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 from our Gabriel Tarde's seminary

Today, we have held the second to last seminary on this 2014/2015 course. We have red two books about Gabriel Tarde, titled "Beliefs, Desires, Societies" and "Social Laws"; two of the basic manuals in order to understand the Tarde's work. We have highlighted two main concepts in their books: the microsociology, and the "public" concept. We also have commented the "Desire" and "Belief" concepts on this author.

Here is the key points and the summary:

• What is Belief in Tarde?
• What is Desire in Tarde?
• The "public" concept vs "multitude"
• Microsociology and ANT

For him, both Belief and Desire can be quantified. In his theory of value, which is based on the belief and desire, he tries to make science of the "individual", categorizing and quantifying the two powers of individuality, although in themselves are more artistic than scientific.

Thanks to Tarde, we can say that in the Social Sciences, it emerged a thing called Psychology, which comes from it the other ones as sociology, anthropology, and so on.

Latour owes much to Tarde. Latour says that to start thinking, it must be placed "in the middle" or center of anything. " Tarde, in this same sense he says: "the only way to clear up some sources of any material, is placed in media res". As the same Latour points out in the preface of the book, ANT is greatly influenced by Tarde's work in its view of whatever kind of sociology (not only human sociologies) as an association of several "micro" elements which constitute the macro-structure or the macro-actant.

How is introduced the novelty in Tarde?: throughout the "personal genius". The personal battle each one: every new idea arises in a private individual mind before the public. Individual is personal, but not singular. How does that monadic individual produces the novelty?

The "minimum measure" on Afternoon is the brain. The novelty comes from the individual, from the small, but is there creation and adaptation at intermediate levels (eg. The level of discourse introduces novelty in the set of discourses that is the next level), or is there creation only in the small level?

Tarde dares to break the distance between the micro / meso / macro. Instead, Moscovici said psychosocial facts by psychosocial facts, maintaining the distances between levels (contrary to Tarde and later, to ANT).

Multitude concept in Tarde and Negri: multitude is an emerging potential of a group. In Tarde, creative uniqueness is in the individual. The forces of beliefs and desires do not exist in Negri (nor other concepts). In this sense, public creation also introduces novelty.

Tarde also does the first attention to technology (before  ANT) through the press, the newspaper ... when he says that through technology is the only way possible to create public.

Desire and belief are the "Konatus" and the "Apetitus" from Leibniz: Belief is the expression of a desire, if you have a desire, belief moves you to do something. Both are inseparable. They are the basic forces within the individual. As we all have beliefs and desires, it is something that goes beyond the individual:

"At the bottom of the internal phenomena," says Tarde, "[There are] three elements, belief, desire and its point of application, the pure feeling." "The first two terms," ​​he continues, "are the constitutive and innate forms or forces of a subject; the molds where it receives the raw material of sensation", Thus, the trials and human actions are rooted in the beliefs and desires that each individual owns in his conscience".

Photo Credit: Flickr, User Eduardo Fonseca Arraes

Some notes about the Foucaultian course by Deleuze and our research' topic

After a little break due to a big load of work at the queue (three papers, a project for a grant by the Spanish Government, the final course' evaluation of our PhD students...) we come back to our blog. Today, we only want to point out some ideas about our big and successful seminary on this year: the course taught by Deleuze about the Foucault' work. We also want to remember we have pending the last session about this course the 15th june (the third book about this course is called "La Subjetivación").

In this vein, we want to purpose a brief panorama about this course linking it to our current research:

a) There is a new subjectivation in the "bios era", that is, in the contemporary West societies where biotechnology and bio-medicine are conquering each square of our current life? How is the fold of the outside-line in this time?

b) As Deleuze says, subjectivation needs, firstly, the forms of knowledge and the forces relations. Can we "break" (in the Deleuzian vocabulary) sentences and images in order to extract statements and visibilities? What is that "illuminated" and "said" in our current time under the light and the statable of the bios?

c) We affirm that images has a forgotten role in the contemporary social research, but we foster the role of images in (for instance) ebola epidemics or protocols from other outbreaks. Is it possible that images have taken a new primacy over statements in this time? (next post will be about the role of images in the contemporary psychology, one of the last papers we have been working these days).

d) Are we in a new diagram beyond the third "super-man" diagram? and in this case, what are the features of this fourth diagram?

e) How are the "conquests" from knowledge and power over the subjectivation to shape this last one? Or, in the Felix Guattari comments' sense: If we can allocate an identity to this subjectivation, what it has been the role of power and knowledge?

f) From the Felix Guattari's observation form the Foucault work: how is the new field of perception in the bios era? 

g) Finally, what are the differences between "desire" and subjectivation? we think this difference is important in order to clearify the work by Deleuze from the work by Foucault.

We will try to answer this questions this summer with a new theoretical paper where we want to gather our the ideas emerged in our seminaries. We will keep informing about it soon.

Photo Credit: Flickr, User Jef Safi

A last reconfiguration of our seminaries

After the sudden publication of the third book about the Focaultian course by Deleuze (Ed. Cactus, Buenos Aires), we have decided to reschedule our calendar for the end of this course. In this sense, the readings have been set in this way:

June, 1th: Gabriel Tarde, Social laws and beliefs, desires, societies. 

June, 15th: Gilles Deleuze, The Subjectivation.

For this reasons, we have delay the second Cinema seminary by Deleuze till the next course (most probably, in October). In this vein, we can complete the seminary about the Foucault's course with this little book about the subjectivation. If you want to come to our seminaries, write an e-mail to: portraitsbioscontemporary@gmail.com. Attendance is free and it is located at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, department of Social Psychology. 

In a few moments, you will see in our website the updated information (http://pobics.wix.com/pobics)

Photo Credit: By ourselves, front of "La Sujetivación", by Gilles Deleuze.

Summary of our Deleuze reading: Cinema I

Yesterday, we held a new seminary where we had the chance to read the first book by Deleuze about images. Here you can read a brief summary about our meeting:

Bergson thesis:

The film really does not represent the movement. It would not exactly reflect or capture the real movement, but creates the movement-image. It is a way of reinventing the movement itself (Chinese pictures are first but they are different).

(P. 90) ancient philosophy: the film exists only when it is equidistant from images (any kind of images). The modern cinema invented the frame: always the same images, one after another, without priority, preference or distinction between them.

The moment is a motionless cutting movement.

The movement is a mobile cutting of length.

At the duration there is a whole, and the duration is also a transformation. The movement, which we usually consider translation, is transforming everything, affects everything, and it has nothing to do with the space (the tiger when it moves and eats zebra, then there es one zebra less, and this changes the whole result of the forest).

What is a picture-motion?

Bergson called images to what in philosophy is called phenomenon: the image is what appears, is the phenomenon, the idea.

The subject wants to know the noumenon that can never be known. The phenomenon is the encounter between the subject and the noumenon. The film brings a new conception of the image: the picture-motion.

The motion-picture is the main brick with which it is mounted or built the rest, is the atom. These bricks are expanding, in constantly movement, making a gap. Each frame, each image, has movement, and this establishes relationships with previous and the later frames and frames. That is the essence and the novelty of cinema: we hold the movement in a image.

There are three levels of analysis or elements:

-Framing: Framing is to build an artificially closed system, a system of things artificially closed.

-Plane: The plane is made determining the relative movement between the objects that have been determined by the frame. The plane is inseparable from the movement of the camera, and then what we have is a permanent sequence of shots.

-Assembly: The assembly is the way in which the relative movement is composed (a plane), and gives meaning to everything else.

There are types of motion-picture, and besides, this is different from the memory-image:

-Perception-image: is the image that reaches the indeterminacy center (IC).

-Affection-image: it is what is installed in the indeterminacy center.

-Action-image: it is what comes out of the indeterminacy center.

The indeterminacy center (in principle) is the brain, this introduces a mismatch between an action and a reaction. If we had no brain, everything would be directly action-reaction-action-reaction, constantly.

The image is displayed. What appears is the phenomenon. What appears is moving.

The brain is an interval, makes a change. The image, when it abuts on an IC becomes a affection-image, and it subtracts something (perception-image - something). In the sense that I can perceive something, I can catch something, I stick with it, the arrest occurs, (the theft of something). If that something would not been subtracted, all will pierce me without leaving a trace in me. And it not only passes by me but it affects me and also produces feelings in me (affect me).

The same imbalance is what generates the affection, then this is what makes possible the action-image.

Perception-image:

Faciality, pure condition. We must eliminate communication, the exacerbated expression of emotion. (Whether or not a face, a close up of a watch is also faciality).

Affection-image:

The image-affection is the foreground image, the face. The face is the foreground. The foreground does not have to be a face. The affection causes only within the whole, but in isolation, in the foreground isolated (in a frame for example), it does not cause affection.

Affection is a common potential to two opposites (the scary-the grounding) or a common quality (the vampire and his victim)

Action-image:

What comes out is different. The curve is the angle that allows us to what comes out would different. What comes out has a difference with what came in (diffraction of light, the angle at which the light enters the water, it makes what comes out (the rainbow) is different from what came in (the white light of al lightning). This concept is similar to the "clinamen" concept by Michel Serres.

Almost all the current cinema is action-image.

The movement-image reaches a limit where it overflows into something new: the optical-noise image (together with music): suddenly, there are two planes, image and another plane that is the sound, and this throws the image to another dimension. The movement-image is the motion, and time is the image-volume. Both are consubstantial, and it occurs when we reach the pure affection.

There are other kind of images:

-Time-images.

-Memory-images.

-Remembrance-images.

Photo Credit: By ourselves, part of the POBICS staff.

Biocapitalism, state of exception, and scenarios.

After several weeks shaping a new paper about biocapitalism (you can read about our first ideas here), we are finalizing it with new concepts and theories where our recent seminaries have had a clear influence (particularly, the Agamben's reading). 

Finally, the paper is about a brief review about the biopolitical proposal given by Agamben, and then we offer our particular vision. The key idea is the political axis is not longer the "leading actor" in our contemprary time about the law or govermentality, but it is the techno-scientific knowledge about the bios and life. Despite some theories like Rose for instance, we propose that this shift till the techno-scientific rule is fostered by the scenario concept.

What is then, a scenario?, it is the techno-scientifical injuction where the classical and positive conception about the Scientific Method is substituted by the creation of fictional futures within the preparedness logic of government. Our novelty results by placing the scenario-creation before the prearedness. Scenarios, then, are the new state of exception within this new key role of bioscience and biotechnology. This state of exception creates deterritorialized life flows without a main figure (unlike for Agamben, which talks about the Homo Sacer figure).

How we explain the performance of this new logic? Through the equipment concept given by Foucault. In the paper, we offer some examples about how it works, and you can read it when the paper is available. We want to offer a new conception about the role of bioscience in our contemporary life, and some points about a new state of exception articulated by the same kind of knowledge. 

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Wes Peck.

2014/2015 Course: an activities report

In this post, we want to give an overview of the activities we have done during the course that is ending. Although we still have some task to finish, now we can offer a complete report about the key events, papers and research we have done. Here is it in detail:

1) We started writing one paper for "Universitas Psychologica" Journal, a Colombian ISI journal. This paper was called "From Biopower to Kinepower in the European Union Security Devices". In we talked about how biosecurity has implemented a new regime of control in the contemporary world, where biopolitics in the Foucaultian sense has been abandoned in favor of a new regime: the  movement's control and surveillance. 

2) During the first months we also work on the communications for the II Congress of Critical Social Psychology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. We presented two communications called "From institutionalized body to interspecie body" and "We always have been Cyborg. Re-thinking embodiment". The first one was about a new kind to understand body as a interrelational body, where mosquitoes and human (for instance) was only one body linked by the new knowledge produced by bioscience and the new way of understand the life from biosecurity. The second one was about post-humanism, and we talk about how technology was present in our daily life from the birth of humankind, and not only from the last decades with the emergence of computers or another kind of technologies as DNA manipulation. In this vein, we hava try to answer to two main questions: Do we are truly evolving? and, in this case, there is some historical and taken-for-granted conceptions we have to change about it?

Furthermore, some of our staff participated as volunteers in the congress, guiding and moderating the communications.

3) Along this months, we have explore the role of citizenship as Early Warning System, as well as the concept of biosurveillance: is this kind of surveillance different in his nature from other kind of surveillance? What can people do when they see an odd man bleeding from this mouth and coughing? We have instigate some documents from the WHO and some "apps" and software as HealthMap.

4) In the end of 2014, we launched this blog by one of our staff, Enrique Baleriola. Two months later, the blog was linked with our final version of our webpage. The binomial Blog (Anthropology of the Bios) and webpage (POBICS) has an average of 150 monthly visits.

5) Portraits of Bios in the Contemporary Societies (POBICS) was constituted as research group as a branch of the new research group STS-b (Science and Technology Studies-Barcelona). Our research group aims to study the bios and life within the contemporary practices of biosciences in the path of biosecurity and biosurveillance.

6) We have published two papers: one in a Brazilian journal called "Subjectivity and Subjectifiers in Union European Technologies of Biosecurity" and other one in a Chilean journal called "Cosmopolitics and Biopolitics in the European Union Regimes of Biosecurity". 

7) We are finishing and sending more articles. For instance, one titled "New forms of inhabit the city: towards a conceptualization of biovigilant citizenship", "Biocapitalism and suspension of the norm: from the politic-legal paradigm to the emergence of the techno-scientific paradigm", or another one called "Images Regimes in Social Psychology" (we will offer an abstract about the last one in the next post). 

8) We received a great new when we achieved fund from the Spanish Government with the project called "Citizen Participation in Social Aproppiation of Knowledge and Technological Design Processes". This project has a duration of three years and we are involving in it now with new research.

9) We are also writing to ISI journals a new paper about the scenario-planning concept and another one about acceleration dispositifs in the last ebola outbreak.

10) We have held several seminaries about key Authors as Deleuze or Agamben, as well as key concepts and theories as Biopolitics, surveillance and new ways to understand the life, with the whole STS-b group and anyone who wanted to come. In fact, these seminaries are still actives.

11) Our students have collaborated in some teaching assignments, as guiding to pre-graduate students in their final dissertation, doing a peer-to-peer review for an ISI journal, or teaching to post-graduate students some issues as Images Analysis or writing some manuals.

12) Finally, the book about Biosecurity and Biopolitics in the 21th Century where we are editors and authors is about to be published . We will post about it when it would be published (but meanwhile you can see our chapter here).

And that is all. We think it has been a very productive course. We have learned many things and we want to follow this line next course. All of our staff hope you keep reading our post during this course and in the future!

Photo Credit: By ourselves at the 2nd Congress of Critical Social Psychology.