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