Andrés G. Seguel Seminary: and anthropological view of 2009 H1N1 pandemics

As we announced in our webpage, this week took place the seminary by one of our recurrent Andrés G. Seguel, recently came from Chile. In this ocassion, Andrés has tell us some ideas about his current work and thinkings: influenza, subjectivity, and the emergence of singularities. 

colleagues,

Here our report:

Andres beguns with our famous reading about the work of Deleuze by Foucault (you can read more about it here and here) about the relationship between knowledge and power (and also subjectivity). He came this theories to the symbol/sign relationship, and also wanted to split the substrate from the object (ANT and Foucault never achieved this). How he does that? With the "fold" concept: in a fold, we have captures that allows that some particular object enacts as it is (and not as anyother is), but this enactment is never definitive, but temporal and made from a joint of points.

A singularity is a "indent" in that fold. But, how emerges this singularity? between the relationship and the tension between the different points. The "logoi" concepts allows us to explain it: a logoi is a place where a logic is represented by his tension. When this tension is stabilized, we find a temporal object.

This is related with the subjectivity explained by Deleuze and Guattari in the book "La Subjetivación", but this two authors propose something quite different about subjectivity:

Deleuze: It offers a fold, more large in time, less autonomous, and less changing (more procesual).

Guattari: It offers not a fold, but a "indent", and this indent is faster, more autonomous and more changing and emergent.

In the H1N1 case, technology acts as a key element to the emergence of a singularity: pandemics. It was a very important controversy in 2009, but why?

In 2009, WHO changed the classical definition of a pandemics (two outbreaks in two isolated places one from the another) to the emergence of a new influenza virus against human population has not immunization (we recommend to read the book "Pandemics Perhaps" by Carlo Caduff).

About the relation between information and how works CDC/ECDC and physicias that must alert about suspected cases of flu, this two elements are articulated from:

-Platforms like HealthMap.

-Panoramas (Latour concept).

-Medical platforms where they can predict the number of case of a particular strain of flu.

-Medical protocols.

-Google Flu Trends.

All of this elements makes H1N1 visible, and this is so important to Foucault when he is explained by Deleuze (go to the post linked at the biginning of this post). 

Visibility, then, allows to emerge a particular subjectivity, and this, at the same time, has some concrete afects.

Photo Credit: Jose Ramon Pato

New paper sent: Biopolitics, Deleuze, and a new Contemporary view

Finally, today we have sent a new paper to the "Pléyade" journal to its monographic about biopolitics. We present a different conceptualization about biopolitics, based on some Deleuzian concepts (we pointed out about them here). If the paper is accepted, it will be published on summer 2016. Until then, you can read the abstract (english and spanish) here:

Since Michel Foucault started to use the notion of biopolitics in the decade of the seventies, this has acquired a key relevance in Social Sciences and has been applied to the analysis of a big number of phenomena which transform directly our daily life. This paper rethinks the mentioned notion thanks to the proposals of Gilles Deleuze about the work of Michel Foucault. To do this, first, we examine how the former analysed the notion of power offered by the latter.  Next, we revise the work of several authors that have transformed the meaning of biopolitics. Specifically, we comment the proposals of Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose, on the one hand, and the ideas of Andrew Donaldson and Lyle Fearnley, on the other. Third, we present our research based on a case study about the discourses and practises on biosecurity currently deployed by the European Union. Through this work we reread the relation infection-surveillance and put forward the idea of “syndromic observation” as a new dispositive to manage life that would be replacing the notion of biopolitics.

Desde que Michel Foucault utilizó la noción de biopolítica en la década de los setenta, su uso se ha extendido por todas las Ciencias Sociales y se ha aplicado al análisis de un amplio rango de fenómenos que impactan directamente en nuestra vida cotidiana. Este artículo reformula la mencionada noción recurriendo a las propuestas que Gilles Deleuze realizó sobre la obra de Michel Foucault. Para ello, en primer lugar se revisa cómo el primer autor analizó la noción de poder ofrecida por el segundo. A continuación, se hace un análisis de los trabajos que recientemente han transformado la noción de biopolítica. Concretamente, se examinan las propuestas de Paul Rabinow y Nikolas Rose, por un lado, y las de Andrew Donaldson y Lyle Fearnley, por otro. En tercer lugar, se presenta un estudio de caso centrado en los discursos y prácticas sobre bioseguridad que está implementando la Unión Europea. A partir de esa investigación se ofrece una reconceptualización del binomio infección-vigilancia y se plantea la noción de “observación sindrómica” como dispositivo reciente sobre la gestión de la vida que ocupa el lugar explicativo que ofrece la idea de biopolítica.

Photo Credit: Jef Safi

Geoffroy de Lagasnerie summary: "Last Lesson Given by Foucault"

We are coming back and now we want to offer a little and brief summary about how was our meeting in order to discuss about the work about Foucault writen by this author. 

We discussed particularly about some key points:

-Differences between Liberalism - Neoliberalism

-Are we still in a "Homo Oeconomicus" rationalism?

-Was then, Foucault, a Neoliberal?

Foucault will say that there is a fundamental difference between liberalism and neoliberalism that Lagasnerie did not collect: labour. In Marxism theories, labour is a work force that you sell and other pays to you. Nonetheless, in Neoliberalism labour is not a work force: it is a truth with which the subject can understood itself.

Main differences Liberalism-Neoliberalism:

Laissez-faire, do not intervene.	Must intervene under the ground.
The homo economicus is a partner with whom you exchange.	Homo Oeconomicus is not a partner, is a businessman himself, he is his own capital, his own business.
Disciplinary Societies.	Control Societies.
Still believe in the totality and universality.	Charge against any principle of totality, backing the plurality.
It is still not as stressed the role of the experts (When the king is removed, we must to be governed by rules).	The role of experts is much more main in all fields.
Economics is a science of prices and resources.	Economics isa science of  rational decisions.

Economics is the space that offers a better veridiction ground. Neoliberalism is adjusted to control societies, it is the place par excellence of government, the structure is always in economic terms. This may not fit with the idea of Deleuze, because he does not see a predominance of one type of place. 

What would today replaced the entrerprise-form, the entrepreneur of itself? Is there a new diagram where the pre-eminence would not be economic, but biological, for instance? How would it be? 

Photo Credit: Karl-Ludwig Poggemann

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.

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.

New cycle of readings by POBICS!

Yesterday in our last meeting, we set a new cycle of readings for this spring at the success of our cycle of seminaries about Deleuze. Concretely, we have to split the cycle in 3 courses. They will be every week at Wednesday, 15:00 at the Martín Baró Classroom (Department of Social Psychology, Autonomous University of Barcelona), but there are some exceptions (like the first meeting in the next week, that will be Monday and not Wednesday, at 15:00). The courses are:

a) A biopopolitical review beyond Foucault: Empire, Homo Sacer and Ethopolitics.

b) Semiotics of the image: Visual Methodologies, and Cinema I & II.

c) Compilation about Gabriel Tarde. 

As we have said, the seminaries will begin next Monday with the reading of Empire, by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. You can consult the whole list here:

NEW WAYS OF BIOPOLITICS

- April 13th: Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

- April 22th: Homo Sacer by Giorgio Agamben

- May 6th: Policies of life. Biomedicine, power and subjectivity in the XXI century by Nikolas Rose

 

REGIMES OF IMAGES IN CONTEMPORARY

- May 13th: Visual Methodologies by Gillian Rose

- May 20th: Cinema I. Bergson and images by Gilles Deleuze

- May 25th: Cinema II. Signs of movement and time by Gilles Deleuze

THE END OF THE SOCIAL. GABRIEL EVENING READING

- June 3th: Monadology and sociology by Gabriel Tarde

- June 10th: Beliefs, desires, societies  byGabriel Tarde

- June 17th: The social laws by Gabriel Tarde

All the sessions are opened and are free. You can come wherever you want and only to those you are interested (if you cannot come to the complete cycle). You can invite and tell everyone that could be interested.

If you need more information, contact with us in this email:

portraitsbioscontemporary@gmail.com 

Thank you so much!

Photo Credit: By ourself, one of our last meetings.

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

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. 

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)

A brief summary about our first POBICS seminar

As I posted the last week, yesterday we held the first session of the seminary about the Foucaultian's course by Deleuze with the first five chapters of the book "El Saber". 

The meeting was so interesting because we achieved to answer several questions about the Foucault's work. The index of the seminary was:

1. What is knowledge?
2. What is archeology? / Why do archeology?
3. What is a file?
4. Four Deleuzian thesis on the components of knowledge
5. Why Foucault is a Kantian?
6. What is a statement? / Criticism of traditional linguistics

During the two hours of the reunion we discussed about this questions, some easier to answer than others. The key idea is around the first question (what is knowledge in Foucault?) and how we can extract a statement. We deduced that extract, in this sense, is a synonymous of "compose" because there isn't a concrete way to operate in order to "catch" the statement from phrases, clauses, sentences or words.

The most important process in order to do this, is summarized in these points:

1. Build a corpus: a set of words, phrases ... where we clear regularities.
2. Where can we look for the corpus? In the foci of power.
3. The foci of power are drawn from the daily practices, not from great authors (this practice is inherited from the School of the Annales)

Along the session, Francisco Tirado drew at the blackboard the graphic you can watch in the blog's image. This represent an example about a sentence: "Yoga is a health practice". He showed this example because in the Deleuze's book is quite difficult to understand or apprehend what is a statement with the illustration he gives.

So we have the sentence "Yoga is a healthy practice" and we have "cut" the sentence:

Yoga: it has been a science, a way of life, not a practice. It never was linked to health, but happiness. Nonetheless,  today we can link it to the practice and health. This is because there is a rule that allows them to join: the imperative of health. The imperative of health is the extracted (or composed) statement of this sentence.

The imperative of health operates in different and heterogeneous systems forming the associated field: in medicine, yoga, day by day, the law ...

There is a particular object, is dispersed, is spoken. It is the boundary of the statement.

The subject is what is left out of the intersection of the heterogeneous systems, such as when we exceed the health imperative till hypochondria.

The concept is the intersection of all areas where health imperative works. What remains amid of the whole intersection.

That's all. We wait for you next week (Wednesday, Social Psychology department of the Autonomous University of Barcelona). We hope too your comments and answers to the questions we have posed. 

PhotoCredit: by my self at the seminary.

Some novelties about the blog

Once the hangover's congress has finished, I have to announce some news happened during the week:

First, this blog, Anthropology Of the Bios (AOB), has been fused with the webpage of my research group, called Portraits of the Bios in Contemporary Societies (POBICS, check it out here). In this vein, we think this is a good way to promote both the blog and webpage

because their topic is the same: to analyse and reflect about some current events of bios' management, anthropology, epidemics, etc. In order to power the blog, it has a new look, more minimalist and concrete. We hope you feel comfortable with it and you find easy the access to the whole content.

Henceforth, our website has a new section where the blog is exposed and each post will be updated there too. At the same time, this blog includes the weblink of POBICS and so, you can be informed about our upcoming events, publications or seminaries. Furthermore, we are planning a new project by which all our staff would publish information, discussions, readings, etc; and thus, we will be able to make a daily post. I invite you to visit the website and subscribe for updates!!

In this sense I want to share with all of you we have set a seminary about the Foucaultian course that Deleuze imparted in 1985. The readings will begin next wednesday, 25th in the Social Psychology Department of the Autonomous University of Barcelona; talking about "the visible and the expressible". 

I also remind you can follow us in Twitter (@pobics or my account, @ebaes) and in Facebook (click here). We want to know people in order to exchange ideas, knowledge, points of view, information, etc. so we will be happy in order to get in touch with you!

On the other hand, I want to post the recordings made along the congress, so if the heads of the staff give me permission, I will share the videos of Monica Greco, talking about Participating Bodies: Neuroliberal Governmentality and the Politics of Symptoms; Patricia Clough, about Affect After Neoliberalism: Subjectivity, Bodies, and Sociality; Mari-Luz Esteban, pointing some aspects with The reinvention of politics and claim of vulnerability. Theoretical, political and ethnographic somatizations; Silvia Possoco and The Ends of Affect: Deferred Reflections from the Field; and finally, Jasbi Puar talking about Conviviality: New Methods for No Future.

Finally, this week expires the deadline to send the content of the book we are editing, titled "Biossegurança e Biopolítica no Século XXI", a work where we have invite to some researchers to write a chapter about biosecurity and biopolitics, that will be published in 2016. Our chapter will be called as "What is biosecurity? Bios and regimes of vitality". In it, we will talk about biosecurity as a new focus that creates norms to establish what is bios (in the Agamben sense) and what is not-valuable life within the biotic realm. I will write about it later.

PhotoCredit: Flickr, user Arbyreed