Last 2014-2015 POBICS seminary: "La Subjetivación", Gilles Deleuze, course about Michel Foucault

Today, we have finished our calendary of seminaries with the last Deleuze's book about Foucault: "La Subjetivación". Undoubtedly, this course has been very important to us due to the great set of concepts, arguments and claims given by Deleuze to understand Foucault's work, but also in order to think about some key concepts in Social Critical Psychology like Power, Subjectivity or another importants philosophic concepts from Kant or Heidegger. 

The two axes around we have talked has been these two-ones:

- What is the subjectivity? It is more than a fold, but what?

- If between power and knowledge there is a actual-virtual relationship, and the subjectivity is a third axis, which is not actual or virtual; then, what is it and what kind of relationship has with the other two ones?

So, we will present as normally we do, the main ideas we have pointed out:

What is properly Foucault, is the answer to the emptiness that causes questions about: what lies beyond the power? What is characteristic of Deleuze would be the explanation about the outside points and its origin in line outside.

Deleuze breaks with the widespread conception of what Foucault calls subjectivity: subjectivity is not knowing, nor is power; It comes from the diagram (power relations), but is independent of them: they are three different ontologies (Knowledge, Power and Subjectivity). But, what is subjectivity then? "The art of itself". Subjectivity comes from the Greek diagram, and then the fold occurs. But within the fold there are not things, no content: there is memory, the absolute memory. Greeks created the possibility that  individuals could be a totality in itself (absolute memory, Bergson's memory concept).

History is a succession of events, but the memory are the conditions to establish relationships between those events. We can have the whole data at the time, but we have all the conditions to establish relationships between these events, i.e, a logic that allows you to understand the History in a particular way, like the rest of the people of your age, you understand the things one way (for instance. 2 + 2 may be 4, and nothing else). This is the absolute memory Bergson.

Westerners have added to the memory of our times the truth (the truth of sexuality, the truth of knowledge ...). In our time we can not think without truth. Subjectivity therefore is not a set of content.

The time that Foucault gives tosubjectivity is much larger than the that one given to power or knowledge. This, restructure Power and Knowledge regarding Subjectivity: the outside line is here, do not look away because in the distance there is only diagrams: subjectivity is more basic than Knowledge and Power (subjectivity becomes autonomous from these two, and them try to catch subjectivity changing more often than this last one, and therefore , being subordinated to subjectivity, it is becomes central (although it not borns before the others one).

So, in this sense...

Knowledge: actual

Power: virtual

Subjectivity: memory

If the resistance points  are singularities or subjectivities, we can talk about micro-practices of subjectivity with the equipment-concept given by Foucault. It is the way given by Foucault in order to convert logos in ethos, as the ethos would be an individual micro-subjectivity.

To govern itself is disengaging from Power and from Knowledge: you become you in your own world.

In the fold the is the unthinkable of thinking: the unthinking are the conditions to think (the absolute memory, conditions, logic); not only the thought (that would be the contents).

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Brande Jackson.

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.