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inquire some topics about power, knowledge, and the third emergent form "the desire", the name of the third book (still unpublished).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.