Deleuze and Guattari's Immanent Ethics: Theory, Subjectivity, and Duration

209 Pages·2011·3.111 MB·English

by  Tamsin Lorraine

PHILOSOPHY l
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in deleuze and guattari’s
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immanent ethics
In Deleuze and Guattari’s Immanent Ethics, Tamsin Lorraine focuses on the
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pragmatic implications of Deleuze and Guattari’s work for human beings
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struggling to live ethical lives. Her bold alignment of Deleuze and Guattari’s
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project with the feminist and phenomenological projects of grounding e
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human action in lived experience provides an accessible introduction to
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their work. Lorraine characterizes Deleuze and Guattari’s nonfoundational
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approach to ethics in terms of a notion of power that comes into skillful
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confluence with the multiple forces of life and an immanent principle of
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flourishing, while their conception of philosophical thought is portrayed
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as an intervention in the ongoing movement of life that she enacts in her
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own exploration of their ideas. She contends that Deleuze and Guattari
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advocate unfolding the potential of our becoming in ways that enhance our
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participation in the creative evolution of life, and she characterizes forms
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of subjectivity and cultural practice that could support such evolution. By t
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means of her lucid reading taken through the lens of feminist philosophy,
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Lorraine is not only able to present clearly Deleuze and Guattari’s project but i
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also an intriguing elaboration of some of the project’s practical implications

for novel approaches to contemporary problems in philosophy, feminism, i
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cultural theory, and human living.
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Tamsin Lorraine is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Swarthmore a
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College. She is the author of Irigaray and Deleuze: Experiments in Visceral
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Philosophy and Gender, Identity, and the Production of Meaning.
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theory, subjectivity, and duration
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A volume in the SUNY series in Gender Theory
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Tina Chanter, editor
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i
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SUNY
tamsin lorraine
P R E S S
new york press
lorraine hc fix.indd 1 4/4/11 8:12:36 AM

Deleuze and Guattari’s
Immanent Ethics
A volume in the SUNY series in Gender Theory
—————
Tina Chanter, editor
Deleuze and Guattari’s
Immanent Ethics
Theory, Subjectivity, and Duration
TAmSIN LorrAINE
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2011 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic,
electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production by Diane Ganeles
marketing by Anne m. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lorraine, Tamsin E.
Deleuze and Guattari's immanent ethics : theory, subjectivity, and duration /
Tamsin Lorraine.
p. cm. — (SUNY series in gender theory)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3663-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Deleuze, Gilles, 1925-1995. 2. Guattari, Félix, 1930–1992. 3. Ethics.
4. Feminist ethics. I. Title.
B2430.D454L67 2011
194—dc22 2011003167
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xiii
Chapter 1: INTroDUCTIoN 1
Intuition and the Durational Whole 6
Theory 12
Chapter 2: A GENEALoGY oF (IN)HUmAN EXISTENCE 31
(In)human Genealogy 33
Faciality and the majoritarian Subject 48
Chapter 3: FEmINIST CArToGrAPHIES AND
mINorITArIAN SUBJECTIVITY 57
Feminist Cartographies 57
minoritarian Subjectivity and the Question of Identity 66
Chapter 4: BoDIES, TImE, AND INTUITIoN 81
Intensive Plateaus 83
Philosophy, Art, and Intuition 95
Becoming-Woman and Lines of Flight 105
Chapter 5: ETHICS, TrAUmA, AND CoUNTEr-mEmorY 115
Spinoza’s Joy and Nietzsche’s Gift-giving Virtue 115
Trauma and Counter-memory 130
Witnessing New Territories 137
vi Contents
Chapter 6: PoLITICS, SUBJECTIVITY, AND THEorY 147
Spinozist Ethology 147
minoritarian Subjectivity 154
Theory 165
Conclusion 168
Notes 171
references 181
Index 187
Preface
The reading I give here of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s conceptions of
theory, subjectivity, and ethics is inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s innovative
approach to two problems with which I have struggled throughout my adult
life. The first problem is that of how to be ethical in an age where traditional
approaches to grounding transcendent values in God or reason appear to be
increasingly suspect, and the second problem is that of how to conceive of
the practice of philosophy in a way that manifests its pragmatic importance
to living as well as the aesthetic pleasure it can bring to its practitioners.
As a woman and a feminist who came of age in the 1970s, I was drawn
to philosophy for its skeptical attitude; it was by taking a philosophical step
back in order to reconsider the assumptions informing my conceptions of
truth and ethics that I was able to rethink what I had been told about what
it meant to be human or what we could hope for as human beings struggling
to live with one another in productive harmony. This critical endeavor gave
me important tools in investigating and analyzing reality in light of human
subjects marginalized in various ways from the mainstream and opened my
eyes to more inclusive ways of conceiving what it meant to be human and
how we might better work toward a society that could support our collective
humanity. my love of philosophy has thus always had a pragmatic edge to it
that spoke to my need to resolve the dissonance I experienced in trying to
live ethically as I faced particular life problems (Why did the “right” thing
sometimes feel so “wrong”? To whom could I turn for answers when neither
specific authority figures nor rational argument could supply completely
satisfying solutions?). Deleuze and Guattari’s emphasis on a pragmatic
conception of language always implicated with the situations of embodied
subjects of a particular time and place responding to specific problems
along with a conception of human beings as evolving creatures struggling
to unfold their capacities to live in always novel circumstances in response
to life conceived as becoming, spoke to my need to take an ethical approach
more creative than that of applying moral rules or transcendent ideals—an
approach that was more attuned to the skewed perspectives of embodied
vii
viii Preface
subjects facing unanticipated and even unintelligible (at least according to
“normal” or “acceptable” ways of understanding social reality) dilemmas.
Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of philosophy not only spoke to the
way philosophy has enabled me to resolve some of the dissonance of day-
to-day living, it also captured the aesthetic pleasure I often derive from the
unexpected perspectives arrived at by unfolding lines of thought I would never
have otherwise traveled. It has been one of the great pleasures in my years
of teaching philosophy (as well as one of my great frustrations when, as I
often do, I fail) to communicate to my students the inherent joy of carefully
pursuing the intricacies of the webs of beliefs—with all their implicit nuance
and affective charge—that structure the meaning of our lives. Deleuze and
Guattari’s conception of philosophy as a form of thought that creates concepts
through a principle of consistency unfolded in attentive pursuit of the nuances
of the meaning of concepts in relation to other concepts, not only gave me
a way of understanding the pleasure practicing philosophy gives me, but a
way of reading philosophy that opens up the unexpected perspectives it can
create rather than closing them off as often happens when we, as we all to
often do, become more entrenched in marking territory than pursuing ideas.
In my reading of Deleuze and Guattari I not only attempt to present
conceptions of an immanent ethics and philosophy as the creation of concepts
that are drawn as consistently and rigorously from a reading of their concepts
as I can manage, but I also have attempted to enact the conception of
philosophy that I draw from their work: an approach that emphasizes the
rigor and creativity philosophy can contribute to cultural debates without ever
losing sight of our ongoing and embodied immersion in a world to which
we must respond. In that spirit, I have refrained from engaging in debates
of interpretation and instead deliberately chosen to take from Deleuze and
Guattari as well as the secondary commentaries that have inspired me in the
pursuit of this particular project what speaks to the pragmatic concerns of
individual human beings wondering, from their very specific locations, how to
live ethical lives. In doing so, I have, I hope, not only shared some of these
implications, but also some of the joy of carefully working through some of
their concepts in light of such implications. I thus hope not only to suggest
an innovative approach to ethics that I believe could speak to some of our
current ethical impasses, but also to introduce some of my readers to the
pragmatic and even aesthetic pleasures, as they are described and enhanced
by Deleuze and Guattari’s characterization of the process of philosophical
thinking, of what might at times seem to be the overly careful approach of
the philosopher to a set of texts.
The view of philosophy I develop and enact here suggests that multiple
theories from multiple locations can and should be read in light of situated
problems in order to encourage the cross-fertilization of productive connections.