End of our seminary about Deleuze

As we have notifying along last weeks, yesterday we have finished our seminary about the Deleuzian reading of Foucault. Although we finished the second book last week, we wanted to comment some complementary texts in an additional session in order to clarify some concepts and to purpose another readings alternative to Deleuze. 

In this vein, we have read a little text by Agamben: "What is a dispositif?" and a brief chapter of the Foucault's book by Deleuze (not the 85-86's course, but the book) where Deleuze talks about the Desire (the third pending book) in a few pages. The index for this session was this:

• How can we operationalize the diagram idea?
• Fold-overfold relationship: subject and "oversubject"?

The first questions is about how we can "work" with the diagram, that is, if the diagram is an abstract thing and we cannot "touch" it by itself because it is always melted with the knowledge forms, how can we "resolve" the distance between knowledge and power?

For this question, we have decided to read the Agamben's text:

Agamben, dispositif (or device):  capturing apparatus of living beings. The device according to Agamben is not located at the formal level or stratum, but he moves between the diagram (power) and the stratum (knowledge). In Deleuze, the gap between strategy (power) and stratum is infinite; in Agamben is not infinite and the "jump" is made possible by the device.

The diagram would be identical to what Agamben calls "creatures that enter into relationships". This makes more sense than a plane forces that affect on the outside (the Deleuzian's argument). The diagram is Nietzschean according to Deleuze, but Nietsche has not a microphysical model (Deleuze) but a biological (Agamben).

The device is that network linking institutions, regulations, institutions, laws, scientific statements, etc ... and that the stratum is mixed with strategy.

In Deleuze, living beings are singularities (with the "curve" that match the points drawn, concrete bodies, discrete bodies).

Vitalism is placed in the center of our thinking to life (the bios or the living), and it is not a detachment of life from God, or Science, etc.

We have two great classes, living beings or substances and devices. And, between the two, as a third , we have the subjects. We call subject to the result of the relationship or, as it were, the "melee "between living and appliances.

The idea of ​​device is similar to the capturing apparatus of Deleuze: something that introduces cuts in a magma or situation without form, and then enter a formation. The novelty of Agamben is that there is a relationship: the sovereign depends on homo sacer and viceversa; zoe and bios are a bidiorectionaly relationship between them, there is movement within its continuous, but both pure, do not exist.

For Agamben the device is an apparatus of capture. If you do not "jump" to the device, you stay forever trapped in the intermediate levels proposed by Deleuze (between the forces of power and the stratum). If you do not jump, you'll never reach the end. And this is what makes Agamben, to jump.

About the second question, the "overfold" (a fold within a fold) could mean the proliferation of subjectivities by capitalism. Thus, at the time of the superman-form what we would find is a overfold who identifies with a larger number of subjects (understood as captured by the device). Then, at the time of the man-form, the fold means that there are not many subjectivations.

In the superman-form there is no longer subject, no fold: however, there is connection to the outside of the outside, with the open (Agamben); and the load (the superman loaded with silicon, modern literature and labor).

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Chris Tarnawski

Our current events

After a busy weekend, we come back with a new post for Anthropology of the Bios. In this case, we want to "brush up" some news and events related with the present activity of our research team:

• Firstly, we are ending the reading of the two books published by Cactus editorial, "El Saber" and "El Poder", the two first quarters of the Deleuze's course about Foucault in 1985 and 1986. We have talked about statements, the visible and the enunciable, power relations, the superman-form (or overman-form)... and now we are reading two complementary texts by Agamben and Deleuze. We are also waiting for the third book, called "El Deseo" (the Desire) where Deleuze ends the dimension's path and thus, we can completely understand the Deleuze's vision about Foucault.

• In the second place, we are ending our first book, called "Biosecurity and Biopolitics in the 21th Century". Altough you can check its content in the highlighted post, it is possible we have some surprises prepared when it would be published (an important collaboration perhaps?... we'll keep reporting.

• In addition to our weekly seminary meetings, we are working hard in some new papers and ideas (biocapitalism, biovigilant citizenship, a quite interesting discussion via Research Gate about Early Warning System and lay people...). You are invited to collaborate or express your opinion about it. 

• Recently, we have also "refresh" and published our webpage, POBICS (Portraits of Bios in Contemporary Societies), a place where you will find several information about us, our current work, upcoming seminaries and meetings, etc. You can also visit of Facebook-page and our Twitter account (@pobics). The rest of our staff will publish materials and contributions in our blog very soon. 

• Last month, in our university (Autonomous University of Barcelona) was held the Second Congress of Critical Social Psychology, and we presented some partial results of our work. You can view the summary of the first day here, and one of our communications here.

And that is all for now. This thursday we will publish the last summary of our seminary about the Deleuzian's reading of Foucault. Next week, we will talk about a new concept: Planetary Boundaries, a concept we think that fits perfectly with some of our ideas. 

Photo Credit: POBICS brand. Copyleft image found in the web.

Summary of our 4th Deleuze's Seminary

Yesterday, we have finished the second book of Deleuze about Foucault, "El Saber". In the sense we have talked the past weeks, we have inquire some topics about power, knowledge, and the third emergent form "the desire", the name of the third book (still unpublished). 

This seminary treated about two key points:

- The death of man

- The birth of superman 

- The desire

Although there is a current discussion about if "superman" is the best translation or it would be "overman", Deleuze says that the superman-form is the current form, resulting as the conjunction of the "outside forces on the man" and the "forces of the unlimited finite" (modern literature, genetic chains and silicon). 

The forces of the unlimited finite: it is finite, but unbounded in their combinations (both the genetic code, such as silicon, as modern literature). 

About the desire, the fold allows us to understand subjectivity. We tend to understand the subjectivity / identity as interior. But what about Superman? their subjectivity is not a fold, is a "overfold" (p. 274). Man charged with animals, rocks and literature, is that overfold: you are mixed with what is outside, you are loaded with it. The outside is subsumed within the form-superman.

There is an outside from outside which is where resistance to power appears, and it is prior to power...

         ... And this third dimension is called:

-Foucault Always sought: Subject (effect of certain practices (disciplinary or whatever)).

-In The folds he will call it: Subjectivation

-Deleuze will call it: Desire. The three dimensions are immanent, no it sooner or later (Knowledge, Power and Desire)

Desire is happening, it's surprise, forcing you to react, it is unexpected.

For Deleuze (no Foucault), the subject takes precedence over power. For Deleuze, desire is more basic and prior to pleasure.

One critic to the Deleuzian argument:

The technology would allow us to articulate the visible and the enunciable without jumping to power. The material element is forgotten by Deleuze and Foucault (i.e one sheet of paper allows you to articulate the visible and the enunciable with a phrase and an image; this is what Actor-Network Theory would say and this exercise is not unmeaning).

Serres: the network is form and strength; file and diagram simultaneously. The network contains our past history, but also the future. It changes the past and creates new pasts, etc.

Agamben match the diagram to the device; and the device, the strenghts relation are living beings that are in relation with other living beings, and between their there are relations.

De Certeau will say that in terms of forces, there are spaces that are tactics and them, are always subverting forces.

So this is our final reading about Deleuze until the third book would be published. Next season (wednesday 25th) we will read a little text by Agamben and another one from Deleuze talking about the device and some "draft" points about the desire. Thank you all for coming and to help us in this research!

Photo Credit: by ourself.

Biocapitalism: a new older conception

From a few years, some authors like Nikolas Rose or Monica Greco, are talking about the relationship between some bio-concepts, as life, living or the biotic; and neoliberalism or capitalism. Despite of their proposals are quite interesting because they allows us to understand how our current economic realm is impacting on what is life and how is this life; today we want to show another approach to the concept of Biocapitalism. 

Classically, biocapitalism has been understood within a new economic space (bioeconomy), whose new form of capital is biocapitalism. In this sense, they are emerging a new kind of regime of truth, based on the true of the economy. Thus, life can be isolated, dilimited, mobilized, etc. at the basis of a value (Rose, 2006).

Currently, our research group are working in a turn of the screw over this concept. In this vein, etymologically, capital means "head" or "leader", "the center or the top of something", "the most important thing on a set of things"; then, the word "biocapitalism" has to do with locating the bio, that is to say, life or the living, in the center or in the spotlight. 

Although it may seem that this is a naïf definition, it makes sense within our previous work, where we have inquired about the key rol of life in the current world (you can check it here and here or in our recent papers, here and here), Our next aim is to develop this concept in order to write a paper where biocapitalism can be linked with the notion of scenario, and illustrated with some extracts from some documents and images. We will show an abstract when this work is finished.

References: 

Rose, N. (2006). The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Photo Credit: Flickr, User Andrew Hudson

Summary of our 3rd POBICS seminary: First part of "El Poder" by Deleuze

The seminary is being finished, and today we have held the 3rd meeting, the first one talking about the second book about the Foucault's course by Gilles Deleuze. 

The key points of this season was these:

• Difference between stratum / strategy

• Postulates of power

• Diagram's notion

• What does actualize mean ? The dualism of joining / Ddfferentiation

• Difference between the outside / external

Before show our comments, I want to highlight that the seminary has been change in dates, so the next session (wednesday, 18th) we will read the rest of the book (chapters VI-XI) in order to finish it; and the next week (wednesday, 25th) , we want to read one Agamben's text and one text by De Certeau to complement the Deleuzian's book.

Once the changes are explained, you can check our comments:

The micro has to do with power and the macro with knowledge; areality of  forces  and a form's reality; and this is the cause they have different nature. Deleuze in this case, reverses the relationship of how we understand the power and knowledge (or lay people), because we usually understand power as macro and knowing as a micro (the close to our daily practices).

Postulate of legality (the sixth one):when we talk about law, basically we are talking about jurisprudence as practice over practices: practices are sustained over other ones. Where the law fails, the procedure is the juxtaposition of practices that come to fill that gap. There is no law, but distribution of laws, and so the border legal/ illegal is unclear due to these multiple laws. And so illegalities spread: what is illegal is distributed within the law, and that is the purpose of the law, not eliminate illegal, but distribute it within.

• Resistance is another diagram point and it it as forces: resistance comes from outside, and can not be integrated by the knowledge because if not it would be power, and thus it wouldn't be resistance. To solve the problem of resistance, we must resort to De Certeau when he talks about strategy and tactics. Deleuze will take the subject in his third book (The Wish). Resistance is at the microphysics of power in Deleuze.

• For Deleuze, the subject is a set of vectors or intensities that are packaged at a specific time. How you get that package, when it is formed? Foucault  proposes that the relationship between knowledge-power-subject is a relationship of immanence: knowledge and power are not on different planes, and subject is immanent to these two. We can not talk about a subject without talking about power or knowledge ... each plane appeals to the other two, but they are not the same, they are separated.

• The Roll Dice: there is not evolutionary processes, because this involves a process of development (a directional and progessive History). But this is not in that vein, it appears suddenly with not previous process.

• A device is the specific stratified formations given by Foucault. They are actualizations in the diagram. The device is one of the ends of a continuum, from the other side, the other end would be the most abstract and general diagram:

•  Agamben gives another interpretation, saying the devide is in the midst of the strategy and the stratum. Is a connection between the stratum and the diagram

• The device can freeze or crystallize certain power relations on the diagram. The device is freezing the diagram.

That's all, we recommend to read the book in order to obtain a complete vision of this issues and thus, understand our comments. We also want to hear you and maintain the questions. What do you think about the relationship between knowledge and power? What is your diagram's conception? 

Photo Credit: By ourself in the seminary. 

Looking for new documents and information: Biosurveillance and Early Warning System

After some weeks planning new papers and the directions for upcoming researches, now we are focused on gather new empirical data in order to analyze it.

The topics we are analyzing and what we want to collect data is about Early Warning System and some biosurveillance practices carried out by general people.

In this vein, we want to achieve some documents to deepen how Early Warning Systems works, particularlly we want to know:

• What is a "general" Early Warning System

• Lay people, or citizenship, has operated as Early Warning System anytime in any outbreak?

• In an affirmative case, how did it happen?

• Where we can find information about it?

• We are very interesting in some "apps" for smartphone as HealthMap or Outbreaks Near Me. How does it works? 

Well, this is the kind of questions we have. We are consulting some webs as the WHO's gate or the CDC's website, but we would be happier if someone could give us some papers, protocols or any other document which responds to this. 

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Nate Laverdure

Summary of our second seminary about "El Poder": 05-03

Yesterday, we finished the first Deleuze's book about Foucault, "El Saber", retaking the discussion carried out the last week abot statements, knowledge and the relationship (or no-relation) between the visible and the statable. 

In this session, we wanted to answer three main questions:

1. The relationship between the statable and the visible

2. How could be possible a relationship in the non-relationship between the statable and the visible?

3. How is the movement from knowledge to power?

So these points were the central topic of our seminary. First of all, we concluded that the relationship between the statable and the visible is base on the mutual capture. There is no knowledge without mutual capture between the visible and enunciable: no knowledge is possible without a mutual interlacement between them.

It is not translatable (in Actor-Network Theory terms), the catch is only possible (it only can be explained) jumping to another dimension, power. Jumping to the other axis, we move to the second book (we will talk about it next week). So, summing up, dualism on Foucault and Deleuze: we start from two forms, then we jump to another dimension that brings up a multiplicity (centers of power).

In this vein, we have to highlight that power is not a form, is an informal dimension: power has not form. 

Another interesting questiong that emerged in the seminary, was about an example given by Foucault when he talked about the Magritte's picture of a pipe with the sentence: "this is not a pipe". Thus, Deleuze shows us the relation between the statable and the visible with this picture in this sense:

"This is not a pipe: you can not put the sign "this is a pipe" under the picture of a pipe, because the pipe drawn is a picture, not a real pipe. Therefore, the only sentence that is possible is "this is not a pipe", which would be the statement, and acts as mediator (Actor-Network Theory again). The transfer traslate us, a move from one medium to another (from reality to the drawing). If we put the phrase "this is a pipe", we would be breaking the principle that a statement has no external reference, only refers to itself."

(This paragaph is our, reading Deleuze, but not him directly).

It is quite difficult to understand when we are referring to a sentence or a statement. A sentence is the "mark" of the statable, the place where we look for a statement, but never it is a statement itself. We have to break sentences in order to find statements.

We can deduce then, that statements are only necessary when there is a change of medium (heterogeneous system), if not, the statement is not necessary (eg. ZERT is not a statement within the typewriter because it is their original place, but what is when we write on paper it becomes a statement). Perhaps is more easy to understand whith the yoga's examples given in the last seminary.

Finally, answering the question about how we move from knowledge to power, we had more problems because we have not yet read the second book, but, as Deleuze does, we "spread" some topics in order to delimit the topic:

1. Power is to be able to do (the ability to): can to do, can to speak ... no power in a negative sense or oppressive power.

2. Power relations establish a dispersion of singularities; if we change the dispersion of singularities, then changes the relationship of singularities.

3. Knowledge is a form; power is a force. There is a relationship between them although different dimensions.

4. Power is not up nor down of knowledge, but is immanent to know.

5. The power is not derived from an institution, but the institutions are integrating a force field that is power. Like the statement prevails on light,  power prevails over knowledge.

That is all, we hope you have undestood our discussion, and we want to hear your opinions about the relationship between power and knowledge; the visible and the statable.

Photo Credit: Flickr, Steven Zucker (Ceci n'est pas a pipe, by Magritte)

Biovigilant citizenship

Another month, another monday I am writing a new post for the blog. In this case, I want to point out some ideas about a new paper we are clarifying, and it is about the role of citizenship within biosurveillance. 

The first we made is to build the index, and it has remained as follows:

1. Introduction: We talk about our current moment and their main events: the heightening of bio-sciences, Big-Data, DNA researches, pandemics, anthrax, ebola... and then we frame it within the preparedness logic of government: scenario-planning, biorisk, etc. We also remark some aspects of our theoretical framework: Social studies of Science and Technology, and Actor-Network Theory.

2. What is citizenship?: Starting with a brief review about the classical conception of citizenship (in Roma and Greece, the republican vision), we meander till the Marxist's conception of citizenship going through the liberal conception (with Hobbes or Marshall, for instance). 

3. New citizenships: From the beginning of the 21th Century, as many authors have pointed out (i.e Nikolas Rose or Petryna), and in part on the basis of the panorama given in the introduction, some new conceptions of citizenships have emerged. We discuss them here and we also give some key points of each one (we also talk about the biosecure citizenship of Kezia Barker for instance).

4. Biovigilant citizenship: In the fourth paragraph, we want to present our own proposal within these new categories of citizenship, the biovigilant citizenship. However, in which consists it? Well, I cannot advance so much, but our concept is constructed using the Foucault's idea of paraskeue or equipment. In this vein, we affirm the existence of some equipments that allows citizenship to become biovigilant, in the sense of watch and be watched. Is here where we present our empirical data to support our thesis.

5. Conclusions: We aim to problematize the naïf role of citizenship as a mere collaborator in the alert and detection of new outbreaks, and we conclude with the idea that this equipment becomes normal a very concrete regime of veridiction, with quite interesting implications.

So, what do you think about it? We can really talk about a new kind of citizenship, or is only a concrete and not so important feature? Do you think another term would be more interesting?

This papers will be send in May, so we have to wait until Christmas (more or less) to have it published. We will keep reporting!

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Bernard Goldbach