more phony desegregation where racial minorities are still relegated to lower tracks or more all-black (all-latino, etc.) skools?

that's what the first card was referring to in relation to womyn's liberation: it wasn't the power of their demands, but of the cultural changes they spurred, even when they were greatly outnumbered. this also has implications for how the ballot is viewed in relation to social movements: it's not about 'winning a majority', so arguments like 'your movement will never catch on' or 'nothing is gonna change' fall to the floor - it's not 'we're gonna change the world', it's 'we're not gonna let the world change us' (or in d&g-ese: "the power of the minorities is not measured by their capacity to enter and make themselves felt within the majority system, ... but to bring to bear the force of the nondenumerable sets...").

and lastly, it also means looking for literary works and narratives that sweep the listeners up in an empathic process ("we can be thrown into a becoming by anything at all, by the most unexpected, most insignificant of things") instead of just another logocentric feminist or anti-racist kritik................. does this help?

yes, thanks. more questions later after i do some rereading.

[TheScuSpeaks]

I was hoping I could split this thread from discussion with Terry and Justin's question, but too many posts overlap, so sorry Justin, you'll just have to deal with a muddled thread. Wish I had gotten here sooner.


Also, later on I might have something interesting or worthwhile to say. But not right now.

Today I sat through the single most painful day of class discussing Deleuze and Guattari's Kafka.

[justink]

Damn, that class sounds like it has potential. As far as the argument, it's okay, the little spat is a fun diversion.

p.s - i think you lost some posts on your post count.

[TheScuSpeaks]

>Damn, that class sounds like it has potential.<

It's taught by a Derridean, and there is just such a different project between what Derrida wants to do, and what D&G wants to do. The other problem there, is that the professor is not that well schooled in Deleuze and Guattari. So he wants to do this tight, hermuntical, close reading of the text, which is grand and all, but he doesn't have the background to do such a reading. So the clase spent like 20 some odd minutes on the line, "His inaptitude for marriage, his writing, the attraction to an intense and barren world are completely positive motivations from a libidinal point of view"
And they wanted to know what it meant by completely positive. By the time I had gotten to speak so much bullshit had been spread, and I was finally able to say, "they mean productive, postitive as in productive, rather than always seeing this in terms of lack and negativity."
The real problem the professor has is that he views D&G's Kafka as a book of literary criticism that has an object, and that object is Kafka. What that means is he wants to read the book as an attempt to say several really cool things about Kafka. The point of D&G is never an interpretative one, though, and they want to make heard several really cool things that Kafka says. The point is both subtle and huge, because it conditions how you approach the text. Point out a bunch of errors by D&G (such as saying Giben, when the real german word is Geben) really does not advance anything. There's no point, except of course because of the seducation of theory or to anesthize thought itself. The only point to critize and say, "D&G got this wrong about Kafka!" is if it in turn opens up a new path, a new way of escaping. Or at the very least if it reveals some type of oppression that was otherwise covered up by their misreading. Otherwise, the point of their project is not literary criticism.
Bah, I was so pissed after that class today.


>p.s - i think you lost some posts on your post count.<

Hmm, did I? What do you mean?

[TheScuSpeaks]

In May 68 it was common for students to chant that we are all German Jews.
There, that is the simple explaination. Now a longer one.

I've just gotten done doing lots of work with their Kafka book, so I'm going to take this from that angle.

They talk about a minor literature, which is not simply a literature that a minority writes (though of course, it could be that) but rather that which makes literature stutter, stammer, murmur. It is that which takes literature to its limit, to silence itself, to the boom and the crash. It is to take within the major literature, and produce something foriegn to it. The example they give over and bloodly fucking over is what african americans do with english (so, no Chris, this is more than just what rich white people can afford to do).

A becoming-minority is always a political event, and though they are writing before Ranciere, I feel they really mean political in the sense that Ranciere does: "politics exists when the natural order of domination is interrupted by the institution of a part of those who have no part. This institution is the whole of politics as a specific form of connection. It defines the common of the community as a political community, in other words, as divided, as based on a wrong that escapes the arithemetic of exchange and reparation. Beyond this set-up there is no politics. There is only the order of domination or the disorder of revolt." (Disagreement pp.11-12). Politics exist when a party of people who have no part interrupt domination. A becoming-minority is to engage with those who have no part; be it yourself or others.

Another way to understand this is by way of thinking of queers. It is common that lesbians and gays often make fun of and deny bisexuals. They play sex police, they are acting straight, instead of queer. So even if by their sex lives they are queer, they are doing there best to not be queer. This is what D&G mean when they say blacks must learn a becoming-black. We must all, regardless of who we fuck, learn to be queer.