Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective: Recent Episodes
Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective
We are a collection of D&G readers and thinkers who are trying to make our way from where we are into a new mode of processing the events around us. We host dozens of readings, discussions, and more. Please join us live on Discord anytime!
Music from Aaron Brown (@aaronbrownsound) Twitter
You know, it's going better than last time. Our first reading we got through one paragraph in a week. It's a really dense bit here.
Part 2 expands on everything yet, and we even start talking about sex. Well, not that sex.
The home stretch, finally it's time to head into how we move desiring production to a space without repression!
Sure it took us ten hours to get through it but i've sure we can make at least some headway in the convo in under two hours....right?
Finally finishing off the Positive Task - at least the first one. the rebuilding begins!
Continuing through Section 4, even more of the book comes together! Molecular/Molar regimes move a bit to the front as we start discussing the parts, breaks, and flux of it all...
Continuing through Section 4, even more of the book comes together! Molecular/Molar regimes move a bit to the front as we start discussing the parts, breaks, and flux of it all...
Hey, it's about time! Now we move away from the destructive, the critique, and into the 'so what do we do with this?' What we do first is the role of mechanic, but we have to recapitulate a lot of things in this new way....
Not a simple section of the book, we probably indulge our film interests a bit more. However we do find our way back through the major points of the section and clear up (a bit) some of our own misonceptions.
Machines everywhere! Also how we see machines, how we experience film, and the territorialities of it all. Look, you need to just listen to it. There is a ton here.
After a hiatus we are back, and a lot more are in the hopper ready to be released. Thanks for your patience! Representation is back in full force, and how capitalism functions, psychoanalysis backs it, and what YOU do with it needs to be restated. Again!
It's that time again! Psychoanalysis and Lacan and Freud. Thanks god we have our resident experts on it to say why Brooks is an idiot again!
Yes this is 4.3, despite what I say confusingly at the start! D&G Dive here into the moves Psychoanalysis makes across experience, and how the psychoanalytic field has substituted so much myth and story for social and desiring production.
You know that Marx guy? You should read his book. It would be sueful here. Also, in life. Of course it's AO so a million books would be useful. After the overt crtiqiues last week the book dives deeper and goes harder at the way general psychoanalytic thought does more than just oedipalize.
Back on track, we continue down into 4.3 as the critique of psychoanalysis and the relation to it's work within the capitalist socius plays out.
Finally ending Chapter 3, we move back into Oedipus, the way the universal history as built all the parts necessary, and how it all finally comes together. This episode comes after a hiatus thanks to having another child, so expect new episodes more rapidly from here out!
Andrew Novick has a colorful past, having punk bands, art exhibits, a campaign to save Casa Bonita - but along the way he also happened to become the owner of a small pink tricycle that belonged to JonBenet Ramsey, the little girl famous for being strangled to death on Christmas in Boulder Colorado. The DGQC watched the film, and then spent over an hour talking through the implications of it, the scenes, people, background, media, and even just bullshitting as old people do about the 'good old days' as things within denver had changed. I hope you enjoy
Continuing with our discussion of the two regimes, why we have them and how they are useful, we end finally as we move towards schizoanalysis.
This whole book? Finally starting to piece together why they took us on this journey. However for now, it's back to the desiring machines, their functions, the syntheses, lack, and the rest.
So, with all we have read to this point, where does the analysis begin? Psychoanalysis has it's spot, which they've critiqued. So where does Schizoanalysis begin?
Finishing out the section, we close up some questions I get confused again, and then I pretend to not be, and then am shown again to be confused. It ends well. Unless I'm confused again.
So, time for Marx, time for Commodity, and time for Seinfeld references, all int he service of understanding exactly how representation operates within Capitalism!
Just as how the Despotic shifted how we might find meaning, how we make sense, and how representation works at a fundamental level, the Capitalist machine has it's own form of representation. It works very, very differently. It's a difficult one. Bear with us.
We continue the discussion around Capital, Commodity, Marx, Das, Macluhan, salaries, the rich, Hasan, and more as we dig into how D&G break down the functioning of Capital flows.
We continue here and dive into Capital v Money, the alliant and the filiative. We also spend perhaps a bit too much time on translation questions of Flow v Flux. If that discussion bored you, drop at the 2 hour mark when I do the outro, otherwise stay on for 30 minutes of us breaking down the difference a word makes. And it's pretty huge.
Money isn't capital, fiat isn't either. Money and Capital are strange elements that find themselves crossing each-other as the filiative or alliant once did. This section dives deep into the difference, the elements, and how it comes to manage the machine of production across everything
As we move from the primitive, a new machine is created, The Urstaat. How it operates on society should be familiar, or will become familiar, but here D&G make their case that we aren't talking about many states in succession, but a single UrStaat simply changing form.
Not an easy one, here we answer questions and discuss parts of the section we still have issues with after all this time.
With the new socius comes a new way of representation. A new way meaning is built and generated. you might say, a new logic of sense. The way signification works, the way language has been created, and the form it takes all shift how perceptions of the world work - and this one is a doozy. Part three moves into precursors for what is to come. Written words, spoken words, language, representation and more are starting to exist as we now know them.
With the new socius comes a new way of representation. A new way meaning is built and generated. you might say, a new logic of sense. The way signification works, the way language has been created, and the form it takes all shift how perceptions of the world work - and this one is a doozy. Part two here gets deep into the unification of graphism and voice, the creation of language as we know it, and the way there is a tiny fascist waiting inside almost every word we say
With the new socius comes a new way of representation. A new way meaning is built and generated. you might say, a new logic of sense. The way signification works, the way language has been created, and the form it takes all shift how perceptions of the world work - and this one is a doozy.
All lines trace back to the despot. Everything we once did through natural obligation to the family, we do for him. All we once did for alliances and the tribe, he gets. And somehow the functionaries of ijt all feel magical, god-like.
As we go forward into the shifts in Socius through history, there are some basic elements that need to be laid out first. In the territorial socius, the primitive, we must re-evaluate some assumptions about pre-modern man.
So as psychoanalysts travel the globe, as ethnologists find tribes, indigenous locals, and somehow still reveal that Oedipus was there all along...why? Here we discuss how imperialization and colonization of cultures leads to oedipalization.
So as psychoanalysts travel the globe, as ethnologists find tribes, indigenous locals, and somehow still reveal that Oedipus was there all along...why? Here we discuss how imperialization and colonization of cultures leads to oedipalization.
So - that paralogism. The one with the three parts? Can we break it down so much it becomes more clear yet also more confusing and then clear again? Here we do this, as we get into how representation shifts and pushes desire down, blocking it up, misshaping it.
You know how they had said Incest is impossible? Well, here we dive into how, and the way that representational knowledge is passed, infects, and shifts us. Let's revisit some Paralogisms!
How is it that our social machines functioned prior to any semblance of a state or economy? How did we know what needed to be made? What organized our labor?
Now that we are moving outside of the self, the subject, and into the space of social machines - like the Socius - we start to learn about how desire itself gets coded, why the flows usually have to be coded,
We close out the psychoanalytic talk as we dive into the process overall, the question of what madness is, what normative means, and asking ourselves, what is it that we call madness, how do the psychotic or neurotic or perverse relate to Oedipus? Or could it be that they don't...and there is something else at the foundation?
The Afterward appears here finally, the final paralogism, and the question of what it is that truly drive desiring production and how it works.
We also play another round of 'did Brooks change Mic's again only to return it after the recording made him pissed'.
They answer is yes.
So, the question now moves into the space of how repression operates. Is it truly separable as social and psychic? Does repression exist only in one, are they united? With all we have discussed, how is Desire held back and why?
Now we dive back through and Oedipus comes front and center. We trace through the syntheses how desire moves, how Oedipus forces it to shift, and ultimately to the errors produced by such a misuse of the process. Myth, Law, Lack, Signifiers and more are taken to task.
Okay. Now we close and explain it all. And boy do we have a ton of new thoughts on everything.
It continues. And continues. I'd write something here but this is the middle. It's not final, it's not the start. It's just moving from Oedipus into the creation of representation and how it all gets fucked up.
Now we have gone through the first two and the creation of Oedipus and involved in the repression of the poor desiring machines. Buckle in. it's a long one.
Ever have a short section become so very very long? This is one of those. With the Three Syntheses behind us, it's time to bring them back in a new light, to talk through how they break, and to discuss where it all goes so very very wrong.
Now, let us discuss the first synthesis through the eyes of Oedipus, and allow the critique to begin.
This is not about anything critical theory. It's been a year since we started this whole thing, and we wanted to take a minute to talk about that journey and some good moments. It's been wild. Thank you all for helping us get here.
So. Freud. I know you're as excited as we were, which is fine because we dove deep into his texts, the meanings, and a lot more when it comes to the man who 'found' Oedipus.
In this section D&G outline their reasons for involving psychoanalysis and the geneology of how they got here.
Why Oedipus? Why be Anti-Oedipus with all that is wrong with things? The authors dive right in to explaining how Oedipus itself is an imperialist and fascistic thing - that the very nature of representation as Oedipus exists to create itself.
Have you brushed up on your Proust? Here we dive into a good amount of it, as the authors start down the path of trying to describe how to move from the traditional 'many' versus 'one' and instead think of all things as both the whole, as well as its part.
Where does repression get created, how do we interact with it, and how does it change who we are?
What makes us unique is we don't go into these things having discussed before hand. Everyone ahs their take. You get to join us as we hash through thoughts and differences. This one starts rough. I'll admit. But we end so well.
In The Machines we break down the first level of what the machines are, and we disabouse anyone of the notion that they are virtual, an allegory, or a metaphor. This shit is real.
In Chapter 1.4, the critiques of those who came before is out in full force. First, they come out swinging at Freud (shocker I know) but then Klein takes a few hits and then Lacan. Et Tu, Guattari?
The big points here? How repression takes hold and the actual palce that Neurosis, Psychosis and more actually come from. Hint - it's not from you.
Before we dive into Chapters 3 & 4, we wanted to cover anything left over. And there is a lot. This was basically run like a huge Ask-us-Anything, and we did our best to take on all the questions we got. No questions was stupid. It was wonderful.
Someday I'll get the audio right. This episode we dive into the creation of the subject - you! As we introduce the third synthesis, and the miraculating energy that makes you think that you want a thing or did a thing. Also, the egg makes it's first of many appearances.
I uploaded this without doing heavy editing. The three syntheses are a very difficult thing to discuss directly, and for the first 30 or 40 minutes we dance around terminology and have some talks. The last hour we dig into those terms and really get at the heart of how these three elements work, how they come together, and why it's so important to understand their processes.
Forgive the wonky audio. In this reading we move into the discussion of how anti-production comes into play, how the BwO not only utilizes but interacts with desiring machines and how the recording process itself works - and what it shaves off of desire along the way.
A new year a new reading! We begin at the start with a new crew, and our format we figured out towards the end of the last reading now takes on the book once again. The Desiring Machines, the summary of the entire story to come, is analyzed and discussed.
Our roundtable this week focuses on the 5 Paralogisms and how they work and interfere with the process of desiring production. Enjoy my saying Syllogism incorrectly a few hundred times.
One of the more frustrating concepts around the works of D&G is easily the Body without Organs. With our primary goal the demystification of these works, we couldn't let this sit out in that awkward place where the idea is only accessible to the extremely well read.
We take a crack here at explaining it for the neophyte, for those without a doctorate. Maybe it will help you.
I mean, we're done. The big things in this we go over, but we are going to spend a few weeks going over specifics.
What a ride.
Aside from us realizing the new user was one of our old with a Robin-Hood-quality British accent, we dive deeply into the way Capital plays with our desires, subverts our own, and creates more.
We finished with a countdown last time, we start with it now! But here we really start getting into the system that replicates itself through the paranoiac mindset.
Diving into how awful guattari thought the psychoanalytic times were, and they dive in heavily to the oedipalization of us all Again!
Anti-Oedipus Chapter 4 Section 5: The Second Positive Task of Schizoanalysis (Pt2) by Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective
Anti-Oedipus Chapter 4 Section 5: The Second Positive Task of Schizoanalysis (Pt1) by Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective
MidWeek Review for Chapter 4, Section 4: The First Positive Task of Schizoanalysis by Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective
Anti-Oedipus Chapter 4 Section 4: The First Positive Task of Schizoanalysis (Pt3) by Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective
To build up you must destroy, and the positive task moves into how death drives function, anti productions involvement, and how we can identify it....?
Okay, today we cover the first few pages of this section, mostly about how the three syntheses produce the BwO, how the BwO works with molecular machines, and how they all repel and attract eachother constantly.
This will be a long reading.
The good news is the new way of recrding is so much better for audio. Doing this from now on.
Where is the subject, how does capital function, what are the flows.....and what does it all mean? We actually break a lot of it down.
At the end, you'll hear my race through the last two paragraphs and feel triumphant. An extremely long section filled with more than any other yet. But we finish it!
Week two. We believe we see the end of the section, but Sarge says there is more. We are low on rations. Ammo, too. We will find the end of it. We swear.
So, after all this roundwork, what does it mean for capitalism, our current socius. Well, be ready. It's gonna be the next 4 episodes plus a review. Representation, Capital, Perception, signs, and so very much. Be ready for the brunt of the fun stuff you've been hoping to hear.
We had to make this a second one. This is such an important concept, plus go there isn't enough time in the day.
So what has been meant by machines? Sure, they tended to switch to the term apparatus in the original text but we have been going on and on about these damn machines.
Tell us if we solves it. Please.
We are heading into schizoanalysis by way of capitalism through the social field. And friend of the reading Terrence Blake drops in to help us (and Brooks specifically) through some major mental blocks that he was embarrassed about and wanted to edit out but didn't because it's how it goes.
Onto Chapter 4 as we enter the breakdown of Schizoanalysis, how it applies to the social field, and what the social field is within it. Dads fuck up kids, Shrabers dad really fucked up a lot of kids, and we dive deep into Ginsberg. I love Ginsberg.
MidWeek Review for Chapter 3 Section 11: So Much Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective
After all our work on Capital and the changes in the Urstaat, Socius and more over time, it's about time we got back to how this connected to the timing of Freud, the way Capitalism has grown, and how this axiomatic sits and ruins everything!
Just like a few weeks ago where we reviewed everything leading into the chapters on Capital, here we are reviewing everything through the lens of now having read the chapter on Capital!
How do the machines we are part of generate meaning? How do we find the subject created? How does class come into this? Does class even exist meaningfully inside of our late stage capital world? Will this chapter ever end?
Finally moving into Capitalist Representation and how the axiomatics of capital work against us, how they se rabatt sur every goddamn thing they can.
We open it to questions but mostly we have a handful of questions:
What is territorialization? How does coding work? The Three...well..everything. That's the big one. How does the three parts keep showing up.
I mean, the last one was difficult enough but we are talking through some shit here that hurt my brain. We finish the section though!
So this concept we tear into a few different ways, and while we did a review session we mostly actually dove in thanks to the shortness of this section. we do glance against their timely issues with history and udnerstanding around things now quite problematic - but their point is interesting. The Urstaat - we have only ever had one state. It simply shifts as it needs.
I mean, this is just more of that last one. Plus, this was a nightmare to format and edit, so i'm not putting something clever here. It's all imperial all the time.
The admin team declares prima nocta on this section, as we dive into exactly how the despot changed the repressing representative and the shift in how symbolism functions under the despot or empire. And then we barely get halfway.
A handful of us dive into Celebate machines, what paranoia really means, and all the places that this text touches from NeoKantianism to Nietzsche and more.
Forgive any audio strangeness, we are still figuring out how to record this well, while offering anyone a chance to join
Having learned all we can about their take on the primitive, we dive into the transition to the Despotic Machine, the second Socius, and an all new Body without Organs.
Forgive any audio strangeness. We record on Discord to enable anyone to join but it's been fighting us the last week or two.
Okay so we dive deeper into Leach, FAR deeper into the three elements of representation and Brooks starts to understand things. Two things, not all three. also Debt. SO MUCH DEBT
Debt! The group goes deep into Levi-Strauss vs Leach and the complexities underlying the original exchanges discussed in the previous chapter. We also deeply talk through systems of representation. This is a good one.
Finally uploaded, we move into the second half of this and discuss implications of maternal, paternal, exchangism and lots and lots of times you get to hear Brooks awkwardly try to say Savages.
Some wonderful language of structures, but here we begin the discussion on all the different Oedipal from everywhere and how it insidiously takes on all it can. Learn how it is a triangle shitting Zombie.
The Collective Discusses the meaning of Ursula Le Guin's short form story about those a society with one dark secret, and who can live with it.
The Collective Discusses the meaning of Borges tale of The Garden of Forking Paths and it's implications
We discuss 'primitive' societies, creation myths, and how even matrilineal societies can be infected by Oedipus. Infection!
Join us for a discussion on our previous readings of Artaud, Kafka, Blanchot, Borges, and Blake. Here we discuss the common themes and their differences during these readings.
Listen as Brooks has a difficult time saying savages, everyone gets a bit confused by some 'Noble Savage' language, and the usual sarcasm inside the writing becomes too difficult to parse. Also, we discuss the first Socius in there somewhere.
Closing out Chapter 2, the group discusses the nature of the schizo, why the damaged mind is actually a beacon of hope, and how even those who are submerged within the Body without Organs show emancipatory potential. Yeah, it's a helluva read.
The admins of the Quarantine Collective dive further into Blake, his writing, his works, and the meaning between the lines, its imapct on us, and how it relates to the world of Anti-Oedipus
Join the admins as we go through the meaning of essentially this entire chapter slowly, but through the lens of looking at the two side of the oedipal disjunction - neurotic and psychotic
We start with what Freud says separates the world of the Neurotic and the world of Psychotic. However as we learn there is far more, especially as we lead into how the family relates, and of course our old friend Oedipus
The admins rapid fire respond to questions, thoughts, opinions, ultimately trying to bridge the gap between Lacan, Kant, Deleuze, Guattari, and repression. So fucking much repression.
If desire is a flow, then what stops it and what happens to it when it is jammed up? Here is where we finally talk about how desires operate, how they get stymied, and how the repression itself can cause the very thing it's attempting to prevent.
The Quarantine Collective takes on the works and history of William Blake. Artist and Poet who even invented ways of being both, he was reviled by his contemporaries for eschewing common media and form for something grander. We discuss what that is.
Join the collective as we break apart the three syntheses as we prepare for moving onto Chapter 3. This regrouping is necessary to break down many of the finer points.
We return to a recapitulation as we review the three syntheses, which we have reviewed quite a bit. More to the point, we have a review of this reviewing chapter about our reviews coming soon.
This seemingly interminable section which is a deep takedown of the concepts that have plague psychoanalysis for years are reviewed in depth by our group. If you've had any issues with any concepts, we probably cover it!
Working through the final paragraphs of the Conjunctive Synthesis was a major trudge, but luckily worth it. We didn't finish though - that's for the Review Session that is now a main reading.
Further into this incredibly dense section we go as we once again talk about Eggs, further talking about having daddy and mommy issues at a societal level, and Lacanian Foreclosure, because why not bring in even more difficult concepts?
The body without Organs is like an egg. Well not an egg, but the essence of an egg, but not like a chicken egg, it's like a protoplasmic egg. Egg.
We bring up Kant a few times, dig deeply into the double-bind that classical use of Oedipus foists on humanity, and welcome a hopefully ongoing visit from theorist Taylor Adkins who tells us we are actually making good points once in a while.
Please check out Taylors amazing Theory Talk podcast at https://soundcloud.com/theory-talk
Henry Miller: It is a world suited for monomaniacs obsessed with the idea of progress - but a false progress, a progress which stinks. It is a world cluttered with useless objects which men and women, in order to be exploited and degraded, are taught to regard as useful ... Whatever does not lend itself to being bought or sold ... is debarred
Chapter three helps us stumble through multiple massively complex subjects including old world views of so many sex things.
The Admins of the Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective continue to compare, contrast, and read through DeLanda's work through the lens of physics, science, and really good jokes.
We continue to persevere through the section as we have a few more audio hiccups, but our group finally finds their way out the other side.
With a few recording errors (lots of apologies with that) we start one of the most dense sections of this text. Thank god we aren't doing a reading of
So anti-oedipus isn't THAT anti-Oedipus, it's more like being anti-oedipus as it's been solidified? Huh? I smell toast.
Doug and others compare and contrast Delueze and DeLanda, and spend wholly too much time discussing math and physics.
The Quarantine Collective discusses Mark Fishers work Capitalist Realism, the author, his theories, and Acid Communism.
The discussion on Artaud, his play, and the meaning of his extremely symbolic textuality continues with Mal and Jack
Mal and Jack from the Admin group take us through the play which inspired so much of the terminology and poetry found within the work of D&G. A stunning deep dive into the meaning behind meaning, and the original of the Body without Organs.
Anti-Oedipus Chapter 1, Section 6 - The Whole and its Parts by Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective
Anti-Oedipus Chapter 1, Section 4 (Part 2) - A Materialist Psychiatry by Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective
Anti-Oedipus Chapter 1, Section 4 (Part 1) - A Materialist Psychiatry by Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective
Anti-Oedipus Chapter 1, Section 3 - The Subject and Enjoyment by Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective
Anti-Oedipus Chapter 1, Section 2 (Part 2) - Bodies without Organs by Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective
We review and discuss Pierre Clastres' Society Against the State, and talk about centralized authority, tribal societies, and power dynamics in primal histories
The Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective reviews section 1's discussion and dives a bit deeper into definitions, questions, and more