User:Tancre/readings/On Machines

Guattari - on machines

Abstract

The idea of the evil machine is transformed in the conception of the machinic as a vector capable to create universes of reference where beings and machines find a common ground. The technological object obtains a proto-subjectivity through a play of chaos and complexity and its capability to create internal and external relations in a fractal machinic's environment.

Synopsis

Moving away from the prevailing idea of the machine as evil, Guattari reconceptualizes the machine transferring the mythological conception of the machine with a soul into the Heideggerian inquiry on the relation between being and things.

The soul of the machine becomes a proto-subjectivity capable to relate to itself (ontogeny) and the external world ('phylum' and alterity). The technical object, conceived as a machinic interface by Pierre Levy, transcend its materiality in the connection with multiple interfaces connected to itself, and themselves made of infinite machinic elements. A fractal machine's environment made of machinic agencements. The liminal element of entering in the machinic zone is a smooth uniformization of materials and deterritorialization of its elements, functions, and relation of alterity.

The philosophy of machine, before part of the history of techné and technique, inverts its relation transforming the inquiry on technique part of the machinic problem. The machinic agencements, individual subjectivity and relation with social constituents, delete the opposition between being and machine or being and subject, different on a qualitative level but an extension of the creativity of the machinic vector. The being is not the common trait but the machine capable to build universes of reference. The variegated use of the word machine shows how the machine is more than a structure but possesses a core of consistency, of ontological affirmation. Proto-subjectivity but also finitude, the possibility of destruction and death.

The complexity of the machinic object embodied into the different machinic systems, and its chaotic aspect which divides its elements creating an hyper-complexity, makes its description complicated flowing into a mythological and non-scientific narrative. This play between complexity and chaos, mediated by infinite-speed, permits the rise of a proto-subjectivity which determine a new model. In this model, each level of complexity contains its ontological substratum that cannot be translated with the others, despite maintaining a machinic unity. Semiological lines running in parallel, as in computing. Binarization of the totality of the discursive system but, at the same time, ontological heterogeneity of universes of reference incarnated in multiple systems of discursivity. The machinic as discursive systems and non-discursive existential affirmation.

Summary

Methodology - Thought that proceeds by affective axes and by affects, open set of themes (thematique), in order to see the response that provokes.

Interest in the theme of the machine as a conceptual object. kind of safety in the machine vs mechanicist vision.
Unavoidable crossroads where machine as anathema and prevails the idea that technology is leading us to inhumanity and rupture with any kind of ethical project + history reinforce machine as catastrophic causing ecological damage and so on. Reaction to look backward to the machine age to begin again (primitive territoriality?)
Pierre Levy - les techniques de l'intelligence > revival of the theme but in computer . 'trying to break down the ontological iron curtain between being and things'(a preoccupation from Hidegger) > through the machinic interface (machine conceived as an interface) that levy called 'hypertext'.
>> re-apprehend and reconceptualize the machine in a different way, to being from the being of the machine as at the crossroads, and inertia, the character of nothingness, as the subject. Subjective individuation or collective subjectivity. Examples in mythology, literature, cinema, as machine inhabitated by a soul and diabolical powers. Not back to animistic thinking or machine with a soul but a proto-subjectivity. The function of consistency in the machine, relationship to itself and to alterity.
The technical object can not be limited to its materiality, series of interfaces attached to the object (ontogenetics, plan, construction, social relationships, knowledge, economic relations..). link between
The modern type of technological machine and the tools or pieces of the machine, elements connected to one another, the concept of an articulated machine, fractal, with other machines which are themselves made up of infinite machinic elements. Machine's environment part of machinic agencements (assemblage, arrangements).
Liminal element of entry into the machinic zone as smoothing process, uniformization of material, deterritorialized and uniform to be molded into machinic shapes.
Essence in the deterritorialization of its elements, functions and relations of alterity by the producer. Ontogeny of the technical machine as that which makes it open itself to the exterior, and phylogenetic dimension, machines in a 'phylum' preceded by some machines and succeeded by others, generations of machines which opens thee future to the next generation through meeting point elements.

Onto+philo applied to the technological object as link to other machines which are not technological. In philosophy machine as part of the more general history of techne/technique VS opposite, technique as a part of the machinic problem. Because of individual subjectivity+relationship with social constituent, the technological machine become the broadened machinic agencements (everything that develop as a machine). No opposition between being/machine or being/subject, being differentiate itself qualitatively and emerge onto an ontological plurality, very extension of creativity of the machinic vector. Not being as a common trait but a machine that develops universes of reference ???

Proto-machinic tool and technological machines but (not only social but cosmic and universal) also:

• social machines, city as a mega-machine.
• Chomsky's abstract machine, linguistic machines.
• Musical machine, Logic machine, Cosmic machine
• Desiring machine, from psychoanalisis > objects of desire, machines of desire, objects-subjects of desire and vectors of subjectification.
• Biology - machines as living cells, organs, individuation and social body > maturana+varella, machine as interrelations+components. Machine as autopoietic, self-reproducting and continually reproducing its components (like a system without input nor output). Autopoiesis, living beings VS allopoiesis, machine search its components outside of itself. (social system, technical machines) >> go beyond >> establish relation between auto- and allo- machines because they live togheter

From levy > machinic systems as interfaces articulates to one another through 'hypertext' and gradually expand to the whole of the 'mecanosphere'.
>>machine in both auto- and allo- in the developement of interface, which garant exterior politics and relations to alterity. machine as more than structur because not only interactions between its parts but it possesses a core of consistency/insistence/ontological affirmation. machinic core prior to the unfolding into energetico-spatio-temporal coordinates.Proto-subjectivity and proto-biological, onto e phylo genesis but also finitude (birth and death) exploded, destroyed or imploded machine, bearer of death around and death to itself.
Autopoietic existence and heterogeneous alterity as difficult to describe because not existing as coordinates and something that affirms itself. How to describe this object if not through myth or narrative (non-scientific means)? Machinic core linked to systems of meta-modelisation which call for a theory. This autopoietic and interstratic affirmation of opening outwords involve an idea of complexity in 'extraordinary' coordinates. Complexity of the machinic object is realised in the embodiement into the different machinic systems BUT haunted by the chaos which divide it into different kind of decomposition of its elements. Machinic protosubjectivity into the register of chaos and complexity.
Chaos not only as chaotic but creating new formulas of extreme complexity. Chaos as bearer of hyper-complexity. (Mallarme's chaotic univers of multiple combinations of words).

How chaos and complexity can hinabit the same site? Entities inhabiting chaos as animated by infinite-speed, creating complexities that de-complexify themeselves. Protosubjectivity can filter into this chaotic centers and at the same time be adjacent to a chaotic dissociation with its own death and infinitely complex compositions. > 'grasping chaotic' momentary grasp of complexity inhabited by all kind of potentialities. + 'hyper-complexity' complexity which is taken over, rather than truly dominated, and exists in a relationship of insistence and repetition.
In the theory of signifier, there is always a system of quantity or binary system in different and heterogenous systems. In this new model heach level is a bearer of its own ontological substratum and there's cannot be translation with the others.
(Freud's theory of drive as narrative+affect but contraddiction. In structuralism only discursive element so economy of the signifier)
In this conception of machine not dissociation between narrative and non-narrative(its autopoietic affirmation. In Lacan's theory of the signifier in spatial and linear dimension, which inhabits all notions of subjectivity. But limitation that lose the machinic center (subjective autopoiesis and self-affirmation) and undergoes the pathic relationship by means of the affect. This relation of affect makes us state phenomenologically that something is living. Not a description of propositional analysis but living being, therefore a machine, immediate pathic and non-discoursive apprehnsion of the machine's ontological autocomposition relationship.
Natural coding with different spatial categories than the signifying register. Familiar with n-spatial dimensions, not autonomous but in complex spatial systems.(DNA) Different lines which run parallel (in movies, visual line, colour line, sound line) not homogenity. The same in all pre-signifying or symbolic semiologies. (archaic societies). These semiological lines have a kind of relation which exists in the machinic unity, social machine of ritual, but not completely articulated one another, rather in parallel. VS signitying semiologies where linearity which control all the lines of expression. Which occurs in computing.
Binarisation of the totality of the discoursive systems. BUT ontological and autopoietic universes of the machinic are neglected. > over-linearity of semiotic chains by a-signifying elements, a-signifying machines.

Ontological heterogeneity represented by universes of reference incarnated in multiple systems of discursivity and to some extent dependent on them. Paradoxical situation because into discursive systems (coordinates) but at the same time non-discursive existential affirmation.+ present the non-discursive through discursive material and representation.

• In poetry rhythm and regularity + level of expression - crossroad between poetry and music.
• In psychoanalysis discursive systems as existential support to subjective affirmation.

(examples of a grasp of non-discursive relationships) > existential function
Paradox esisting in the whole word (specificly scientific and animistic societies). Discursivity pose universes of reference, qualitative structures and ontological textures. We therefore produce incorporeal universes which althought being marked with the name of the inventor, are in fact universal. Universes that may evoc Platonic Ideas but they are inscribed in history, cuts and mutations marked by a factor of irreversibility and singularity.

Pierre Levy distinguishes between machines which come under the oral and written mode VS computing machines. In word-processing machine, which changes one's relationship to expression, he notes the interface which compose and singularise this new universe of reference: .... thus we have a new machine.
Learning language through word-processor change the types of universes of reference, both in cognitive, affective dimension and social or ethical relationships. What does this kind of machinic delirium provide us with?
psychotic patients in the universe of 'communicational reference' closed in their own monad and searching for transfer. Instead the transfer comes first as 'something is happening' with or without a machine of subjectification, and it isn't activated by discoursive, cognitive or deductive sentences. It occurs immediately and this machine will develops different means of expression.

Clinic as machine of subjectification composed of n-sub-wholes of subjectification. In the beginning between the patient and doctor, than counsellors, animales and machines. They all must be capable of vectoring care and existential strenght for the psychotics in a phase of ontological imbalance. > machinic virtuality, machinic alterity.
Kitchen as vector of subjectification, machine-kitchen >> be aware of its space to be able of engender further exchange within this space and to don't close yourself in a citadel.

Subjectivity as a subjective composition according to the hold of consistency of these different ensembles.

Autopoietic and hypertextual position of the machine possesses a pragmatic potential, which allow for a creative standpoint of machinic composition, occurring in the face of the ontological iron curtain which separate the subject on the one side from things on the other.