¿qué demonios?

In Chapter 11 of A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari (D&G) discuss the territorializaton and deterritorialization of assemblages and how their oppositional  relationship creates the consistency and fluidity of assemblage.

“Just as milieus swing between a stratum state and a movement of destratification, assemblages swing between a territorial closure that tends to restratify them and a deterritorialzing movement that on the contrary connects them with the Cosmos. Thus it is not surprising that the distinction we were seeking was not between assemblages and something else but between the two limits of any possible assemblage, in other words, between the system or strata and the plane of consistency.” (p. 392)

My initial reaction to this passage, as with most of D&G, was ¿qué demonios? So I turned to Manuel De Landa’s book The New Philosophy of Society, Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity for clarification. De Landa uses assemblage theory to explain social ontology in a very clear and meaningful way.  His summary of assemblage theory gave me the sense of illumination or at least partial illumination coveted by people everywhere reading D&G.

“First of all, unlike wholes in which parts are linked by relations of interiority (that is, relations which constitute the very identity of the parts) assemblages are made up of parts which are self-subsistent and articulated by relations of exteriority, so that a part may be detached and made a component of another assemblage…….A second dimension characterizes processes in which these components are involved: processes which stabilize or destabilize the identity of the assemblage (territorialization and deterritorialization.) (p.18)

 The deterritorialization of assemblage allows a component of the whole to be released and start new assemblages.  This cyclic process allows for infinite combinations of assemblages and strata.  I was able to connect this to the idea of collage in my last post by imagining another artist taking a picture from my board, placing it on their own and creating a new collage around it.  Ultimately, both collages or assemblages would have different meanings to the artist and audience but contain the same autonomous component.

In this same way, academics can and do create intellectual collages by taking an idea from another academics work and creating their own assemblage around it.  De Landa's work is an excellent example of this because he basis a new school of thought in sociology off of assemblage theory.  In this way, he makes D&G understandable and relevant.  Any author that can claim that is pretty cool. 

Assemblage and Collage

Deleuze and Guattari (D&G) introduce their readers to assemblage in chapter one Introduction: Rhizome to lay a framework for their book A Thousand Plateaus.

“There is no longer a tripartite division between the field of reality (the world) and a field of representation (the book) and a field of subjectivity (the author). Rather, an assemblage establishes the connections between certain multiplicities drawn from each of these orders, so that a book establishes has no sequel nor the world as its object nor one or several authors as its subject.” (p. 23)

Assemblage also defined as a whole made up of heterogeneous parts provided me with a theoretical “middle” for contemplating this work.  D&G's usage of assemblage throughout their book as entity brought to mind the collages I created as art projects in elementary school.  The art teacher explained a collages as images and text taken from magazines and newspapers glued to poster board to convey a larger idea to your audience. The concept is a simple one but the end result was a complex and at times seemingly dissimilar montage.

The idea of assemblage as a type of intellectual collage became cohesive for me in chapter five 587 BC-AD 70: On Several Regimes of Signs.  

"We call any specific formalization of expression a regime of sign, at least when the expression is linguistic.  A regime of signs constitutes a semiotic system.  But it appears difficult to analyze semiotic systems in themselves: there is always a form of content that is simultaneously inseparable from and independent of the form of expression, and the two forms pertain to assemblages that are not principally linguistic." (p. 131)

 D&G discuss regimes of signs as an assemblage of symbols that is infinitely connected and circular. The circular aspect of symbols isn't as important as the link it forms in the symbol chain.  It is easy to picture a chain or the Olympic rings as a visual interpretation of this assemblage.  This concept is easily likened to dependent images in a collage.  They stand on their own but the end result or whole is dependent on the connections the images make for the artist and the audience.

In applying the concept of assemblage and regime of sign to my professional work and study, I began to understand how complex assemblages can be.  For instance, A Thousand Plateau's is full of scientific, political, religious and linguistic assemblages.  While I understand the gist of rhizome or geological strata, these concepts would be much more relevant to a botanist or geologist because they understand the symbolic and textual nuances of that assemblage.  The assemblages that make up real property law, cartography, state and federal code, litigation, precedence and surveying, are simple for me to interpret and apply because I have been immersed in their study for 25 years. I now have much more empathy for the pre-law and engineering interns I work with.

English 6480

Michel Foucault’s influence on academics and their writing is both wide spread and far reaching.  The citations in this bibliography hardly scratch the surface of Foucault’s impact on the humanities.  In fact, Wikipedia listed Foucault as the most cited scholar in the humanities in 2007.

Annotated Bibliography (Foucault)

Armstrong, P. (1994). The Influence of Michel Foucault on Accounting Research. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 5(1), 25-55.

Peter Armstrong discusses how Foucault’s theories have affected the history and sociology of accounting.  Armstrong addresses the concepts of comprehensive surveillance on the individual and disciplinary regimes in relationship to the controls in accounting. The article addresses how these concepts may have been misleading for the discipline.

Butler, J. (2006). Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.

Judith Butler, a post-structuralist feminist, introduced her performative theory of gender in this book published in 1990.  Butler uses Foucault’s theories from Discipline and Punish as the basis for her argument that gender is the key cultural agent which affects the body and that gender identity is the result of actions or performance.  Butler also views the body as the prison for the soul.

Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.

In his book, Anthony Giddens, a modern sociologist, presents his theory of structuration which revolves around the concept that either individuals or social influences create social reality.  In particular, he sites Foucault’s theory of how time and space influence disciplinary power.  Ultimately, Giddens views them as a duality that can’t be separated.

  

Oksala, J. (2005). Foucault on freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Johanna Oksala book is dedicated to discussing Foucault’s views on freedom which played a large role in Foucault’s lectures and writing.  Oksala divides these views into three separate categories archaeological, genealogical and ethical.  She also addresses Foucault’s theories on phenomenology or the study of how the human consciousness develops.

Saatcioglu, Bige, & L., O. J. (2013). Moral habitus and status negotiation in a marginalized working-class neighborhood. Journal of Consumer Research, Electronic, None Given.

This journal article published in July, 2013 is an ethnographic study about how identity affects consumers in a trailer park. Of particular interest how social hierarchies and power structures influence the purchases of low-income and working class families.  Foucault’s concepts of identity and power can be seen throughout this discourse. 

Frankfurt School Theorists

Post |01 Frankfurt School Theorists

 I found Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” very engaging primarily because I disagreed so fully with his view of photography and film as lesser art forms produced for the uneducated masses. I harbor a deep love for photography and the role it played in my education. As one of eight children growing up on a farm in Southern Idaho, I was immersed in poverty. We had very little money for the necessities of life making access to travel, art museums and plays impossible. The opportunity for me to experience the “aurora” of a painting was non-existent.

Pictures became my only means of discovering anything about the outside world. I cut them out of any National Geographic I could get my hands on and saved my money to buy books about travel and art that contained photographs of places and things I only imagined in my dreams. I still have these collections and as a result of my fascination with photos my Grandfather willed me his photographs from WWII.

While Benjamin views photography as a medium that doesn’t require “free-floating contemplation” (p. 6), I can attest to a lifetime of exactly the opposite. Photography has been at the center of the deepest contemplations of my life. I was shown the following picture at the age of 8:

 

 

 

This photograph taken by my Grandfather at the Dachu Concentration Camp and started my life-long quest for education. At 13, this picture inspired my first essay on freedom which was chosen to be read by me at the Utah State Capitol during the bicentennial celebration of the U.S. Constitution. In turn, I was introduced to Mark Tenhove who offered me a Presidential scholarship to USU. If not for the contemplation invoked by this single photograph I could never have gotten an education.

In addition to its educational value, I also view photography as a medium that allows art to be enjoyed by the masses and provides people with opportunities that were unavailable prior to its invention. I also believe the distribution of art to the masses to be a positive act not a political act lead by fascists. Art isn’t something that should be available only to upper classes and mechanical reproduction has allowed the uneducated poor like me to see the Mona Lisa.