Deleuze and Guattari and the issue of clarity in critical philosophy

[Hephaestus]

That's what Deleuze and Guattari sound like to me so far. I am reading Anti-Oedipus, and so far it is a lot of bizzarro Freudian mumbo jumbo, with some reference to a 'daddy-mommy-me' at the end of every chapter.

Hopefully, there is a context that I am missing in this book. I am sure there must be, otherwise the guy that wrote the original article on this thread is entirely right.

[dan.]

Perhaps, if you are having trouble with it, you should start with something more fundamental. For example, if you think psychoanalysis is "mumbo jumbo," you would probably be well-served to get a stronger foundation, at least until you understand what it is and what it is for. You'll find it is a powerful tool to uncover the effects of kinship systems on socialization.

[retired]

Originally Posted by Hephaestus

That's what Deleuze and Guattari sound like to me so far. I am reading Anti-Oedipus, and so far it is a lot of bizzarro Freudian mumbo jumbo, with some reference to a 'daddy-mommy-me' at the end of every chapter.

Hopefully, there is a context that I am missing in this book. I am sure there must be, otherwise the guy that wrote the original article on this thread is entirely right.

things you may want to read along side of d+g: a fair amount of freud and lacan; its not mumbojumbo, they are doing some playful things in the early chapters. The real political stuff is in sections 3 and 4. Also, Artaud, and probably some Beckett are handy.

Finally, a thorough and careful read of foucault's books on prisons, hospitals, mental health, criminality may also illuminate your readings.

AO is highly intertextual in this regard.

[Hephaestus]

I don't know, man. I read at least 200 pages of Freud's 'the Interpretation of Dreams', and I have read just about everything by Foucault. I think that there is a great deal to be learned from familial patterning, sibship relationships, etc. I can always read more Freud, but I am desperately waiting for psychoanalysis to sound a lot more real, a lot less artificial and ad hoc as it sounds to me so far.

I don't know about you, but I find some psychoanalysis not only far fetched, but rather insulting at times. There is so much emphasis on early childhood development and its influence in adult life. I remember my high school psychology course and my teacher talking about erogenous zones and oral and anal fixations. I remember reading 'Civilization and Its Discontents' by Freud, and I found that to be very interesting. One thing I will say, though, is I had a much different take on it in 1987 than I do now in 2007. An interesting counter to 'Civilization and Its Discontents' would be Ayn Rands 'Return of the Primitive' which really indicts this whole concept of the human need to free oneself of the repression of the modern civilized world.

I am not an Ayn Rand follower, or zealot, but I will say that it is nice to read something that really makes sense. I used to be intimidated by philosophy, psychology, or literature that was difficult to understand. I am more inclined to believe that when something is unclear, it's because they don't know what they are talking about.

Think of all of the things that we are bombarded with every day that are so difficult to understand.... obscure music, technical philosophy, debate rounds with high speed speakers that are difficult to understand. LOL - think about what the average graduate student in philosophy that is involved in policy debate subjects him or herself to on a weekly basis - music, debate, and philosophy.

The older I get, the higher a premium I put on clarity.

[TheScuSpeaks]

Originally Posted by Hephaestus

I used to be intimidated by philosophy, psychology, or literature that was difficult to understand. I am more inclined to believe that when something is unclear, it's because they don't know what they are talking about.

Think of all of the things that we are bombarded with every day that are so difficult to understand.... obscure music, technical philosophy, debate rounds with high speed speakers that are difficult to understand. LOL - think about what the average graduate student in philosophy that is involved in policy debate subjects him or herself to on a weekly basis - music, debate, and philosophy.

The older I get, the higher a premium I put on clarity.

Other things that are hard to understand: James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, William S. Burroughs, Kandinsky, Otto Dix, David Lynch, David Foster Wallace, Pynchon, Borges, Peter Greenaway, and on and on and on.

This is a debate I use to get into with Terry all the time. Lots of things take work to understand. Nietzsche use to say that he wrote philosophy to give you strong teeth. What does that mean? It means that just like cows, who have to chew their food twice, we should digest the philosophy of Nietzsche, regurgitate it, chew again, and then digest again. And yeah, that takes work.
It might even be that thinking takes work. That some of the best things in this word, take work.

It is also true that sometimes people are trying to do radically new things. That they are engaged with trying to change our perceptions. This often means a refusal of standard ways of producing in that medium (isn't this way abstract painting arose? new wave cinema? and et cetera). Deleuze and Guattari are trying to do the same in philosophy, to do something playful and new.

Also modes of appealing to a "common man" often assumes that there is such a thing as a common man. That we have a common background, that we are more or less intellectually interchangeable. This is exactly the sort of thing that Deleuze and Guattari rejects.

I mean, they both write plenty of essays (and more than a few books) that are highly more accessible than Anti-Oedipus. Several of the essays in here are very accessible http://www.mediafire.com/?72moy2yx2wj including letter to a harsh critic, mediators, and postscript on control societies.

Unlike the other people, I wouldn't suggest going and read someone else to be able to read A-O, that has always seemed silly to me. I've lots of other places about how I would suggest to approach that book, and if you want I can try and find some of those posts and repost them here.

[maxpow]

Originally Posted by Hephaestus

...I will say that it is nice to read something that really makes sense. I used to be intimidated by philosophy, psychology, or literature that was difficult to understand. I am more inclined to believe that when something is unclear, it's because they don't know what they are talking about.

Think of all of the things that we are bombarded with every day that are so difficult to understand.... obscure music, technical philosophy, debate rounds with high speed speakers that are difficult to understand. LOL - think about what the average graduate student in philosophy that is involved in policy debate subjects him or herself to on a weekly basis - music, debate, and philosophy.

The older I get, the higher a premium I put on clarity.

"False clarity is only another name for myth." -Adorno and Horkheimer

Also, speaking of clarity, I find this review of Spivak to be rather brilliant: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n10/eagl01_.html

[Hephaestus]

I think its a lot of smoke and mirrors half the time. The writers should be more clear. The fact that they aren't makes me wonder.

I don't want to damn Deleuze and Guatarri or even their genre, because there is plenty of murky text to go around.

The temptation to be obscure and oblique just so you can thumb your nose at people is reprehensible. Every now and then I start to read some philosophy, and I say to myself 'wow, that is a really haughty assumption.'

You can read surrounding literature, or books that are entirely explanations of some of these issues, but I think in philosophy, more than any other study, there are people walking around simply acting like they understand it, or most of it, or whatever. This is particularly true of students.

I had a very good teacher tell me a piece of advice...he said that when you prepare a speech for a very complicated piece of material, and you can't seem to break it down, make a list of topics that parallel a 'Greatest Hits' album.

Question: For anyone that has read Anti-Oedipus, would you be able to provide a 'greatest hits' album for what the biggest and most important themes of the book are?

[Hephaestus]

I am almost done with 'Anti-Oedipus', and it makes very little sense to me if any. Again, I get the feeling that half of the people writing post-modern philosophy don't know what they are saying, that they are insane, and that it is all a big bluff.

I read a few excerpts to my Nuclear Scientist brother that went to MIT, and he hasn't the foggiest idea what they are talking about either.

Even if I am totally wrong, that given the right amount of work and context, that what they are saying is completely profound and revolutionary, they ought to couch it in terms that an intelligent man might be able to understand.

[Jiggle Billy]

Well, first off, the book was originally written in French, so you're going to lose some (or a lot) in translation. This makes it hard for D&G to write in a particular style, because a lot of the pressure ends up on the shoulders of the translator and his/her interpretation of what D&G are saying.

Second, their writing assumes some background in Nietzschean/Marxist philosophy and uses ideas put forth by those (and others, i.e. Freud) authors. Background is very important; sitting down an intelligent individual and handing him a Calculus book while asking him to learn Calculus if he's never taken a Pre-Calculus course before is (often) going to end in frustration. Your Nuclear Scientist brother's degree from MIT has (I assume) nothing to do with philosophy, and therefore you can't expect him to understand specific passages from D&G any more than you could expect him to understand a contract written in Legalese (which tend to be undecipherable for anyone who isn't a lawyer).

I find D&G much easier to read than, say, Foucault. That may be personal preference, but it seems to me as far as using esoteric language, you'll find many other authors more guilty.

[Hephaestus]

Wow, I don't.

You are right about those two points that you made, that being that even a smart person can't understand Anti-Oedipus if they don't have the right background. I think more emphasis should be added to just how much background you might need to read this text.

I think you need a whole lot of very specific background to get anything out of it. I have read almost everything by Nietzsche and at least a couple of texts from both Freud and Marx. I suspect that I need a whole lot more of both of those particular authors to get anything out of either of these texts.

I think Foucault is a pretty easy read for the most part. After 250 pages, I don't think I could formulate a single proposition of what the hell D&G are talking about.

Feel free to summarize what you feel some of the main arguments that D&G are making in this text. I understand it so far as some sort of reversal of Freudian Psychology that can be a parallel to what Marx did to Keynesian economic principles.

'A Body Without Organs.' 'Desiring Production Machine.' I have read what these mean in the Wikkipedia. Feel free to explain any other aspects of their philosophy.

(1) Translation. (2) Background Literature. - I agree with both of these two points.

[TheScuSpeaks]

(1) It's odd to mention the nuclear scientist, because (a) has nothing to do with philosophy and (b) have you tried to read physics' journals? Seriously, you need all sorts of special training to access those things.

(2) If you don't like reading them, stop. D&G would have said the same thing.

(3) They aren't the Stephen King or J.K. Rowling of philosophy. Have you read Joyce, Kafka, Beckett, Borges, David Foster Wallace, O'Conner, et cetera? They aren't exactly famous for their accessability. (And look at the literary influences, Beckett, Kafka, Borroughs, Woolf, Proust, Borges, et cetera). People write in ways all the time that are inventive, that try to do something differently. You can certainly claimed they failed, but to say that the most important thing is to make themselves understandable to some generic "smart person" (and clearly no such person exists. All sorts of people are intelligent in so many different ways. I can't do nuclear physics at all, but I'm known as being a pretty smart guy when it comes to reading D&G. There is no generic person, and that we want to construct such an entity is one of the many things that their work critiques), is just silly.

(4) Continental philosophy isn't the only kind that doesn't make sense. Have you tried reading that analytical stuff that has long complicated logic proofs?

(5) I'm not sure what you want us to say about the book? The Foucault intro is fucking brilliant and clear as hell, they are writing a book against fascism.
So, they want to know why it is we desire our slavery as if it was our freedom? (this is the question spinoza asks, and others). So we also have to begin with this question of desire. If you are writing in the 70s in that parisian intellectual scene, there is a very dominate answer to desire, Lacanian psychoanalysis (or at least psychoanalysis of some sort). Well, desire is the terrain of the political for D&G (Who are we is ontology, How do we know is epistimology, how should we act is ethics, and what do we want is political), so they need to contest the hegemony of psychoanalysis, especially all the ways that desire is depoliticized in psychoanalysis. So a really good chunk of the book is to create a new way of exploring desire, schizoanalysis, that is the political response to psychoanalysis. And much of what is in A-O is therefore criticisms of psychoanalysis.
The other part of the book is the capitalism part. So if desire is a political term, then there must be a political economy of desire. And what is at stake, or at least partially, is discovering the ways the market overcode you, make you desire things in certain ways, and therefore the book argues for some political/ontological solutions to the question of fascism.
Now I know that is really generic, but what do you want? Post specific questions, and I will try to answer them when I have a chance and the interest.

[Hephaestus]

I think these authors should incorporate more clarification in their writings. I understand what you are saying, about how there is a level of complexity in any academic field, be it physics or 19th century Irish literature, that requires a good deal of background even if you are a pretty smart guy. I really believe that Philosophy is notorious, though.

I read a rather large book on the 'Anti-Psychiatry' movement. It was an excellent critique of modern Psychiatry, how the influx of the use of medication to treat every minor woe is non-scientific and dangerous. The book had plenty of raw data, and never was there a time that I had to struggle with what they were saying.

There are a lot of threads and movements in Philosophy that make a comprehensive explanation difficult. I reread the Introduction by Foucault, and I also read the entire thread on Anti-Oedipus that Kevin directed me to. There were several people writing in this thread that expressed concerns similar to mine: what D&G were saying was very unclear, very hard to pin down. I also got the sense that the thread pretty much died on the vine. Perhaps the reason you think that the Introduction by Foucault is 'beautiful' is because it is indeed well edited and clear.

Philosophers need to take writing classes. It goes beyond just being immersed in a particular field.

The invention of non-existent entities is certainly nothing new in philosophy. I was trying to explain to that same brother yesterday how 'Realism' in Greek Philosophy actually means just the opposite of what it sounds like; the belief that Platonic forms are real, which they aren't. What I always thought was the height of this bizarre reasoning was Leibniz's Monadology.

I think that a healthy critique of Freudian concepts is a good idea, and I applaud D&G for doing that. To reduce all human desires down to a 'daddymommyme' relationship, to some kind of phallic or anal stage, or to some kind of Oedipal relationship is a mistake. I always liked the 'Id, Ego, Superego' thing, though. Certainly, this is a highly simplified distinction, but it is a way to cut certain data that makes sense out of a lot of human behavior.

The various machines that D&G talk about are interesting. I often think of these types of explanations the way a meteorologist might explain weather events. There is something at work, say the barometric pressure, that is the root cause of a particular weather phenomena. Human beings do have desires, collective desires. There are relationships between products and the process of production as well.

I do wonder why there is a need to 'animate' this relationship by describing it as some sort of 'machine.' Same with the BwO concept. You can look at potential or self-actualization as a body - this is similar to Plato and the world of forms.

Note to Kevin - That ethical distinction that you draw with the Star Wars analogy is interesting, and a very critical conflict. Do you love your ideals, your ground project - do you love 'the force' more than you love your friends and family? I see this distinction everywhere, often in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Whatever you do, work at it with your whole being. Do it for the Lord rather than for men, since you know full well you will receive an inheritance. (Col 3, 23-24)

[Lazzarone]

http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showpost.p...8&postcount=23

i also made a lot of edits to this post - http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showpost.p...2&postcount=11 - and would appreciate feedback (...would like to know if it helped anyone understand 'anti-oedipus').

[Hephaestus]

That is a very interesting post, and I intend to review the formulas you set forth describing the various machines.

I think I have a pretty good grasp on what D&G mean when they say 'deterritorialization' and 'reterritorialization.'

I do not know what they mean when they employ the term 'schizzes.' (sp?)

As far as whether they are 'structural' or 'post-structural', they certainly, as you mention' try to deemphasize Freudian structure overly applied such as the Oedipus complex, but they create their own set of structures. Perhaps these 'machines' have more explanatory power than the Oedipus Complex (I believe they might) but they probably also have limitations.

[Lazzarone]

schizzes are breaks in the chain which then form new chains, take it in new directions. this correlates to the process of deterritorialization actually. you might search 'schizzes' in this paper to see how the word is used in context: http://digitalmedia.risd.edu/billsea...PoeticsDis.pdf - as it relates to the notion of a 'non-sign'.

d&g are generally referred to as post-structuralists. as zizek notes in his book 'organs without bodies', however, deleuze's own relationship to structuralism is more complex than simple rejection.

[gamer9190]

I'm no expert on these subjects, but I agree with Hephaestus and would say that there is a difference between legitimate depth and just idiotic levels of complexity layered in a way that means nothing in particular.

[Lazzarone]

"there is a difference between legitimate depth and just idiotic levels of complexity layered in a way that means nothing in particular"

i agree, and challenge anyone to cite a single passage in deleuze & guattari's work (their work, not second-hand scholarship) which meets the latter.

if they're the posers some say they are, surely even 'non-experts' should be capable of finding (and posting) some guilty excerpt from their texts, no?

[Hephaestus]

Originally Posted by gamer9190

I'm no expert on these subjects, but I agree with Hephaestus and would say that there is a difference between legitimate depth and just idiotic levels of complexity layered in a way that means nothing in particular.

I am on page 340 of AO right now, and I really would like to understand at least a good chunk of what they are talking about. I would much rather understand them then continue to be frustrated with a lack of clarity.

Here is a quote - Kevin, if you would like to explain this quote, go for it.....

[p.300] "Desiring-production and machines, psychic apparatuses and machines of desire, desiring-machines and the assembling of an analytic machine suited to decode them: the domain of free syntheses where everything is possible; partial connections, included disjunctions, nomadic conjunctions, polyvocal flows and chains, transductive breaks; the relation of desiring-machines as formations of the unconscious with the molar formations that constitute statistically in organized crowds; and the apparatus of social and psychic repression resulting from these formations - such is the composition of the analytic field. "

[Lazzarone]

in anti-oedipus, we're attempting to find an analysis that is adequate to the concrete problem of the unconscious. at the beginning of the chapter from which hephaestus quotes (4.3), d&g write:

"the schizoanalytic argument is simple: desire is a machine, a synthesis of machines, a machinic arrangement - desiring-machines. the order of desire is the order of production; all production is at once desiring-production and social production. we therefore reproach psychoanalysis for having stifled this order of production, for having stunted it into representation."

representation : psychoanalysis :: production : schizoanalysis. therefore, we shouldn't reduce the unconscious to a state of representation, nor interpret society by way of beliefs.

BUT we still require an accurate analysis. the paragraph before the one hep quotes mentions that michel foucault's work (in the order of things) shows how production ruptured the world of representation, how it 'called forth forces that no longer permit themselves to be contained in representation, called forth flows and breaks that break through representation, traversing it through and through: "an immense expanse of shade" extended beneath the level of representation' (p299). so the next paragraph is a slew of concepts with which we might analyze this 'immense expanse of shade'.

"Desiring-production and machines, psychic apparatuses and machines of desire, desiring-machines and the assembling of an analytic machine suited to decode them: the domain of free syntheses where everything is possible; partial connections, included disjunctions, nomadic conjunctions, polyvocal flows and chains, transductive breaks; the relation of desiring-machines as formations of the unconscious with the molar formations that constitute statistically in organized crowds; and the apparatus of social and psychic repression resulting from these formations - such is the composition of the analytic field."

these are the tools we'll use, and this is how the domain we're using these tools on operates (or how the analytic field is composed). following freud, we will understand desire as an essential force, an abstraction not relegated to any particular stereotype of personhood - just as marx (following ricardo) understood socially abstract labor.

so we will understand desiring-production (the machines themselves), psychic apparatuses (the machines of desire), and thus desiring-machines (which entail the assembling of an analytic machine suited to decode the previous two). so we will assume that every force can act on multiple other forces and all are in a constant state of flux - there's connections (ever partial), disjunctions (ever included), and conjunctions (ever changing). there's flows and chains that occur on many levels at once (thereby being ever polyvocal). there's transduction - which means that something real happens between semiotic expressions (words) and material chains (reality). so we will also investigate how molar formations (big groups) arise out of this sea of molecular forces (small changes), how they manufacture themselves 'statistically in organized crowds'. so we will expose the repression these molar formations can impose/induce.

d&g don't deny oedipus. they don't deny the unconscious. they don't deny myth and tragedy, or even representation. but they contend adamantly that these things are mass-produced: they're not pre-given facts; they're social constructions. it's not that there isn't a state; it's that the state has to be re-created everyday in order to exist at all. it's not that there isn't such a phenomena as belief; it's that the one who believes is the psychoanalyst in each of us (that is, we have to tacitly accept the psychoanalytical model of belief in order for believing to make sense to us; we learn to look at ourselves from the perspective of the shrink before we talk about 'how that made us feel'). it's not that actions speak louder than words; it's that words are also actions, and as such, they can't explain everything: you can't reduce experiences to expression or communication. d&g's gamble is to do the opposite: understand expression and communication as production. before things mean anything (express, communicate or represent anything), things simply happen: they're irreducible events before they're pictures in your head.

did that help?

[alter-narrative]

Originally Posted by Hephaestus

I am on page 340 of AO right now, and I really would like to understand at least a good chunk of what they are talking about. I would much rather understand them then continue to be frustrated with a lack of clarity.

Here is a quote - Kevin, if you would like to explain this quote, go for it.....

[p.300] "Desiring-production and machines, psychic apparatuses and machines of desire, desiring-machines and the assembling of an analytic machine suited to decode them: the domain of free syntheses where everything is possible; partial connections, included disjunctions, nomadic conjunctions, polyvocal flows and chains, transductive breaks; the relation of desiring-machines as formations of the unconscious with the molar formations that constitute statistically in organized crowds; and the apparatus of social and psychic repression resulting from these formations - such is the composition of the analytic field. "

I think your notion of clarity may be paraphrase-able as linear thought process based on a stable relationship (or a correspondence) between the signifier and the signified. Anti-Oedipus is written precisely to undermine such notion of “clarity.” Schizophrenia is considered to be a “problem” because a schizophrenic person does not see why the signifier has to be tied down to the signified. From his perspective, any signifier can lead him to yet another signifier and yet another one, never to return to the signified. In this non-linear process of thought or paradigmatic thought process, the subject is not a person nor an enunciator but a process, and hence, a desiring machine. D-G liberated schizophrenia from the clinical/medical/scientific discursive grid and gave a status of epistemology in its own right as “schizo-analysis.”

We have an overabundance of texts claiming to be postmodern. But in my opinion Anti-Oedipus (and Rhythm Science) is one of the very few genuinely postmodern texts in the sense that it is written through the non-linear logic and requires readers to step out of the prison-house of modernity.

[The Incredible Hulk?]

I don't have much to add except, I think Foucault was significantly easier to read than D and G. In fact, D and G made my head hurt worse than the morning after I drank a fifth of black velvet and fell off a deck. But then again, I'm dumb. Scu is absolutely right on about the regurgitating. I often read a paragraph three or four times, and even going back a whole paragraph, until I'm certain I understand the meaning.

[Hephaestus]

Yes, it does help, and I appreciate your time in talking to me about this. As I read the table of context, what looked like indefinable snow is now making some sense.

I notice that they frequently state that the machines they describe are 'not-metaphors' but they actually exist, etc. The Wikkipedia mentions that they are trying to avoid a metaphor of the unconscious as theater and introduce their 'factory concept.'

I am going to read the text again when I am through with it. Perhaps I will try to get my hands on some Freud too to help me better understand what they are recharacterizing.

Msacko - What I am going to try to do here is to read the whole thing and then read the whole thing again. It seems like this text takes a lot of 'stepping back' as much as it does 'looking closely.'

[Lazzarone]

manuel de landa provides a great example of the 'non-metaphor'-principle: he writes (http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/a-market.htm), "When one says, as leftists used to say, that 'class-struggle is the motor of history', one is using the word 'motor' in a metaphorical way. On the other hand, to say that a hurricane is a steam motor is not to use the term metaphorically, but literally: one is saying that the hurricane embodies the same engineering diagram as a steam motor: it uses a reservoir of heat and operates via differences of temperature circulated through a Carnot cycle."

it may strike us as odd to speak of hurricanes as motors because they're so-called natural phenomena, but the natural/artificial distinction is the first one d&g dispense with. when d&g write about desiring-machines, we're looking for the engineering diagrams ('abstract machine') of the unconscious as a socio-historical production. this is a fully pragmatic attitude, however wiggly the details, because we're strictly interested here in how things actually work. take this passage:

"the truth is that sexuality is everywhere: the way a bureaucrat fondles his records, a judge administers justice, a businessman causes money to circulate; the way the boureoisie fucks the proletariat; and so on. and there is no need to resort to metaphors. ... hitler got the fascist sexually aroused. flags, nations, armies, banks get a lot of people aroused. a revolutionary machine is nothing if it does not acquire at least as much force as these coercive machines have for producing breaks and mobilizing flows." (p293.)

...which is why if abbie hoffman screams 'revolution is sex', he isn't using a metaphor.

_

something else: the distinction between this type of abstraction ('mapping') and what's referred to as representation ('tracing') couldn't be sharper. it's the same difference between a jackson pollock abstract expressionist painting and a da vinci classic representationalist drawing.

_

"I don't know about you, but I find some psychoanalysis not only far fetched, but rather insulting at times. There is so much emphasis on early childhood development and its influence in adult life."

hephaestus, you have understood anti-oedipus perfectly. ..."is this really the right way to bring on better days? shit on your whole mortifying, imaginary, and symbolic theater. what does schizoanalysis ask [for]? nothing more than a bit of a relation to the outside, a little real reality. and we claim the right to enter the analyst's office and say it smells bad there. it reeks of the great death and the little ego." (p334, edited.)

_

as for works by freud that might illuminate denser parts of d&g, start with freud's three case histories: the wolf man, the rat man, and the psychotic doctor schreber - the last of which being the most important, as schreber and his anal sunbeams are cited on the 2nd page of anti-oedipus. ..."and rest assured that [his solar anus] works: judge schreber feels something, produces something, and is capable of explaining the process theoretically. something is produced: the effects of a machine, not mere metaphors."

[zSunfirez]

If you've read Nietzsche, Freud and Marx you should be able to make inroads on Protevi's notes. A good companion. However, don't over-rely on them.

http://protevi.com/john/DG/AO.pdf

As a methodological question of their writing, D+G are writing in the wake of dialectics. The Frankfurt School and others have a very mechanical writing style that is trying to subvert the logic of more Enlightenment/Modernist based approaches. D+G don't think even the most radical of dialectics go far enough, therefore their approaches to the subject are quite thorough (look at the underlying structure someone like Protevi or De Landa are able to identify) - but they are not meant to be "the answers". They are to be supple enough that you can endlessly mine them for concepts.

It was an experiment. D talks about it in an interview in Negotiations. Were they completely successful? Maybe not. Their lack of clarity is purposeful, however, it's not supposed to confuse you. It will make your reading experience quite different than reading other types of texts. You said you've read a lot of Nietzsche - well, remember how different it was to read him? Did you have to get used to it? It's like that with Deleuze and Guattari.

If you want to use secondary lit, I would suggest picking up Colebrook's Understanding Deleuze and for AO, Holland's "Introduction" is without question the best.

If you're still having problems, I have a Lercercle essay that will illuminate it in terms of Marxism. my email is polarbear [@] riseup.net

[Hephaestus]

You mean 'subtle' and not 'supple', right? Also, could you define for me what a 'dialectic' is?

I don't mind the idea of writing in a particular way as to emphasize something. Rhetoric is very important. Also, writing in such a way as to avoid logical pre-conceptions and biases is very important.

Several people have mentioned how AI is postmodern and written as such. When I look at the table of contents now after reading the book, I see it as a very clear and simple construct. When I first picked up the book, it really seemed impenetrable. I had the same reaction picking up Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations.'