Excerpts for Monday March 14

Hi everyone,
on top of the Sloterdijk and the Latour, I'd like us to return to these 2 passages, one from Whitehead, the other from Deleuze and Guattari. I will bring some copies of the text, but if you like you could also read them in advance and have them with you.
See you tomorrow!
Erin

From Geology of Morals

p. 41

It is clear that the distinction between the two articulations is not

between substances and forms. Substances are nothing other than formed

matters. Forms imply a code, modes of coding and decoding. Substances as

formed matters refer to territorialities and degrees of territorialization and

deterritorialization. But each articulation has a code and a territoriality;

therefore each possesses both form and substance. For now, all we can say is

that each articulation has a corresponding type of segmentarity or multiplicity:

one type is supple, more molecular, and merely ordered; the other is

more rigid, molar, and organized. Although the first articulation is not

lacking in systematic interactions, it is in the second articulation in particular

that phenomena constituting an overcoding are produced, phenomena

of centering, unification, totalization, integration, hierarchization,

and finalization. Both articulations establish binary relations between

their respective segments. But between the segments of one articulation

and the segments of the other there are biunivocal relationships obeying far

more complex laws. The word "structure" may be used to designate the

sum of these relations and relationships, but it is an illusion to believe that

structure is the earth's last word. Moreover, it cannot be taken for granted

that the distinction between the two articulations is always that of the

molecular and the molar.

p. 44-45

Every stratum is a judgment of God; not only do plants and animals,

orchids and wasps, sing or express themselves, but so do rocks and even rivers,

every stratified thing on earth. The first articulation concerns content,

the second expression. The distinction between the two articulations is not

between forms and substances but between content and expression,

expression having just as much substance as content and content just as

much form as expression. The double articulation sometimes coincides

with the molecular and the molar, and sometimes not; this is because content

and expression are sometimes divided along those lines and sometimes

along different lines. There is never correspondence or conformity

between content and expression, only isomorphism with reciprocal presupposition.

The distinction between content and expression is always

real, in various ways, but it cannot be said that the terms preexist their double

articulation. It is the double articulation that distributes them according

to the line it draws in each stratum; it is what constitutes their real

distinction. (On the other hand, there is no real distinction between form

and substance, only a mental or modal distinction: since substances are

nothing other than formed matters, formless substances are inconceivable,

although it is possible in certain instances to conceive of substanceless

forms.)

Even though there is a real distinction between them, content and

expression are relative terms ("first" and "second" articulation should also

be understood in an entirely relative fashion). Even though it is capable of

invariance, expression is just as much a variable as content. Content and

expression are two variables of a function of stratification. They not only

vary from one stratum to another, but intermingle, and within the same

stratum multiply and divide ad infinitum. Since every articulation is double,

there is not an articulation of content and an articulation of

expression—the articulation of content is double in its own right and constitutes

a relative expression within content; the articulation of expression

is also double and constitutes a relative content within expression. For this

reason, there exist intermediate states between content and expression,

expression and content: the levels, equilibriums, and exchanges through

which a stratified system passes. In short, we find forms and substances of

content that play the role of expression in relation to other forms and substances,

and conversely for expression. These new distinctions do not,

therefore, coincide with the distinction between forms and substances

within each articulation; instead, they show that each articulation is

already, or still, double. This can be seen on the organic stratum: proteins

of content have two forms, one of which (the infolded fiber) plays the role

of functional expression in relation to the other. The same goes for the

nucleic acids of expression: double articulations cause certain formal and

substantial elements to play the role of content in relation to others; not

only does the half of the chain that is reproduced become a content, but the

reconstituted chain itself becomes a content in relation to the "messenger."

There are double pincers everywhere on a stratum; everywhere and in all

directions there are double binds and lobsters, a multiplicity of double

articulations affecting both expression and content.

p. 69-70

There is a third problem. It is difficult to elucidate the system of the

strata without seeming to introduce a kind of cosmic or even spiritual evolution

from one to the other, as if they were arranged in stages and ascended

degrees of perfection. Nothing of the sort. The different figures of content

and expression are not stages. There is no biosphere or noosphere, but

everywhere the same Mechanosphere. If one begins by considering the

strata in themselves, it cannot be said that one is less organized than

another. This even applies to a stratum serving as a substratum: there is no

fixed order, and one stratum can serve directly as a substratum for another

without the intermediaries one would expect there to be from the standpoint

of stages and degrees (for example, microphysical sectors can serve as

an immediate substratum for organic phenomena). Or the apparent order

can be reversed, with cultural or technical phenomena providing a fertile

soil, a good soup, for the development of insects, bacteria, germs, or even

particles. The industrial age defined as the age of insects ... It's even worse

nowadays: you can't even tell in advance which stratum is going to communicate

with which other, or in what direction. Above all, there is no lesser,

no higher or lower, organization; the substratum is an integral part of the

stratum, is bound up with it as the milieu in which change occurs, and not

an increase in organization.31 Furthermore, if we consider the plane of consistency

we note that the most disparate of things and signs move upon it: a

semiotic fragment rubs shoulders with a chemical interaction, an electron

crashes into a language, a black hole captures a genetic message, a crystallization

produces a passion, the wasp and the orchid cross a letter... There

is no "like" here, we are not saying "like an electron," "like an interaction,"

etc. The plane of consistency is the abolition of all metaphor; all that consists

is Real. These are electrons in person, veritable black holes, actual

organites, authentic sign sequences. It's just that they have been uprooted

from their strata, destratified, decoded, deterritorialized, and that is what

makes their proximity and interpenetration in the plane of consistency

possible. A silent dance. The plane of consistency knows nothing of differences

in level, orders of magnitude, or distances. It knows nothing of the difference

between the artificial and the natural. It knows nothing of the

distinction between contents and expressions, or that between forms and

formed substances; these things exist only by means of and in relation to the

strata.

From Nature Alive

p. 205-206

Now as a first approximation the notion of life implies a certain absoluteness of self-enjoyment. This must mean a certain immediate individuality, which is a complex process of appropriating into a unity of existence the many data presented as relevant by the physical processes of nature. Life implies the absolute, individual self-enjoyment arising out of this process of appropriation. I have, in my recent writings, used the word 'prehension' to express this process of appropriation. Also I have termed each individual act of immediate self-enjoyment an 'occasion of experience'. I hold that these unities of existence, these occasions of experience, are the really real things which in their collective unity compose the evolving universe, ever plunging into the creative advance.

p. 206-207

This concept of self-enjoyment does not exhaust that aspect of process here termed 'life'. Process for its intelligibility involves the notion of a creative activity belonging to the very essence of each occasion. It is the process of eliciting into actual being factors in the universe which antecedently to that process exist only in the mode of unrealized potentialities. The process of self-creation is the transformation of the potential into the actual, and the fact of such transformation includes the immediacy of self-enjoyment.

p. 207-208

But even yet we have not exhausted the notion of creation which is essential to the understanding of nature. We must add yet another character to our description of life. This missing characteristic is 'aim'. By this term 'aim' is meant the exclusion of the boundless wealth of alternative potentiality, and the inclusion of that definite factor of novelty which constitutes the selected way of entertaining those data in that process of unification. The aim is at that complex of feeling which is the enjoyment of those data in that way. 'That way of enjoyment' is selected from the boundless wealth of alternatives. It has been aimed at for actualization in that process.

p. 229


In the first place, we must distinguish life from mentality. Mentality involves conceptual experience, and is only one variable ingredient in life. The sort of functioning here termed 'conceptual experience' is the entertainment of possibilities for ideal realization in abstraction from any sheer physical realization. The most obvious example of conceptual experience is the entertainment of alternatives. Life lies below this grade of mentality. Life is the enjoyment of emotion, derived from the past and aimed at the future. It is the enjoyment of emotion which was then, which is now, and which will be then. This vector character is of the essence of such entertainment.

p. 232

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.