Cruelty and Culture
A Treatise on Schizoanalysis and Political Anthropology

“Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.”

– Lenin,
What Is To Be Done?, “Dogmatism And ‘Freedom of Criticism’” (1902)

“On his standard of proof, natural science would never progress, for without the making of theories I am convinced there would be no observation.”

– Charles Darwin (1888, p. 315)

Introduction: Summary of the Contents of This Book

The curious reader can skip ahead to the main body of the book.

The main thesis of this book is that the State is at its basis nothing but a machine for violence and slavery, and that it uses moralities or moral discourses in order to produce and reproduce its power. This book may be said to be a work of anthropology or sociology as well as metapsychology; and although many will dismiss it as “merely philosophy,” the fact that it is indeed a work of philosophy is neither sufficient grounds nor necessary grounds for dismissing it. That being said, most of the thinkers we engage with are indeed philosophers. People who dismiss works of philosophy on the grounds that it is “merely philosophy” are of no concern to us.

Part I, “The State and Violence,” focuses on the main thesis of the book. Along the way, we make maps of power and discover both technologies of power and technologies of resistance. Part II, “An Introduction to Schizoanalysis,” introduces what we deem to be the three core concepts of schizoanalyis, as developed by Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus: desiring-machines, the body without organs, and the celibate machine. Along the way, we add much to the core concepts of schizoanalysis, since the interpretation of a work is always an addition to its object, since it is never the same as the object itself. Part III, “Schizoanalytic Explorations,” extends and revises the theory of schizoanalysis, taking it to new domains of theory. Along the way, we work on pure theory, theory which still awaits the discovery of its possible applications.

Part I, “The State and Violence,” is, in part, a schizoanalysis of power, meaning that it uses concepts which are only defined (and explicated in great detail) in Part II, “An Introduction to Schizoanalysis.” The definitions of schizoanalytic concepts are defined thus in a separate part because defining them in the midst of their application would render their application too cumbersome and digressive. For the same reasons, avoiding the cumbersome and the digressive, Part III, “Schizoanalytic Explorations,” contains bits and pieces of the groundwork for the metaphysics we employ in Part I and Part II. Conceivably, the three parts can be read in any order, according to the inclinations of the reader. We have placed “The State and Violence” as Part I because it is both the most accessible and the most political part. “The State and Violence” has the most immediate import for political activists and theorists. The news will always be bad news as long as there is a hierarchy founded and maintained by physical violence, and consequently the reasons for making a revolution will always be there. Thus, as long as there is a hierarchy founded and maintained by physical violence, “The State and Violence” will remain urgently relavent reading, with Part II and Part III serving as reference material for whatever remains obscure in Part I.

Part I, Section 1, “What Is a Cultural Construct?”, is a critique of Durkheim’s transcendentalist concept of “social facts,” and by this proxy also a critique of structuralism (the school of thought that includes the works of Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, and Lacan), which is based on Durkheim’s concept of “social facts.” We develop the concept of “cultural constructs” as a viable and operational alternative unit of analysis, and as the starting point of a post-structuralist analysis, that is to say, a sociological or anthropological analysis that rejects all forms of transcendentalism.

Part I, Section 2, “A Political Ontology of the State,” is a revision of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals that develops Nietzsche’s concept of the State, especially in relation to his concepts of morality, through critical engagements with Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years, Lenin’s The State and Revolution, and Marx’s Capital Vol. 1. Our main thesis is that the State, at bottom, is based on nothing but violence, and that as a social institution the State is nothing other than the social institution of slavery. Among our key findings are a reversal of the orthodox Marxist theory of infrastructure/superstructure, which places political economy at the base or infrastructure and the State at the superstructure; we argue that the real relation is the reverse, such that the State is the base or infrastructure, and political economy is the superstructure. Along the way, we also examine the role played by different types of morality in either its complicity with the State or its opposition to the State. We also rectify Nietzsche’s psychology by relying on Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalysis.

Part I, Section 3, “The Ontology of Abstract Labour and Capital,” is both a critique and an affirmation of Marx’s concepts of abstract labour (economic value) and capital, as presented in Capital Vol. 1. We critique a portion of Marx’s theory that is too idealist, namely Marx’s concept of an ideal “value form” objectively existing in the commodity beyond its material physical form. We affirm Marx’s concepts of economic value (abstract labour) and capital based on our materialst theory of cultural constructs and our materialist theory of the State’s primacy in relation to political economy.

Part I, Section 4, “Nietzschean Anarchism and Genealogical Materialism,” develops Nietzsche’s theory of genealogy, with some modifications in the interest of materialism, and also in relation to Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” which is both a striking affirmation of genealogy by another name, and an elucidation of the political implications of the concept of genealogy for the ultra-left.

Part I, Section 5, “Overhumanism,” cites the anarchist dimension of Nietzsche’s concept of the “overman,” which he explicitly writes of as able to come into being only with the abolition of the State, and also revises the concept of the “overman” in order to both make it more inclusive and develop its anarchist dimension, such that, as the political project of the abolition of the State, it intersects with all other liberation struggles, including women’s liberation, gay liberation, and trans liberation, as well as decolonization. In this regard, we examine further political implications of Nietzsche’s concepts of the active and the reactive, as well as Nietzsche’s critique of slave morality.

Part II, Section 1, “I, Robot Too; Or, the Desiring-Machines,” explicates Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of desiringprouction and desiring-machines.

Part II, Section 2, “The Zombie Within; Or, the Body Without Organs,” explicates Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the body without organs.

Part II, Section 3, “The String-Theoretical Topology of Affects; Or, the Celibate Machine,” explicates Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of the celibate machine and the nomadic subject. In a much later work, What Is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari develop an entirely new concept of affect which we completely ignore in the present work. Deleuze and Guattari themselves found it essential to change their jargon from book to book; following them in spirit rather than to the letter, we have defined “feelings,” “emotions,” and “affects” as meaning the same thing in the present work, but the interested reader who peruses What Is Philosophy? can easily adapt our observations and conclusions, mutatis mutandis, to their new jargon.

Part III, Section 1, “Realist Monism or Monist Realism,” presents what may appear to be our “overarching” ontology, but is in fact one ontology of ours alongside the others, with which it intersects. We modify the broad outlines of Spinoza’s ontology; we define substance as plasticity, thereby affirming an ontology of radical contingency, and understand forms as forces. We also briefly discuss the political implications of our ontology of plastic substance.

Part III, Section 2, “The Real and Reality,” is a critique of Lacan’s concept of the Real, by way of Zizek’s presentation of it in Looking Awry.

Part III, Section 3, “Cruelty and Memory,” presents our concept of cruelty in relation to memory, by way of Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of the body without organs and intensity. The text we focus the most on here is Deleuze and Guattari’s essay, “How Do You Make Yourself a Body without Organs?” We affirm that intensity or cruelty makes a sense-impression more memorable, and we critique Freud’s concept of “repression,” which states the opposite.

Part III, Section 4, “A Post-Structuralist Anti-Semiology,” explicates Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome in new ontological terms, and develops schizoanalysis as a mode of interpretation.

Part III, Section 5, “The General Economy of Raw Desire,” develops our concept of raw desire, desire without an object, in terms of Bataille’s concept of general economy, that is, the economy of excess.

Part III, Section 6, “The Critique of Mythology,” develops our concepts of Truth, myth, and mythology. In this section, we present our ontology of particulars and universals. Moreover, we appropriate Husserl’s phenomenology in order to develop a new semiology, that is, a new theory of the sign, one that is machinic as opposed to transcendental. We relate our conclusions to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of “group fantasy,” which we rename “group mythology,” as well as to the Nietzschean project of the transvaluation of all values. We develop new technologies of interpretation that complement those of Deleuze and Guattari, and those we have developed following Deleuze and Guattari. Deleuze and Guattari also employ a different concept of “concept” in What Is Philosophy? than the one we use here; we define concepts as abstract generalities, but for the later Deleuze and Guattari it means something else entirely.

To readers of our previous works and prospective readers of our previous works, we wish to say here that this present work is a radical rupture with our past works. Although at times we draw upon our previous study of Nietzsche, The Science of Self-Actualization, and our previous study of Freud, The Science of Love, the interpretations (and revisions) of Nietzsche and the refutations of Freud we present here are mostly new, both in relation to our own work and the works of others. Moreover, we mostly reject our earlier work Matter Over Mind, which recycles the stale combination of orthodox Marxism and Freud, and presents groundless criticisms of post-structuralism. Here, we affirm post-structuralism, we affirm Nietzsche, we affirm a heterodox Marxism, and we reject Freud, the crucial difference being that we also affirm anarchism (a Nietzschean anarchism, which could equally well be described as a Marxist anarchism). The justifications for our break with the past are explicitly stated in our critiques, albeit without reference to our previous works.

Prelude: Destroy the Centre

Part I: The State and Violence

Section 1: What Is a Cultural Construct?

Durkheim defines social facts as “ways of acting, thinking and feeling which possess the remarkable property of existing outside the consciousness of the individual” (1895/1982, p. 51). Thus social facts would be universals that exist outside of, that is, separate from, particulars. However, we maintain that social facts as Durkheim defines them do not exist. In other words, there are no ways of acting, thinking, and feeling which exist outside of the mind of an individual or the individuals constituting a group. Durkheim speaks of “consciousness,” as if the mind did not also have an unconscious portion; in order to include the unconscious in our discussions, we shall simply read “mind,” meaning the mind whether conscious or unconscious, whenever Durkheim misleadingly says merely “consciousness.” Furthermore, all ways of acting, thinking, and feeling are simultaneously individual and social, that is, individuality and sociality are always their two degrees of freedom; all ways of acting, thinking, and feeling are social, even if they belong to a society that does not yet exist, because they are all products of the process of cultural construction, which is really another way of describing motivation-construction. Therefore, we may call practices, intentions, thoughts, and affects “cultural constructs” in order to distinguish them from Durkheim’s erroneous concept of “social facts.” The ontology of cultural constructs exemplifies Hegel’s dictum that “the universal exists only in the particular, and the particular is itself a universal unto itself.” Ways of acting, thinking, and feeling exist only through the mind of the individual; they are, however, nonetheless always in a relationship with the world outside of the individual mind. Cultural constructs are ways of acting, thinking, and feeling, which always possess the readily observable property of existing only through individual minds.

Durkheim writes, “The system of signs that I employ to express my thoughts, the monetary system I use to pay my debts, the credit instruments I utilise in my commercial relationships, the practices I follow in my profession, etc., all function independently of the use I make of them” (1895/1982, p. 51). These may indeed all exist and function outside of my own individual mind, such as before my birth and after my death, but only because they also exist and function through the individual minds of other individuals who are not me, namely all those other individual minds that existed before my birth and all those other individual minds that will exist after my death. Moreover, unit-systems such as monetary unit-systems (for instance, those used in capitalism), credit instruments (for instance, those used in capitalism), and professioinal practices (for instance, those of the police officer, those of the corrections officer, and those of the banker) may be abolished in the event of a revolution, and they can be abolished precisely because they were nothing but cultural constructs to begin with. Each member of society can in turn repeat the above statement by Durkheim and in each case it would be relatively true for themselves as individuals, but if we consider all of the members of society as individuals constituting that society, and thus no longer consider them singly and in turn as mere individuals, but consider them instead as individuals constituting a social unitstructure or social machine, then it becomes indubitably evident that the unit-system of signs employed to express thoughts, the monetary unit-system used to pay debts, the credit instruments utilised in commercial relationships, the practices followed in various professions, etc., all function in complete dependence upon the multiplicity of given individual minds that together form the group that we call society. Ways of acting, thinking, and feeling may exist outside the mind of a single given individual, but only because they exist through the minds of many individuals who together constitute a group.

Durkheim writes that a “social fact” “is a product of shared existence, of actions and reactions called into play between the consciousnesses of individuals,” that it is a “special energy derived from its collective origins” (1895/1982, p. 56). From this passage, the non-material, ideal, and metaphysical nature of “social facts” is immediately apparent and transparent. A “social fact” is a “social product” in the sense that it is the product of a “collective origin,” that is to say, “of shared existence,” but this product is specifically a “special energy” which does not exist within individuals, but externally to them in a non-material, ideal space which exists only “between the minds of individuals” while simultaneously excluding those individual minds. Such a concept of a “special energy” is clearly not meant literally as a physical energy capable of being studied by physics, but is a metaphor drawn from physics, whether consciously or unconsciously, and such a metaphor is familiar to anyone even passingly familiar with the obscurantist metaphysics of popular “spirituality,” and indeed Durkheim’s idea of social facts is completely compatible with such obscurantist metaphysics, and it is probable that opportunistic mystics literate enough to read Durkheim would find Durkheim’s idea of “social facts” to be “scientific” support for their mystifying obscurantism. In any case, it is clear that not only is this “special energy” non-existent from the positivist perspective of the natural sciences, but more importantly it is completely non-existent from the existential perspective of the actual lived experience of being human. We do not reject the idea of “social facts” for merely being metaphysical (since materialism is after all a metaphysics), but rather, we reject it for being an idealist concept, that is, non-existent – for being an irrational, unobservable, and obscurantist idea that does not describe anything that actually exists. There is neither a necessary reason nor a sufficient reason for the existence of “social facts.” It is entirely possible to explain culture and society without ever resorting to Durkheim’s concept of “social facts.” The burden of proof lies upon the Durkheimian sociologists (and, by implication, the structuralists), since it is the hypothesis of “social facts” which apparently transcends our lived experience (and is therefore the more fantastic claim), whereas the hypothesis of cultural constructs is amply proved by our lived experience (and is therefore the more readily observable claim).

Durkheim makes no mention of it, but his concept of “social facts” is roughly equivalent to Hegel’s idea of “objective spirit,” or obversely, the concept of “objective spirit” that Hegel develops (in The Phenomenology of Spirit) ends up being a description of an ideal entity that functions roughly in the same manner as what Durkheim describes as a “social fact.” We note the similarity of the Durkheimian “social fact” and the Hegelian “objective spirit” because both refer to the same hypothetical ideal entity that shares the same essential property of being autonomous “ways of thinking, feeling, and acting” that exist wholly independently of all individual minds, which is why we describe “social facts” as “ideal spirits.” Obversely, Zizek correctly identifies Hegel’s concept of “objective spirit” as “the universal symbolic system as a non-psychological “objective social fact”” existing independently of and opposed “to individual subjects and their interaction” (in the Hegelian jargon, individual minds or individual subjects are “subjective spirits”) (2012, p. 98). But we deny that “universal” symbolic unit-systems are non-psychological “objective social facts.” We identify “universal” symbolic unit-systems, what elsewhere Zizek and other Lacanians also describe as “the symbolic order,” as imaginarysymbolic unit-systems or imaginary-symbolic orders which are wholly psychological or metapsychological subjective cultural constructs, and moreover, we identify them as texts fabricated upon the surface of what Deleuze and Guattari describe as “bodies without organs” (such than a given imaginary-symbolic order is in reality a text recorded upon the surface of a body without organs). A text recorded on the surface of a body without organs is precisely a wholly psychological or metapsychological subjective cultural construct that functions as a “universal” imaginary-symbolic order.

Zizek writes that Hegel’s concept of “absolute spirit” refers to neither a “simple reduction of OS [objective spirit] to subjective spirit (SS),” nor an “even more In-itself absolute entity that encompasses both SS [subjective spirit] and OS [objective spirit]” (2012, p. 98), but rather, Hegel’s concept of “absolute spirit” refers to “the gap that separates OS [objective spirit] from SS [subjective spirit] within SS [subjective spirit],” which makes it “so that OS [objective spirit] has to appear (be experienced) as such, as an objective “reified” entity, by SS [subjective spirit] itself (and in the inverted recognition that, without the subjective reference to an Initself of the OS [objective spirit], subjectivity itself disintegrates, collapses into psychotic autism)” (2012, p. 99). However, because in reality there is no such “objective spirit,” it necessarily follows that there is no gap between a “subjective spirit” and the “objective spirit,” since the “objective spirit” does not exist to begin with. In other words, there is no “absolute spirit.” The “objectivity” of the socalled “objective spirit” is nothing but an illusion. Or, to phrase it another way, the apparent “objectivity” of the “social fact” is nothing but an illusion. The “objective spirit” of laws and customs is in reality nothing but the purely subjective phenomenon of cultural constructs, and the only possible “gap” between an individual mind and the cultural constructs existing within it is the gap of understanding which makes cultural constructs appear as reified nonpsychological “objective” social facts, and this gap of understanding can also be described as a form of alienation, or more precisely selfalienation or self-estrangement, for this gap of understanding is a lack of understanding of a part of one’s self just as much as it is a lack of understanding of the essence of society and a lack of understanding of the essence of laws and customs. The part of one’s self in question which is alienated in this form of alienation is one’s own faculty of freedom, that is to say, the full extent of one’s own freedom, the part of one’s self that has the capacity to be free, since the cultural constructs which appear as “objective” social facts, insofar as they do appear “objective” to the subject, suppress one’s own faculty of freedom insofar as they suppress one’s ability to resist the internalized coercion of laws and customs (as well as one’s ability to resist the external coercion of laws and customs through their representatives and intermediaries, viz. parents, teachers, police, military, even one’s own siblings or peers, etc.), that is to say, insofar as they suppress one’s ability to disobey laws and customs in order to follow the dictates of one’s own free will (one’s will independent of laws and customs; that is to say, one’s will independent of all duties or categorical imperatives). One only ever obeys a duty out of an unfree will, out of the coercion exerted by that duty, whether that coercion is consciously felt or whether it is an unconscious instinct.

Therefore, “without the subjective reference to an “In-itself” of the objective spirit,” subjectivity does indeed disintegrate and collapse into “psychotic autism,” but this “psychotic autism” is nothing but the discovery of one’s own freedom, that is to say, it is the negation of self-alienation, it is self-reconciliation and selfactualization. Without the subjective reference to an “In-itself” of the “objective spirit,” subjectivity reconciles itself with its own freedom and ceases to be an alienated and unfree subject. It is evident that by describing the subjectivity of freedom, subjectivity “without the subjective reference to an “In-itself” of the objective spirit,” as “psychotic autism,” Zizek – following Lacan, who is himself following Freud, who is himself following other bourgeois thinkers – pathologizes and criminalizes, excludes as diseased, insane, and criminal, the truly free subject. We agree with Deleuze and Guattari’s critiques of psychoanalysis in their book Anti-Oedipus, especially, for instance, when they criticize psychonalysis for reducing practically everything to “the Father” and then upholding as “good” the internalized authority of this “Father,” which in Lacanese is “the Other” (the “Other” with a capital “O”) or “the big Other,” which, according to Lacan and Zizek, is the spectre or phantasm that upholds “the universal symbolic system as a nonpsychological “objective” social fact,” and which, according to Zizek’s study of Hegel, can be described in Hegelese as the “absolute spirit” (but which, as we have demonstrated, is in reality nothing more than the alienation of the subject from its own freedom, that is to say, it is nothing more than the internalized suppression of the subject’s own freedom within the subject itself); and we wholeheartedly agree when Deleuze and Guattari affirm as the true good the so-called “psychotic autism” or “schizophrenia” that results for the self once it emancipates itself from the simultaneously psychological and social tyranny of the so-called “big Other,” since both the so-called “big Other” and the so-called “objective social facts” it upholds are in reality nothing but cultural constructs, and since the subject can only be restored to its own capacity for freedom once it recognizes the so-called “big Other” and the so-called “objective social facts” as nothing but mere cultural constructs. Indeed, within the terminology of psychoanalysis, the subject’s real freedom cannot be described as anything other than “psychotic autism,” “psychosis,” “dementia praecox,” or “schizophrenia.” (The eliminative materialism of cognitive-behavioural, neurological, and pharmacological psychiatry is even worse, since it denies the existence of the mind altogether, and since it makes anyone who disagrees with it in the slightest out to be suffering from one “mental illness” or another, for which there is no cure, but conveniently enough for the pharmaceutical companies and the big capitalists who ultimately own them, only a life-long treatment which requires the patient to purchase pills from those aforementioned pharmaceutical companies for the rest of their life).

Durkheim himself unwittingly and unknowingly refutes his own idea of social facts when he attempts to furnish examples of them, apparently oblivious to both the implications of his own words and the actual functioning in the real world of the institutions and other things he describes. For instance, Durkheim writes, “When I perform my duties as a brother, a husband, or a citizen and carry out the commitments I have entered into, I fulfil obligations which are defined in law and custom and which are external to myself and my actions. Even when they conform to my own sentiments and when I feel their reality within me, that reality does not cease to be objective, for it is not I who have prescribed these duties; I have received them through education” (1895/1982, p. 50). Although it may not be “I who have prescribed these duties,” nevertheless “I have received them through education.” In other words, these duties must be put into my own individual mind, presumably by other individual minds, before I can obey them, which means that they have no existence except inside individual minds. Cultural constructs are objectively subjective, including when they are intersubjective. Moreover, it may not be “I who have prescribed these duties,” but it is self-evident that some individual or group of individuals has, at some point in the past, prescribed these duties, meaning that laws and customs are neither products of nature nor of a divinity, but are human-made creations and are necessarily the fabrication of either a single individual or a group of individuals. Therefore, neither in their origin nor in their operation do laws and customs exist totally outside individual minds, but in their origin and their operation laws and customs only exist inside individual minds. It is the very existence of laws and customs inside individual minds that is objective: the objective truth of laws and customs is that they only exist in and through the subjectivities of individuals.

If every human being on Earth were simultaneously struck with amnesia, all existing laws and customs would cease to exist. Having no memory of any prior law or custom, no one would follow them, since they would be entirely ignorant that any such law or custom had ever existed, nor would they suffer any coercion to follow them, since all prior agents of coercion would likewise have no memory of any prior law or custom let alone that it was their job to enforce them. It makes no difference that some prior laws and customs were written down, for they would need to be re-discovered for anyone to know that they once existed at all, and having absolutely no memory, it is doubtful whether anyone would choose to follow them once again; in other words, if they were rediscovered, these documents of prior laws and customs would be come to known first and foremost as historical cultural artefacts, assuming that they would not simply be objects of pure speculation, and in any case they would not exist as laws and customs in the post-amnesia present. It is clear then that the existence of laws and customs as existing, functioning laws and customs is wholly dependent on individual minds.

Durkheim describes in greater detail the process of education, and our conclusions above on the incompatibility of the real process of education and the existence of “social facts” are completely re-affirmed by Durkheim’s more detailed description of the process of education. Therefore, the following paragraph is worth quoting in full:

“It is sufficient to observe how children are brought up. If one views the facts as they are and indeed as they have always been, it is patently obvious that all education consists of a continual effort to impose upon the child ways of seeing, thinking and acting which he himself would not have arrived at spontaneously. From his earliest years we oblige him to eat, drink and sleep at regular hours, and to observe cleanliness, calm and obedience; later we force him to learn how to be mindful of others, to respect customs and conventions, and to work, etc. If this constraint in time ceases to be felt it is because it gradually gives rise to habits, to inner tendencies which render it superfluous; but they supplant the constraint only because they are derived from it. It is true that, in Spencer’s view, a rational education should shun such means and allow the child complete freedom to do what he will. Yet as this educational theory has never been put into practice among any known people, it can only be the personal expression of a desideratum and not a fact which can be established in contradiction to the other facts given above. What renders these latter facts particularly illuminating is that education sets out precisely with the object of creating a social being. Thus there can be seen, as in an abbreviated form, how the social being has been fashioned historically. The pressure to which the child is subjected unremittingly is the same pressure of the social environment which seeks to shape him in its own image, and in which parents and teachers are only the representatives and intermediaries.” (1895/1982, pp. 53–54)

That parents and teachers are representatives and intermediaries of the “social environment” means precisely that the “social environment,” that is to say, laws and customs, can only exist in and through individual minds, and has no existence apart from them. The idea of “a rational education” in which the child is allowed “complete freedom to do what he will” is irrelevant to Durkheim’s idea of “social facts.” In either case, the child would internalize laws and customs through their representatives and intermediaries, parents and teachers. What is in question is not the best style of education for the internalization of laws and customs, but whether laws and customs have any existence independent of individual minds. We agree with Durkheim that “education sets out precisely with the object of creating a social being” and that a “social being” is a human being who has internalized the laws and customs of their society by means of education. By this definition, for example, feral children, children abandoned in the wilderness at an early age who have grown up without contact with other human beings, that is to say “children raised by wolves” as the popular idiom goes, such as Victor of Aveyron, are not “social beings” (at least in the technical sense we have delineated), although they may become “social beings” via education once they have made contact with members of a given society. Furthermore, cases such as those of Victor of Aveyron lend support to our argument for the nonexistence of “social facts,” since they demonstrate that a human being completely isolated from other human beings from infancy feels absolutely no pressure to obey any laws or customs of any human society whatsoever, since they are completely ignorant of absolutely all human societies, as evinced by the fact that when such feral children are initially discovered they behave without any regard for established laws and customs, guided instead only by their primitive instincts, their natural faculty of empathy for others, and the behaviours they learned from non-human animals in the wilderness. We agree with Durkheim that education is the means by which laws and customs are internalized, and that the result of this internalization is that culturally relative laws and customs are thought and felt by the socialized being to be “objective social facts” with a wholly objective existence, but we deny that laws and customs have any real objective existence, that is to say, we maintain that laws and customs remain culturally relative ideas which exist only in the minds of individuals even when those individuals have been so thoroughly culturally indoctrinated that they believe and feel on an instinctual, intuitive level that the laws and customs of their society are objective.

In order to explain the mechanism of cultural indoctrination, socialization, or education, we cannot rely on Durkheim, since the factor of desire or motivation is wholly absent in Durkheim’s analysis. If we wish to account for the factor of desire, then we cannot resort to explanations that rely on the concept of habit. One may indeed obey laws and customs out of habit, in which case one does not feel coerced to obey them. However, the cases in which the feeling of coercion does occur cannot be accounted for by the concept of habit. Moreover, we are concerned with a very specific type of cultural indoctrination (or socialization, or education), one in which externally imposed constraints become internalized as internally imposed constraints, constraints imposed by the “moral conscience” of an individual mind. First of all, let us note that this “moral conscience” is in fact merely a “bad conscience,” since it feels itself to be “bad,” or what amounts to the same thing, it feels itself to be coerced, and it only obeys the given laws and customs on that basis. This bad conscience or feeling of coercion is a zone of intensity upon a specific type of body without organs, a virtual body of slavery, which has inscribed upon its surface the imaginarysymbolic order or unit-system of laws and customs which is associated with its zones of intensity (including the bad conscience), and which the productive subject thereby feels its inclined to obey. An authority figure (for example, a parent), forges a virtual body of slavery for the child through a unit-system of cruelty, that is, a unitsystem of intensity, a process which is accompanied by the moral discourse that becomes internalized as an imaginary-symbolic order that is felt to be “objective” and “transcendental.” Thus, what starts out as a fear of punishment by authority figures external to one’s own individual mind becomes internalized as a fear of becoming immoral (the fear of becoming a criminal in one’s own essence, i.e. the fear of becoming a “sinner”), which nonetheless still bears the traces of the fear of punishment by external authority figures insofar as the fear of becoming a sinner is always accompanied by the idea of being punished by an objective moral-spiritual order (for example, “karma,” “God,” “cosmic energy,” or “Hell”). We shall later revise this model and describe it in greater detail, but for our present purposes this gloss suffices. In any case, the truth of this process of moral education is that it is totally arbitrary and culturally relative, meaning that it is wholly dependent upon the society which one happens to be thrown into by one’s birth, and also upon the parents and teachers who happen to instill one with a fear of external punishments (and its necessary correlate, a desire for external rewards, which is likewise internalized to the point of becoming instinct). Because the process of moral education is always completely arbitrary and culturally relative, any unit-system of morals is itself a completely arbitrary, culturally relative, and wholly subjective unit-system of ideas. There are no laws and customs that we necessarily have to obey because there are no laws and customs which have any objective existence or truth whatsoever. All laws and customs are wholly arbitrary, culturally relative, and subjective.

Therefore, we must revise our concept of the cultural construct, or at least we must revise what exactly we mean by “cultural construction” when we say that cultural constructs are established and operate by way of a mutual cultural construction among the individual members of a given group. The phrase “cultural construction” might suggest to some the image of an art project freely undertaken by a group by uncoerced mutual agreement. However, the real process of cultural construction, as we use the term, is a material process, and examples of it include all those processes of violence and coercion, for example all those processes of violence and coercion essential to the machinic functioning of the State. We accept the Marxist-Leninist definition of the State, that the State is merely an instrument for the oppression of one class by another, but we deny that the State can ever really benefit the proletariat, because the State invariably always oppresses the proletariat, coerces the proletariat to obey it by means of violence or the threat of violence, and this violent coercion of the proletariat by the State is essential to the machinic functioning of the State. That is to say, the State is by definition a machine for the violent oppression and coercion of the subjugated class by the ruling class, and the proletariat is always by definition the subjugated class (for example, as opposed to the ruling class of party bureaucrats in the socialist state, or, roughly speaking, as opposed to the ruling class of capitalists in the capitalist state). We shall examine the MarxistLeninist theory of the State in closer detail later on.

In his essay The Social Contract, Rousseau writes, “If one is compelled to obey by force, there is no need to obey from duty; and if one is no longer forced to obey, obligation is at an end” (2002, p. 158). Rousseau argues in The Social Contract that might does not constitute right, that is to say, violence is not justice, power is not justice. If violence founds and maintains laws and customs, then obedience to laws and customs is ultimately motivated by nothing other than fear of punishment, fear of pain or death. We maintain, along with Rousseau that “pity is the foundation of virtue,” that pity is basis for justice, albeit we add the caveat that that pity must have its basis in truth, that is, in reality. It is on this basis that we agree with Rousseau that laws and customs founded and maintained by violence are fundamentally unjust and illegitimate. But we differ from Rousseau in that we deny that a State can ever be legitimate or just, since a State as such is merely a machine of violence, meaning that the State is fundamentally illegitimate and unjust. In other words, the State is never founded upon a social contract, since a true social contract, a social contract that is freely agreed to, can never be founded on violence.

Durkheim writes that “Undoubtedly when I conform to them [laws and customs] of my own free will, this coercion is not felt or felt hardly at all, since it is unnecessary,” but “If purely moral rules are at stake, the public conscience restricts any act which infringes them by the surveillance it exercises over the conduct of citizens and by the special punishments it has at its disposal” (1895/1982, p. 51). In other words, when in the real world individuals are either ignorant of a given law or custom or they deliberately defy a given law or custom, the State punishes them in one way or another, and in any case the threat of punishment for failing to obey laws and customs was there in the State from the beginning, such that obedience to laws and customs was coerced from the very beginning. Only those who desire their own repression obey laws and customs out of their “own free will,” and metapsychology denies that this will is truly free, since it is both alienated from its own true freedom (the ability to disobey) and since it is at bottom nothing but the instinctualized fear of punishment. However, the surveillance and special punishments of the “public conscience,” which means here nothing but the State apparatus, presumably depends upon the individual minds who are its agents or constituents, for instance the police and the military, meaning that the “public conscience” is itself made up of individual minds. If absolutely all members of a given society suddenly believed that all their prior laws and customs are unjust and that therefore they should no longer obey them, then those prior laws and customs cease to exist as laws and customs for them; such would be a bloodless revolution. Of course, in reality, revolutionaries have to fight against the counterrevolutionary constituents of the State who still believe in and thus enforce the laws and customs of the State. On the other hand, if I think that the laws and customs of a given society are unjust but I nonetheless obey them because I am coerced to obey them by the threat of violence, I have those laws and customs in mind at least insofar as I am coerced to obey them, regardless of the fact that I judge them to be unjust; moreover, in the case of coercion, there are at least two groups (or perhaps in certain cases they form one and the same group), that both has these laws and customs in their minds and judges them to be just, however cynically they may define justice (for example, they might believe that justice is constituted solely by violence), namely the group (or perhaps the single individual) that invents the laws and customs and the group that coerces others into obeying these laws and customs. Disobeying laws and customs out of ignorance of their existence for others merely demonstrates that in the unconsciously disobedient individual’s mind the given laws and customs do not exist as laws and customs. Disobeying laws and customs deliberately demonstrates that for the consciously disobedient individual’s mind the given laws and customs also do not exist as laws and customs, but because the consciously disobedient individual has judged the given laws and customs to be illegitimate in one sense or another. In any case, laws and customs never exist completely independent of individual minds, but they objectively only exist inside individual minds, whether they are obeyed out of rational belief in their justice, or obeyed out of a desire for one’s own repression, or obeyed out of coercion, or disobeyed.

Durkheim writes, “Even when in fact I can struggle free from these rules and successfully break them, it is never without being forced to fight against them” (1895/1982, p. 51). However, whenever I attempt to break free from the rules, it is never the rules in themselves that I am forced to fight, which would be absurd, since in reality the rules are no more than thoughts in the minds of others, despite Durkheim’s assertions to the contrary that they have some sort of ideal objective existence apart from all minds. Whenever I attempt to break free from the rules, it is always the enforcers of the rules that I am forced to fight against, that is to say, I am forced to fight against other human beings endued with mind who believe, sincerely or cynically, but always wrongly, that the rules are just (though they are ultimately based on violence and nothing but violence) and that it is justified to enforce them with violence. Durkheim writes, “Even if in the end they [the rules] are overcome, they make their constraining power sufficiently felt in the resistance that they afford” (1895/1982, pp. 51–52). However, assuming that the rules have been overcome by way of overthrowing the authorities that enforce them, then the only ways that the rules can continue to exert a contraining power on the victorious rebel is either by way of the old enforcers of the rules who continue to exist as an underground counter-revolutionary group, or by way of the ostensibly troubled psyche of the victorious rebel, within which in this latter case one part of her mind continues to believe in the justice of the rules that the other part of her mind believes is unjust; in either case, the rules continue to exist only within the mind(s) of either a group of individuals or a single individual, never completely independently of all minds.

Durkheim reserves the term “social” to describe ostensible phenomena of the kind he calls “social facts,” namely ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that exist independently of all individuals. However, as we have demonstrated, the kind of “social facts” Durkheim describes simply do not exist, meaning that there is nothing “social” in the sense that Durkheim means it. To reiterate, we have used the term “cultural constructs” to designate those ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that exist wholly dependently upon minds, whether of a single individual or a group of individuals. We can reject the term “social facts,” since it is a piece of jargon, especially in the interest of more accurate jargon, namely the term “cultural constructs.” The term “social,” however, is in common usage and is to an extent unavoidable when dealing with groups, therefore it must be redefined rather rejected in toto. According to our findings, the term “social” should basically be used strictly to refer to whatever is dependent upon the mind, such that the “psychological” or “metapsychological” and the “social” are really the same. In other words, each society has a set of individual minds as its substratum. To use Durkheim’s phraseology, whether one means by “society” “either political society in its entirety or one of the partial groups that it includes – religious denominations, political and literary schools, occupational corporations, etc.” (1895/1982, p. 52), in each case the society in question is constituted ultimately by a set of individual minds who are in mutual cultural construction with each other, whether formally or informally, consciously or unconsciously, freely or coercively, and thereby form a group of individuals with no ideal spirit extraneous to its constituent individuals. Bearing in mind our new concept of the social, which is opposed to Durkheim’s concept of the social, we can also describe cultural constructs as “social constructs.”

We are not objecting to any description of constraint, we are objecting to the idea that a group is defined by some ideal spirit extraneous to its constituent individuals; when there is constraint in a society, it is enforced either by certain individuals in that group upon other individuals in that group, or it is enforced by the “conscience” of a given individual’s psyche, whether rightly or wrongly (but we must add that the conscience that affirms participation in the State is always wrong). Cultural constructs consist of either practices and intentions, memories, strategies, predictions, or affects, that is to say, cultural constructs are psychical phenomena that have no existence save in and through the set of individual minds that constitute the group to which they belong. We include practices as psychical phenomena since the practices of human beings are inseperable from their psychological components, namely the thoughts and feelings which make them possible. However, it is evident from our above analyses, especially from our analysis of Durkheim’s theory of moral education, that the given unit-system of constraints that comprise the laws and customs of the State are inherently coercive (in other words, coercion is the essential moment of the laws and customs of the State) because they are ultimately based on and maintained by coercion through violent means, that is to say, they are ultimately based on an external unit-system of concrete punishments, and as our analyses suggest, the effective existence of the laws and customs of the State, that is to say, the existence of the laws and customs of the State in effect through the actions of individuals that comprise the constituents of the State, wholly depends upon the continuation of an external system of concrete violent punshiments maintained and executed by individuals (in and through whom this system of violent punishments exists; we mean specifically all those individuals that maintain and operate the criminal justice system and the military, including but not limited to the police, judges, lawyers, law-makers, prison-guards, corrections officers, wardens, soldiers, officers, generals, mercenaries, and the veritable army of accountants and bureaucrats that these institutions require). Because all the laws and customs of the State are wholly arbitrary and culturally relative, lacking in any purely objective existence whatsoever, founded ultimately upon violence and not upon any rationally grounded morality or freely chosen social contract, all the laws and customs of the State are fundamentally and inherently illegitimate, meaning that all states are fundamentally and inherently illegitimate.

Durkheim cites the emotions of a crowd, as in a public gathering, as examples of his “social facts,” and he calls such phenomena “social currents” (1895/1982, pp. 52–53). However, there is no need to posit a ideal spirit extraneous to the individuals in a crowd in order to explain the emotions of the crowd. Durkheim’s choice of terminology, “social currents,” perhaps the metaphor of electric currents, was no doubt the idiom of his time and place for crowd emotions. But even using the analogy of electrical currents, the precise analogy would be of emotions jumping from individual to individual just like electricity, meaning that there is no need to introduce here a reservoir of emotional currents extraneous to the individual bodies in which they circulate. The idiom of my time and place would be that the “energy” of the crowd is “infectious” or “contagious,” which is similar enough to the idea of emotional “currents” circulating in the crowd. Even if we extend the metaphor and describe a crowd emotion as a virus, we must note that a virus is a parasitic psuedo-organism which depends wholly upon its host body for its existence, but we need not play the game of establishing resemblances when we can simply describe things as they are. It is easy enough to understand the mechanism whereby one person can feel the exact same emotion as that experienced by another person, this mechanism is often called “empathy” or “sympathy” and it is a common enough occurrence at the very least in our face to face interactions with others, if not for strangers whom we never see. It is by means of our natural empathy for others in our close proximity, then, that emotions can circulate in a crowd as if it were an electrical current or a contagious virus. In any case, the emotions of a crowd can simply be called crowd emotions, or just as simply, perhaps group emotions, group feelings, or group sentiments, or crowd feelings, or crowd sentiments. The point being that crowd sentiments are cultural constructs, not social facts. In a crowd, great waves of emotion may indeed “come to each one of us from outside and can sweep us along in spite of ourselves,” as Durkheim writes (1895/1982, p. 53), but what Durkheim fails to recognize is that in such a case these great waves of emotion come to us from other individuals outside ourselves, not any extraneous ideal spirit.

Durkheim argues that crowd sentiments are inherently coercive upon every individual in the crowd and that all individuals in the crowd either succumb to this coercion and thus feel the crowd emotion in themselves or at the very least feel the alleged pressure of the coercive crowd sentiment, the more so the more they rebel against it (1895/1982, p. 53). However, when Durkheim introduces the notion of coercion into that of crowd emotions, he is no longer talking about currents generated by empathy; there are indeed coercive crowd emotions, but these coercive crowd emotions depend entirely upon an instinctualized desire for one’s own repression; that is to say, a coercive crowd emotion is ultimately based in the coercion of the State. As the common idiom goes, it is indeed possible for an individual to be “alone in a crowd.” That is to say, it possible for a given individual to be located physically in a crowd but spontaneously not feel the emotions the rest of the crowd feels, without feeling even the slightest pull from a crowd sentiment. The feeling of being “alone in a crowd,” if the popularity of the idiom is any indication, is rather common, perhaps more so for certain individuals as opposed to others, but in any case it is probable that if not everyone, then almost everyone, has felt or will feel “alone in a crowd” at some point in their life. The importance of the “alone in a crowd” phenomenon for our inquiry is that it reveals that belonging to a crowd requires more than mere physical proximity to the crowd. Belonging to a crowd requires a psychological proximity. A crowd, as in a public gathering, is a group, and like any other group the members of a crowd form a crowd as such via a mutual cultural construction (which exists wholly in the individual minds of group members), whether formal or informal, conscious or unconscious. Moreover, membership in a crowd, like membership in any other group, depends upon other cultural constructs, that is to say, upon ways of thinking, feelings, and acting particular to the group, as prerequisites, which constitute the bond between group members (and which exist wholly in the individual minds of group members); it is on the basis of these prerequisite ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that a crowd may spontaneously think, feel, or act in the same way in response to a given stimulus. To be sure, group emotions are real in that they are really felt as emotions, but they are nonetheless constructed, for even reality itself must be always be constructed in order to exist. The lone individual who is “alone in a crowd” may have physical proximity to a given crowd, but they lack the prerequisite cultural constructs necessary to be a true member of the crowd, hence why they do no react to stimuli in the same manner as the members of the crowd. Moreover, insofar as group emotions are dependent upon the prerequisite laws and customs of the State, they are founded upon violence, that is to say, they are at bottom the fear of punishment.

We agree with Durkheim that “certain currents of opinion, whose intensity varies according to the time and country in which they occur, impel us, for example, towards marriage or suicide, towards higher or lower birth-rates, etc” (1895/1982, p. 55), but such an observation is by no means limited to Durkheim, and we find similar statements made by practically everyone who has had contact with cultures other than their own, however accurate or inaccurate the particulars of their observations may be. Plato’s Republic, for example, has as its primary concern the effects that opinions have on the functioning of a society, with the aim of establishing a perfect society in which only the correct opinions, meaning more precisely only truths as opposed to mere opinions, and myths serving a beneficent social purpose, circulate. The truth of Plato’s observations and conclusions are open to doubt, but the fact that he recognized that “certain currents of opinion” cause us to behave in certain ways is amply evident. Moreover, such “currents of opinion” are plainly cultural constructs, not social facts. Currents of opinion do not exist in or as an ideal spirit extraneous to the individuals composing a group. Currents of opinon only exist in the minds of the individuals composing a group.

We disagree with Durkheim in that we maintain that statistics does not afford us a means of isolating these currents of opinion. Currents of opinion are not accurately represented by, for example, rates of birth, death, and suicide. Durkheim writes, “Since each one of these statistics includes without distinction all individual cases, the individual circumstances which may have played some part in producing the phenomenon cancel each other out and consequently do not contribute to determining the nature of the phenomenon. What it expresses is a certain state of the collective mind” (1895/1982, p. 55). However, simply because statistics include “without distinction all individual cases,” it does not necessarily follow from this that “individual circumstance which may have played some part in producing the phenomenon cancel each other out and consequently do not contribute to determining the nature of the phenomenon.” The fact that statistics include “without distinction all individual cases” is an effect of the nature of statistics, not the cause of the statistics themselves, for the cause of these statistics, in the sense of that which ultimately makes the collection of these statistics possible, is without a doubt the occurrence of the individual cases to begin with. The collection of statistics abstracts from these individual cases, in effect obscuring individual circumstances. Therefore, the fact that individual circumstances apparently “cancel each other out” in statistics is an artifice, or illusion, produced by the statistics themselves, that is to say, by the activity of collecting statistics itself. As Mark Twain writes, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Statistics lie insofar as they “cancel out,” obscure, hide, or disguise, the individual circumstances of the individual cases that they purport to describe. The same conlcusion is also expressed by the popular aphorism of Joseph Stalin, “The death of one person is a tragedy, but the death of millions is a statistic.” The death of one person is a tragedy insofar as we know them as a person, that is to say, insofar as we know the individual circumstances of their individual case, but the death of millions is a statistic precisely because we do not know them as persons, but as an abstract statistic which “cancels out” their individual circumstances and thereby “cancels out” their very personhood, their very humanity. Actual events such as birth, death, and suicide are undergone by real human beings, not by abstract statistics, meaning that they only make sense in the context of the individual circumstances of the real human beings who undergo them. Deaths and suicides, and even births, are most often tragedies, but in certain circumstances may even be comedies, but in each and every case, however, they are always dramatic in the fullest sense, meaning that first and foremost they are individual cases that happen to individual human beings, always with individual circumstances contributing to determining them. These individual circumstances often include not only currents of opinion, or currents of ways of thinking, acting, and feeling, that is, currents of cultural constructs, in addition to ways of thinking, acting, and feeling which are particular to the individual, but also the individual’s material conditions, that is to say, their economic circumstances, which is in any case determined in the last instance by the given society’s economic unit-system, and which in the State is dependent upon the unit-system of violence defining the State. We maintain that the psychical phenomena of a given individual always exist in a dialectical relationship to that individual’s economic circumstances, such that sometimes an individual’s economic circumstances play the dominant role in their life and at other times their psychical phenomena play the dominant role in their life, depending on the circumstances. Statistics can tell us the frequency of an event measurable by them, such as the rates of birth, death, and suicide in a given society, but they can never reveal the processes of individual minds. Moreover, a “collective mind” in Durkheim’s sense, an ideal spirit extraneous to the individuals which concretely form a collective, simply does not exist. The phrase “collective mind” can be used, at best, as a metaphor to describe cultural constructs, but in the interest of accuracy it is best if it were simply abandoned. Durkheim’s sociological method, withs its undue emphasis on statistics at the conscious expense of individual circumstances, can only, in effect, reduce human tragedies to lifeless abstractions, thereby obfuscating, hiding, and disguising them, all the more so when the Durkheimian sociologist produces fictions about ideal spirits such as “social facts” and “the collective mind.” Surveys, which are a kind of statistics, are likewise unreliable because they are lifeless abstractions which do not take into account the lived experiences and individual circumstances of individuals in a given group or society. The only accurate method for sociology, insofar as sociology is indeed the study of society, the only sociological method which enables the sociologist to truly understand phenomena such as births, deaths, and suicides existentially, that is to say, as these phenomena occur in the lived experiences of individuals, and holistically, that is to say, multi-dimensionally, considering all aspects of such phenomena, including individual circumstances, cultural constructs, and material conditions, is ethnography, which includes as its essential components interviews with the actual individuals in the given society one is studying and the observations of the sociologist who is actively participating in the given society they are studying (this latter practice is often called “participant observation”). There can be no true sociology, no true study of society, without ethnography. Insofar as sociology must depend primarily on the existential and holistic method of ethnography in order to truly study society, here there is no difference between sociology and anthropology, either practically or theoretically.

The fact that social phenomena only exist through individuals is one of their essential elements, not an extraneous element. Without individuals, there are no social phenomena. Durkheim anticipates structuralism when he writes, “As regards their [social phenomena’s] private manifestations [“private manifestations” presumably meaning the occurrence of social phenomena through the individual], these do indeed having something social about them, since in part they reproduce the collective model” (1895/1982, p. 55), the “collective model” here meaning roughly the same thing as the concept of “structure” developed by Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, and their followers, in that they define “structure” as a “social fact” as Durkheim defines it, an ideal spirit extraneous to all individual subjects. Durkheim himself can be credited as the true originator of the structuralist concept of “structure,” since he does indeed write that there are “social facts” which are “physiological,” “anatomical,” or “morphological” in their essence, by which he means that they form the “substratum of collective life” (1895/1982, pp. 57–58). We agree with Bourdieu’s critique, presented in Outline of a Theory of Practice, that the structuralist concept of “structure” is a lifeless “collective model” that is stripped of the actual lived experience of individuals. Bourdieu’s focus, as the title indicates, is on the existential practices of individuals in a given society, as well as on the intellectual strategizing performed by individuals in relation to their existential practices. There are no “private manifestations” of “structures” or “collective models” because there are no such “structures” or “collective models.” We may more accurately use the term “individual aspect,” as in “individual aspect of a cultural construct,” rather than “private manifestation” to describe the occurrence of social phenomena or cultural constructs through the individual. The individual aspect of a cultural construct is its dimension or degree of freedom of individuality, that is, of occuring in and through the individual; obversely, cultural construction is always an aspect, dimension, or degree of freedom of an individual.

Durkheim writes that each “private manifestation,” which we would describe more accurately as each “individual aspect,” “depends also upon the psychical and organic constitution of the individual, and on the particular circumstances in which he is placed” (1895/1982, pp. 55–56). But Durkheim claims that for this reason individual aspects “are not phenomena which are in the strict sense sociological,” but “could be termed socio-psychical,” which for Durkheim means that “they are of interest to the sociologist without constituting the immediate content of sociology” (1895/1982, p. 56). However, because “social facts” have no real existence, Durkheim is just plain wrong about every conclusion that he derives from the premise of “social facts” being real. It is indubitably true that individual aspects of cultural constructs are indeed “socio-psychical” phenomena, but it is precisely for this reason that they are sociological phenomena, since social phenomena can and do only exist in and through individual psyches, meaning that socio-psychical phenomena are indeed the true and immediate content of true sociology. Insofar as all individuals exist in some kind of relation to a society which is composed of other individuals, even if that society does not yet exist, there is no difference between psychology, metapsychology, sociology, and anthropology, either practically or theoretically; conversely, the true method of true psychology, insofar as psychology is truly the study of the mind, must be ethnography, since human beings, the creatures endued with minds who are overwhelmingly the main object of study for the discipline of psychology, always concretely and practically exist in some kind of relation to a society made of other human beings.

From Deleuze and Guattari’s introduction to their concept of the machine, we may extract two fundamental questions which effectively function as the two foundational questions of schizoanalysis, the two points of entry into schizoanalysis: “Given a certain effect, what machine is capable of producing it? And given a certain machine, what can it be used for?” (AO, p. 3). Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the machine is meant to negate the structuralist concept of “structure” (in the relevant literature, the terms “system” and “structure” are used interchangeably). The structuralist concept of “structure,” beginning with Saussure and elaborated by Lacan and Lévi-Strauss, denotes a “social fact” as defined by Durkheim, an objective ideal entity (or we might say, following Hegel, an “objective spirit”) that exists independently of all individual minds or all individual instances or manifestations; the structuralist “structure” is always a total and totalizing structure, a totality; we maintain, moreover, that the structuralist concept of “structure” is an eminently idealist and ahistorical concept, which apparently does not change and thus always appears to have come into existence fully formed and seemingly out of nothing, and which is, most importantly, not localizable in any material entity. For example, Saussure’s concept of “language” denotes a total system or structure, explicitly described by Saussure as a social fact, that exists independently of all particular instances of speech and all particular individuals in a given society, and this total structure of “language” exists in a transcendental relation to particular instances of speech such that the total structure of “language” determines all particular instances of speech. We deny the existence of “total structures” such as the Saussurean “language.” In contrast, the Deleuzian-Guattarian concept of the machine is a materialist concept, in that it denotes the material particulars themselves. Each particular is a machine, all matter consists of machines. Whereas structuralist analysis reads everything as so many symptoms of transcendental and ideal (and phantasmatic) total structures (for example, as so many symptoms of a transcendental and ideal “force,” psychopathology, or economic system), machinic analysis reads everything in terms of either the concrete and material effect a given concrete and material machine produces or the concrete and material machine that produced it as a given concrete and material effect.

If we are tempted to use the word “structure” or “system” to describe machines, it is not in the structuralist sense of the word, but in the operational sense of the word, as one might find it used in biology, engineering, or computer science. To distinguish the operational concept of “structure” from the structuralist concept of “structure,” we will specify that the structuralist concept of “structure” is that of a “total structure” (or more simply as “structure” in quotation marks), and we will specify that the operational concept of “structure” is that of a “unit-structure” (or “unit-system”). The word “unit-structure” was coined by Cecil Taylor, who named one of his free jazz albums Unit Structures, and whose spontaneous compositions more generally consisted entirely of unit-structures of sound-objects, sound-machines. A machine is a unit-structure, a unit-structure is a machine, always localizable in time and space, always material. Matter consists entirely of unitstructures. Unit-structures are never total, never totalties, and never totalizing. Unit-structures are always parts among other parts, units among other units. Language only exists in and through particular unit-structures, for example, unit-structures of speech, painting, sculpture, or music; there are only ever language-machines, and there is never any “total structure” of language. A unit-structure is a determinate set of elements that produces a determinate effect. Given a certain effect, there is always a determinate set of elements that produces it; and given a certain determinate set of elements, there is always a determinate effect that it produces; this is the meaning of one of the fundamental axioms of biology, “structure determines function,” which, to be more specific, means “unit-structure determines function,” that is, “a determinate set of elements produces a determinate effect,” and which applies to all unitstructures in every domain. The determinate effect of a determinate unit-structure is precisely that unit-structure’s function. Each unitstructure functions, each unit-structure is a function, each unitstructure is inseperable from its functioning; therefore, each unitstructure is a machine, a production process, since each unitstructure necessarily produces an effect or function. We also note in passing here that function and use are two different things, such that a given unit-structure and its functioning can be used in various ways, such that each unit-structure has both an unvarying defining function and a contextually dependent use-function.

All “post-structuralism” means is “going beyond structuralism,” and since structuralism is founded on Durkheim’s concept of “social facts,” going beyond structuralism necessarily means going beyond Durkheim’s concept of “social facts.” But this word “post-structuralism,” which is nothing more than a cultural construct imposed upon thought by academic institutions, in reality obscures and mystifies the possibility of analysis from a strictly nonstructuralist perspective. Moreover, the word “post-structuralist” inescapably connotes structuralism, and defines whatever it labels in terms of its relation to structuralism, such that structuralism may surreptitiously survive in the guise of “poststructuralism.” Thinkers traditionally labelled “poststructuralists” by academics who have done little to no relevant reading of the primary sources, such as Deleuze (the post-Guattari Deleuze), Guattari, Lyotard, Blanchot, and Foucault, are much more accurately described as “nonstructuralists” if they need to be described in relation to structuralism at all, since these thinkers all reject the structuralist concept of “structure,” meaning that they reject the Durkheim’s concept of “social facts.” Derrida, on the other hand, is a structuralist, insofar as he believes in the concept of structure, meaning that his decision to remain within the discourse of structuralism in order to critique structuralism from within is a failure insofar as he affirms the concept of “structure” which is the basis of structuralism. One cannot remain part of the establishment and at the same time rebel against it, one must always do one or the other, and remaining part of the establishment in order to critique it will always be a failure in terms of rebellion because one affirms the establishment so long as one remains a part of it (however critical one may be of it; that is, however cynically one may accept it). Rebellion is only possible from outside the establishment.

Here, we have developed the concept of cultural constructs as an entry-point to a non-structuralist analysis; more specifically, as an entry-point to the machinic analysis of Deleuze and Guattari, which analyzes the world in terms of machines, that is, in terms of its machinic functioning. Our “post-structuralism,” or rather our nonstructuralism, is the machnism of Deleuze and Guattari, the machnism of schizoanalysis. Machinism is a thought outside Statethought, a rebel thought opposed to State-thought. Machinism is the theoretical precursor to real acts of rebellion, to a lived experience outside the State and opposed to the State. He who refuses to acknowledge the laws and customs of the State as legitimate is by definition an outlaw. Machinism is an outlaw thought, an outlaw theory. Those who support the State, explicitly or tacitly, are right to fear ideas such as the cultural construct (or social construct), since these ideas, logically elaborated, do in fact threaten the perceived legitimacy of the State; the belief in the legitimacy of the State becomes impossible once one understands the full import of ideas such as the cultural construct. If we analyze the State in terms of the cultural constructs and processes of cultural construction that constitute it and its machinic functioning, then we are left facing only the naked brutality and violence that founds and maintains the State, and from there we are faced with a simple choice which depends solely upon the extent of our courage: either support the State or rebel against the State.

Section 2: A Political Ontology of the State

In his book Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, Cedric J. Robinson, discussing the Germanic and Gallic “barbarians” (the Latin term barbarus, like the ancient Greek term bárbaros from which it derives, simply meant “foreigner,” although it was certainly also a pejorative) who migrated to Rome in search of work, writes, “It is also important to realize that with respect to the emerging European civilization whose beginnings coincide with the arrivals of these same barbarians, slave labor as a critical basis of production would continue without any significant interruption into the twentieth century” (1983, p. 11). The centrality of slave labour to Roman civilization, as well as to Greek civilization, is well known. Robinson observes that the same social institution, slavery, was and continues to be central to European civilization (as well as to USAmerican civilization). Robinson was writing in the late twentieth century, but nothing has fundamentally changed as we enter the twenty-first century regarding the problem of slavery, such that we may add that slave labour continues unabated as a critical basis for production into the twenty-first century by so-called “developed” States and their constituent big capitalist class (either outsourced, for example, to Chinese factory wage-slaves, or to sweatshop wageslaves, or to Congolese coltan mine slaves, or occurring within the “developed” States themselves in their prisons, not to mention the wage-slaves within the “developed” State).

What is slavery? We ask this as a properly ontological question (as opposed to a merely moral question). Recounting Orlando Paterson’s Slavery and Social Death, David Graeber writes that “slavery is unlike any other form of human relation because it is not a moral relation. Slave-owners might dress it up in all sorts of legalistic or paternalistic language, but really this is just windowdressing and no one really believes it; really, it is a relation based purely on violence; a slave must obey because if he doesn’t, he can be beaten, tortured, or killed, and everyone is perfectly well aware of this” (2011, p. 170). A materialist theory of slavery must begin with the fact that slavery is a violent relation, not a moral relation, meaning that slavery is a social relation determined in the last instance by violence. Later on in the same text (Debt: The First 5000 Years), Graeber writes, “If our political and legal ideas really are founded on the logic of slavery [cf. Graeber, 2011, pp. 165–210], then how did we ever eliminate slavery? Of course, a cynic might argue that we haven’t; we’ve just relabeled it. The cynic would have a point: an ancient Greek would certainly have seen the distinction between a slave and an indebted wage laborer as, at best, a legalistic nicety” (2011, p. 211). In this text, Graeber goes on to argue against this “cynical” social theory, on the basis that some forms of slavery have been eliminated in the developed world (for instance, formal chattel slavery), but this overlooks the fact that other forms of slavery continue to exist in the developed world (a point which Graeber acknowledges on other occasions) and that the developed world only remains “developed” by relying on slavery in other parts of the world that it has deliberately underdeveloped (a point which Graeber also acknowledges on other occasions). Therefore, we affirm what Graeber describes as the “cynical” social theory of slavery, which we may also describe as “Dionysian cynicism,” that is to say, as “Dionysian realism” (which is, we add, wholly compatible with a sincere politics), and to which we make a few significant modification.

First of all, we note that it is not only our political and legal ideas that are founded on slavery, but the very political (or legal) unit-system of what we describe as our society, namely the State, has the social institution of slavery at its basis. Despite the legalistic and paternalistic hegemonic discourse of the State, which even many of the subjugated believe, the State is, at bottom, a relation of pure violence between the ruling class and the subjugated class, that is to say, between the masters and the slaves. Members of the subjugated class must obey the ruling class, because if they don’t, they may be beaten, tortured, or killed, in contemporary society typically by middle class agents of the ruling class (rather than members of the ruling class itself). In fact, members of the subjugated class may be beaten, tortured, or killed by the middle class agents (i.e. the police) of the ruling class without provocation (hence the eternally recurring problem of police brutality in the police State). First let us make a more thorough case for the equivalence of the State and the social institution of slavery, then let us try to account for why the constituents of the State typically do not conceive of the State as equivalent to the social institution of slavery.

On the hegemonic discourse of capitlaism, Graeber writes that “in its basic nature, capitalism has something to do with freedom. For the capitalists, this means the freedom of the marketplace. For most workers, it means free labor. Marxists have questioned whether wage labor is ultimately free in any sense (since someone with nothing to sell but his or her body cannot in any sense be considered a genuinely free agent), but they still tend to assume that free wage labor is the basis of capitalism…All those millions of slaves and serfs and coolies and debt peons disappear, or if we must speak of them, we write them off as temporary bumps along the road. Like sweatshops, this is assumed to be a stage that industrializing nations had to pass through, just as it is still assumed that all those millions of debt peons and contract laborers and sweatshop workers who still exist, often in the same places, will surely live to see their children become regular wage laborers with health insurance and pensions, and their children, doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs” (2011, p. 351). Graeber writes, “There is, and has always been, a curious affinity between wage labor and slavery…because both the relation between master and slave, and between employer and employee, are in principle impersonal: whether you’ve been sold or you’re simply rented yourself out, the moment money changes hands, who you are is supposed to be unimportant; all that’s important is that you are capable of understanding orders and doing what you’re told” (2011, p. 352). Graeber writes, “Karl Marx…wrote Das Kapital in an attempt to demonstrate that, even if we do start from the economists’ utopian vision, so long as we also allow some people to control productive capital, and, again, leave others with nothing to sell but their brains and bodies, the results will be in many ways barely distinguishable from slavery, and the whole system will eventually destroy itself” (2011, p. 354).

Graeber thus presents two different critiques of Marx’s version of the labour theory of economic value (Marx’s theory that economic value consists of abstract labour), both of which are mutually exclusive. In the first critique of the labor theory of value, Graeber argues that Marx’s distinction between slave and wage laborer is merely “legalistic,” that is to say, pedantic and not material, since there is no real difference between someone who has nothing to sell but their labour and someone who has nothing to sell but their body, such that in any case such a person is not a free agent, i.e. such a person is a slave. Graeber argues that the hegemonic discourse of the capitalist State, with its mythological concepts of “freedom” and “progress,” obscures the fact that “ millions of debt peons and contract laborers and sweatshop workers,” who are in reality not free agents in any meaningful sense, i.e. they are slaves, continue to exist today just as in earlier centuries, in many of the same places, there were “millions of slaves and serfs and coolies and debt peons.” Graeber argues that Marx and Marxist theorists, despite criticizing the capitalist mode of production on the basis that it amounts to nothing more than what we would today call wageslavery, nevertheless still “assume that free wage labor is the basis of capitalism,” i.e. they still assume that that wage laborer is the “negation” of the serf and the slave on the basis that the wage laborer has the freedom to sell their labour on the free market (as opposed to the unfreedom of the serf and the slave). Thus, Graeber’s first critique of the Marx’s labour theory of economic value is really an extension of it; Graeber suggests that Marx does not go far enough in drawing conclusions from his own work, that Marx is not enough of a materialist, since: 1) in reality one’s labour is never truly alienable from one’s self, just as the lightning is not alienable from its flash, i.e. one’s own labour and one’s own self are one and the same thing, just as the lightning and its flash are one and the same thing, such that to sell one’s labour in exchange for wages is functionally equivalent to selling one’s self into slavery in exchange for subsistence; and 2) slavery in the capitalist State has been clearly observable from the historical beginning of (modern, industrial) capitalism to the present day, and there are no signs of it significantly abating within the limits of the social unit-structure of capitalism, despite the myth of progress peddled in the hegemonic discourse of the capitalist State.

However, Graeber’s second critique of the Marx’s labour theory of economic value, which is at odds with the first, is that Marx wrote Das Kapital starting from the point of view of the classical “economists’ utopian vision” (for example, from Smith’s utopian vision of capitalism), and that “What everyone seems to forget is the “as if” nature of his analysis,” such that Marx “was never suggesting that that’s what the world was actually like” (2011, p. 354). Graeber writes that “Marx was well aware that there were far more bootblacks, prostitutes, butlers, soldiers, pedlars, chimneysweeps, flower girls, street musicians, convicts, nannies, and cab drivers in the London of his day than there were factory workers” (2011, p. 354), as if this constituted a serious argument against Marxist economics. Literary portraits of 19^th century London, such as the novels of Charles Dickens, accurately portray the squalor and the poverty of the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat, i.e. the subjugated classes. While it is true that Marxist economics fails to adequately analyze the poverty of the lumpenproletariat, as well as the cruel regime of discipline and punishment that soldiers are subject to (and in the case of conscription, subjugated to), the misery of “bootblacks, prostitutes, butlers, soldiers, pedlars, chimneysweeps, flower girls, street musicians, convicts, nannies, and cab drivers” in 19^th century London in no way invalidates Marx’s labour theory of economic value, because factory workers continued to exist alongside all those other professions or situtations. (We may also note that prostitutes, conscripted soldiers, and convicts are not in any meaningful sense free agents, i.e. they are slaves). Graeber’s own observation of the slavery of coolies, debt peons, sweatshop workers, and contract laborers is wholly compatible with Marx’s observation that capitalism is “in many ways barely distinguishable from slavery,” and although their respective arguments are based on different premises, they nonetheless both agree “that that’s what the world is actually like.” Marx’s analysis of capitalism, or rather the capitalist State, may be incomplete, but it is definitely not merely an “as if” analysis. Marx, of all people, definitely believed that his own critique of capitalism described “what the world is actually like,” although he too was aware that his critique of capitalism was incomplete; Marx himself only ever completed the first volume of Das Kapital, and the second and third volumes were prepared by Friedrich Engels from the notes Marx had made prior to his death, and Marx had planned to write several more volumes before his death rendered Das Kapital (and with it, Marx’s critique of capitalism) an unfinished project. Thus, we reject Graeber’s second critique of Marxist economics, since it is untenable.

In an earlier work, “Turning the Modes of Production Inside Out, Or, Why Capitalism is a Transformation of Slavery” (2006), Graeber does indeed argue that the capitalist mode of production, the social relation between employer and employee, is a transformation of the ancient slave mode of production, the social relation between master and slave. Graeber writes, “Alternatively, one could just as easily turn Friedman’s own example around, define ‘capitalism’ as based on free wage labor, but define ‘slavery’ in the broadest terms possible: say, as any form of labor in which one party is effectively coerced. One could thereby conclude that modern capitalism is really a form of slavery. (One could then go on to argue that the fact that modern capitalists don’t see themselves as coercing others is irrelevant, since we are talking about objective constraining [unit] structures and not what the actors think is going on.) Such an argument would not be entirely unprecedented: there’s a reason why so many workers in modern capitalist countries have chosen to refer to themselves as ‘wage slaves’” (2006, pp. 68–69). Before we consider the preceding passage, which we shall describe as Graeber’s first thesis on capitalism and slavery, and which is by itself readily observable as wholly compatible with our conclusions thus far, let us first consider Graeber’s main argument for the fact that “capitalism is a transformation of slavery,” which we shall describe as Graeber’s second thesis on capitalism and slavery.

Graeber’s second thesis on capitalism and slavery is that the ancient slave mode of production and the capitalist mode of production are homologous when considered in terms of social production (2006, p. 62), which he defines as “the production of human being and social relations” (2006, pp. 69–71), and which, following feminist theory, he limits to the domestic sphere, “the endless labor of care, maintenance, education and so on, which actually keeps societies running and which has tended to be carried out overwhelmingly by women” (2006, p. 71). Graeber’s argument is basically that in both the ancient slave mode of production and the capitalist mode of production, the social production proper to the domestic sphere is both separated from the workplace and uncompensated, meaning that in both cases the exploitative class extracts surplus labour from the exploited class without compensating the domestic labourers who were responsible for the social (re)production of the human beings who were exploited and from whose labour the exploiters extracted a surplus (2006, pp. 7781). Graeber writes that in the ancient slave mode of production, the masters appropriate “the years of care and nurture that some other society has invested in creating young men and women capable of work, by kidnapping the products – and then, often as not, working them fairly rapidly to death” (2006, p. 78), whereas in the capitalist mode of production the appropriation of the products of domestic labour is repeated over time “with endless mind-numbing drudgery” (2006, p. 80). Graeber’s second thesis on capitalism and slavery is admirable in that it uncovers a previously overlooked structural homology between capitalism and slavery, namely the role of domestic labour (or social production in the domestic sphere) in both, but it has its shortcomings: 1) it overlooks the serf and the feudal mode of production entirely, and fails to notice any structural homology between the slave, the serf and the wage laborer, each of which is a subjugated class (although a strucutral homology between the three can be easily established on the basis of the role of domestic labour in each); 2) as Graeber himself admits, “it might seem a bit impertinent to compare the morning commute to the Middle Passage” (2006, p. 80), despite the structural homology between the two; 3) although Graeber defines social production as “the production of human beings and social relations,” he arbitrarily limits the domain of social production to the domestic sphere, and he fails to recognize violence as a mode of social production, despite the fact that violence is a means of producing human beings and social relations. Both of Graeber’s theses on capitalism and slavery are true, but for these reasons Graeber’s second thesis is weak, whereas, as we shall see, his first thesis is strong.

The structural homology between the capitalist mode of production and the ancient slave mode of production is primarily that they are both “forms of labour in which one party is effectively coerced,” and only secondarily the fact that in both the exploiter appropriates domestic labour in order to extract surplus labour. Moreover, serfdom (or the feudal mode of production) is also “a form of labour in which one party is effectively coerced,” meaning that the ancient slave mode of production, the feudal mode of production, and the capitalist mode of production are all structurally homologous on this basis. Coercion is a social relation of violence. Thus, the ancient slave mode of production, the feudal mode of production, and the capitalist mode of production can all be described as modifications or forms of slavery, modifications or forms of the slave mode of production. In addition, the serf and the wage labourer share the additional structural homology of having to pay a tribute to the ruling class; in the former case, the ruling class is more honest in that they call the tribute what it is, whereas in the latter case the ruling class employs ruses and calls the tribute “taxes.” Graeber recognizes a structural homology between taxes and tribute; he writes that “in the ancient world, free citizens didn’t usually pay taxes. Generally speaking, tribute was levied only on conquered populations,” thereby implying, in context, that the taxation systems of modern States are a kind of tribute, but levied on allegedly “free” citizens.

Engels writes that wage labourers (proletarians or proletariats) differ from slaves in that “The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole” (1847, §7). However, the proletariat class is not a “whole” separate from its constitutive individual members. Therefore, the existence of the proletariat class as a whole can only be assured by way of assuring the existence of the individual proletariats who constitute the proletariat class as a whole. The existence assured to the slave, “however miserable it may be,” refers to the means of subsistence required by the slave to continue labouring for the master. The wage labourer receives wages from their employer precisely so that the wage labourer can secure the means of subsistence required for them to continue labouring for the employer. Here, there is no difference between the wage labourer and the slave, since both have a secure existence, no matter how miserable it may be, because their continued existence means that they can continue labouring for the benefit of the ruling class (or at least for the relatively more dominant class, if the master or employer is a member of a middle class). Graeber writes that “in effect, a transfer effected just once, by sale, under a regime of slavery is transformed into one that is repeated over and over again under capitalism” (2006, p. 80). The slave’s labour is sold at once, whereas the wage labourer’s labour is sold in repeated increments, but in either case it is labour that is sold. However, selling oneself into slavery a little at a time is still selling oneself into slavery. Moreover, the wage labourer receives wages in increments in exchange for labour, but only in order to acquire their means of subsistence in increments, as their relatively immediate needs require, which is merely a modification of the situation of the slave, who also receives their means of subsistence in increments as their relatively immediate needs require, albeit without the mediation of the wage system. Thus, the situation of the wage labourer is a modification of the situation of the slave; one of the key differences between ancient slavery and modern capitalism is that, as Engels points out, the slave is typically the property of a single master, whereas the wage labourer is the property of the entire capitalist class (or rather, of both capitalist classes, the big capitalist class or bourgeoisie and the small capitalist class or petit bourgeoisie), since the wage labourer is interchangeable for all members of the capitalist class, whereas the slave typically belongs inalienably to a single master; however, the wage labourer and the slave remain property that belongs to the dominant class, and in this respect the wage labourer is indeed a type of slave.

Engels writes, “The serf possesses and uses an instrument of production, a piece of land, in exchange for which he gives up a part of his product or part of the services of his labor. The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another, for the account of this other, in exchange for a part of the product. The serf gives up, the proletarian receives. The serf has an assured existence, the proletarian has not” (1847, §8). However, Engels is simply wrong to say that the serf “possesses” a piece of land. The serf rents land in exchange for a tribute paid to the lord, who is the one who possesses the land, the land-lord. Moreover, the wage labourer and the serf both “give up” and “receive” in a structurally homologous way. The wage-labourer, like the serf, does not “possess” a piece of land, but rents a piece of land (whether urban, suburban, or rural) from a landlord, to whom they give up a portion of their product or a portion of the services of their labour. The wage-labourer repeatedly receives subsistence wages in exchange for repeated labour, whereas the serf receives the means to produce their own subsistence in exchange for the labour required to produce the lord’s tribute. Like the wage labourer, the serf sells themself into slavery in increments. The serf is the property of their lord. Serfs are a conquered population, hence why they pay tribute to their conquerors, the lords. Slaves, too, are conquered populations, and they too are coerced to pay tribute; the tribute paid by the slave is their labour, which is ultimately what all tribute amounts to. The wage slave may believe themselves to be “free,” as the hegemonic discourse labels them, but insofar as they are coerced to pay tribute in the form of taxes, they are indeed a conquered population. There is a descent with modification from the ancient slave to the serf to the wage labourer, but the substance of all three forms is slavery, such that they are all modifications of slavery.

In Debt, Graeber writes, “If history shows anything, it is that there’s no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt – above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it’s the victim who’s doing something wrong. Mafiosi understand this. So do the commanders of conquering armies. For thousands of years, violent men have been able to tell their victims that those victims owe them something. If nothing else, they “owe them their lives” (a telling phrase) because they haven’t been killed” (2011, p. 5). Morality, considered as a discourse or ideology, a unitsystem of ideas, does indeed effectively function as a material force in the social institution of slavery (in all its modifications). The hegemonic discourse that plays a role in slavery is constituted in part by the master’s “legalistic or paternalistic language,” which we describe as “master morality” following Nietzsche (although our account of master morality differs from Nietzsche’s account). Slavery is determined in the last instance by physical violence, but this foundational physical violence (which is immediate) is also mediated by the symbolic violence of a hegemonic discourse (which is primarily just as foundational as the physical violence, but also secondarily reproduces the physical violence). Master morality operates in part by producing a moral debt in the slaves towards the masters. When this moral debt of slavery is successfully produced, the slave takes actions in order to pay it back, thereby becoming complicit in their own slavery, but in any case slavery is determined in the last instance by physical violence. The moral debt of slavery is created primarily through the trauma of enslavement, which involves either physical violence or the threat of physical violence in combination with the symbolic violence of the discourse of master morality, which produces a body without organs of slavery in the psyche of the slave; the moral debt of slavery, insofar as it is felt, is a zone of intensity upon the body without organs of slavery.

Although we accept Marx’s labour theory of economic value, we reject Marx’s theorization of the relation of political economy to power (the domain of politics proper), in which a political economy forms the base (or infrastructure) of a class society, and power is part of the superstructure of society, which reproduces the economic base. We agree with the political anthropology of Clastres, which suggests that the reverse is the case. In the interview transcribed in The Question of Power, Clastres says that the Marxist conception of the State is “an instrumental conception of the state. That is, the state is the instrument of domination of the ruling class over other people; both logically and chronologically, the state comes afterwards, once the society has been divided into classes, and there are the rich and the poor, the exploiters and the exploited. The state is the instrument of the rich to better exploit and mystify the poor and the exploited. My impression, based on research and thinking that stay within the confines of primitive, stateless societies, is that the opposite is true: the initial division, the one that underlies all the others, in the last analysis, is not the division into conflicting social groups, into rich and poor, exploiters and exploited. It’s the division between those who command and those who obey: that is, the state, because fundamentally, that’s what the state is, it’s the division of society into those who are in power and those who are subjected to that power. Once that exists, that commanding/obedience relationship – that is, a guy, or a bunch of guys who give orders to the others, who obey – everything is possible from then on, because someone who gives orders, who is in power, has the power to make the others do what he wants, precisely because he has the power, he can tell them to work for him, and at that point the man in power can easily turn into an exploiter, into someone who makes others do the work” (1974/2015, pp. 17–18).

Clastres’s conclusion is also supported by the theories of Deleuze and Guattari, Cedric J. Robinson, and Graeber. Lyotard, recapitulating Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, writes, “Nowhere is there a primary economic order (of interest, need or work) followed by ideological, cultural, juridical, religious, familial, etc., effects” (1977, pp. 19–20). Lyotard also writes, “It thus reveals that infra/superstructural oppositions, or those of economic/ideological structures and relationships of production versus social relationships are themselves pairs of concepts that cannot show us what happens in savage, feudal or Oriental societies, Or even in capitalist society itself. For they are either too much or too little: too much because it is unquestionable that in the former, kinship, ritual and practical relationships decisively determine the production and circulation of goods, that is, the configuration of the “economy,” and that they cannot be reduced to an illusory ideological function; too little because in the latter the term economics covers much more than political economics, much more than production and exchange of goods, since it is no less production and exchange of labor force, images, words, knowledge and power, travel and sex” (1977, p. 19). Cedric J. Robinson writes, “The social, cultural, political, and ideological complexes of European feudalisms contributed more to capitalism than the social “fetters” that precipitated the bourgeoisie into social and political revolutions.

No class was its own creation. Indeed, capitalism was less a catastrophic revolution (negation) of feudalist social orders than the extension of these social relations into the larger tapestry of the modern world’s political and economic relations” (1983, p. 10). Robinson also writes, “The historical development of world capitalism was influenced in a most fundamental way by the particular forces of racism and nationalism. This could only be true if the social, psychological, and cultural origins of racism and nationalism both anticipated capitalism in time and formed a piece with those events that contributed directly to its organization of production and exchange” (1983, p. 9).

On the origins of the market (which is a necessary condition for capitalism, but is not the same as capitalism), Graeber writes, “Say a king wishes to support a standing army of fifty thousand men. Under ancient or medieval conditions, feeding such a force was an enormous problem – unless they were on the march, one would need to employ almost as many men and animals just to locate, acquire, and transport the necessary provisions. On the other hand, if one simply hands out coins to the soldiers and then demands that every family in the kingdom was obliged to pay one of those coins back to you, one would, in one blow, turn one’s entire national economy into a vast machine for the provisioning of soldiers, since now every family, in order to get their hands on the coins, must find some way to contribute to the general effort to provide soldiers with things they want. Markets are brought into existence as a side effect. This is a bit of a cartoon version, but it is very clear that markets did spring up around ancient armies; one need only take a glance at Kautilya’s Arthasasatra, the Sassanian “circle of sovereignty,” or the Chinese “Discourses on Salt and Iron” to discover that most ancient rulers spent a great deal of their time thinking about the relation between mines, soldiers, taxes, and food. Most concluded that the creation of markets of this sort was not just convenient for feeding soldiers, but useful in all sorts of ways, since it meant officials no longer had to requisition everything they needed directly from the populace, or figure out a way to produce it on royal estates or royal workshops. In other words, despite the dogged liberal assumption – again, coming from Smith’s legacy – that the existence of states and markets are somehow opposed, the historical record implies that exactly the opposite is the case. Stateless societies tend also to be without markets.” (2011, pp. 49–50)

In lieu of recapitulating the entirety of the voluminous research and arguments of the above quoted authors, we have provided merely their conclusions, for the sake of brevity. However, readers requiring a more rigorous presentation of evidence may easily refer to the works cited, and to other works by the same authors. For ethnographic and historical research, we rely heavily on Society Against the State by Pierre Clastres, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition by Cedric J. Robinson, and Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber. However, we do not assume that our readers have read these works, and our arguments stand firm in themselves, as we present them. Our arguments and conclusions are ontological just as much as they are empirical. Our precedents in theory are Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari, and On the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche; however, we have made significant revisions to the theories of these authors in the present work, on the basis of the ethnographic and historical research we have cited. Before we move on to develop our theory of the State, let us explicate the above quoted passages in relation to the question of slavery and the analyses to follow.

The Marxist theory of the State in relation to political economy is aptly summarized by Engels, who writes, “At a certain stage of economic development, which was necessarily bound up with the split of society into [economic] classes, the state became a necessity owing to this split” (as quoted in Lenin, 1917, I.3). As we have noted above, this aspect of Marxist theory reproduces one of the errors of classical economics, the assumption that a “free” market arose naturally and spontaneously, and that at a certain stage of the economic development of this “free” market, there was a natural and spontaneous division into economic classes, that is, into rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, and that the formation of the State naturally and spontaneously, logically and chronologically, follows from the split into economic classes. To be sure, this Marxist theory of the economic base and political-cultural superstructure is at odds with other aspects of Marxist theory; however, it is nonetheless essential to orthodox Marxism. This error of orthodox of Marxism likely has its roots in the barter myth of classical economics, which likewise conceives of the “free” market and the division between rich and poor as arising spontaneously and naturally in the absence of a State, more specifically from an alleged “barter economy,” which consists of economic exchanges in the absence of money.

Marx himself argues, without any evidence, that exchange value and money arise out of a barter economy between primitive societies, as a natural result of the natural progress of a barter economy (MECW Vol. 35, pp. 98–99). Marx writes, “The exchange of commodities, therefore, first begins on the boundaries of such [primitive communal] communities, at their points of contact with other similar communities, or with members of the latter. So soon, however, as products once become commodities in the external relations of a community, they also, by reaction, become so in its internal intercourse…Meantime the need for foreign objects of utility gradually establishes itself. The constant repetition of exchange makes it a normal social act. In the course of time, therefore, some portion at least of the products of labour must be produced with a special view to exchange. From that moment the distinction becomes firmly established between the utility of an object for the purposes of consumption, and its utility for the purposes of exchange. Its use value becomes distinguished from its exchange value…At this stage, therefore, the articles exchanged do not acquire a value form independent of their own use value, or of the individual needs of the exchangers. The necessity for a value form grows with the increasing number and variety of the commodities exchanged. The problem and the means of solution arise simultaneously. Commodity-owners never equate their own commodities to those of others, and exchange them on a large scale, without different kinds of commodities belonging to different owners being exchangeable for, and equated as values to, one and the same special article. Such last-mentioned article, by becoming the equivalent of various other commodities, acquires at once, though within narrow limits, the character of a general social equivalent. This character comes and goes with the momentary social acts that called it into life. In turns and transiently it attaches itself first to this and then to that commodity. But with the development of exchange it fixes itself firmly and exclusively to particular sorts of commodities, and becomes crystallised by assuming the money form…Nomad races are the first to develop the money form, because all their worldly goods consist of moveable objects and are therefore directly alienable; and because their mode of life, by continually bringing them into contact with foreign communities, solicits the exchange of products.” (MECW Vol. 35, pp. 98–99)

To begin with, Graeber affirms the conclusion of Caroline Humphrey, whose work he describes as the “definitive anthropological work on barter”: “No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money; all available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing” (as quoted in Graeber, 2011, p. 29). Graeber clarifies, “Now, all this hardly means that barter does not exist – or even that it’s never practiced by the sort of people that Smith would refer to as “savages.” It just means that it’s almost never employed, as Smith imagined, between fellow villagers. Ordinarily, it takes place between strangers, even enemies” (2011, p. 29; my emphasis). In any case, the occasional barter between strangers from different primitive societies never leads to the transformation of a communal economy into a barter economy, as Marx believed (“So soon, however, as products once become commodities in the external relations of a community, they also, by reaction, become so in its internal intercourse”); this also means that money does not originate from a barter economy, as Marx believed.

Primitive societies are “gift economies” in which there is no economic exchange as such, a fact recognized by Marxist theory, in which gift economies are described in the jargon as “communal societies” or “primitive communism.” In Capital, Marx himself writes, “To become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use value, by means of an exchange” (MECW Vol. 35, p. 51), and, “In the primitive Indian community there is social division of labour, without production of commodities” (MECW Vol. 35, p. 52). In primitive, societies, there is social division of labour, but not hierarchy, meaning that there are no classes and no State. Moreover, there is no economic exchange as such in primitive societies, meaning that there is neither a market in primitive societies nor capitalism (which is distinct from the market, but depends upon the existence of a market). Exchange defines commodities. No entity is ever in itself a commodity, it only becomes a commodity when it is exchanged or collected for the purpose of exchange. In a gift economy, objects, actions, people, thoughts, and the world have use values and moral values, both of which are thoroughly qualitative and unquantifiable, but they never have a quantifiable exchange value (since there is no exchange).

To reiterate, what is at stake here regarding the barter myth is the role of the State in political economies based on money (or, what amounts to the same thing historically and for all practical purposes, a political economy based on exchange, i.e. the market). A theory of political economy that asserts that money naturally and spontaneously developed out of a barter economy both neglects all available historical and ethnographic evidence, mistakenly believes that the economy is a separate sphere from politics and culture, and completely effaces the role of the State and state violence in the formation of the market. Although these shortcomings of Marx’s Capital do not affect his main arguments concerning abstract labour and capital, they are nevertheless serious shortcomings that demand a reversal of the orthodox account of the relationship between the State and market-based political economies. As Graeber recounts, money only comes into being with the market, which comes into being only through the State, that is to say, only through violence.

To reiterate, the State is a society in which the infrastructure is the social production of hierarchy, and the economic mode of production of the State is a part of the superstructure of the State, meaning that the function of the State’s economic mode of production is to reproduce the (conditions of existence of the) infrastructural social production of hierarchy. This materialist reversal of the orthodox Marxist infrastructure/superstructure theory, which puts Marxism back on its feet, is supported by Graeber’s theory and history of the relationship of the State to markets. Modifying Graeber’s essay on domestic labour, we may also say that domestic labour (in the society of the State) also forms part of the superstructure of the State. Graeber demonstrates how the State makes the market possible, and how the market reproduces the State. This is most succintly illustrated by the ideal model of the State that Graeber provides, generalizing from historical evidence in order to convey the essence of the logic of the State. The State, at bottom, is a special body of armed men (and sometimes women too, but overwhelimingly in history from ancient times to the present, men), the primary special body of armed men in question being a hierarchically organized military, with the leaders of the military being the rulers of the State. The logistical problem of maintaing a large army finds its solution in the creation of the social institution that we call the market. The market unit-system, with its use of currency and taxes (or tribute), is far more lightweight than employing “almost as many men and animals [as in the army] just to locate, acquire, and transport the necessary provisions.” Instituting a market, with its attendant unit-system of currency and taxes, transforms the State’s political economy “into a vast [social] machine for the provisioning of soldiers,” which means that the market unit-system facilitates the acquisition of means of subsistence for the special body of armed men constitutive of the State, i.e. the market unit-system reproduces the labour power of the army constitutive of the State (since a means of subsistence is one of its conditions of existence). The basic mechanism constitutive of the market is the combination of currency and taxes: a uniform currency distributed to soldiers enables a relatively frictionless and anonymous exchange of commodities with strangers at numerous locations; while the distribution of this same uniform commodities to either a subordinate middle class (for example, of merchants) or even to a subjugated class (for example, to wage labourers) coupled with the demand for a tribute (to the ruling class) paid in the same currency provides the subordinate or subjugated class with the incentive to produce and exchange commodities with each other and with the soldiers, thereby producing the circulation of commodities or unit-structure of exchanges that constitutes the life of the market. In addition to the ideal model quoted above, Graeber also recounts the material, intertwined histories of States and markets from ancient times to the present in greater detail, examining the nuances and singularities of particular cases, but as befits the tile of his book (Debt), Graeber’s focus is on the history of debt (cf. Graeber, 2011, pp. 165–391). Nevertheless, throughout all of the market’s transformations, the same logic of the State, wherein an army is the infrastructure and a political economy based on a market is a superstructure (in addition to a hegemonic moral discourse), is legible.

Clastres conceives of classes only in terms of “the rich and the poor, the exploiters and the exploited,” following Marxist theory, despite his criticism of Marxist theory, wherein “logically and chronologically, the state comes afterwards, once the society has been divided into [economic] classes.” Clastres observes that the division into economic classes (“the rich and the poor, the exploiters and the exploited”) is only made possible by an initial division “between those who command and those who obey,” which is what the State fundamentally is, “the division of society into those who are in power and those who are subjected to that power.” Clastres recognizes this initial division between “those who are in power and those who are subjected to that power” as constitutive of the State, but here it remains undertheorized. If we understand class primarily in political terms, as a question of power, and not in economic terms, as a question of wealth, then it is evident that the initial division between those in power and those subjected to that power is a class division, the first division into political classes. Clastres overlooks that the question of power is the question of slavery. Power is a social relation of hierarchy determined in the last instance by physical violence, which is exactly what slavery is. Power is slavery, slavery is power. Slavery is a social, cultural, political, and ideological institution before it is an economic institution. Moreover, slavery is a mode of social production before it is an economic mode of production. That is to say, what is primary in slavery is the power relation that defines it, which is a political institution, not an economic one. The economic uses of slavery (e.g. the ancient slave mode of production, the feudal mode of production, the capitalist mode of production, as well as the socialist mode of production, which is merely state capitalism) are secondary and superstructural, that is to say, they are dependent on the primary and infrastructural mode of social production that defines slavery, the production of hierarchy.

In On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche writes that “the welding of a hitherto unchecked and shapeless populace into a firm form was not only instituted by an act of violence but also carried to its conclusion by nothing but acts of violence – that the oldest “state” thus appeared as a fearful tyranny, as an oppressive and remorseless machine, and went on working until this raw material of people and semi-animals was at last not only thoroughly kneaded and pliant but also formed” (GM, II.17; emphasis in original). If the oldest State was “an oppressive and remorseless machine” of violence, then all subsequent States have been and continue to be merely variations or modifications of the same entity. Nietzsche thus defines not only the oldest State, but all States. The State is at bottom an oppressive and remorseless machine of violence. Nietzsche describes the State in terms of two castes, the masters and the slaves, but we may just as well describe these two castes as the ruling class and the subjugated class, the meaning remains the same. The members of the ruling class make the members of the subjugated class into constituents of the State by means of a founding act of violence, and this process of subjugation is “also carried to its conclusion by nothing but acts of violence.” As Deleuze and Guattari write, borrowing a term from Lewis Mumford, the State is a type of “social machine,” a “megamachine” that has human beings and their tools for its parts, its cogs and wheels. Whereas an imaginary-symbolic social order internal to the psyche is a text recorded upon a virtual body within the psyche, society itself is a megamachine that includes bodies without organs and the imaginary-symbolic orders manufactured upon their surfaces (as well as the desiring-machines, celibate machines, and affects of the psyches) of various human beings among its parts. The State is an oppressive and remorseless social machine which functions only by way of certain of its cogs and wheels, namely those that comprise the ruling class, committing acts of violence against certain other of its own cogs and wheels, namely those that comprise the subjugated class. We shall call the social machine of the State the “State-machine.” The defining machinic functioning of the State is as bloody and as brutal as a slaughterhouse, and the sole beneficiaries of this brutality and bloodshed are the members of the ruling class. Just as the repeating slaughter of animals is essential to the functioning of the slaughterhouse, the repeating slaughter of human animals is essential to the functioning of the State. The State is just as much a machine for slaughter, a slaughter-machine, as the slaughterhouse. And just as the capitalists who own the slaughterhouse are the sole beneficiaries of the slaughterhouse, the sole beneficiaries of the slaughterhouse of the State are the members of the ruling class.

The violence essential to the State has nothing to do with Galtung’s concept of “structural violence,” which can roughly be defined as the limiting of the potentiality, the limiting of the freedom, of a given group or individual, and which can be measured by statistics such as comparative mortality rates, comparative literacy rates, etc. What Galtung calls “structural violence” is merely a secondary effect of the State-machine, and moreover, it is misleading to describe the limiting of potentiality as “structural violence,” since such a description obscures the very real physical violence and brutality at the basis of the unit-structure of the State. We may appropriate and subvert the Marxist-Leninist conceptual framework of “infrastructure (base)” and “superstructure” in order to describe the two main types of violence essential to the State: 1) the “infrastructural violence” of the State is the physical violence at the infrastructure or base of the State, the remorseless oppression by which the ruling class constitutes and maintains the subjugated class as such, that is, as subordinate and oppressed; 2) the “superstructural violence” of the State is built on top of the infrastructural violence of the State, just as the superstructure of a building is built on top of its infrastructure; superstructural violence is relatively autonomous from infrastructural violence, but is nonetheless determined in the last instance by infrastructural violence and reproduces infrastructural violence; the superstructural violence of the State is the necessary effect of the constitution and maintenance of an oppressed subjugated class, that is to say, the superstructural violence of the State is the limiting of the potentiality and freedom of the subjugated class by the ruling class (in concrete terms, such as limiting the average lifespan of members of the subjugated class in comparison to members of the ruling class, or limiting the access to education for members subjugated class in comparsion to members of the ruling class).

On the origin of the State, Nietzsche writes, “I employed the word “state”: it is obvious what is meant – some pack of blond beasts of prey, a conqueror and master race which, organized for war and with the ability to organize, unhesitatingly lays its terrible claws upon a populace perhaps tremendously superior in numbers but still formless and nomad. That is after all how the “state” began on earth: I think that sentimentalism which would have it begin with a “contract” has been disposed of. He who can command, he who is by nature “master,” he who is violent in act and bearing – what has he to do with contracts!” (GM, II.17; my emphasis). Nietzsche also describes these “blond beasts of prey” as “triumphant monsters who perhaps emerge from a disgusting procession of murder, arson, rape, and torture, exhilarated and undisturbed of soul, as if it were no more than a students’ prank, convinced they have provided the poets with a lot more material for song and praise” (GM, I.11). The State has neither anything to do with a “social contract” nor with any kind of “recognition” between master and slave. There is no freely chosen social contract, there is no question of rights or morality, in the circumstance of coercion, as in the founding and the maintenance of the State. The State is not a product of society at a certain stage of development. The State is a power forced on society from without. The infrastructural violence of the State is quite clear and always physical: “a disgusting procession of murder, arson, rape, and torture.” The ruling class are always “triumphant monsters,” for even if they no longer perform acts of infrastructural violence directly in the manner of their ancestors, they are nonetheless just as responsible for the same acts of infrastructural violence, since they employ servants who plan and execute acts of infrastructural violence on their behalf. The ruling class generally may no longer be violent in their direct actions as their ancestors were, but they are nonetheless still just as violent in their bearings, since they are in the end the ones who ultimately oversee military operations, the carceral unit-system, and the lethal unit-system of policing. The military, the police, and prisons are all instruments of coercion, there is no possible “social contract” underlying them.

Nietzsche is wrong to say that nomads are not organized for war, for in fact they are, although they are not organized for wars of conquest (or wars of aggression). The ruling class is defined in its essence by the fact that it is organized for the war of aggression (or the war of conquest). A war of aggression (or war of conquest) is a military operation performed for the purpose of either the subjugation of the enemy force or territorial gain, and it is by definition not an act of self-defense. The State is nothing but the state of permanent war of conquest: the State is the permanent war of conquest waged by the ruling class upon the subjugated class. The State always defines its boundaries by means of a military occupation. The police are always merely a subset of the military, for it is primarily the military that occupies a territory and only secondarily the police (as an extension of the military). The founding act of the State is the war-machine of the ruling class laying “its terrible claws upon a populace,” but this populace is only transformed and maintained as the subjugated class precisely by the continuation of the war-machine of the ruling class laying “its terrible claws” upon it. The military, the police, and prisons constitute the war-machine of the ruling class. The subjugation of the subjugated class by the ruling class constitutes the State, and the State is “instituted by an act of violence but also carried to its conclusion by nothing but acts of violence,” which means nothing other than that the ruling class institutes the State by means of a war of conquest and that the ruling class maintains the State by permanently continuing this war of conquest.

Nietzsche writes that the work of the masters “is an instinctive creation and imposition of forms; they are the most involuntary, unconscious artists there are – wherever they appear something new soon arises, a ruling structure that lives, in which parts and functions are delimited and coordinated, in which nothing whatever finds a place that has not first been assigned a “meaning” in relation to the whole” (GM, II.17). The members of the ruling class are the bricoleurs of the State, the bricoleurs of the social machine that is the State. The forms created and imposed by the rulers upon the subjugated are cultural constructs. The rulers, as rulers, are also in essence creators of cultural constructs, bricoleurs of cultural constructs, and the cultural construction of the rulers goes hand in hand, or rather claw in claw, with their permanent war of aggression on the subjugated; in fact, here intellectual labour and the labour of violence constitute one and the same process of cultural construction. The “ruling structure that lives” (or ruling unitstructure in movement) referred to by Nietzsche is nothing other than the social machine of the State, the living hierarchy or hierarchical unit-structure of the rulers and the subjugated. The rulers invent “meanings” for the constituent parts of the social machine, thereby delimiting the functions of those parts in relation to the whole social machine of the State, and these cultural constructs are “instituted by an act of violence but also carried to their conclusions by nothing but acts of violence,” that is to say, they are imposed by force upon the subjugated, who serve as the raw material for this production process and who are kneaded, plied, and shaped into the form of the imposed cultural constructs by means of violence. However, the subjugated are only an “unchecked and shapeless” or “formless” populace relative to the new cultural constructs invented and imposed by the rulers. A historical analysis always reveals that the enslaved populace always has its own culture, its own regulations, shapes, and forms, even when they belong to a nomad society or any society opposed to the State.

We may appropriate and modify Bourdieu’s concept of “symbolic violence” or “symbolic domination” in order to describe the imposition and enforcement of cultural constructs by the ruling class. Symbolic violence is the violence performed by unit-systems of symbols or cultural constructs, that is, words or representations (or, more technically, partial objects), that produce or reproduce social hierarchies; for example, unit-systems of categories and classifications may function as unit-systems of symbolic violence, such as racial categories and classifications and gender categories and classifications. The primary and founding category or classification invented and imposed by the ruling class is quite simply the distinction between master and slave, which is the “originary” cultural construct of hierarchy that defines and delimits the State as such. Bourdieu dissociates symbolic violence from physical violence, but in doing so he remains unable to explain why and how social hierarchies exist to begin with. Our Nietzschean modification to the concept of symbolic violence is the recognition that although symbolic violence and physical violence are relatively autonomous, symbolic violence is determined in the last instance by physical violence. This is not to say that physical violence and symbolic violence can be neatly divided into infrastructural and superstructural respectively, since the real relationships between the several forms of violence are more complicated. On the one hand, the State-machine is itself constituted in part by the symbolic violence of a hegemonic discourse that categorizes and classifies human beings in order to shape them into parts and assign them functions in relation to the whole State-machine, and this symbolic violence is at first directly instituted by acts of physical violence and later directly maintained by acts of physical violence; on the other hand, after the institution of the symbolic violence of a hegemonic discourse, that symbolic violence becomes as relatively autonomous as the hegemonic discourse that produces it, although both are determined in the last instance by the infrastructural violence. Symbols, ideas, are material forces. Symbolic violence (and the hegemonic discourse by which it operates) is thus two-fold and operates at both levels of violence, infrastructural and superstructural; symbolic violence is an essential moment of infrastructural violence because in direct combination with physical violence it constitutes and maintains the subjugated class as subordinate and subjugated, but symbolic violence is also an essential moment of superstructural violence insofar as its secondary movement of relative autonomy is built on top of and reproduces infrastructural violence, and insofar as it reduces the potentiality and the freedom of members of the subjugated class.

The infrastructural violence of the State is the very infrastructure of the State itself, and although superstructural violence comprises a large portion of the superstructure of the State, the superstructure of the State also includes unit-structures other than that of superstructural violence. We reiterate that our concept of infrastructure/superstructure differs radically from the MarxistLeninist concept of infrastructure/superstructure. In the MarxistLeninist model, the infrastructure of society is its “mode of production” or economic unit-system, while the superstructure of society is technically designated as “ideology,” which we can also informally describe as “culture,” and the State, when it appears, is merely a unit-structure within the superstructure of a society; thus, in the Marxist-Leninist model, the State is a superstructure that reproduces the conditions of the stricly economic infrastructure. The problem with this Marxist-Leninist model is that it conceives of the economic unit-system (for example, the capitalist mode of production) as existing prior to the unit-systems of violence that constitute the State, whereas in reality (that is to say, in history) it is the State and its unit-systems of violence that make particular economic unit-systems (for example, the “ancient” slavery mode of production, the feudal mode of production, the capitalist mode of production, and the socialist mode of production) possible. Furthermore, in a society with a State, the State is itself the society (such that it is never possible for the State to be the superstructure of a society that exists prior to the State). The infrastructure and superstructure of a society with a State is quite simply the infrastructure and superstructure of the State. Moreover, since ideas are material forces, and since they are integral to both the infrastructure and the superstructure of the State, the category of “culture” cannot be limited to the superstructure of the State (or to the superstructure of societies against the State, for that matter), that is to say, just as the State itself is the society of a society with a State, so is the State itself the culture of a culture with a State, such that here there is no real difference between culture, society, and the State, insofar as the culture or society in question is that of a culture or society with a State.

The infrastructure of the State, the infrastructural violence of the State, is not a “mode of production” in the traditional economic sense, it does not directly involve “relations of production” in the traditional economic sense, and it does not directly involve “productive forces” in the traditional economic sense of the term. However, we can describe the infrastructural violence of the State as a “mode of production” if we work with the broadest possible definition of “production,” such that the infrastructural violence of the state is a mode of production of hierarchy, which mobilizes and utilizes the “libidinal economies” of the rulers but has nothing directly to do with the “economy” in the traditional sense. For purely phenomenological and pragmatic purposes, we may describe the production of hierarchy as a politico-cultural “mode of production,” as opposed to the politico-economic modes of production which they make possible. The production of hierarchy is a concrete, material, and social process. The infrastructure of the State is the (mode of) production of hierarchy, and the “relations of production” in the production of hierarchy are the concrete, material, and social power relations between the rulers and the subjugated, that is, between the conquerors and the conquered. The “productive forces” in the production of hierarchy are the libidinal economies of the rulers. The superstructure of the State is the reproduction of the mode of production of hierarchy, which necessitates the reproduction of the instruments of violence of the rulers (the means of the production of hierarchy), the libidinal economies of the rulers (the productive forces of the production of hierarchy), and the power relations between the rulers and the subjugated (the relations of the production of hierarchy).

Nietzsche’s materialist theory of the State, that the State is founded and maintained ultimately by physical violence, is also supported by certain observations of Engels and Lenin; both sets of theorists are ultimately insufficient by themselves, but by appropriating the fruits of each we discover the seeds of a more accurate, more precise, and more enduring theory of the State. Engels writes, “The second distinguishing feature [of the State] is the establishment of a public power which no longer directly coincides with the population organizing itself as an armed force. This special, public power is necessary because a self-acting armed organization of the population has become impossible since the split into classes.... This public power exists in every state; it consists not merely of armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons, and institutions of coercion of all kinds, of which gentile [clan] society [primitive communal society] knew nothing…” (as quoted in Lenin, 1917, I.2). In his commentary on this passage, Lenin writes, “Engels elucidates the concept of the “power” which is called the state, a power which arose from society but places itself above it and alienates itself more and more from it. What does this power mainly consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men having prisons, etc., at their command. We are justified in speaking of special bodies of armed men, because the public power which is an attribute of every state “does not directly coincide” with the armed population, with its “self-acting armed organization”…A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power. But how can it be otherwise?” (1917, I.2).

It must be kept in mind that our terminology differs somewhat from that of Engels and Lenin, and that our concept of classes in particular differs sharply from the Marxist-Leninist concept of classes. Nonetheless, the above quoted passages, mutatis mutandis, are in harmony with our theory of the State. Engels writes that the State is a unit-system of public power. Power always means public power, power over the public. Public power and state power mean one and the same thing. Power is social and material. By definition, there is no such thing as “private power,” that is to say, where there is only a single isolated individual the possibility of power simply does not exist. Lenin specifies that state power consists of “special bodies of armed men” in order to differentiate armed agents of the State from armed members of the lay populace. Engels adds, and Lenin recapitulates, that the special bodies of armed men constitutive of state power possess “material adjuncts” such as “prisons, and institutions of coercion of all kinds.” That is to say, prisons and other institutions of coercion are merely secondary appendages of the primary organ of state power, the special bodies of armed men, and are therefore dependent upon those special bodies of armed men. The special bodies of armed men are dominating bodies; these are more colliquially called the army and the police. The army and the police are the primary instruments of state power because power as such can only be established and maintained by physical violence. The army and the police are organizations that specialize in inflicting violence upon other bodies, therefore they constitute the core or essence of the State apparatus. The police is essentially a military organization, and it differs only superficially from the official army. Police presence is always a military occupation. The “special” quality distinguishing the “special bodies of armed men” constitutive of state power from other bodies of armed men is nothing other than their domination. The special bodies of armed men constitutive of the State are nothing other than dominating bodies; the State, therefore, ultimately consists of dominating bodies.

The observations of Engels and Lenin thus far appear to affirm Nietzsche’s theory of the State, and in particular Nietzsche’s meta-analysis of the power relation between master and slave. The masters are nothing other than special bodies of armed men. The advantage of Engels’ and Lenin’s definition of the State, thus far, is that its historical scope is explicitly far greater than Nietzsche’s. Nietzsche, when discussing concrete material and social power relations, limits himself to the relation between master and slave. Engels and Lenin, on the other hand, observe that concrete material and social power relations are operative in every society divided into classes, and that the State, throughout all history, is by definition constituted by special bodies of armed men that inflict violence on the oppressed class, exactly in the manner of the power relation between master and slave. Moreover, Nietzsche, in his lengthy analysis of punishment in Section II of On the Genealogy of Morals, overlooks the fact that institutions of punishment, such as prisons, institutions of public execution, and other institutions of coercion, are merely the material adjuncts of special bodies of armed men, that is to say, institutions of coercion are merely the material adjuncts of a military class constitutive of a State apparatus. This means that Nietzsche overlooks the fact that the same power relation between master and slave that he discovered at the origin of the State is always operative at the basis of the State apparatus wherever there is a State apparatus. In this regard, Foucault’s genealogy of punishment in Discipline and Punish is far more accurate and precise than Nietzsche’s.

However, Engels and Lenin, not to mention Marx, are fundamentally mistaken about which class is the ruling class in a society with a State. Nietzsche is correct to observe that because the State is at bottom the power relation between master and slave, the ruling class of the State is always the military class, the class constituted by the dominating bodies. Marx, Engels, and Lenin, of course, believe that the ruling class in modern “capitalist” society is the capitalist class, the bourgeoisie. However, it is highly questionable why the military class, the dominant people with weapons, would simply consent to do whatever the richest merchant class demanded of them; certainly, it cannot be simply for the sake of money, since the military class, being armed and skilled in arms, could simply rob the richest merchant class whenever they desire to, if it is truly their money that they desire. The relation between the military class and the merchant class is much more comprehensible if we reverse the traditional Marxist-Leninist theory of the State: it is the military class that is the ruling class, and the richest merchant class (for example, the bourgeoisie) is subordinate to the needs and desires of the military class. The people in charge of a society with a State are always the people constitutive of the kernel of the State, and those people happen to be the people with weapons who are distinguished as “special” precisely by the fact that they are in charge. The “split into classes” only begins with the origin of the State itself, and it is continually produced by the infrastructure of the State; it is primarily the split between the masters and the slaves, that is, between special bodies of armed men and subjugated bodies, and only secondarily a matter of splits into middle classes such as the merchant class and the priest class. To reiterate, state power, the power of the State, never arises from within a society; rather, the power of the State always arises from outside a society, and it imposes itself upon a society and thereafter shapes that society according to its own needs, thereby defining that society as the society of the State, or more simply put, as the State. In the final analysis, the State is indeed a machine for the oppression of one class by another, but to be more specific, the State is a machine for the oppression of the subjugated class by the ruling military class.

Just as a political economy can only function by means of the reproduction of the labour power on which it runs (for example, in capitalism the reproduction of labour power is in part enabled by wages), so does a political culture only function by means of the reproduction of the labour power on which it runs. In fact, a political economy is only a means by which a political culture is reproduced, which is what it means for a political culture to be the infrastructure and a political economy to be a superstructure. For example, the wages given to the proletariat in exchange for their work in capitalism merely functions to reproduce a mode of production of hierarchy, with its attendant symbolic violence and physical violence, at the basis of the State. The infrastructure of the State, its political culture or politico-cultural “mode of production,” mobilizes and utilizes the libidinal economies of the rulers. Libidinal economies in general consist first and foremost of unit-systems of labour power. Cultural construction is cultural labour, the labour of the production of culture, meaning that it is constituted by labour power. At this point, we must make a detour into the ontology of labour power and discover its equivalence with the ontology of force in order to be able to more thoroughly explicate the infrastructure and the superstructure of the State. Just as political economy plays the central role in dialectical and historical materialism, political ontology plays the central role in genealogical and logistical materialism. Political ontology is the ontology of politics, the metaanalysis or metaphysics of politics. Political ontology is the metaanalysis of the forces (or blocks of ontological labour) constitutive of politics. Political ontology begins its meta-analysis of the State with the power relations at the infrastructure of the State, and only secondarily analyzes political economy as part of the superstructure of the State.

Marx writes: “Productive activity, if we leave out of sight its special form, viz., the useful character of the labour, is nothing but the expenditure of human labour power. Tailoring and weaving, though qualitatively different productive activities, are each a productive expenditure of human brains, nerves, and muscles, and in this sense are human labour” (MECW Vol. 35, p. 54). “On the one hand, all labour is, speaking physiologically, an expenditure of human labour power, and in its character of identical abstract human labour, it creates and forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, all labour is the expenditure of human labour power in a special form and with a definite aim, and in this, its character of concrete useful labour, it produces use values” (MECW Vol. 35, p. 56). “Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use values, but not commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only produce use values, but use values for others, social use values…To become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use value, by means of an exchange” (MECW Vol. 35, p. 51). A use value is “a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference” (MECW Vol. 35, p. 45).

First of all, let us note that “labour power” has nothing whatsoever to do with “power” as we use the term. Power, as we use the term, always means power-over (as opposed to capability or “potential,” as in “potential-to”). Potential-to or capability-to is often denoted colloquially as “power to,” and the “power” in “labour power” fits precisely this colloquial usage of “power to,” such that “labour power” really means “labour potential,” “labour capability,” “labour ability,” or “labour faculty.” In the interest of developing precise methods, we develop a more precise jargon than colloquial language, and therefore strictly limit the meaning of “power” to “power-over.” However, for the sake of clarity, we retain the term “labour power” as Marx wrote it, although it must be kept in mind that “labour power” by itself is not the same as “power,” and that the “power” in “labour power” really means “potential” as in “potentialto.” Though power, as in power-over, is indeed constituted by labour power, that is, by labour potential, as we shall see.

“Labour,” “productive activity,” “labour power,” “the expenditure of labour power,” “productive force,” and “production” all mean the same thing; each of these terms only highlight a different facet of the same entity, that of labour power. Labour power is not in itself a commodity (it only becomes a commodity when it is exchanged), and the products of labour power are first and foremost use values (which become commodities only under certain determinate conditions, namely those in which they are exchanged or at least collected for the purpose of exchange). In any case, labour power is the production of use values, and any entity that satisfies a desire or motivation is by definition a use-value. In human beings, labour power takes the form of “a productive expenditure of human brains, nerves, and muscles.” But here Marx is far too concise, not to mention anthropocentric (it is undeniable that animals, for instance “beasts of burden,” perform labour). Because all physiological activity, whether in human beings or in other species, whether plant, animal, fungus, etc., produces entities that satisfy the need for survival, any productive expenditure of a physiological unit-structure is labour power. Moreover, we recognize the existence of psychical unit-systems, and we likewise recognize psychical unit-systems as consisting of the expenditure of labour power, since, in living organisms, psychical activity produces entities that satisfy the need for survival. However, there are a multitude of physical entities that satisfy the need for survival but that are not produced by physiological unit-structures (for example, molecules of oxygen, molecules of carbon dioxide, molecules of water, rays of sunlight), yet they are indubitably produced, that is, they are indubitably products of labour, or else they would not exist. From this, four points become clear: 1) that inorganic beings (for example, the sun) also expend labour power; 2) that Marx’s concept of “use value” has a “biocentric” bias, meaning that it is defined solely from the perspective of living organisms; 3) therefore, the concept of “use value” cannot adequately describe the products of labour power in the inorganic world; 4) and by implication, it cannot adquately describe the products of labour power more generally, even in the organic or biological world. We affirm the truth of the Native American doctrine (or at least, the doctrine held by many Native American nations) that “Nature is a relative,” that Nature must be viewed and treated as a relative because Nature is objectively a relative; what this means to us is that Nature, the set of organic and inorganic beings that exist independently of the human being, is just as much constituted by the expenditure of labour power as the human being.

“Use values” indubitably exist from the perspective of living organisms, but the products of labour power are more primarily something else before they become use values for a living organism, if they do become use values for a living organism (this applies not only to the labour of inorganic beings, but even to the labour of physiological unit-structures). What, then, are the products of labour power? The products of labour power are nothing other than other expenditures of labour power. We do not mean this in a circular way. An expenditure of labour power is a block of ontological production, or a block of ontological labour power, or a block of ontological labour, and each block of ontological labour produces another block of ontological labour (or, to phrase it another way, a block of ontological production produces another block of ontological production). For example, the ontological labour of the sun produces rays of sunlight, which are so many blocks of ontological labour, some of which go on to be utilized by plants on Earth in the labour of photosynthesis. Deleuze and Guattari describe this aspect of the production process as “the production of production” and as “the producing/product identity.” We deny that there is any purely objective entity such as “abstract labour.” We affirm that labour exists only in and through particular forms of labour (the blocks of ontological labour), and that “abstract labour” is nothing but a cultural construct invented and enforced by capitalists and the capitalist State (or, for that matter, by socialists and the socialist State).

In the most general terms, labour power is the productive expenditure of energy. Or rather, energy only exists in and through its expenditure, and is therefore fundamentally equivalent to labour power. Labour power is energy, energy is labour power. By “energy” we mean “energy” as roughly defined by Nietzsche, which he more often calls by the name of “force.” Although Nietzsche himself conflates his concept of “force” with his concept of “will to power,” the two are in fact distinct concepts in his works, such that the only salvageable portions of Nietzsche’s theory of “will to power” are those in which “will to power” is described as force. Nietzsche writes that this world is “a monster of energy…a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing” (WP, 1067). This world is the expenditure of infinite blocks or units of energy, the expenditure of infinite blocks or units of forces. In our jargon: this world is entirely constituted by blocks of ontological labour power. Labour power is force, force is labour power.

Nietzsche writes, “A quantum of force is equivalent to a quantum of drive, will, effect – more, it is nothing other than precisely this very driving, willing, effecting, and only owing to the seduction of language (and of the fundamental errors of reason that are petrified in it) which conceives and misconceives all effects as conditioned by something that causes effects, by a “subject,” can it appear otherwise. For just as the popular mind separates the lightning from its flash and takes the latter for an action, for the operation of a subject called lightning, so popular morality also separates strength from expressions of strength, as if there were a neutral substratum behind the strong man, which was free to express strength or not to do so. But there is no such substratum; there is no “being” behind doing, effecting, becoming; “the doer” is merely a fiction added to the deed – the deed is everything. The popular mind in fact doubles the deed; when it sees the lightning flash, it is the deed of a deed: it posits the same event first as cause and then a second time as its effect. Scientists do no better when they say “force moves,” “force causes,” and the like – all its coolness, its freedom from emotion notwithstanding, our entire science still lies under the misleading influence of language and has not disposed of that little changeling, the “subject” (the atom, for example, is such a changeling, as is the Kantian “thing-in-itself”).” (GM, I.13)

To effect something means to produce something, to produce an effect. Because a quantum of force is a quantum of effect, it is a quantum of expenditure of labour power. A quantum of force is a quantum of ontological action, which is a quantum of ontological labour. Nietzsche’s description of force as “willing” and “driving” is accurate only insofar as this definition is circular, that is, only insofar as “willing” and “driving” mean nothing but force. Nietzsche is much more precise when writes that force is effecting. Nietzsche’s breakthrough in ontology is his ontology of becoming, which recognizes no real “beings” in the traditional sense of the word, that is, no “identities” or “self-identical entities,” but which never resorts to the Hegelian dialectic of “contradictions” which rediscovers “identity” in and through “contradictions.” The Hegelian dialectic (not to mention its pale shadow, the materialist dialectic of dialectical materialism) is no better than a parlour trick or cocktail conversation in which one always discovers the “contradictions” and “identities” in “contradiction” that one had put everywhere to begin with a-priori. Nietzsche’s ontology of becoming never sinks to the level of easy answers offered by the Hegelian dialectic. In Nietzsche’s ontology of becoming, becoming can only be properly understood “empirically,” that is to say, in terms of the concrete, material activities defining its quanta. Moreover, Nietzsche’s ontology of becoming is an ontology of multiplicity. (Additionally, whenever Nietzsche uses the word “difference” in the context of ontology, what he really means by it is “multiplicity.”) In an ontology of multiplicity, there are no “identities,” and “beings” in the traditional sense (being as identity). We use the word “being” throughout this text for pragmatic purposes, and since language forces us to do so, but our concept of being is the same as Badiou’s concept of being, “being is multiplicity,” which is a concept of being under erasure. Nietzsche’s ontology of becoming is one sense or aspect of “genealogy” as Nietzsche uses the term in On the Genealogy of Morals; we may describe this aspect as “the materialist genealogy” or “genealogical materialism.” Becoming only exists in, through, and as genealogies of quanta of becoming. In a genealogy, there are neither identities nor contradictions. In a genealogy, there are only continuities and discontinuities of forces. A quantum of becoming is a quantum of force, a quantum of ontological labour power. Nietzsche’s ontology of becoming is equivalent to his ontology of force, which we have discovered is equivalent to our ontology of labour power.

To use Freudian jargon, there is only “free energy,” energy that immediately expends itself, and there is no such thing as “bound energy,” energy which does not immediately expend itself. According to Freud, whereas “bound energy” is blocked and accumulates, only to be discharged at some future point wherein it becomes “free energy,” “free energy” is immediately and totally discharged. The discharge of energy is the expenditure of energy, the expenditure of force, the expenditure of labour power. Nietzsche defines a force as an action or a doing. A force always does something, it only exists by way of doing something. A doing, an action, is nothing other than labour, the expenditure of labour power (to labour means to do, to do means to labour), meaning that force is ontological labour, labour as an ontological entity. Any concept of an entity or being that somehow exists and persists independently of all actions is nothing other than a pure cultural construct, and more particularly a mere linguistic construct, a fiction of language. Just as the fundamental errors of reason petrified in popular language separate the lightning from its flash, such that the lightning is the “subject” and the flash its “verb,” so do the same fundamental errors of reason petrified in popular language separate, in psychology, the “subject” and its “actions.” In reality, there is no such transcendental subject, no “doer,” neither in psychology nor in any other domain. In reality, there is only the doing. There are only actions. The “productive subject,” our phrase for what Deleuze and Guattari describe as “desiring-production,” is not a transcendental subject, but a subjectivity or subjective experience constituted entirely by blocks of ontological labour. Moreover, if Nietzsche can be described as post-structuralist avant le lettre, it is only insofar as he remains consistent in his ontology of force and thereby affirms a machinic analysis. Nietzsche emphatically warns against misconceiving force as a transcendental subject or object, a gross error which leads one to make statements such as “force moves” or “force causes,” as if a force could be separated from its action. The lightning only exists in, through, and as its flash. Force only exists in, through, and as its action; this is the real meaning of the concept of labour.

Considering the immanence of labour, it was a mistake to have coined the phrase “working class” or “workers.” Everything that exists only exists in, through, and as a form of work. Labels such as “working class” and “workers” obscures the fact that despite the unit-system of wages in the unit-system of capitalism, the wage labourer is just as subjugated as slaves and serfs. Moreover, the subjugated class in a State may actually be composed of multiple classes, such that there are multiple subjugated classes (which are nonetheless united by the fact that they are subjugated, however much their subjugation may differ in degree); for example, the lumpenproletariat have always been a subjugated class even more subjugated than the proletariat in the “capitalist” State (we need only consider that the lumpenproletariat has always constituted the majority of the prison population), and in the contemporary “capitalist” State, refugees constitute another subjugated class. Furthermore, limiting the concept of labour to the “working class” obscures the very real labour of subjugation and domination performed by the ruling class (and by their middle class agents) upon the subjugated class.

In his essay on dialectical materialism, “On Contradiction,” Mao Zedong writes, “When the superstructure (culture, politics, etc.) obstructs the development of the economic base, political and cultural changes become principal and decisive” (2007, p. 92). Mao understands this interaction of the politico-cultural unit-system and the politico-economic unit-system dialectically, that is, in terms of contradiction: Mao recognizes a dialectical relation of mutual contradiction between the politico-economic “base” and the politicocultural “superstructure,” such that there are times when the politicocultural “superstructure” plays the principal and decisive role in history, a place typically reserved for the politico-economic “base” in the mechanistic variants of Marxism (which are by far the most common) (2007, p. 92). However, Mao does not realize that his simple and true observation of the importance of politico-cultural unit-systems in history, to the point that they may play the principal and decise role in certain moments of history, destroys the the Marxist theory of history (historical materialism) altogether. For if it is possible for a politico-cultural unit-system to alter the course of history over and against the politico-economic unit-system of the same social machine, then there is neither truth nor utility in labelling the politico-economic unit-system the “base/infrastructure” and the politico-cultural unit-system the “superstructure,” since there are at least some occasions in which the reversal of roles is apparent, and the politico-cultural unit-system functions as the “base/infrastructure” while the politico-economic unit-system functions as the “superstructure.”

Mao’s conclusion is that political and cultural changes are necessary in order to produce economic changes. What Mao discovers is that a politico-economic unit-system is only made possible by a politico-cultural unit-system, which means precisely, as we have delineated, the reversal of the traditional MarxistLeninist “base/superstructure” theory: in a society, the politicocultural unit-system is the base or infrastructure, and the politicoeconomic unit-system is a superstructure. Following Nietzsche’s genealogical materialism, we may further dispense with the other trappings of dialectical materialism, namely the conceptual framework of a “dialectic” between “contradictions.” The cultural infrastructure and the economic superstructure are not mutually contradictory opposites, but integrated and harmonious parts of the same social machine. More broadly, and for the same reasons, it means that there is no economically determined “class struggle” functioning as the driving force of history, although there are times when a class struggle emerges. There is no single driving force of history which can be indiscriminately found in every nook and cranny of history, but we may say that in general it is a politicocultural unit-system that shapes history. Generally, when a class struggle emerges, on whatever scale, it emerges as the result of one or several politico-cultural unit-system(s). Therefore, a science of revolution must begin with a political anthropology, a scientific study of political culture, and not with political economy, although the scientific study of political economy remains an important field of research for political anthropology.

The subjugated class is always a conquered populace, a perpetually conquered populace. The ruling class of the State only exists through its permanent war of aggression on the subjugated class, but this is not the same as the Marxist concept of “class struggle,” which denotes the struggle of the subjugated class against the ruling class. In fact, as long as the subjugated class remains subjugated, that is to say, as long as the subjugated class does not revolt and thereby become the revolutionary class, the subjugated class remains complicit in its own repression. In other words, there is no “contradiction,” real or apparent, between the subjugated class and the ruling class. To paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari, “There are no contradictions, real or apparent, there are only degrees of humour.” Both the infrastructure and the superstructure of the State mobilize and utilize the libidinal economies of the ruling class and the subjugated class in order to produce and reproduce the subjugation of the subjugated class by the ruling class. It is in this context that we should understand Nietzsche’s concepts of “master morality” and “slave morality,” between which there are no contradictions, either real or apparent, but only degrees of humour: both the master morality of the masters and the slave morality of the slaves function together in an integrated whole in order to produce and reproduce the enslavement of the slaves by the masters.

A unit-system of morality directly depends upon a unitsystem of libidinal economy, that is to say, it is not merely a conceptual framework of cultural constructs, but a conceptual framework of cultural constructs in its natural context of desiringproduction. Based on etymological research which we shall not recount here, Nietzsche discovers that the cultural constructs delimiting master morality are “good” and “bad” (roughly speaking), whereas the cultural constructs delimiting slave morality are “good” and “evil” (roughly speaking), and it goes without saying that these concepts all have very different meanings in their respective unitsystems; even without the etymological apparatus, the properly philosophical concepts of master morality and slave morality that Nietzsche develops are readily observable in any State, including in all contemporary States. Let us first consider Nietzsche’s concept of master morality. Nietzsche writes that in master morality, it is the masters themselves, the triumphant monsters themselves, “who felt and established themselves and their actions as good, that is, of the first rank, in contradistinction to all the low, low-minded, common and plebeian. It was out of this pathos of distance that they first seized the right to create values and to coin names for values…The pathos of nobility and distance, as aforesaid, the protracted and domineering fundamental total feeling on the part of a higher ruling order in relation to a lower order, to a “below” – that is the origin of the antithesis “good” and “bad”” (GM, I.2). The masters declare themselves “good” and their slaves “bad.” The objectively existing beings that the masters conceive of and feel as “low, low-minded, common and plebian” are nothing other than the slaves that they (the masters) are subjugating and enslaving. The domination by the masters is necessarily undertaken by them with a “good conscience,” that is, an untroubled conscience; that is to say, the masters believe and feel that their enslavement of their slaves is good, which is why they carry out the enslavement to begin with and why they maintain it. Master morality can be aptly summarized by the maxim “might is right” or “might makes right,” and its founding praxis is “the right of conquest,” the “right” to ownership by means of violent coercion. (The right of conquest and the doctrine of “might is right” survives in the contemporary State, despite what the hegemonic discourse of obfuscating legalism, as promoted by that eminently theatrical organization, the United Nations, would have us believe; one need only consider the United States’ continuing military occupation of Native American lands, not to mention Israel’s ongoing military occupation of Palestine.) The ultimate concern of master morality is the war of aggression, which it feels and labels as “good” while feeling and labelling its victims as “bad.” The masters feel and label their “disgusting procession of murder, arson, rape, and torture” as “good” while feeling and labelling their victims as “bad.”

Nietzsche writes that the pathos of distance “grows out of the ingrained differences between stations, out of the way the ruling caste maintains an overview and keeps looking down on subservient types and tools, and out of this [ruling] caste’s equally continuous exercise in obeying and commanding, in keeping away and below” (BGE, §257). The “ingrained differences between stations” are the positional and topological differences of the sites in a hierarchy (“above” and “below,” or “higher” and “lower,” roughly speaking). Nietzsche’s slight inaccuracy about the pathos of distance “growing out of” power relations, as stated in Beyond Good and Evil, is corrected by him in On the Genealogy of Morals, where he recognizes that the pathos of distance is what enables the formation of power relations to begin with, although after the formation of power relations the pathos of distance continues to operate and functions to maintain power relations (directly at the level of the infrastructure of the State, and indirectly at the level of the superstructure of the State). The positional and topological differences between the sites in a power relation must first of all form part of the libidinal economy of the masters before it is actualized by acts of physical violence. In plainer language: the masters must lack pity for their victims to begin with in order to be able to enslave their victims. The pathos of distance is the gaze of the masters, from which the victims or slaves appear at best to be “tools” or “beasts of burden.” If the subjugated class can be described as the “working” class, it is only in the sense that they are used as beasts of burden by the ruling class. The pathos of distance basically means the absolute lack of pity, the absolute lack of compassion, which in more contemporary jargon means the absolute lack of empathy.

Let us note that when we are directly discussing the pathos of distance and its direct effects, we are discussing operations essential to the infrastructure of the State. The pathos of distance enables and maintains the relations of production of hierarchy, that is to say, the pathos of distance enables and maintains power relations. Nietzsche writes that it is out of their pathos of distance that the masters create their master morality. The pathos of distance is itself the formation of desiring-production, the unit-system of libidinal economy, characterizing the masters, which produces the conceptual framework constitutive of a master morality. Insofar as master morality is a discourse, it is a unit-system of symbolic violence. Insofar as the symbolic violence of master morality is intimately and intricately connected to the physical violence constitutive of the infrastructure of the State, the symbolic violence of master morality is also constitutive of the infrastructure of the State, such that the infrastructure of the State is constituted by a combination of the physical violence of the masters and the symbolic violence of master morality. The “originary” categorization or classification by the masters, the distinction between the masters and the slaves, is precisely master morality’s distinction between “good” and “bad” respectively.

A power relation is a material politico-cultural relation of domination-submission in which there is one party that dominates by means of violence and another party that submits out of fear of injury or death. A power relation is by definition a hierarchy. Power relations or relations of domination-submission are a type of social relation and a type of political relation between bodies (to be more specific, between physiological bodies or bodies with organs, as opposed to virtual bodies or bodies without organs). Bodies are constituted by forces. A power relation is a relation between sets of forces only insofar as those sets of forces have the forms of bodies. We reject Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power, which means that we reject Nietzsche’s idea that power relations can exist within a single body, between forces in that single body. Foucault writes that a docile body is “a body…that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved” (1975/1977, p. 136). The existence of docile bodies, which we also describe as “submitting bodies,” implies that there are also dominating bodies, bodies which subject or subjugate other bodies, use other bodies, transform other bodies, “improve” other bodies (relative to the needs of the dominating body), or destroy other bodies. The bodies of the masters are dominating bodies, the bodies of the slaves are submitting bodies. Power relations, relations of domination-submission, are also relations of domination-utility, wherein the “utility” or “use value” of the submissive body is defined by the needs of the dominant body (or bodies). Relations of domination-submission do not necessarily have anything to do with commanding and obeying, although commanding and obeying necessarily involve relations of domination-submission. Submitting bodies may be helpless bodies that are violated without consent. Obversely, dominating bodies need neither recognition, nor obedience, nor consent in order to utilize submitting bodies for their (the dominating bodies’) ends.

By a combination of the libidinal economy of the pathos of distance, the symbolic violence of master morality, and physical violence, the dominating bodies of the masters produce the relations of production of hierarchy, which is tautologous to saying that they produce hierarchy itself, since the relations of production of hierarchy is hierarchy itself. The power relation is hierarchy itself, the relation of hierarchy that defines hierarchy itself. Hierarchy in its essence is the relation of domination-submission. A hierarchy always necessarily involves a dominating body, a submitting body, and the power relation between them. All forms of dominationsubmission are forms of hierarchy, that is to say, forms of power. Power is hierarchy, hierarchy is power. In the unit-system of symbolic violence constitutive of master morality, the concept of “freedom,” another guise of the master’s concept of “good,” always takes the form of a “zero-sum game,” to appropriate the language of game theory; the master’s concept of freedom means the freedom to dominate, the freedom to have power-over, such that one can only have freedom for oneself at the expense of someone else’s freedom. For the master, more freedom for oneself can only be achieved by limiting the freedom of others, and in the last instance this means enslaving others.

Power relations are “differential relations,” relations of “difference-in-itself,” roughly in the manner delineated by the early (pre-Guattari) Deleuze. Deleuze writes that a differential relation is a type of relationship “between elements which have no determined value themselves, and which nevertheless determine each other reciprocally in the relation” (DI, p. 176). A differential relation is a relation between elements that reciprocally determine each other. Differential relations are defined by the process of reciprocal determination between elements. All differential relations are not power relations, but all power relations are differential relations. (Moreover, all social relations are not power relations, but all social relations are differential relations, that is, relations of reciprocal determination.) It must be kept in mind that the elements of a power relation, the master and the slave, are real beings who are each constituted only in part by imaginary-symbolic unit-structures (their libidinal economies). That is to say, the elements of a power relation are always real elements, and the differential relation between them is always a real relation (as opposed to purely symbolic elements with purely symbolic relations). Nevertheless, master and slave reciprocally determine each other in the power relation, such that the slave is determined as such only by their relation to the master, and the master is determined as such only by their relation to the slave. Nietzsche writes that the society of the masters, the State, is a sort of society that “believes in a long ladder of rank order and value distinctions between men, and in some sense needs slavery” (BGE, §257), which means that the masters, in order to be masters, need slaves. All power relations are differential power relations; or rather, the term “differential power relation” merely emphasizes the differential dimension of the power relation. Differential power relations are both static and dynamic, both synchronic and diachronic, depending both on a pure logic of relations and a dirty logistics of cultural and historical construction, both ordinal and cardinal, depending both on the order of positions and the quantity of forces. The differential power relation is the process of power differentiation. Power differentiation is the differentiation of power, the process of violence that constructs the differential relation between master and slave. Infrastructural violence is power differentiation. Power differentiation is the construction of power, the construction of hierarchy.

Whereas for the early Deleuze, the “repetition-for-itself” of a transcendental “structure” or “Idea” directly determines the “difference-in-itself” of differentiation, we observe on the contrary that it is the “difference-in-itself” of power differentiation that directly and completely determines the “repetition-for-itself” of the State-machine. There are indeed certain sets of “repetition-for-itself” that precede and partially determine the “difference-in-itself” of power differentiation, but these sets of “repetition-for-itself” are merely the quasi-transcendental bodies without organs internal to the respective psyches of the masters and the slaves. In any case, the State-machine, like social machines generally, is a thoroughly empirical entity that is nonetheless a repetition-for-itself. The repetition-for-itself of the State-machine is completely determined by the difference-in-itself of power differentiation. The reciprocal determination of master and slave continues henceforth into the complete determination of the repetition-for-itself defining the Statemachine. Every State has an infrastructure constituted by the following two-fold processes: 1) a unit-system of differential power relations according to which the ruling class and the subjugated class determine themselves reciprocally; and 2) a unit-system of repetition-for-itself corresponding to these differential power relations and constituting the operations of the State-machine.

To appropriate the jargon of the early Deleuze, bodies without organs are the quasi-transcendental “obscure precursors,” “Ideas,” and “embryos” (or “eggs”) of this process of the constitution of the State, that is, the infrastructural violence of the State. What Deleuze writes in the following passage on the obscure precursor is applicable, mutatis mutandis, to the role of bodies without organs in the infrastructural violence of the State: “Something like a “difference operator” is required, to relate difference to difference. This role is filled by what is called an obscure precursor. A lightning bolt flashes between different intensities, but it is preceded by an obscure precursor, invisible, imperceptible, which determines in advance the inverted path as in negative relief, because this path is first the agent of communication between series of differences” (DI, p. 97). The bodies without organs of the masters are the “difference operators” required to differentially relate master to slave. These “difference operators” are the obscure precursors of the infrastructural violence of the State, meaning that bodies without organs of the masters are the obscure precursors of the infrastructural violence of the State. The differential power relation is a blood-red lightning bolt flashing between the master and the slave (each a differential element of power), but it is preceded by the obscure precursors, the bodies without organs of the masters, which are invisible and imperceptible, but which nonetheless determine in advance, by means of metapsychological operations, the inverted path of hierarchy as in negative relief, because this path of hierarchy is first the agent of communication between the differential elements of power, that is, between the master and the slave. In short, the function of the bodies without organs internal to the master is to oppose the absence of the power differentiation between master and slave, or to phrase it obversely, the function of the bodies without organs internal to the master is to enable the presence of the power differentiation between master and slave. It is only secondarily, when the masters produce the slaves as such, that they, by the same process, produce bodies without organs for the slaves that likewise enable the presence of the power differentiation between master and slave.

Power relations, the relations of production of hierarchy, are determined as differential relations that are established between real, concrete people with real, concrete libidinal economies (imaginarysymbolic unit-systems), as real violence. Each mode of production of hierarchy is thus characterized by the State-machine corresponding to the violence of the differential power relation. The loci or sites of a hierarchy are simultaneously both: 1) real positions of material bodies (physiological bodies, bodies with organs) in a real and material social machine; and 2) the imaginary-symbolic positions of a libidinal economy internal to a physiological body (in which the virtual body, the body without organs, plays the role of embryonic obscure precursor and Idea), which are formulated as the master morality in the master and the slave morality in the slave. The true “productive subjects” (“productive subjects” are constituted by a set of forces) of the State-machine are indeed the real beings who constitute and occupy the loci of a hierarchy. A unit-system of morality is an imaginary-symbolic unit-system. The imaginarysymbolic unit-system of master morality, in combination with physical violence, constitutes the infrastructural violence of the State. The imaginary-symbolic unit-system of slave morality, on the other hand, constitutes a portion of the superstructural violence of the State.

Whereas the symbolic violence of master morality is directed by the masters against the slaves, the symbolic violence of slave morality is directed by the slaves against themselves. That is to say, slave morality is by definition not symbolic violence directed against the masters, but symbolic violence directed by the slaves against themselves. Let us consider the fact that there are at least two different types of submitting bodies, namely helpless bodies and complicit bodies. With helpless bodies, there is absolutely no question of complicity, since helpless bodies are by definition submitting bodies that are violated or dominated without consent, that is, without any obedience on their part, and even despite their absolute psychological resistance to obedience. On the other hand, complicit bodies are submitting bodies that give their consent to being violated or dominated, however much that consent is determined by coercion in the last instance; it is only with complicit bodies that there is obedience to the commands of dominating bodies. Let us also consider, for contrast, resisting bodies: resisting bodies are bodies that do not submit to the violation or domination of dominating bodies; that is to say, resisting bodies are bodies that refuse to obey the commands of dominating bodies. Resisting bodies are not complicit bodies, and complicit bodies are not resisting bodies. Moreover, complicit bodies are not helpless bodies, and helpless bodies are not complicit bodies. However, of course, each type of body may become another type of body under certain determinate conditions, such that, for example, a resisting body may become a helpless body, a complicit body may become a helpless body, a helpless body may become a complicit body, a complicit body may become a resisting body, a resisting body may become a complicit body, etc. It may even be that a dominating body becomes a submitting body, or that a submitting body becomes a dominating body. In any case, there are typically complicit bodies that participate in the cultural construction of the State and thereby materially support the State and the constitutive infrastructural violence of the State. There are different modes of complicity in one’s own domination by dominating bodies. The mode of complicity in domination that Nietzsche discovers and explicates is slave morality.

Whereas the libidinal economy of master morality can be characterized as the pathos of distance, the libidinal economy of slave morality can be characterized as ressentiment. Ressentiment is indeed a pathos, the pathos of a particular mode of complicity, by far the most common mode of complicity although not the sole mode of complicity. Nietzsche writes, “The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge” (GM, I.10). On the content of slave morality, Nietzsche writes: “When the oppressed, downtrodden, outraged exhort one another with the vengeful cunning of impotence: “let us be different from the evil, namely good! And he is good who does not outrage, who harms nobody, who does not attack, who does not requite, who leaves revenge to God, who keeps himself hidden as we do, who avoids evil and desires little from life, like us, the patient, humble, and just” – this, listened to calmly and without previous bias, really amounts to no more than: “we weak ones are, after all, weak; it would be good if we did nothing for which we are not strong enough”; but this dry matter of fact, this prudence of the lowest order which even insects possess (posing as dead, when in great danger, so as not to do “too much”), has, thanks to the counterfeit and self-deception of impotence, clad itself in the ostentatious garb of the virtue of quiet, calm resignation, just as if the weakness of the weak – that is to say, their essence, their effects, their sole ineluctable, irremovable reality – were a voluntary achievement, willed, chosen, a deed, a meritorious act. This type of man needs to believe in a neutral independent “subject,” prompted by an instinct for self-preservation and self-affirmation in which every lie is sanctifted. The subject (or, to use a more popular expression, the soul) has perhaps been believed in hitherto more firmly than anything else on earth because it makes possible to the majority of mortals, the weak and oppressed of every kind, the sublime self-deception that interprets weakness as freedom, and their being thus-and-thus as a merit.” (GM, I.13; emphasis in original)

First of all, let us note that ressentiment is not the will to revenge. Let us remember Nietzsche’s ontology of force: every force always expends itself at every moment, such that there is only free energy and no bound energy. To phrase it another way, force is ontological labour, a force only exists in, through, and as its labour. When Nietzsche writes that ressentiment is the result of being denied the deed of revenge, we should be careful to understand that if we can employ the words “denial,” “repression,” or “suppression” here, it is not in the sense of describing ressentiment as a bound energy. Rather, the repression of the will to revenge means the transformation of the will to revenge into ressentiment, which is no longer the will to revenge. The will to revenge can only exist in, through, and as its expenditure in the deed of revenge, the “true reaction.” The will to revenge is the labour of revenge, and nothing else. Ressentiment is defined precisely by the fact that it is not the labour of revenge. Ressentiment is the will to compensate oneself with a purely imaginary revenge, a revenge fantasy. Ressentiment is the will to fantasize about revenge in lieu of the labour of revenge. The labour of ressentiment is the labour of fantasizing about revenge, which also necessarily means the labour of not performing the deed of revenge, that is to say, it means the labour of political inaction. It is by means of its political inaction that a submitting body becomes complicit in its own submission, and thereby delineates itself as a complicit body. Being complicit in one’s own submission means desiring one’s own repression. Complicit bodies desire their own repression, by definition. Ressentiment is a mode of complicity in one’s own submission, a mode of desiring one’s own repression. The productive subject of ressentiment labours on their own political-social repression by way of labouring on an impotent fantasy of revenge (in lieu of labouring on a deed of revenge). The “originary” revenge fantasy constructed by the productive subject of ressentiment is the unit-system of slave morality. Slave morality is a unit-system of symbolic violence because it limits the potentiality and freedom of the slave by means of producing political inaction, that is, by means of producing the refusal to perform the deed of revenge against the masters. The deed of revenge against the masters is the true slave revolt, the slave revolt of deeds, and thus the increase of the freedom of the “slave,” who for that very reason would cease to be a “slave” as such. Slave-morality, as a unit-system of symbolic violence, is a unit-system of superstructural violence; by producing slave morality, the slave reproduces the conditions of their own oppression.

What Abraham and Torok write of fantasy applies especially to the revenge fantasy characteristic of ressentiment: “Granting our metapsychological definition of “reality” as everything, whether exogenous or endogenous, that affects the psyche by inflicting a topographical shift on it, “fantasy” can be defined as all those representations, beliefs, or bodily states that gravitate toward the opposite effect, that is, the preservation of the status quo. This definition does not address the contents or the formal characteristics of fantasy, only its function, a preventive and conservative function despite the highly innovative genius of fantasy, its vast field of action and even despite its defninite complacency with respect to desire” (1994, p. 125). The labour of revenge is a real labour of a real revenge, the labour of revenge is a reality; the labour of revenge, simultaneously exogenous and endogenous, not only affects the world by inflicting a topographical shift on it, but also affects the psyche by inflicting a topographical shift on it, transforming the productive subject of revenge (for example, from a slave into a revolutionary). Revenge fantasy (or slave morality) can be defined as all those representations, beliefs, or bodily states (in the productive subject of ressentiment) that labour toward the opposite of the labour of revenge. That is to say, revenge fantasy (or slave morality) can be defined as all those representations, beliefs, or bodily states (in the productive subject of ressentiment) that labour toward the preservation of the subject of ressentiment’s own slavery. The function of revenge fantasy (or slave morality) is in essence a preventive and conservative function, namely the prevention of the labour of revenge, and the conservation of slavery.

When Abraham and Torok write of the fantasy’s “definite complacency with respect to desire,” they are engaging in the type of obfuscating redundancy which would seperate the lightning from its flash. Desire, motivation, consists wholly of blocks of ontological labour, what Deleuze and Guattari describe as desiring-production. The production of a fantasy is just as much a labour of desire (or motivation), a process of desiring-production (or motivationconstruction), as the production of a positive political action. The production of a revenge fantasy is a process of the libidinal economy of ressentiment, while the production of a deed of revenge is a process of the libidinal economy of the will to revenge. When Abraham and Torok write of fantasy’s “vast field of action,” their meaning is simply obscure, since both metapsychologically and existentially, the function of fantasy is preventive and conservative, meaning that it is much more accurate to discuss fantasy’s “vast field of inaction,” since its function is inaction. But inaction, which is always political inaction (whatever the value of such inaction), is itself still a form of labour, the labour of political inaction, so perhaps one can discuss a “vast field of action” of fantasy, if one means by that phrase a “vast field of labour” or a “vast field of effects.” We recognize no “formal characteristics” of fantasy apart from its machinic functioning, since fantasy, as a form, is defined precisely by its machinic functioning. The preventive and conservative function of revenge fantasy is described by Nietzsche as well as by Abraham and Torok (via their description of fantasy in general), but Nietzsche, in addition, specifically describes the content of revenge fantasy. By comparing the two sets of authors, we may firmly conclude that there is no “general content,” no “content in general,” of fantasy, meaning that the content of fantasy is always a particular content that can only be properly understood in the context of what specific action or type of action it prevents, and what specific situation or type of situation it conserves. The revenge fantasy is only one type of fantasy among many types of fantasy.

The unit-system of categories and classifications constitutive of slave morality, beginning with the “originary” distinction between its “good” and “evil,” wherein the slaves as slaves are “good” and wherein the masters are “evil,” prevent the slaves from revolting and conserve the circumstance of slavery, which defines slave morality as a unit-system of symbolic violence. Nietzsche notes that the formula of the theory of slave morality is “we weak ones are, after all, weak,” and that the formula of the praxis of slave morality is “it would be good if we did nothing for which we are not strong enough.” Following Nietzsche’s actual descriptions of the operations of slave morality, Nietzsche is absolutely wrong to generalize slave morality as “the slave revolt in morality.” On the contrary, the slave revolt consists wholly of the labour of revenge, and as such the slave revolt has nothing to do with ressentiment or mere revenge fantasies; the slave revolt is the actual deed of revenge, never the mere fantasy of revenge. The morality of the slave revolt is a revolutionary morality, not a slave morality. Therefore, slave morality is never a “slave revolt in morality”; on the contrary, slave morality prevents the slave revolt in praxis as well as in theory, meaning that slave morality is more aptly characterized as a mode of resignation to slavery. Slave morality’s formula of theory may also be rendered as “we slaves are, after all, slaves,” and its formula of praxis may also be rendered as “it would be good if we slaves resigned ourselves to being slaves,” that is to say, “it would be good if we slaves did not revolt against the masters, since we are not strong enough to defeat the masters.”

We wholly agree with Nietzsche in his rejection of the transcendental subject of free will, which in colloquial language is called the “soul.” Zizek writes, “Recall Husserl’s dark dream, from his Cartesian Meditations, of how the transcendental cogito would remain unaffected by a plague that would annihilate all humanity” (2007, p. xv). Husserl’s “dark dream” expresses the idealist essence of the transcendental subject, since only a purely ideal subject could remain wholly unaffected by a plague that annihilates all humanity. A purely ideal transcendental subject simply does not exist in the real world; this point does not need to be proven at length here, especially for our readers, who have gone beyond all such idealist fictions. In the discourse of slave morality, the concept of a transcendental subject functions as a fantasy in the context of a revenge fantasy.

According to Nietzsche, in the discourse of slave morality we always find an idealist form of the concept of “free will” that asserts that purely voluntary acts of transcendental subjects seperate the masters from the slaves, such that the slaves are slaves only because they choose to be slave, and the masters are masters only because they choose to be masters. We reject the traditional concept of “free will,” a will free from material conditions and material causes, on the basis that it is by definition merely an idealist concept, not a material one. Only a purely ideal transcendental subject that could remain wholly unaffected by a plague that wipes out all humanity could possibly possess a “free will” independent of material conditions and material causes. In reality, the material conditions of the slaves is materially different from the material conditions of the masters, such that for a slave to really cease being a slave there needs to be a change in material conditions, and for the masters to really cease being a master there needs to be a change in material conditions. A change in material conditions is a logistical problem, not a mere problem of “free choice.”

Here we diverge from Nietzsche, who is still far too idealist in his meta-analysis of slave morality. Let us call the belief in an idealist concept of free will “voluntarism.” Nietzsche’s idealism is the “opposite” of the idealism of voluntarism; Nietzsche’s idealism is the idealism of fatalism. Nietzsche believes that the slaves are by nature slaves and that the masters are by nature masters, and that is the end of the story. Nietzsche expresses his fatalism in terms of his concepts of “strength” and “weakness,” by which he means “psychological strength” and “psychological weakness” respectively, descriptions which are problematic because of their potential for obfuscation with physical strength and physical weakness, and because of their inaccuracy with respect to the machinic functionings of libidinal economies. In Nietzsche’s meta-analysis, the masters are masters because they are by their nature “strong,” whereas the slaves are slaves because they are by their nature “weak.”

We agree with Nietzsche that there are no transcendental subjects capable of freely choosing to be either masters or slaves, but we add that the difference between master and slave is first and foremost a material and logistical difference, and we also add that the differing libidinal economies of master and slave can only be properly understood in terms of logistical categories (as opposed to idealist categories like “psychological strength” and “psychological weakness”). As we have seen, the material difference between master and slave is constructed by the masters by means of a combination of physical violence and symbolic violence; that is to say, the difference between master and slave is determined in the last instance by the physical violence of the masters against the slaves. Without physical violence, the distinction between master and slave cannot be instituted. The libidinal economies of the people who become slaves may be different from the libidinal economies of the masters, or they may be the same as the libidinal economies of the masters; it is possible for some masters to transform other masters into slaves by means of physical violence and symbolic violence. However, in any case, the fact of slavery never depends upon the libidinal economies of the people who become slaves. It is only the violent process of enslavement that forges the libidinal economy of the slave as such, with its attendant slave morality. Slavery and the libidinal economy of the slave are cultural constructs, they are culturally constructed by the violent process of enslavement; it must be kept in mind that cultural constructs are material constructs, that a process of cultural construction is always also a process of material construction.

Nietzsche’s fatalism, and fatalism generally, is an idealist discourse because it obfuscates the logistical dimension of material reality. Logistics is the mobilization of resources necessary for the organization and implementation of an operation. Our materialism is “logistical materialism.” We define the material in terms of the logistical dimension of the material. That is to say, we define the material by the fact that the material consists of resources that can be mobilized under determinate conditions. Material reality is ontologically constituted by ontological logistical operations, ontologistical operations, mobilizations of blocks of ontological labour that constitute the organization and implementation of operations. The mental is material because the mental consists of ontologistic operations. Libidinal economies consist of ontologistic operations. If the traditional distinction between the “mental” and the “material” has any utility, it is only if this distinction is taken in a purely phenomenological and pragmatic sense. Every ontologistic operation can be modified under determinate conditions. In other words, there is no necessity, there is only contingency. Or, to appropriate Meillasoux’s formula, there is only the “necessity of contingency.” Ontologistic operations are all contingent, they are all modifiable.

Nietzsche’s discourse of “psychological strength” and “psychological weakness” is a thoroughly non-materialist discourse because it is a thoroughly non-logistical discourse. Libidinal economies are material conditions, and as such they are ontologistically constituted, meaning that libidinal economies are material resources that can be mobilized and even modified under determinate conditions. In other words, there is no necessity that dictates that a slave always has been and will be slave, or that a master always has been and will be a master. The slave is always contingently a slave, the master is always contingently a master. Logistical materialism rejects both the idealism of voluntarism and the idealism of fatalism. Logistical materialism understands causality, cause and effect, in material terms, that is to say, in logistical terms. The question of praxis is neither a question of voluntary decision-making (as in voluntarism) nor a question of resignation to some form of pre-destination (as in fatalism). The question of praxis is an eminently logistical question, concerned first and foremost with the mobilization of resources for the organization and implementation of an operation. The question of praxis has nothing to do with notions like “psychological strength” or “psychological weakness.” The question of praxis does have everything to do with the ontologistics of libidinal economies, that is, with the mobilization of libidinal economies as a resource necessary for the organization and implementation of an operation.

Let us consider the difference between one’s material interest and one’s libidinal interest. One’s material interest is always objective; whatever objectively increases one’s own material resources is in one’s objective material interest (for example, more money is always in one’s own material interest). One’s libidinal interest is always subjective; whatever (subjectively) gratifies one’s own subjective desire or whatever one (subjectively) conceives of as being able to serve as a means to gratify one’s own subjective desire is in one’s (subjective) libidinal interest (for example, being desired by a singular beautiful woman may be in one’s own libidinal interest). One’s libidinal interest and one’s material interest may indeed coincide; for example, the capitalist’s material interest is the same as their libidinal interest, namely accumulating more money that makes money (i.e. accumulating capital). However, one’s own libidinal interest and one’s own material interest may not necessarily coincide; for example, the singular woman in one’s own libidinal interest may refuse to give herself in exchange for money, in which case money may be in one’s material interest but not in one’s libidinal interest.

The master’s material interest and libidinal interest are at bottom one and the same, namely perpetuating slavery. The slave’s material interest and libidinal interest are diametrically opposed: it is in the slave’s material interest to revolt, since it is only by means of revolting that the slave has any chance of regaining possession of themselves, and thereby objectively increasing their own material resources (by way of increasing the ultimate material resource, one’s ownmost self); but the slave qua slave has a libidinal interest in perpetuating their own enslavement, as a result of the libidinal economy of slavehood forced upon them by the masters. Therefore, the slave’s libidinal economy must be transformed into the libidinal economy of a revolutionary in order for there to be a slave revolt. To revolt means to no longer be a slave; the very act of revolt liberates the slave. To put it more technically, the human being who becomes a slave can cease to be a slave by becoming a revolutionary.

We agree with Nietzsche that there is no transcendental subject with “free will,” and that the problem of being or not being a slave is never a problem of voluntary choice, but only because we understand the problem of being or not being a slave to be a problem of the transformation of libidinal economy, that is, a problem of the transformation of desire (or motivation), which is an eminently logistical problem. The slave as such is generally characterized by their libidinal economy of ressentiment. Under what determinate conditions can the libidinal economy of ressentiment be transformed into the libidinal economy of the revolutionary? What resources must be mobilized in order to organize and implement the transformation of libidinal economy from that of ressentiment to that of the revolutionary? We do not have immediate answers to these questions, and moreover, the particular answers may differ depending on the particular human being under consideration. After the human being’s libidinal economy has been transformed from that of a slave to that of an anarchist, logistical questions pertaining to the labour of a real slave revolt, that is, the labour of revenge, prevail.

However, here we must make a caveat: there are basically two flavours of the revolutionary, and they are diametrically opposed to each other, namely the socialist usurper and the anarchist. Whereas the socialist usurper merely labours to seize state power, the anarchist labours to abolish state power altogether. Socialist usurpers are only one type of usurper, and the only type of usurper that can genuinely be called revolutionary. Any group or individual who labours to seize state power is an usurper. In feudal times, there were many usurpers to the throne, and we may describe them as monarchist usurpers. Usurpers come in many different flavours, but in the contemporary political landscape there are, broadly speaking, two main types of usurpers, namely socialist usurpers and fascist usurpers. The difference between socialist usurpers and fascist usurpers primarily concerns their differing plans for the political economy of the State: 1) socialist usurpers plan for a political economy of socialism, that is, of state capitalism, what is also often described as a political economy of “central planning,” a unitsystem of political economy in which the State, run by the victorious leadership of the socialist party, owns all or most industries and the proletariat labours for a State-owned business in exchange for wages; 2) fascist usurpers plan for a political economy of traditional capitalism, in whatever flavour, in which the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class or merchant class, owns all or most industries and the proletariat labours for a bourgeois-owned business in exchange for wages. In both the socialist political economy and the capitalist political economy, the proletariat never owns the means of production; in the capitalist political economy, the bourgeoisie or merchant class own the means of production, whereas in the socialist political economy, the State (meaning the leadership of the socialist party that runs the State) directly owns the means of production. In both the socialist political economy and the capitalist political economy, the proletariat remains a subjugated class. Moreover, neither socialism nor fascism necessarily imply either totalitarianism or civil liberties; socialist governments may be either totalitarian or inclusive of civil liberties, just as fascist governments may be either totalitarian or inclusive of civil liberties, but in any case they remain States, and as such they exist only by the brutality of the infrastructural violence of the State (exactly in the same manner as the liberal representative democracy, for that matter). Nonetheless, fascists are technically counterrevolutionary because they want to conserve traditional capitalism, whereas socialists are technically revolutionary because they want to destroy traditional capitalism.

To clarify, we deny that either fascism or racism, which so often goes claw in claw with fascism, can be adequately explained as either ressentiment or the will to revenge. Fascism and racism are not engendered by ressentiment, and their respective discourses are not discourses of slave morality, because ressentiment and slave morality engender political inaction, whereas fascism and racism are modes of political action. While fascism and racism sometimes mobilize the will to revenge in order to effect real political actions, via conspiracy theories that attribute wholly fictional crimes to a group or individual, this is a merely secondary phenomenon. Fascism and racism are primarily concerned with power, that is, with hierarchy, hence racism’s discourse of the “master race.” That is to say, the discourses of fascism and racism are discourses of master morality, discourses that label the ruling class or the aspiring ruling class as “good” and that label the subjugated class, or at least the most subjugated class, as “bad.” In the colloquial jargon of modern languages, “bad” and “evil” are often used interchangeably, but this does not affect our argument, since the function of the concept “evil” in fascist and racist discourse is functionally equivalent to the concept “bad” in master morality; we must keep in mind that the “bad” in master morality is labelled as such in our analysis as a piece of technical jargon somewhat removed from the colloquial jargon. The point being that, in any case, fascism and racism are active modes of political action, and that their respective discourses are discourses of master morality. In the case of racism, the fact that the discourse of racism is a discourse of master morality is clearly observable in the case of modern slavery, particularly considering the enslavement of African peoples and Native American peoples by European and US-American colonists. The fact that the discourse of fascism is a discourse of master morality is less easily observable, but nonetheless legible, especially considering the history of fascist Italy and the speeches and writings of Mussolini. Nietzsche is indeed a proto-fascist insofar as he praises master morality and the brutality underlying it, but this is true only because it is Nietzsche’s theory of master morality, and his theory of the State which accompanies it, that enables us to properly understand the nature of fascism. A genocide is nothing other than a “disgusting procession of murder, arson, rape, and torture” from which the “triumphant monsters” of the “master race” emerge “exhilarated and undisturbed of soul, as if it were no more than a students’ prank, convinced they have provided the poets with a lot more material for song and praise.” The “poets” in the modern context are journalists, film-makers, novelists, and other ideologists. One need only compare the ancient Greeks’ genocide of the Trojans at the conclusion of the Trojan War, Julius Caeser’s genocide of the Gauls during his Gallic campaign, the

European and US-American genocide of the Native Americans, the European and US-American genocide of Africans, the Nazi genocide of the Jews, Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, the US-American genocide of Middle-Easterners during its so-called “War on Terror,” the US-American genocide of Latin American peoples by way of sanctions that prevent access to crucial medical supplies, not to mention the numerous genocides organized with the help of the USAmerican government during the 20^th century (one can find a a partial catalogue in the excellent volume The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World (2020) by Vincent Bevins).

Socialist usurpers are still technically revolutionaries, at the very least because the established order tends to consider them so, but also when considered in terms of metapsychology, because socialist usurpers perform the labour of revenge (as opposed to the labour of ressentiment); all the socialist revolutions of the 20^th century have been mere usurpations or attempted usurpations, seizures of state power or attempted seizures of state power, and the great revolutionaries of the 20^th century, including Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, and Ho Chi Minh, have been merely socialist usurpers (however sincere they have been, they have been merely sincere usurpers). But we are not socialist usurpers, nor are we usurpers of any kind. We are anarchists. We believe in the abolition of state power. Therefore, for us, the problem of libidinal economy is not merely the problem of becoming a spirit of vengeance, but also the problem of becoming an anarchist, that is, the problem of becoming someone who does not believe that “might makes right,” someone who does not want to subjugate others, as well as the problem of becoming someone who does not desire their own oppression. The violence of self-defense is just, but the violence of aggression is unjust. We must clarify that we do not want everyone to think and feel in the exact same way; on the contrary, we want everyone to be free to think and feel in their ownmost way, without them wanting to coerce or punish any dissidents to their mode of thought.

(To clarify, reformists are absolutely not revolutionaries, since revolutionaries labour to overthrow the existing State from outside the existing State, which is the only possible meaning of overthrowing the existing State, whether to seize state power or to abolish state power, whereas reformists labour to merely modify the existing State from inside the existing State, meaning that reformists do not labour to overthrow the existing State, but merely labour to seize state power from inside the State.)

Let us consider our four conceptual personae, the master, the slave, the usurper, and the anarchist, in terms of their respective problematics. A problematic is a field of problems, an imaginarysymbolic field used to pose problems. The body without organs by itself forms the problems and questions that are resolved only to the extent that the corresponding body without organs is actualized in praxis, and always according to the way that it is actualized in praxis. To hijack the early Deleuze, “For a problem always gains the solution that it deserves based on the manner in which it is posed, and on the symbolic field [that is, the imaginary-symbolic field] used to pose it…Serge Leclaire, following Lacan, can distinguish psychoses and neuroses, and different kinds of neuroses, less by types of conflict than by modes of questions that always find the answer that they deserve as a function of the symbolic field [that is, the imaginary-symbolic field] in which they are posed: thus the hysterical question is not that of the obsessive” (DI, pp. 181–182). Thus, problems and questions are simultaneously a provisional and subjective moment in the elaboration of knowledge, and, to hijack the early Deleuze, “a perfectly objective category, full and complete “objectalities,”” which are the body without organs’ own. The body without organs is at once a non-productive stasis, problematizing and questioning.

Because the master, the slave, the usurper, and the anarchist each have their own type of body without organs and corresponding type of imaginary-symbolic field that defines them, they each have their own distinct type of problematic. The problematic of the master concerns problems of power, problems of maintaining power, problems of expanding or increasing power; problems of wars of aggression, problems of strategies, tactics, and logistics necessary for wars of aggression; problems of maintaining the infrastructure of the State, problems of discipline and punishment; problems of instituting and maintaining forms of superstructure of the State, problems of instituting and maintaining a hegemonic discourse, problems of inventing, instituting, and maintaining forms of symbolic violence, etc. The Prince by Machiavelli and The Art of War by Sun Tzu are perhaps the best introductory explorations of the problematic of the master. The problematic of the slave qua slave concerns problems of political inaction, problems of being politically inactive, problems of performing or maintaining political inaction; problems of enjoy revenge fantasies, problems of strategizing how best to enjoy revenge fantasies, problems of tactics in enjoying revenge fantasies, problems of logistics in enjoying revenge fantasies; problems of avoiding punishment, problems of not disobeying the masters, problems of not displeasing the masters; problems of moralizing in the mode of slave morality, problems of inventing modes of slave morality. Ressentiment does not produce instruction manuals until it speaks through the priest, but let us not get ahead of ourselves. Revolutionaries, meaning both usurpers and anarchists, are not slaves, and thus they do not share the problematic of the slave. The problematic of revolutionaries, the problematic of both usurpers and anarchists, is the problematic of revenge (as opposed to the problematic of the slave, which is the problematic of ressentiment). Thus, anarchists and usurpers, as revolutionaries, share the problematic of self-defense: problems of how to perform self-defense, problems of how to train for self-defense, problems of the strategies, tactics, and logistics necessary for self-defense. However, as we have already noted, the usurper and the anarchist diverge on the question of state power. The usurper’s problematic includes problems of the seizure of state power, problems of how to seize state power, problems of the strategies, tactics, and logistics necessary for the seizure of state power. However, after the successful seizure of state power, the usurper becomes a master, a new master but a master nonetheless, and as such the usurper’s problematic becomes the same problematic as that of the master. The masterpieces of the problematic of usurpation are the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao; if we were forced to select a few key texts, we would select The Civil War in France by Marx, The State and Revolution by Lenin, and Quotations from Chairman Mao TseTung by Mao Zedong. In addition to the problematic of revenge and the problematic of self-defense, the anarchist’s problematic includes the problematic of the abolition of the State, problems of how to abolish the State, problems of the strategies, tactics, and logistics necessary to abolish the State. The abolition of the State means the abolition of power. Because anarchists have not yet staged a successful revolution against a State, no instruction manual exists for the overthrow of the State. The anarchist problematic of abolishing the State, particularly problems of the strategies, tactics, and logistics necessary to abolish the State, is a fecund area for future research.

Here we must introduce our concept of the priest class or the priest caste. The ruling class and the subjugated class constitute the bare minimum necessary for a State. But perhaps only the very earliest States were limited only to the State’s two defining classes. The priest class is a middle class or middle caste. A middle class (or middle caste) is any class that ranks higher than the subjugated class(es) but is not the ruling class, and that nonetheless serves the ruling class. A middle class is a subordinate class, a class subordinate to the ruling class, but not a subjugated class. The ruling class is always the military class (or military caste), the class that directly controls the weapons and the soldiers. A merchant class (or merchant caste) is always a middle class, no matter how rich and prosperous, since they never own the means of production of hierarchy, namely the weapons and the soldiers. Like the merchant class, the priest class is a middle class, not a subjugated class, but still a subordinate class.

Our concept of the priest class diverges in important ways from Nietzsche’s concept of the priest. Nietzsche is exclusively concerned with the ascetic priest, and his criticisms are directed in particular at the ascetic strain of Christianity, the Brahmins of ancient India, and an Orientalist over-generalization of Buddhist monks that conflates the practices and discourse of Buddhist monks with the Brahmins of ancient India. However, Nietzsche overlooks the diversity of discourses that are publicly articulated by priests, such that he overlooks the fact that there are indeed priests who praise sensuality (even if within the limits of a monogamous marriage). Moreover, Nietzsche overlooks the non-ascetic discourses of the priest class in pagan States, such as the various city-states of ancient Greece, or the nation-state of ancient Rome. Thus, we observe that it is neither a set of beliefs nor a psychopathology that defines the priest; rather, the priest is defined solely by his function and his position in the society of a given State. We recognize no “priest” as such in primitive societies (societies against the State), since in primitive societies there are no classes, and therefore no priest class. The priest is entirely an artifact of hierarchical societies, that is, of States. The priest is essentially the ideologist of the State. The priest is a craftsman or technician of illusions (rites or rituals are nothing other than theatrical performances) in the service of the ruling class. The illusions produced or reproduced by the priest class are technologies of power. The priest class’s domain of operation is the superstructure of the State. The function of the priest class is to mobilize the libidinal economies of the subjugated class and the other middle classes (if there are any) in order to transform them into obedient subjects of the ruling class.

Nietzsche’s ascetic priest also suffers from the pathology of ressentiment and publicly preaches a discourse of slave morality; here Nietzsche is specifically critiquing the discourses of Christianity and its precursor, Judaism. However, Nietzsche’s characterization of these discourses, while accurate in one regard, namely that the discourse of slave morality is indeed pervasive in Christain and Jewish discourses, also amounts to nothing more than a caricature, since it overlooks the fact that, historically, the discourse of master morality has also been a feature of Christian and Jewish discourses. What Nietzsche overlooks here is that there is a hegemonic discourse of the State, and that this hegemonic discourse is directed at the subjugated class but nonetheless serves the interests of the ruling class; as such, the hegemonic discourse of the State may be a mixture of the discourse of master morality, which directly reproduces the power relation at the basis of the State, and the discourse of slave morality, which serves the interest of the ruling class by way of the political inaction that it engenders among the subjugated class, thereby indirectly reproducing the power relation at the basis of the State. One need only consider the fact that the conquerors of Western Europe have always found it expedient to employ priests to justify and even sanctify their conquests in order to realize that the priest class, considered as a class, has always served the interests of the ruling class. That is to say, there has never been any serious opposition between the priest class and the ruling class. (Priests of liberation theology do not disprove this point, they merely modify it, since priests of liberation theology, who by the way do not constitute a class as such, have always served the interests of socialist usurpers, and thus the liberation theologians have always been subordinate to the socialist usurpers, who had designs to become the new ruling class).

When Nietzsche discusses priests, he is neither a materialist nor is he consistent with his own psychological observations. Nietzsche presents the Christian discourse of Hell, circulated by Christian priests, as an example of a revenge fantasy engendered by ressentiment, which is accurate (GM, I.15). However, Nietzsche fails to recall that not much earlier he defined the revenge fantasy, that is, slave morality, as the result of “the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge” (GM, I.10). That is to say, the Christian discourse of Hell, as a purely imaginary revenge, a revenge fantasy, is intended to compensate the subjugated class for their political inaction, their inability or unwillingness to stage a real slave revolt (which would be “the true reaction, that of deeds”), and thereby prevent a revolution and conserve the subjugation of the subjugated class. Thus, when Nietzsche loudly, tearfully, and frequently laments the alleged victory of an ascetic priest class that preaches slave morality over the military class, he is inconsistent with his own psychological observation on the nature of ressentiment and slave morality, namely that ressentiment and slave morality engender political inaction by way of compensating the subjugated class with a purely imaginary-symbolic revenge fantasy; because slave morality engenders political inaction, it is impossible for a subjugated class and a priest class under the spell of slave morality to stage a real revolt, that is, it is impossible for them under such conditions to usurp the military class and become the ruling class. What Nietzsche really wants to critique, although he does not realize it, is the merely superficial fact that, in ancient Rome, the hegemonic discourse of the ruling class increased the quantity of slave morality in its mixture of slave morality and master morality, especially under the reign of Constantine, Rome’s first Christian emperor. However, it must be remembered that Constantine, like so many of the Roman emperors, was an usurper, and that he only became the ruler of Rome through warfare, that is, through physical violence, through bloodshed and brutality, which suggests that Constantine was interested in the political uses of Christianity as a technology of power, and that he did not really believe that triumphant monsters such as himself would really suffer eternal punishment in Hell.

When Nietzsche describes the alleged ascendancy of an ascetic priest class over the military class, he also abandons his clearsighted and materialist meta-analysis of the State, which we have recapitulated. Nietzsche’s materialist meta-analysis of the State reveals that the foundations of the State consist of nothing but naked violence and brutality, and that the State continues its existence only through further acts of brutal violence, which is the proper business of a military class, and most certainly not the business of a priest class (and especially not an ascetic priest class). We could once again cite the case of Constantine here, especially since it is particularly relevant. Constantine was a military officer, a general, and not a priest; when Constantine conquered Rome, it was not Christianity that conquered Rome, but merely another member of the military class. The “history” Nietzsche recounts is not a history at all, but merely a myth, a myth that is easily disepelled by even a cursory reading of an abridged version of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, a seminal history (in its unabridged form) of the decline and fall of Rome.

However, Nietzsche’s general theory of the State stands independently of the mythology he develops. The true critique of Nietzsche is the Nietzschean critique of Nietzsche: Nietzsche does not sufficiently develop his theory of genealogy in opposition to Hegel’s theory of the dialectic, and Nietzsche fails to adequately apply his theory of genealogy to the actual history of the State. We have already inserted the theory of genalogy into the theory of the State in our analysis and meta-analysis of Nietzsche’s theory of the State, but there are more significant revisions to be made. However, it is sufficient merely to consider the State in ontologistic terms, that is, in terms of the labour that constitutes the State, in order to discover the power relation at the basis of the State. Moreover, it is instructive to contrast the applications of logistical materialism with the applications of dialectical and historical materialism (the Marxist theory of history), especially in the context of the respective political projects associated with each unit-system of metaphysics, namely, the political project of abolishing the State which we have associated with logistical materialism and the political project of seizing state power historically associated with dialectical and historical materialism.

Zizek, discussing the Hindu caste system in the time of the Vedas, writes, “This was the first contract between ideologists (priests) and those in power (warrior-kings): the kings, who retain actual power (over the life and death of other people), will recognize the formal superiority of the priests as the highest caste, and, in exchange for this appearance of superiority, the priests will legitimize the power of the warrior-kings as part of the natural cosmic order” (2010, p. 17). Here, Zizek really discovers a truth, which he unfortunately overlooks in the immediately following passages, where he falls back on the standard Nietzschean reading of the Hindu caste system, in which an ascetic priest class is installed at the top of the caste system. But let us again take a step back, and chew over and digest Zizek’s disovery in the manner of a cow, that is, slowly. Zizek writes that those in power are those “who retain actual power (over the life and death of other people).” Power, at bottom, is the power over the life and death of other people. Actual power, real power, power in any meaningful sense of the word, means the power over the life and death of other people. In the States of ancient India, it was the Kshatriya caste, the warrior caste, which Zizek describes as the “warrior-kings,” who had the actual power, that is, the power over the life and death of other people. The Kshatriya caste, being the warrior caste, was the military class and the ruling class, not only by definition, but materially. The Kshatriya caste performed the labour of ruling, which in the last instance means the labour of subjugating, injuring, and killing other human beings. In contrast, the Brahmin caste, the priest caste or priest class, were merely ideologists who had the simulacrum of power within the domain of discourse, but who ultimately did not have real material power. The Brahmins, both by definition and materially, were not warriors, that is to say, they generally had neither weapons nor training in a martial art, which means, in concrete material terms, that they did not have the ultimate power over the life and death of other people. The Brahmin caste was a middle class, they were not a subjugated class (the Shudra caste, the class of common labourers and service providers, and the Dalit caste, the class of “untouchables,” were the subjugated classes of the Hindu caste system, with the Dalit caste being the indubitably most subjugated class), but the Brahmins were nevertheless materially subordinate to the Kshatriya caste, since it is the Kshatriya caste who had the ultimate power of life and death over other people (that is, over all the members of the other castes). The Kshatriya caste granted the Brahmin caste the simulacrum of power in discourse in exchange for the labour of the Brahmin caste, which was to “legitimize the power of the warrior-kings as part of the natural cosmic order” by way of the production of discourse, the production of the theatre of rites, and the production of aesthetic objects generally, and thereby to transform the members of all the other classes into obedient subjects (that is, into complicit bodies).

The ascetic turn of the Brahmin caste around the 5^th or 6^th century BCE was not a purely discursive operation, as it brought with it a new set of practices, for instance vegetarianism and selfmortification, but nonetheless, the reality of power did not change, that is to say, the Kshatriya caste still had the ultimate real material power, the power of life and death over other human beings. Zizek writes that the ascetic turn of the Brahmin caste functioned at the purely discursive level “to unite the hierarchy of castes and the ascetic world-renunciation by making purity itself the criterion of one’s place in the caste hierarchy” (2010, p. 18), thereby placing the ascetic Brahmin caste discursively at the top of the caste system on the basis of their “purity” or asceticism, whereas prior to the ascetic turn the Brahmin caste had been discursively at the top of the caste system because they performed the sacrificial rituals that appeased the Gods’ hunger for flesh and blood (2010, pp. 16–17). Zizek then goes on to analyze how The Law Book of Manu introduces both prohibitions and regulations as to when it is permitted to violate those prohibitions (2010, pp. 18–19), which is an insightful topic in itself, but which too hastily shifts the focus from the power relations at work in the Hindu caste system of ancient India. We want to emphasize here that whatever the cause of th ascetic turn among the Brahmin caste may have been, the real material power nonetheless continued to reside in the hands of the Kshatriya caste, the military caste, the ones who had the ultimate power, the power of life and death over other human beings. This means that the essential and defining features of the State-machine, the defining machinic operations of the State, remain the same throughout all its various iterations, such that even when there is a priest class (whether ascetic or non-ascetic) that discursively holds the highest rank in the caste system and thereby has the simulacrum of power, the real material power nonetheless always belongs to the military class (the masters), which is always the real material ruling class, since it is always the military class that has the ultimate power, the power of life and death over other human beings. Thus, when Nietzsche recounts the origin of the State in terms of the violent relation between master and slave, he really provides a materialist theory of the machinic functioning of the infrastructure of the State in all its iterations, which does indeed consist of the violent relation between the masters (the ruling class, the military class) and the slaves (the subjugated class). In other words, the priest class only serves power, it does not have power; or, if we cannot escape the colloquial expression of saying that the priests have power, it must be remembered that the power of the priests is merely seccondary, and that in any case it is always subordinate to the primary power of the military class; in any case, it is the military class that ultimately has the power or has the power in the last instance, not the priests. When Nietzsche laments the prominence of the ascetic discourse of (some iterations of) Christianity in the hegemonic discourse of a State (for instance, in ancient Rome during and after the reign of Constantine), he does not realize that he is merely attacking the purely discursive simulacrum of power ascribed to the priests, and he does not realize that in any case the real material and social power ultimately belongs to the military class, his beloved masters.

The priest is a technician of illusions, and the artist, too, is a technician of illusions. In fact, the artist is merely a type of priest, and serves the same function as the priest in the caste system of the State. A materialist theory of art begins with the observation that art is a social institution. As a social institution in the society of the State, art is like religion, in that its function is to reproduce power. Camus writes, “Art is only philosophy dressed up with images.” In the society of the State, the philosophy produced through art is statist philosophy, or in the case of more subtle works of art, the philosophy is a philosophy that intersects with statist philosophy; the same can be said for the productions of priests, which are nothing but works of art (for example, the sermon is a performance piece, a theatrical work; the ritual, too, as we have already noted, is a theatrical work). The discourse of the artist either produces, reproduces, or intersects with the hegemonic discourse of the State. The discourse of the artist is always a mixture of master morality and slave morality. Like the priest, the artist is essentially an ideologist of the State; the illusions produced or reproduced by the artist are technologies of power; the artist’s domain of operation is the superstructure of the State; and the function of the artist is to mobilize the libidinal economies of the subjugated class and the other middle classes (if there are any) in order to transform them into obedient subjects of the ruling class.

The State always constructs and enforces a distinction between art and sedition. According to Breight, the English word “sedition” was first used in its modern sense in the Elizabethan era, where it was defined as the “notion of inciting by words or writings disaffection towards the state or constituted authority” (1996, p. 89). Of course, we accept a broader definition of sedition that encompasses all the arts, and not merely writing, following the historical reality of censorship, which likewise encompasses all the arts. Any work of art that incites disaffection towards the State or consituted authority is seditious material, or an act of sedition. Seditious materials are “the literature of evil,” and they are sometimes hypocritically labelled “obscene” or “pornographic,” which is hypocritical because the State always tolerates a degree of pornographic material (not to mention outright prostitution) even despite its explicit laws (at the very least for the entertainment of the ruling class). To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, “Art is what you can get away with,” and what you can get away with is either support of the State or a philosophy that intersects with support of the State. Seditious materials are aesthetic works that no longer qualify as works of art in the hegemonic discourse; they are aesthetic works that are also criminal works. A seditious material is a crime, not a work of art (although it may be recuperated as a work of art at a later date). A seditious material that is dangerous enough may be an eternal crime. A true poète maudit, accursed poet, is quite simply a producer of seditious material; this is confirmed by Alfred de Vigny’s novel Stello: A Session with Dr. Noir (1832/2015), in which the police spy Alfred de Vigny warns the reader (and the titular poet Stello), through his (de Vigny’s) avatar Dr. Noir the state psychiatrist, that direct involvement in any type of politics opposed to the State results in nothing but becoming a poète maudit, due to the perpetual ostracism inflicted by the State and its hegemonic discourse, which invariably leads the poète maudit to a bad end. It is easy enough make an evil work, an obscene work, a scandalous work, a banned work: one only needs to explicitly praise terrorism against the State, the propaganda of the deed, a tactic that would be successful in the production of an obscene work even today in the so-called developed world, where pornography (that is, sex-work) is a legally sanctioned and omnipresent technology of control. Support of the State endangers others, since the State is nothing but an instrument of aggressive violence, yet it is celebrated; support of self-defense against the aggressive violence of the State is vilified and silenced, not because it endangers others, but because it endangers the State’s ability to endanger others.

Nietzsche himself suggests the inherently propagandistic function of art when he writes of the masters’ conviction that their “disgusting procession of murder, arson, rape, and torture” has “provided the poets with a lot more material for song and praise.”

We may use the word “poet” in a general manner, like the word “artist,” to denote artists of every medium; sculptors, painters, actors, etc., are all poets or artists, and as such they have, historically, produced works to either explicitly praise the ruling class or to implicitly support the ruling class. Nietzsche writes that artists “have at all times been valets of some morality, philosophy, or religion; quite apart from the fact that they have unfortunately often been all-too-pliable courtiers of their own followers and patrons, and cunning flatterers of ancient or newly arrived powers. They always need at the very least protection, a prop, an established authority: artists never stand apart; standing alone is contrary to their deepest instincts” (GM, III.5). The artist, like the priest, is essentially a type of servant, a servant who performs intellectual labour, but a servant of the ruling class nonetheless. The artist’s “deepest instincts,” their libidinal economy, like that of the priest, is that of a servant, wherein servitude is a libidinal interest. Artists, like priests, have always been servants of some morality, philosophy, or religion. Nietzsche claims that the artist is in fact distinguishable from the priest, on the basis that the priest serves the ascetic ideal whereas the artist does not necessarily serve the ascetic ideal: “To place himself in the service of the ascetic ideal is therefore the most distinctive corruption of an artist that is at all possible; unhappily, also one of the most common forms of corruption, for nothing is more easily corrupted than an artist” (GM, III.25). Nietzsche’s own statement on the corruptibility and widespread corruption of the artist provides evidence against his distinction between the artist and the priest, especially in the light of the fact that, as we have pointed out earlier, the ascetic ideal is likewise not essential to the priest. Like the priest, the artist may or may not affirm the ascetic ideal. Thus, both the artist and the priest are equally corruptible, in whatever direction. The widespread corruption of the artist and the priest is merely a polemical rephrasing of the fact that they are always the servants of a morality, philosophy, or religion, whether ascetic or sensual. Moreover, we accept Foucault’s arguments in The History of Sexuality that the discourse of sensuality, not to mention sensuality itself, has historically functioned as a technology of power right alongside the discourse and practice of asceticism. Nietzsche affirms sensuality over and against the ascetic ideal, but Nietzsche also affirms power, meaning that even within the discourse of Nietzsche we find affirmed Foucault’s conclusion that the discourse and practice of sensuality has the potential to reproduce power. Nietzsche’s affirmation of sensuality is meant by him as an affirmation of power, not as a resistance to power; Nietzsche’s concern is the mode in which power is reproduced (sensuality or asceticism), and Nietzsche is opposed to the resistance to power (which he mistakenly ties to the ascetic ideal). Therefore, the Nietzschean-Schopenhauerian debate between sensuality and asceticism is completely irrelevant to the problematic of abolishing power. Insofar as sensuality and asceticism are both technologies of power, the resistance to power must reject both of them in the Foucauldian manner. Moreover, the same applies to what Nietzsche describes as “nihilism” or “the will to nothingness,” which he describes as the most extreme form of the ascetic ideal, as evinced by the respective histories of Hinduism and Buddhism, both of which have been used in order to reproduce brutal hierarchies; for example, the nihilism of Hinduism (the monist doctrine of Atman or the Self as the One) reproduced (and continues to reproduce) the brutality of the Indian caste system; and the nihilism of Buddhism (the doctrine of Nirvana, which is invariably the doctrine of a Nothingness that functions as the One, despite superficial philosophical debates between different Buddhist philosophers), which reproduced the brutal machine of serfdom and slavery in feudal Tibet (moreover, Buddhism continues to be complicit with States all across the world, perhaps most notably in Myanmar). We also reject all forms of nihilism, including Hinduism and Buddhism, albeit on the grounds that they are merely technologies of power. Here, we are Foucauldian anarchists just as much as we are Nietzschean anarchists.

Thus far, our portrait of the artist has depicted a contemptible being, a being as contemptible as the priest. However, when we describe the artist as a priest, and the work of art as a work of propaganda, we are speaking of the artist and the work of art in general, although to be sure our descriptions refer to an all too common reality. Fortunately, the possibility of slipping subversive material past the censors always exists. The mechanisms of power are never perfect and infallible; they always have points of entry for sabotage. Whereas a work of sedition is a work of crime and not a work of art, a work of subversion opposes the State while still passing for a work of art. To reiterate, “Art is what you can get away with.” We may describe a producer of subversive material as an antiartist. Whereas the producer of seditious material is a criminal, the producer of subversive material passes for an “artist” while really being an anti-artist. The anti-artist produces art that is really anti-art. Subversive material is anti-art. Subversive materials are examples of true counter-culture, culture against the State, cultural constructs opposed to the cultural constructs of the State. Anti-art is not slave morality. Anti-art is not revenge fantasy. Anti-art is revolutionary morality, and its aim and function is to mobilize libidinal economies in order to organize and implement political acts of resistance. Subversive material, like seditious material, is symbolic self-defense. Examples of subversive material, to name just a few, include the novel The Dispossessed (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin, the graphic novel V for Vendetta (1982-1989/2008) by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, the film Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance (1974), the film Panther (1995), the film La Commune (Paris, 1871) (2000), the songs of the Dead Kennedys, and the songs of Public Enemy. Certain works of critical theory or philosophy also qualify as subversive material; for example, the writings of Deleuze and Guattari, Michel Foucault, Paul Virilio, the Invisible Committee, Murray Bookchin, David Graeber, and anarchist theory generally. There are other examples that we could provide, but even considering them, true counter-culture, that is to say, truly subversive material, is rare, and it is far outweighed, in terms of sheer quantity, by works of art (by which term we include much of what passes for critical theory or philosophy) that, as works of art, produce, reproduce, or intersect with the hegemonic discourse of the State. It goes without saying that the overwhelming majority of popular culture is merely art, that is to say, the overwhelming majority of pop culture functions to produce, reproduce, or intersect with the hegemonic discourse of the State. Furthermore, we must be careful to distinguish between commodified rebellion (which is merely art) and true counter-culture (which is anti-art). Of course, the production of anti-art is not, by itself, a sufficient condition for producing the Revolution, but it is nonetheless a viable means of resistance, and it may be a necessary condition for producing the Revolution. Subversive materials are technologies of resistance.

In addition, because Nietzsche had not yet discovered the body without organs, he misconstrues the nature of bad conscience, the nature of guilt, and the nature of moral debt (the feeling of indebtedness) in On the Genealogy of Morals. We argue that bad conscience, guilt, and moral debt not only intersect, but are in fact merely different aspects of the same affect, the same zone of intensity on the body without organs. We have already seen, reading Graeber through the lens of schizoanalysis, how moral debt is forged in the psyche through oppression. We will see, by reading Nietzsche, how moral debt and bad conscience are the same, forged through the very same process of oppression, and how these are linked to guilt. Nietzsche defines bad conscience as a will to violence that expends itself inwardly against itself (GM, II.16–18), but this definition is at odds with the nature of force, which does not expend itself “outwards” or “inwards” but only expends itself, that is to say, force performs work, and it is meaningless to say that the labour of force is “turned” in any direction (except when discussing the relative positions of physical bodies that may be involved in labour). However, from Nietzsche’s definition of bad conscience we may extract a more essential definition: bad conscience is self-torture, the attitude or affect of self-torture. Thus, like all affects, bad conscience is a zone of intensity on the body without organs.

Nietzsche also gives us some idea as to what type of body without organs experiences bad conscience and how that body without organs is constructed. In the same passage in which Nietzsche defines the State as the differential power relation between master and slave, Nietzsche writes that the masters “do not know what guilt, responsibility, or consideration are, these born organizers; they exemplify that terrible artists’ egoism that has the look of bronze and knows itself justified to all eternity in its “work,” like a mother in her child. It is not in them that the “bad conscience” developed, that goes without saying – but it would not have developed without them, this ugly growth, it would be lacking if a tremendous quantity of freedom had not been expelled from the world, or at least from the visible world, and made as it were latent under their hammer blows and artists’ violence” (GM, II.17). That is to say, bad conscience is the will of the masters internalized in the slave, hence why it is “secret self-ravishment, this artists’ cruelty, this delight in imposing a form upon oneself as a hard, recalcitrant, suffering material and in burning a will, a critique, a contradiction, a contempt, a No into it, this uncanny, dreadfully joyous labor of a soul voluntarily at odds with itself that makes itself suffer out of joy in making suffer” (GM, II.18). In the process of enslavement, the symbolic violence of the hegemonic discourse of master morality becomes internalized in the slave, who thereby imposes the symbolic violence of master morality upon themselves, that is, they impose the form “bad” (as in the “pale shadow” of the “good,” the masters) upon themselves with the same cruelty (the “artist’s” cruelty) that the masters impose it. For Nietzsche, the will to violence of bad conscience ultimately comes from within, but we diverge from Nietzsche in that we observe that the will to violence of bad conscience comes from the outside, namely from the masters, and that it is subsequently internalized by the slaves but turned against the same object as the master’s will, namely against the slaves themselves. It is clear that the evaluation of oneself as “bad,” which is what bad conscience amounts to, cannot originate from the selfaffirmation of an active type of morality, therefore it can only originate within the slave from the process of enslavement, namely as the master’s evaluation of them (the slaves) imposed upon them (the slaves) to the point of becoming internalized by them (the slaves). Nietzsche describes an “active bad conscience” (GM, II.18), but it is clear from our meta-analysis that bad conscience is essentially reactive, since it is characteristic of the reactive virtual body of slavery.

The masters create a body without organs for their slaves through the trauma of enslavement, and bad conscience is a zone of intensity upon this virtual body of slavery. All promises are forged through cruelty, but a debt is more specifically a promise forged through the cruelty of slavery. Moral debt, the feeling of indebtedness, is a form of self-torture, that is, a form of bad conscience: one tortures oneself as long as one has not paid back one’s debts. Bad conscience, on the other hand, has no existence apart from the feeling of indebtedness: one tortures oneself because one feels oneself in debt. The masters themselves have a virtual body of mastery, which knows only good conscience (when it knows conscience at all), it has zones of intensity which are zones of the affect of good conscience, since the virtual body of mastery is an active type of body without organs. The affect of good conscience is not limited to the virtual body of mastery. All active types of bodies without organs have the affect of good conscience as a zone of intensity upon itself; for example, the respective bodies without organs of the rebel and the overhuman likewise have the affect of good conscience as zones of intensity upon themselves. Good conscience is essentially an active affect, whereas bad conscience is essentially a reactive affect. Bad conscience only becomes possible with the production of a reactive type of body without organs. The virtual body of slavery, like all traumatic bodies, is a reactive type of body without organs, the internalized repetition-compulsion of a hostile external world. Bad conscience is a modification of the feeling of being oppressed by a hostile external world. The oppressive hostile external world in question is the utimate creditor, the master who is also creditor, the creditor who lends one one’s own life as credit (a transaction determined in the last instance by violence; “you owe me your life”), thereby forging a lifelong debt for one, which one feels the lifelong need to pay back. The masters who perform the oppressing necessarily do so with a good conscience; “they don’t owe anything to anybody.” Fanon writes, “The agent [of law and order] does not alleviate oppression or mask domination. He displays and demonstrates them with the clear conscience of the law enforcer, and brings violence into the homes and minds of the colonized subject” (1961/2004 p. 4). The colonized are a subjugated class. The law enforcer aggressively inflicts violence on the subjugated class(es) generally, and they do so with a good conscience. The law enforcer, whether police or military, is either a member of the ruling military class or a member of a middle military class (that is, a middle class that is also a military calss, and functions as an agent of the ruling military class). Loathe though we may be to admit it, the law enforcer has an active type of body without organs, that is to say, the law enforcer’s morality is essentially one of self-affirmation; like the masters, the law enforcer is an artist of oppression. If the law enforcer can be said to feel indebted, and thus have a trace of bad conscience and slave morality, it is only insofar as they are subordinate; that is to say, they also feel indebted towards the masters, towards those from whom they take their orders in the last instance. This is best understood in the context of knowing one’s enemy.

Nietzsche writes of moral debt as “the guilty feeling of indebtedness” or “the feeling of guilty indebtedness” (GM, II.20), but he specifies that it only becomes bad conscience under certain determinate conditions, namely the development and existence of Christianity (GM, II.21). We agree with Nietzsche that guilt and moral debt are the same thing, but we disagree with his dissociation of bad conscience from guilt and moral debt. As we have demonstrated, moral debt and bad conscience are one and the same, which means that, since moral debt and guilt are one and the same, moral debt, guilt, and bad conscience are one and the same. To be sure, bad conscience is present in Christianity, but it is also present in Christianity’s genealogical precursor, Judaism, such that the bad conscience in Christianity is merely a modification of the bad conscience in Judaism; with the caveat that in certain historical circumstances and in the ruling class, bad conscience has been wholly absent among the Jews (we are thinking specifically of the Kings in the Old Testament, and of the ruling class in present-day Israel), just as bad conscience has likewise been wholly absent among the “Christian” members of the ruling class of Christian States. Again, Nietzsche misconstrues the logic of power, and therefore misconstrues the nature and demographic of bad conscience.

Section 3: The Ontology of Abstract Labour and Capital

Deleuze and Guattari also describe the body without organs as “the socius.” We also describe the body without organs as “the body politic” or “the political body,” bearing in mind, as with the term “socius,” that we are referring to a metapsychological entity internal to the psyche, not to “external” society, the social machine, which mobilizes the virtual socius or political body merely as one of its parts. Thus, the traditional relationship between society and the body politic must be reversed: it is not society that constitutes the body politic, but rather it is a multiplicity of political bodies that serve as cogs for the social machine that is society (alongside the other parts of the social machine, the desiring machines, celibate machines, affects, technical machines, etc.). A true social contract, when it occurs (when it is possible, that is, in the absence of the State), only occurs after the desiring-production of a community, that is, it only occures after the existence of a multitude of political bodies and imaginary-symbolic order inscribed upon the surfaces of those political bodies, although in turn it comes to be inscribed upon the surfaces of those political bodies and acts upon desiringproduction. The State is a social machine, not a body politic, although it mobilizes the many virtual political bodies of its constituents. Moreover, in any case, the State is never founded upon a social contract, since it is founded on coercion and violence, which means that markets and capitalism, which are created by States, are likewise never founded upon social contracts, since they are founded upon the State, which is founded upon coercion and violence.

Deleuze and Guattari write, “The truth of the matter is that social production is purely and simply desiring-production itself under determinate conditions. We maintain that the social field is immediately invested by desire, that it is the historically determined product of desire, and that libido has no need of any mediation or sublimation, any psychic operation, any transformation, in order to invade and invest the productive forces and the relations of production. There is only desire and the social, and nothing else” (AO, p. 29). Deleuze and Guattari write that desiring-production is “the common denominator or coextension of the social field and desire” (AO, p. 30). Social production is the production of human beings and social relations. Social production is desiring-production or motivation-construction under certain determinate conditions, namely those conditions in which desiring-production mobilizes or is mobilized in the production of human beings and social relations. Motivation-construction, that is, desiring-production, is one and the same process as cultural construction, whether the culutral constructs under analysis are merely metapsychological or virtual (for example, a “meaning” or idea) or both metapsychological and material/actual (for example, power relations). Moreover, a cultural construct is always an effective force, it always labours, it always does something, it always has real effects. Cultural construction and social production are two distinct processes. In fact, since cultural construction and desiring-production are one and the same process, social production is purely and simply cultural construction itself under determinate conditions. The real question regarding culture is not “What is culture?” but “How does culture work?”, that is, “What does culture do?” Culture works exactly in the manner that desiringproduction works, culture does exactly what desiring-production does, whether considered purely metapsychologically or under the determinate conditions in which desiring-production functions as social-production. Desire is culture, culture is desire. That “there is only desire and the social” means the same thing as “there is only culture and the social.”

Therefore, a cultural construct is a product of desiringproduction, and given the product/producing identity, a cultural construct is always in itself a process of desiring-production or a processual part of the process of desiring-production. A cultural construct is always real, even if its reality is only virtual. A body without organs is a type of cultural construct. Deleuze and Guattari write, “Even if we consider given social formations, or a given stratic apparatus within a formation, we must say that every one of them has a BwO [body without organs] ready to gnaw, proliferate, cover, and invade the entire social field, entering into relations of violence and rivalry as well as alliance and complicity. A BwO of money (inflation), but also a BwO of the State, army, factory, city, Party, etc.” (TP, p. 163). Each social formation, as well as each “stratic apparatus” or determinate group within a social formation, has a type of body without organs proper to it that exists within the psyches of each of its members. A body without organs is an obscure precursor, invisible and imperceptible because it is virtual; in a social institution or group, the political bodies of its members are so many obscure precursors that determine in advance an inverted path as in negative relief, as the first agent of communication between differential social relations. That is to say, a political body generates strategies (which are essential to practice) that are recorded upon its surface, and, in combination with desiring-machines, celibate machines, and affects, generates practices as well, but always in differential relations to others. Thus, the body without organs, as obscure precursor, is “ready to gnaw, proliferate, cover, and invade the entire social field” and enter “into relations of violence and rivalry as well as alliance and complicity.”

Deleuze and Guattari write that there is a body without organs “of money (inflation), but also a BwO of the State, army, factory, city, Party, etc.” This is only very roughly true, since “money (inflation),” the army, the factory, the city, and the Party are merely possible stratic formations constitutive of the social formation that we call the State (with the caveat that the army is the only necessary or essential stratic formation constitutive of the State). We have already demonstrated how the State makes the market (and thus “money (inflation)”) and capitalism (and along with it, capital) possible, and we have already examined in closer detail the respective bodies without organs of the masters and the slaves constitutive of the State. Here, we shall focus on the type of body without organs proper to two of the middle classes of the capitalist State, namely the merchant classes functioning as the capitalist classes (the small capitalist class or the small business owners, and the big capitalist class or big business owners), whose proper type of body without organs is the virtual body of capital.

First of all, let us note that abstract labour and capital are both cultural constructs, by which we do not mean that they are not real, that is to say, we do not deny that they are effective forces in the social machine of the State. On the contrary, we argue that abstract labour and capital are able to function as effective forces in society only because they are primarily cultural constructs. To clarify, we accept the spirit of Marx’s critique of political economy in Capital, although we disagree with him on a few details. For example, we disagree with Marx about the ontology of abstract labour and capital, both in relaiton to the capitalist classes and the State. We agree with Marx that the capitalist makes a profit by extracting surplus labour from the wage labourer, that is to say, by coercing the labourer (who is “free” to work or starve) to perform more work than they are adeqately compensated for, i.e. by coercing the labourer to perform unpaid labour (which is the technical definition of slavery). We agree with Marx that the capitalist primarily understands economic value in terms of abstract labour (“human labour in the abstract”; cf. MECW Vol. 35, p. 48), that money, as a commodity with economic value, is ultimately a measure of abstract labour (we add that money is enforced as a measure of abstract labour), and that capital is money that makes money, meaning that it is ultimately abstract labour that makes abstract labour.

Marx distinguishes between a commodity’s “physical or natural form” (also described by him as its “bodily form”) and its “value form” (also described by him as its “money form”): “The [economic] value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition. Turn and examine a single commodity, by itself, as we will, yet in so far as it remains an object of value, it seems impossible to grasp it. If, however, we bear in mind that the [economic] value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., human labour, it follows as a matter of course, that [economic] value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity. In fact we started from exchange value, or the exchange relation of commodities, in order to get at the [economic] value that lies hidden behind it.” (MECW Vol. 35, p. 57)

The physical form of a commodity, that which provides the use values characteristic of it, is physical and material, consists of “the coarse materiality of substance” or “the atoms of matter that enter into its composition,” whereas the “value form” of the commodity is non-physical and non-material, according to Marx himself (“The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition”). Marx writes that the “[economic] value commodities has a purely social reality,” by which he means economic value consists “of one identical social substance,” abstract labour. However, to clarify, Marx does indeed believe that this abstract labour is an entity that exists objectively, independent of the human mind: “Use values become a reality only by use or consumption: they also constitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth. In the form of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the material depositories of exchange value” (MECW Vol. 35, p. 46); “A use value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it” (MECW Vol. 35, p. 48); “Commodities come into the world in the shape of use values, articles, or goods, such as iron, linen, corn, &c. This is their plain, homely, bodily form. They are, however, commodities, only because they are something twofold, both objects of utility, and, at the same time, depositories of [economic/exchange] value” (MECW Vol. 35, p. 57); “Use values are only produced by capitalists, because, and in so far as, they are the material substratum, the depositories of exchange value” (MECW Vol. 35, p. 196). Thus, when Marx speaks of economic value as a “purely social reality,” his theory is homologous to Durkheim’s theory of “social facts,” in that both describe a non-physical and non-material, but nonetheless objectively existing, that is, non-mental and nonpsychological, “social” product. Marx’s theory of “social facts” differs from Durkheim’s in that Marx believes that “social facts” (for example, abstract labour) depends upon a material substratum or depository, whereas Durkheim believes that “social facts” (for example, a monetary system) exist independently of all particular human being, human activity, and material objects, as a transcendental entity. Therefore, whereas Durkheim’s theory of “social facts” is a transcendentalism (or structuralism), Marx’s theory of “social facts” is a type of “emergentism,” and more specifically a type of “weak emergentism,” by which we mean that Marx conceives of “social facts” as an emergent property of a social process (the sufficient condition of “social facts”) that also depends upon a material substratum for its existence (the necessary condition of “social facts”). For example, according to Marx, the social process of exchange (the sufficient condition) differentially produces the economic values (respective quantities of abstract labour) as an emergent property of the objects exchanged (which, by virtue of being exchanged, qualify as commodities; moreover, these objects are the necessary condition and material substratum on which economic value depends).

Although Marx’s theory of “social facts” is much more nuanced than Durkheim’s, it is ultimately just as flawed as Durkheim’s, on the (homologous) basis that it wrongly conceives of the universal (abstract labour/economic value) as a separate and distinct ontological entity from the particular (the material composition of an object; or what amounts to the same thing despite Marx’s distinctions, the use value of that object). Moreover, Marx’s theory of “social facts” is just as idealist and non-materialist as Durkheim’s. Marx himself writes that economic value is the “very opposite” of a commodity’s material composition, which means that economic value, despite depending on this material composition for its material substratum, is non-localizable in material space and material time, since “not an atom of matter enters into its composition.” Marx’s weak-emergentism may also be described as a quasi-Spinozism, since he writes that economic values “acquire this [social] reality only in so far as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., human labour.” In this quasiSpinozistic conception, “human labour” is a substance with two attributes (that is, two dimensions or degrees of freedom), extension (the concrete or material; viz. the expenditure of labour power, the expenditure of nerves and muscles) and thought (the abstract or ideal; viz. abstract labour/economic value).

The main problem with Marx’s quasi-Spinozism is that it misconstrues the truly Spinozistic relation between extension and thought, namely parallelism; for Spinoza, extension and thought are parallel to each other. In other words, even if we accept, for the sake of argument, that “human labour” is a substance with two attributes, extension and thought, then it does not necessarily follow that “abstract labour” is 1) a social product of exchange (as Marx conceives of it) that 2) depends upon the material substratum of the commodities. In fact, if we are more rigorously Spinozistic, we come to rather different conclusions than Marx. To begin with, substance cannot merely be human labour, since there can only be one substance (that is, only one cause-of-itself), therefore substance is simply labour, and human labour is merely one modification or form of labour. Or rather, there are two different modifications or forms of labour that can be characterized as human labour, material or physical human labour (viz. the expenditure of nerves and muscles) and mental or metapsychological human labour (viz. the expenditure of psychic forces; e.g. intellectual labour, emotional labour, etc.). There is no room in a Spinozistic ontology for a purely objective abstract labour. To clarify, Marx writes that abstract labour is “abstract” in the sense that it is not any particular form of labour, or even a particular species of labour, but a “homogenous” labour: “The labour, however, that forms the substance of [economic] value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power” (MECW Vol. 35, p. 49). That is to say, this “homogenous” labour, this expenditure of “one uniform labour power,” is labour emptied of its “content,” labour devoid of any of the particular forms of labour that enable one to identify labour as labour, whether material or mental. It is this that makes us say that abstract labour, like any other abstraction, is an idealist concept that exists only in the mind. Even if we accept a Spinozist ontology wherein substance is labour, it would mean that all metapsychological labour only exist in, through, and as particular modifications or forms of labour, and never as homogeneous abstract labour. Moreover, these particular metapsychological forms of labour can only be the parallel of particular physical forms of labour, meaning that the material substrate of a particular metapsychological form of labour can only be its parallel physical form of labour – and never its product, which is ontologically distinct from the labour that produced it, meaning that there is no abstract labour deposited in commodities.

Abstract labour can only be deposited in the mind in the form of a concept. Therefore, the relationship between abstract labour and exchange must be reconsidered. It is not exchange that produces abstract labour, but abstract labour that produces exchange, that is to say, exchange is only made possible by way of the concept of abstract labour in the minds of merchants. Exchange in the capitalist economy is only made possible by way of the concept of abstract labour in the minds of capitalists, big and small. Moreover, since the State precedes the market both logically and chronologically, it is transparent that the subjective concept of abstract labour as economic value only functions as an effective force in the objective political economy, namely in the form of money, because it is enforced by the violence of the State. The capitalist classes, too, are artists of oppression.

There are no abstractions outside of the mind. Therefore, in order to describe the machinic operations of the capitalist political economy in logisitical terms, that is, as they occur in reality, we must recognize that abstract labour and capital are primarily metapsychological entities, cultural constructs that exist in the minds of capitalists, and therefore we must discuss libidinal economies or desiring-production alongside political economy; in addition, we must discuss the unit-structures of violence, namely those of the State, which enforces these cultural constructs and thereby transforms them into effective forces in the objective political economy of the State. Here, our focus is on the metapsychological The violence of the State is legible enough, both in the present and in history, in relation to the designs of the capitalist classes; for example, it is observable in the history of major labour strikes, especially general strikes, wherein police brutality and murder is a typical feature.

Whereas abstract labour is a concept, capital is a body without organs, but the two are inextricably related. Deleuze and Guattari write, “Capital is indeed the body without organs of the capitalist, or rather of the capitalist being. But as such, it is not only the fluid and petrified substance of money, for it will give to the sterility of money the form whereby money produces money. It produces surplus value, just as the body without organs reproduces itself, puts forth shoots, and branches out to the farthest corners of the universe. It makes the machine responsible for producing a relative surplus value, while embodying itself in the machine as fixed capital. Machines and agents cling so closely to capital that their very functioning appears to be miraculated by it. Everything seems objectively to be produced by capital as quasi-cause. As Marx observes, in the beginning capitalists are necessarily conscious of the opposition between capital and labor, and of the use of capital as a means of extorting surplus labor. But a perverted, bewitched world quickly comes into being, as capital increasingly plays the role of a recording surface that falls back on (se rabat sur) all of production. (Furnishing or realizing surplus value is what establishes recording rights.) “With the development of relative surplus-value in the actual specifically capitalist mode of production, whereby the productive powers of social labour are developed, these productive powers and the social interrelations of labour in the direct labour-process seem transferred from labour to capital. Capital thus becomes a very mystic being since all of labour’s social productive forces appear to be due to capital, rather than labour as such, and seem to issue from the womb of capital itself.” What is specifically capitalist here is the role of money and the use of capital as a full body to constitute the recording or inscribing surface.” (AO, pp. 10–11)

Money is an enforced measure of abstract labour, that is to say, beyond its enforcement by means of physical violence, it is a purely conceptual entity. Gold, paper bills, and credit cards have a material reality and are materially countable; however, their meaning as money, that is to say, their economic value as abstract labour, is wholly conceptual. Capital is money that makes money, which means that it is abstract labour that makes abstract labour. However, capital is itself not a concept, but a body without organs. In fact, economic values, that is, quantities of abstract labour, considered as concepts, are virtual reference points distributed on the virtual body of capital. The virtual body of capital is a death drive, a pure repetition-compulsion or repetition-for-itself, hence why in it money becomes a for-itself, capital-for-itself, which is the basis of (the virtual body of) capital’s logic of permanent accumulation. We argue that the merchant classes throughout history have always in their essence been capitalist classes, animated by the profit motive, and that they have always been subordinate to a ruling military class. Graeber writes that during the Axial Age, a result of the creation of markets by States was “a new way of thinking about human motivation, a radical simplification of motives that made it possible to begin speaking of concepts like “profit” and “advantage” – and imagining that this is what people are really pursuing, in every aspect of existence, as if the violence of war or the impersonality of the marketplace has simply allowed them to drop the pretense that they ever cared about anything else” (2011, p. 239). In fact what was created with markets were new stratic apparatuses, namely merchant classes, animated by the undeath of virtual bodies of capital, which is what “profit” and “advantage” amount to in this context. Capitalists are indeed a type of visionary: their vision is the endless accumulation of capital, and they organize in order to realize this vision, aided in their efforts by the State, whose interest is served by the capitalist political economy of the market, since it provides the means necessary for the efficiency of its (the State’s) war-machine. The labour of the capitalist class is the exploitation of the subjugated class. To be sure, States have not always agreed about how to best manage their markets, that is to say, how best to manage their capitalist merchant classes, but in any case it is the State that ultimately creates and maintains the market.

For the capitalist, “everything seems to issue from the womb of capital itself,” even despite the fact, of which they are well aware, that they increase their capital ultimately by means of the unpaid labour of the subjugated classes. Insofar as so many memories, strategies, and predictions are recorded upon the virtual body of capital, and insofar as the virtual body of capital functions as quasicause, regenerating the desiring-machines of the capitalist being, and thus indirectly regenerating their connections to the social machine, no doubt “everything seems objectively to be produced by capital,” since for the capitalist, capital is the beloved for whom the entire world exists, the beloved who is the entire world, such that from the perspective of the capitalist, or rather, from the perspective of their virtual body of capital, it may indeed appear as if the State exists in order to reproduce capitalism; however, this remains an idealistic model of the capitalist’s beloved capital by the capitalist, which is rectified by taking into account the operations of the war-machine of the State, and its uses of the capitalist classes for its own ends. That is to say, the orthodox Marxist account of history, when it focuses on capitalism, overlooks military history and all its complexities and energies, all its wills to power, and the overlooking of military history obscures the subordinate role that the capitalist classes, and with them the capitalist political economy, or more simply put the market (from ancient markets to modern markets), have always played in relation to the essentially military State. If the socialist revolutions of the 20^th century and their attendant formations of socialist States prove anything, it is precisely that the State creates and maintains its own political economy, whether this political economy is a decentralized “liberal” capitalism or a state-centralized “socialist” capitalism, or anything in between, from Dirigism to social democracy, all forms of capitalism are ultimately forms of State capitalism, that is to say, they are ultimately owned and controlled by the State, however rich the capitalist middle class that manages it may become.

A rhizome is anything that “reproduces itself, puts forth shoots, and branches out to the farthest corners of the universe.” A body without organs is a type of rhizome. Capital is a type of rhizome, not only when considered as a metapsychological entity, a body without organs, but also when considering its realization and operations in the social machine. Culp rejects the rhizome as a framework for analysis, on the basis that technologies of power, such as the internet and capital, also behave rhizomatically, but we observe that this is only a testament to the strength and accuracy of the concept of the rhizome. We agree with Culp when he writes, “We know better than to think that a rhizome is enough to save us.” A rhizome, and the concept of a rhizome, is not in itself good or bad, it simply exists. To paraphrase Sun Tzu, “Know yourself and know your enemy, and victory is certain.” To know our enemy, we must be able to observe and analyze our enemy’s rhizomes, since that is the only way that it can even become possible to outmaneuver’s the enemy’s rhizomes, to interrupt the enemy’s reproduction, to block in advance the paths where the enemy can put forth shoots, and to cut off the enemy’s branches before they reach the furthest corners of the universe. Culp writes, “How does a rhizome advance, except in the crawl of the blob that slowly takes over everything?” Capital, too, advances ‘in the crawl of the blob that slowly takes over everything,” its rhizomatic logic of accumulation deterritorializing all the flows, “transvaluating all values,” but only in order to reterritorialize them, re-evaluate them, inscribe them with exchange values – that is, in order to commodify them. The ecological crisis, in terms of capital, means that the global ecosystem, that is to say, the entire planet Earth, has been reterritorialized by the rhizomatic blob of capital, inscribed with exchange values, commodified, and that the exchange of the Earth for money progresses with each act of environmental destruction, as well as with one’s participation in the capitalist political economy. Yet even here there are lines that connect capital, the virtual body of capital and its realization as an effective force in the social machine, to the outside, to what is outside of itself, namely to the ruling military class. Although capital, or what amounts to the same thing, capitalists, have their own designs, their exchange of the Earth for money, which, at least in terms of pure logic although indubitably not in any empirical or realistic sense, will be used to make more money, their designs are only implemented because they serve the interests of the ruling military class; the largest polluter in human history has been and remains the US military (Belcher et al., 2019), which is itself a kind of rhizome, a kind of blob. If there was no military, there would be no capitalism, and consequently, the Earth might continue to be able to support human life. However, the military in its current capacity can logistically function only due to capitalism. The murder of capitalism (in whatever form it now has or may take, whether neoliberalism, social democracy, or socialism) would mean an unprecedented crisis for the military and a severe reduction in its capacities, since its logistics depends upon capitalist enterprises. Thus, as it regards our ontology of capital, namely the fact that capital is primarily a body without organs in the psyche of the capitalist, we may modify the proverbial question of the tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it: If there were no capitalists, would there still be capitalism?

Section 4: Nietzschean Anarchism and Genealogical Materialism

If the theory of the State we have thus far developed makes us neither orthodox Nietzscheans nor orthodox Marxists, then so be it. We are philosophers, that is to say, we are thinkers, which means that we have no interest in being ideologues. We reiterate that we are anarchists. We believe in “anarchism without adjectives,” or as David Graeber puts it, “small a anarchism,” which means that we do not follow any cookie-cutter tendency and we do not have unwavering faith in any single given theorist. We share the immortal slogan of Blanqui, “No gods, no masters!” However, in this world where “isms” are everywhere misapplied in order to force the unfamiliar and even the truly new into familiar categories in order to prevent the comprehension of the unfamiliar and the new, it is a good policy to invent new “isms” for oneself as a preemptive psychologial operation. We have recapitulated and modified Nietzsche’s theory of the State, and although we have rejected many aspects of Nietzsche’s theory, we nonetheless accept the gift of Nietzsche’s thought, therefore we hereby name our political philosophy “Nietzschean anarchism.” Nietzschean anarchism is indeed the belief that capitalism should be abolished, but it is also, and more fundamentally, the belief that power should be abolished. Nietzschean anarchism is theoretically distinguished by the methods of genealogical materialism and logistical materialism. As Nietzschean anarchists, we believe that in order to carry out the anarchist project of the abolition of the State, it is necessary to know one’s enemy, that is to say, it is necessary to have a materialist, machinic, pragmatic, and non-moral theory of the State, and we find the bare outlines of just such a theory in Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. We are fond of Marx as a thinker, but we are dissatisfied with Marxism in both its (broadly defined) popular political variants, Leninism (whose most popular guise today is “Trotskyism,” or rather, the small but megalomaniacal Trotskyite sect) and reformism (which prefers collaborating with the oppressive State rather than a real revolution), and although we believe in closely reading Marx (especially Das Kapital), we are heterodox Marxists or post-Marxists, more specifically we are postmodern neo-

Marxists. We define postmodern neo-Marxism as Nietzschean Marxism, a form of anarchism that uses Marx’s Das Kapital in order to critique capitalism, but uses a more materialist theory of infrastructure/superstructure that puts the infrastructure/superstructure theory back on its feet (as we have outlined, this means that the infrastructure of the State is its military force, whereas the political economy of the State forms part of its superstructure). We are not orthodox Marxists, since we desire to abolish state power immediately (whereas orthodox Marxists wish to seize state power, whether by reformist or revolutionary means). We are post-structuralists. Nietzschean Marxism is a post-structuralist realism and a post-structuralist materialism. Post-structuralism is indeed a destructive project, a project of destruction, since it is first and foremost the project of the destruction of the State. Destruction and creation are one and the same. To destroy the State means to create a new society against the State. Therefore, post-structuralism is indeed a constructive project, a project of creation, since it is first and foremost the project of the construction of a new society against the State.

Genealogical materialism is the world outlook of Nietzschean anarchism. It is called genealogical materialism because its method of studying and comprehending the forces of the world is genealogical, while its interpretation of the forces of the world, its conception of forces, its theory, is materialist. Genealogical materialism extends to the study of social life, an application of the principles of genealogical materialism to the forces of the life of society, to the study of society and its history. Following Foucualt, we take from Nietzsche only the rational kernel of genealogy, casting aside its idealist shell, and develop genealogy further, following Foucault’s development of genealogy into a modern scientific form. Following Max Stirner, we believe that any “universal” that is posited to be seperate from particulars is in reality merely a “spook” or “ghost,” that is to say, it is purely an idea inside the mind, and it has no actual, physical existence in the world. A spook is an idealist phantasm, a non-materialist concept. By “idealism,” we mean the belief in a spook. By “materialism,” we mean the belief in Hegel’s dictum that “the universal only exists in and through the particular, and the particular itself is a universal unto itself,” albeit on strictly non-Hegelian and non-dialectical grounds. A consistent materialism is the total rejection of all idealist phantasms. However, we must note that we are neither followers of Stirner nor followers of Hegel; we merely extract from these thinkers a few rational kernels. For example, we reject Stirner’s concept of the “ego” and Hegel’s concept of “contradiction” as mere spooks or idealist phantasms.

We believe that Truth is ultimately mathematical, that mathematics is Truth. Mathematics is a perfect description of the world. The unit-system of mathematics is consistent, without contradictions, but incomplete, as suggested by the Incompleteness Theorem of Godel, and this is fitting, because the real world is itself incomplete, forever incomplete, forever a work in progress. There are no contradictions in mathematics, no “opposites” or “movement of opposites” in the Hegelian or dialectical sense, and because mathematics is a perfect description of the world, there are neither real nor apparent “contradictions,” “opposites,” or “movement of opposites” in the world. There are conflicts in the world, but there are no contradictions. Because the totality of the world is devoid of any “movement of opposites,” the process of arriving at truth is likewise devoid of any “movement of opposites,” since the process of arriving at truth is itself a part of the world, and as a part of the world it shares the same essential properties of the world, the one of interest here being the fact that it is devoid of any “movement of opposites.”

The principal features of the Nietzschean genealogical method are as follows:

1. Nature is out of joint and contingent. Genealogy regards Nature as an accidental agglomeration of forces which are not connected into an integral whole, such that all forces in Nature are not organically connected with, dependent on, and determined by, each other, and such that there are discontinuities in Nature, meaning that forces in Nature may be unconnected with, isolated from, and independent of, each other. The genealogical method therefore holds that a force in Nature can only be properly understood and explained if taken by itself, isolated from surrounding forces, inasmuch as it is possible to distinguish a given force from all the other forces that surround it. Obversely, no force in Nature can be understood if merely considered in terms of the forces that surround it, since a given force is only distinguishable by being separable, to whatever degree, from its surrounding conditions, meaning that there is no necessary connection between a force and its surrounding conditions, such that there may be a discontinuity between a force and its surrounding conditions.

2. Nature is a series of discontinuous motions and changes. Genealogy holds that Nature is never at a perfect state of rest, immobility, and immutability. Genealogy holds that Nature is a series of discontinuous movements and changes, of discontinuous renewals and developments, of discontinuous decays and destructions, where a force is always either arising or disintegrating, either developing or dying. The genealogical method therefore requires that forces should be considered not only from the standpoint of their disconnections and independence, but also from the standpoint of their discontinuous movement, their discontinuous change, their discontinuous development or disintegration, their discontinuous coming into being or going out of being. The genealogical method regards as important primarily not that which at the given moment seems to be a state of continuous movement and change (but whose continuity is always contingent), but that which is discontinuous, even though at the given moment the discontinuity may not be predictable, for the genealogical method considers only destruction to be certain and indubitable. All Nature, from the smallest force to the biggest, from grains of sand to suns, from protista to human beings, has its existence in series of discontinuities, in a discontinuous flux, in discontinuous motions and changes. Therefore, genealogy takes forces in their disconnections, ruptures, dislocations, in their modifications and alterations.

3. Quantitative change and qualitative change are one and the same. Here we take our inspiration from Badiou rather than Nietzsche, modifying Nietzschean genealogy with Badiou’s ontology. A quality is always already a quantity, it is quantitative in its essence, such that a qualitative change is always already a quantitative change. A quality and its corresponding quantity are ontologically the same. Following Badiou, we understand quantities ultimately in terms of set theory, that is, as sets of sets or as multiplicities. Moreover, quantities and quantitative changes are much more complex than the simple operations of addition or subtraction, a fact that is revealed even by the most cursory glance at higher mathematics. There are fundamentally two types of change, continuous change and discontinuous change. Continuous changes are simple accumulations or reductions, increases or decreases, whether gradual or rapid. Discontinuous changes are ruptures, taking the form of a leap or break from one state to another. Discontinuous changes are accidental, they are never the natural result of a continuous change. The genealogical method therefore holds that the process of development should not be understood as a teleological process, an onward and upward movement towards a goal, a development from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher. The genealogical method therefore holds that the process of development should be understood as a non-teleological process, a haphazard and uncertain movement in an abyss, an aleatoric development from one complexity to another complexity, from one failure to another failure. Genealogy is descent with modification. Here we may cite evolutionary biology without making an appeal to it, as even the most cursory glance at the evolution of a physiological organ, for instance the brain, demonstrates that the origin of a thing and its use(s) are two disconnected things, and that each modification is a rupture with the past, and that, in sum, there is no telos, no inherent purpose or progress, in Nature. We may also cite, without making an appeal to it, the Markov chain in mathematics, which has numerous applications in physics, chemistry, and biology. A Markov chain is a stochastic sequence, a chance sequence or sequence of chance, of possible events, in which the probability of each event depends only on the state attained in the previous event. The game of snakes and ladders is a simple illustration of a Markov chain: which square one occupies at a given moment (the event) in the game depends only upon the dice-throw one made at the previous square that one had occupied (the state attained in the previous event). In a Markov chain, there is a discontinuity between events, such that questions of origin and goal are superfluous in a historical analysis; this is readily observable in snakes and ladders, in which one’s position in the game is entirely a matter of chance, wholly determined by a throw of the dice, and thus always a rupture with one’s previous position, meaning that one’s position only ever bears a chance connection (and not a necessary connection) with one’s previous position, and one’s subsequent position is likewise a matter of chance and bears no necessary connection (but only a chance connection) with one’s current position. The origin and the final state in snakes and ladders bears no significance except to mark the beginning and the end of the game, which is what it means for a game to be a game of chance; moreover, the origin explains nothing in snakes and ladders, since by way of the misfortune of being swallowed by a snake one can always end up “back at square one,” and the final state likewise explains nothing, since arriving at the final state is purely a matter of chance. The rupture is simultaneously both a qualitative leap and a quantitative leap, and it is an affirmation of contingency.

4. No contradictions inherent in Nature. Genealogy holds that there are no contradictions in Nature, only degrees of humour: sets; points, lines, planes; scalar values (degrees on a scale), vectors, n-dimensional arrays; dimensions or degrees of freedom of a coordinate plane; etc. There is no contradiction between dying and developing, between destruction and creation, such that a destruction is in itself a creation and a creation is in itself a destruction, that is to say, creation and destruction are one and the self-same process; or, to phrase it another way, creation and destruction are merely the two degrees of freedom of change, such that each change is simultaneously the creation of something and the destruction of something else. For example, the birth of a black hole is immediately and directly the death of a star, and obversely, (in this case) the death of a star is immediately and directly the birth of a black hole. Moreover, changes to a given unit-structure do not occur as the result of a struggle between ontological opposites (or contradictions) inherent in that unit-structure, since there are no ontological opposites (or contradictions) inherent in any unit-structure. The causes of changes or modifications of unit-structures are as diverse and manifold as unit-structures, meaning that any historical analysis of the changes of a given unit-structure must examine the specific and unique internal content of the processes of the given developments and all (or as many as possible) of its degrees of humour. The genealogical method therefore holds that the process of development from one complexity to another complexity takes place as an aleatoric, contingent, and unique process. Genealogy is the study of the contingent within the very essence of things.

“Development” is the aleatoric series of contingencies.

Such, in brief, are the principal features of the Nietzschean genealogical method. It is easy to understand how immensely important is the extension of the principles of the genealogical method to the study of social life within the State and the history of the State, and how immensely important is the application of these principles to the history of the State and to the practical activities of the decentralized cell labouring to abolish the State. If there are isolated machines in the world, that is to say, if there are unique machines in the world, if there are disconnected and independent machines, then it is clear that every social unit-system and every social movement in history must be evaluated not from the standpoint of preconceived ideas such as the “struggle of opposites” in dialectical materialism, but from the standpoint of the logistics, strategies, and tactics of that unit-system or that social movement.

Furthermore, we must note that there is absolutely no inherent progress in history. For example, the institution of slavery has always been senseless, stupid, and unnatural under every historical condition. The primitive communal unit-system was indubitably superior to the slave unit-system, and the transition from the primitive communal unit-system to the slave unit-system was indubitably a regression, a backwardness, and a decadence. From a scientific perspective, that is to say, from a non-teleological perspective, it is clear that history is a jumble of accidents and an agglomeration of the most absurd mistakes.

From the application of genealogy and its principle of contingency to political theory, it is clear that there can be no “immutable” social unit-systems, such that there is no eternal necessity safeguarding the existence of the State; it is clear that there is no “eternal principle” of the “struggle of opposites” that can be used to justify the supposed necessity of the State; it is clear that there are no “eternal ideas” that can serve as the blueprint for a revolution. Hence, the State unit-system can be replaced by a new primitive communal unit-system. Further, it is clear that revolutions made by oppressed classes are never (metaphysically) necessary and inevitable; that is to say, the revolutions made by oppressed classes are always contingent and contain an element of chance. Hence, the Revolution is contingent, meaning that the Revolution requires the labour specific to it in order to be produced, and that without this labour there is no Revolution. A force only becomes an effective historical and political force by means of the labour power it expends to alter the course of history. Hence, in order not to err in policy, one must closely examine one’s own historical circumstances, and pay special attention precisely to everything about the modern world that fills one with disgust, horror, despair, loathing, and contempt. Hence, the transition from statism to anarchism and the liberation of the subjugated classes from the yoke of the State cannot be effected by slow changes, by reforms, but only by a rupture with the State unit-system, that is to say, by revolution.

Hence, in order not to err in policy, one must demand the immediate abolition of the State. Further, if the Revolution is contingent, then it is clear that the class struggle of the subjugated classes against the ruling class is neither metaphysically necessary nor inevitable, meaning that labour power must be expended in order to produce the class struggle of the subjugated classes against the ruling class. Hence, we must not cover up the contingencies of the State unitsystem, but disclose and unravel them; we must not believe in the inevitability of victory, but we must concretely labour in order to produce victory. Hence, in order not to err in policy, one must pursue an uncompromising anarchist policy, not a statist policy of protecting the interests of the police and the military (even if a socialist police and a socialist military), not a compromiser’s policy of the “withering away of the State.” Such is the Nietzschean genealogical method when applied to social life, to the history of society.

Mao claims, following Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, that dialectical materialism is not a metaphysics, but in fact it is nothing but metaphysics. The dialectical concept of “contradiction” is nothing but a metaphysical concept. Metaphysics cannot be escaped. All social science is, ultimately, metaphysics. The real question is not whether one is still within metaphysics or beyond it, but whether one’s metaphysics is true or false. Dialectical materialism, the concept of “contradiction,” and the rest of its conceptual apparatus, is not only metaphysics, but it is also false, and it should be rejected precisely for being false. Whenever we hear someone speak of “contradictions,” we should be wary, for they are not speaking innocuously, they are discussing metaphysics, and more importantly, they are lying (whether they are aware of it or not). We are too used to thinking of history in terms of “contradictions” and “negation,” that is, in terms of “the struggle of opposites.” But the entire dialectical materialist conceptual apparatus, because it is fundamentally false, tells us nothing about history, but rather, on the contrary, it actively obfuscates history, disguises the actual forms and mechanisms at work in history, and prevents us from knowing anything about real history and real society, it prevents us from thinking about real history and real society. What image of history and society begins to form if we force ourselves to not resort to myths such as the “struggle of opposites”?

Mao writes, “Qualitatively different contradictions can only be resolved by qualitatively different methods. For instance, the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is resolved by the method of socialist revolution; the contradiction between the great masses of the people and the feudal system is resolved by the method of democratic revolution; the contradiction between the colonies and imperialism is resolved by the method of national revolutionary war…” (2007, p. 78). Let us consider, along with Mao, these situations in general or as they have typically occurred, bracketing off for the moment obvious exceptions such as the Spanish Revolution (which Mao makes absolutely no mention of in the essay under discussion, “On Contradiction”). What the concept of “contradiction” obscures is what all these different forms of society have in common, what is the self-same in all of them, despite the revolutions separating them, namely the State. In ontological terms, what the dialectical concept of “contradiction” obscures is not so much the concept of “identity” (which is always the corollary of “contradiction” in dialectics), but the concept of repetition. Zizek mentions in a lecture that what the Hegelian dialectic is incapable of accounting for is repetition, referring specifically to Deleuze’s concept of repetition-for-itself; we agree with Zizek on this point. However, we may go further and say that the Hegelian dialectic represses or suppresses the fact (and concept) of repetition. Lenin writes, “The two basic (or two possible? or two historically observable?) conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and increase, as repetition, and development as a unity of opposites (the division of a unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation)” (as quoted in Tse-Tung, 2007, p. 68). Here, Lenin develops a false dichotomy between dialectics and what he calls “repetition,” which he defines as “decrease and increase.” In fact, there are many more possible and historically observable conceptions of development than Lenin admits; for example, we have recounted Nietzsche’s conception of development as genealogy, as an aleatoric series of contingencies and contingent ruptures, which is quite literally unthinkable within the discourse of dialectical materialism. Lenin’s concept of “repetition” here is false one; the concept of repetition as Deleuze develops it has nothing whatsoever to do with a simple “decrease and increase.” Moreover, Lenin is attacking a straw man when he attacks the “decrease and increase” conception of development; it is unclear who actually believes something so simple-minded as that historical development, that is, the history of society, consists merely of “decrease and increase.”

To clarify, the concept of repetition we here employ is roughly the same as Deleuze’s concept of repetition-for-itself, which has nothing to do with “decrease and increase.” The State is a unitsystem of repetition-for-itself. Throughout the course of the feudal State, the “democratic” State, the modern capitalist State, the modern socialist State, the colonized State, and the post-colonial State, it is the State that repeats itself, it is the State that remains the lowest common denominator. Repetition-for-itself is not a matter of decrease and increase, but of sheer repetition, irreducible repetition. Thus, examining the history of the State, we observe that different forms of States, that is, different forms of power, succeed each other, and that each of them is contingent. Different forms of conflict and different secondary functions arise in the different forms of States, but nonetheless, the same machinic functioning of the State, the violence of its infrastructure, repeats itself in each of its different forms. The genealogy of the State is an aleatoric series of the uses or secondary functions of the primary function of the State, which is the dictatorship of the ruling class: feudalism or the feudal use of the State/dictatorship, representative democracy or the republican use of the State/dictatorship, capitalism or the capitalist use of the State, socialism or the socialist use of the State/dictatorship, colonialism or the colonial use of the State/dictatorship, ethno-nationalism or the ethno-nationalist use of the State/dictatorship, etc. The Statemachine, considered as a form, is defined as such by its primary function, the dictatorship of the ruling class, and the ruling class imposes various uses upon the State-machine over the course of history. In the history of the State, “like arises from like,” roughly speaking, which means that the State-machine is a unit-structure of repetition-for-itself that is put to different uses, but that nonetheless, through its different uses, purposes, or secondary functions, the State remains the State, that is to say, it remains a machine for the oppression of a subjugated class by a ruling class. Mao writes that “qualitatively different contradictions can only be resolved by qualitatively different methods,” but there are no such qualitatively different “contradictions.” There are only (qualitative) differences (which are always already quantitative differences), but these differences are not “contradictions.” In the history of the State, different forms of domination succeed each other (like arises from like, domination arises from domination, power arises from power, the State arises from the State), and there is no progress. The “qualitatively different methods” Mao refers to, in the context of political history, are merely qualitatively different methods of seizing state power, qualitatively different methods of usurpation, that is to say, qualitatively different methods for the repetition of the same error, dictatorship.

We have previously described the master-slave power relation as both the origin of the State and the infrastructure of the State. For purposes of pedagogy, the infrastructure of the State may be described as the “origin” of the State, in the sense that it is the basis or base of the State, but we must be careful not to confuse the infrastructure with the “origin” in the more technical, historiographical sense, in which the “origin” is the narrative of how something came to be. To be much more precise, the origin of the State is the founding event that institutes the master-slave power relation, and this master-slave power relation is nothing other than the infrastructural violence that defines the State as a unit-structure of repetition-for-itself. The founding event of the State is the origin of the State, and it consists, in the end, of a particular narrative, and given the lack of historical data we have on such founding events, much of the received narratives on the origins of States are pure mythologies. In any case, it matters little whether the origin of a State was due to the sowing of dragon’s teeth which made a race of warriors spring from the ground, or whether it was due to a prodigal pair of twins suckled by a she-wolf, these “origin stories,” like “origin stories” more generally (even true ones), explain absolutely nothing. The State remains a machine for the oppression of the subjugated class by the ruling class whatever its true origin story may be, and even despite any mythological origin story invented for it. It is with the definition of “origin” as “origin story” or “origin narrative” that we can begin to understand Nietzsche’s critique of the search for origins (and following Nietzsche, Foucault’s critique of the same).

Nietzsche explains his concept of genealogy in terms of his concept of the will to power, which renders his account of genealogy especially pertinent to the meta-analysis of power, that is, the metaanalysis of the State, which is one of the only contexts in which the concept of the will to power is applicable. Nietzsche writes, “The “purpose of law” however, is absolutely the last thing to employ in the history of the origin of law: on the contrary, there is for historiography of any kind no more important proposition than the one it took such effort to establish but which really ought to be established now: the cause of the origin of a thing and its eventual utility, its actual employment and place in a system of purposes, lie worlds apart; whatever exists, having somehow come into being, is again and again reinterpreted to new ends, taken over, transformed, and redirected by some power superior to it; all events in the organic world are a subduing, a becoming master, and all subduing and becoming master involves a fresh interpretation, an adaptation through which any previous “meaning” and “purpose” are necessarily obscured or even obliterated. However well one has understood the utility of any physiological organ (or of a legal institution, a social custom, a political usage, a form in art or in a religious cult), this means nothing regarding its origin: however uncomfortable and disagreeable this may sound to older ears – for one had always believed that to understand the demonstrable purpose, the utility of a thing, a form, or an institution, was also to understand the reason why it originated – the eye being made for seeing, the hand being made for grasping. Thus one also imagined that punishment was devised for punishing. But purposes and utilities are only signs that a will to power has become master of something less powerful and imposed upon it the character of a function; and the entire history of a “thing,” an organ, a custom can in this way be a continuous sign-chain of ever new interpretations and adaptations whose causes do not even have to be related to one another but, on the contrary, in some cases succeed and alternate with one another in a purely chance fashion. The “evolution” of a thing, a custom, an organ is thus by no means its progressus toward a goal, even less a logical progressus by the shortest route and with the smallest expenditure of force – but a succession of more or less profound, more or less mutually independent processes of subduing, plus the resistances they encounter, the attempts at transformation for the purpose of defense and reaction, and the results of successful counteractions. The form is fluid, but the “meaning” is even more so.” (GM, II.12)

The form of the State is fluid, but its “meaning” in discourse (of all kinds, but especially in statist discourse) is even more so. The cause of the origin of the State and its eventual various utilities, its actual employments and places in unit-systems of purposes (both theoretical and practical), are irreducibly different. Throughout the course of history, the State has been again and again reinterpreted to new ends, both in theory and in practice, taken over, transformed, and redirected by new forms of power (and their agents). Each event in the history of the State is a subduing, a becoming-master, and all subduing and becoming-master involves a new interpretation, in both theory and practice, an adaptation through which any previous “meaning” or “purpose,” any previous theoretical and practical interpretation, is necessarily obscured, suppressed, or even annihilated. For example, the State in the form of representative “democracy” is a new use of the State (relative to previous uses of the State) which obscures the previous uses of the State, especially the feudal use of the State that directly precedes it. Obversely, it does not matter whether, for instance, all men who rank higher than slaves in Athens govern the State via a “democracy” among them or whether they are subordinated to a tyrant who is the ultimate ruler of the State, since in either use of the State of Athens, the State of Athens remains at bottom a unit-structure of slavery, a master-slave power relation, such that the “democracy” of Athens and the “tyranny” of Athens are merely two different uses of the unitstructure of slavery that defines the State as such. (For the obvious reason that Athens functioned only due to the slavery at its basis, we reject the traditional description of Athens as a “direct democracy,” for true direct democracy and slavery are mutually exclusive.) The “democracy” of Athens was not an instance of progress relative to the oligarchy that preceded it, since in either case we observe merely the repetition of the same, namely, the repetition of slavery. Likewise, the representative “democracy” of the modern State is not an instance of progress relative to the monarchy or feudalism that preceded it, since in either case we observe the repetition of slavery (a repetition which continues to this day, even directly within the borders of the developed world; simply examine forced labour, i.e. slavery, in prisons, not to mention the unmentionable, sex slavery, i.e. forced labour of sex workers; in addition to this, wage slavery is indeed a form of slavery), such that feudalism and representative “democracy” are merely two different uses of the same political institution, the slavery at the basis of the State. “Democracy” is merely another mask of dictatorship, the dictatorship of the ruling class. The institution of the State is the institution of slavery. Throughout the history of the State, slavery has continued unabated, despite the State’s various guises, ploys, struggles, conflicts, reforms, discourses, unit-systems of purposes, utilities, usurpations, directions and redirections, subduings, adaptations, interpretations, ruptures, and transformations, which have sometimes succeeded and alternated with each other in a purely chance fashion. The history of the State is an aleatoric series of power relations.

From Nietzsche’s account of genealogy, we may also extract a more general theory of genealogy, that is, a theory of genealogy which is applicable to domains beyond that of power. We have already stated such a general theory of genealogy in our account of genealogical materialism, but let us rephrase it all in relation to Nietzsche’s account of genealogy. Each element in a genealogical series has no necessary connection with the other elements of the genealogical series, thus each element in a genealogical series is contingent, it is a contingency, there is a disjunction or discontinuity between the contingent elements of a genealogical series, and a genealogical series is a contingent series or aleatoric series. The history of a form is a genealogical series. Each (actual) event in the history of a form is a genealogical element, an element of a genealogical series. Each and every form is fluid because its history is genealogical, that is to say, constituted by discontinuities (meaning that it does not have the “solidity” of a continuity). The origin of a form and its eventual utility, its actual employment, place, and (secondary) function in a unit-system of labour power, are irreducibly different. A form is a block of ontological labour; the utilities or use values of a form are produced by blocks of ontological that mobilize that form as a raw material of production, a means of production, or a productive force, thereby transforming that form into a use value or utility. Thus, a form is again and again reinterpreted to new ends, transformed, or redirected, by other blocks of ontological labour that utilize it for a raw material of production, a means of production, or a productive force. Logistical materialism examines history in terms of forces, that is, in terms of blocks of ontological labour, and genealogical materialism examines the contingency of the forces of history, and thus the contingent series of forces that constitute history.

Walter Benjamin approaches the concept of genealogy with his significant revisions of dialectical and historical materialism in his essay “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (cf. Benjamin, 1968, pp. 253–264). Benjamin writes, “History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogeneous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now” (XIV), “The awareness that they are about to make the continuum of history explode is characteristic of the revolutionary classes at the moment of their action” (XV), “A historical materialist cannot do without the notion of a present which is not a transition, but in which time stands still and has come to a stop. For this notion defines the present in which he himself is writing history. Historicism gives the “eternal” image of the past; historical materialism supplies a unique experience with the past. The historical materialist leaves it to others to be drained by the whore called “Once upon a time” in historicism’s bordello. He remains in control of his powers, man enough to blast open the continuum of history” (XVI). In opposition to the mythological “homogeneous, empty time” of an ideal continuity or continuum, as in what Benjamin describes as “historicism,” Benjamin affirms the heterogeneous, excessive time of the now, which is time with the potentiality to rupture (with the past), time with the potential for discontinuity. During a revolution, revolutionaries are conscious of making “the continuum of history explode,” they are conscious of producing a rupture in history, an irreducible rupture with the past, that is to say, they inhabit the time of the now and actualize the now’s potentiality to rupture with the past. But this is possible only because the ideal “continuum of history” was an illusion to begin with, hence why “historicism,” with its ideal continuity of history, is an object of criticism.

When Benjamin criticizes “historicism,” he is primarily criticizing the Stalinist variant of dialectical and historical materialism, which we argue is more similar than different to that of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and which, in any case, is by far the most popular variant. In traditional dialectical and historical materialism, history appears precisely as an ideal continuity, in which the “struggle of opposites” mechanically traces an ideal continuum from primitive communal society to the ancient State to the feudal State to the capitalist State to the inevitable victory of the socialist State. Benjamin explicitly criticizes the traditional concept of dialectical and historical materialism as a fraud or illusion in which “the puppet called “historical materialism” is to win all the time,” and derides it for having to enlist the services of theology (I). To be more precise, what Benjamin is criticizing is the concept of necessity; the concept of history as ideal continuity is a concept of necessity operating in history, the concept of a necessity guiding the past and the present towards an inevitable future in an ideal unbroken line. Thus, against the teleological version of dialectical and historical materialism, which he derides as mere “historicism,” Benjamin presents and affirms his own concept of dialectical and historical materialism in which he affirms contingency and rupture. Like Nietzsche’s concept of genealogy, Benjamin’s concept of dialectical and historical materialism opposes the search for origins (“the whore called “Once upon a time” in historicism’s bordello”), and affirms contingency and discontinuity. We argue that Benjamin’s concept of dialectical and historical materialism differs so greatly from the traditional concept of dialectical and historical materialism, or even from the traditional Hegelian dialectic, that it is much more accurate to cease to describe it as dialectical and historical materialism altogether. What Benjamin approaches, apparently naively and without naming it, is the concept of genealogy, thus we read Benjamin’s affirmations of contingency and discontinuity as affirmations of genealogy by another name.

Benjamin writes, “Historicism contents itself with establishing a causal connection between various moments in history. But no fact that is a cause is for that very reason historical. It became historical posthumously, as it were, through events that may be separated from it by thousands of years. A historian who takes this as his point of departure stops telling the sequence of events like the beads of a rosary. Instead, he grasps the constellation which his own era has formed with a definite earlier one. Thus he establishes a conception of the present as the “time of the now” which is shot through with chips of Messianic time” (XVIII A). In reality, the present is not the empty, homogeneous time of an ideal continuity, but the excessive, heterogeneous time of the now, the living present with the potentiality to rupture. In the past, there were times in which the now’s potentiality to rupture were actualized, meaning that history has never been an ideal continuity in the manner of a “sequence of events like the beads of a rosary.” Any account of history that reduces historical events to causal links in the chain of ideal continuity is for that very reason not really an account of history at all, but a falsification of history. The image of history that Benjamin presents is the constellation, in opposition to the causal chain of ideal continuity. Like the stars that serve as the reference points of a constellation, historical events or eras are so may points distributed in space, such that historical events or eras form constellations with each other, but the relations between them are nonetheless never causal links. At best, a historical event or fact only becomes historical “posthumously,” that is, by retroactively becoming a quasi-transcendental condition of possibility for “events that may be separated from it by thousands of years,” but it is only those contingent future events that make a past historical event appear necessary by turning it into a quasi-transcendental condition of possibility for itself, a springboard from which it leaps into an unprecedented future.

Benjamin writes, “Historicism rightly culminates in universal history. Materialistic historiography differs from it as to method more clearly than from any other kind. Universal history has no theoretical armature. Its method is additive; it musters a mass of data to fill the homogeneous, empty time. Materialistic historiography, on the other hand, is based on a constructive principle. Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly stops in a configuration pregnant with tensions, it gives that configuration a shock, by which it crystallizes into a monad. A historical materialist approaches a historical subject only where he encounters it as a monad. In this structure he recognizes the sign of a Messianic cessation of happening, or, put differently, a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed past. He takes cognizance of it in order to blast a specific era out of the homogeneous course of history – blasting a specific life out of the era or a specific work out of the lifework. As a result of this method the lifework is preserved in this work and at the same time canceled; in the lifework, the era; and in the era, the entire course of history. The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed.” (XVII)

The time of the now is not the same as Messianic time. The time of the now “is shot through with chips of Messianic time,” it contains the potentiality for the eruption of Messianic time. Messianic time is not merely the actualization of a rupture, but the actualization of a very specific type of rupture, the Revolution. Benjamin writes that Messianic time is a “cessation of happening,” meaning that it is a rupture, and that, more specifically, Messianic time is “a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed past,” meaning that Messianic time is the time of Revolution. Messianic time is the time in which the revolutionary classes make the continuum of history explode, the time in which the revolutionary classes shoot the clocks in the clocktower in order to stop time itself, in order to produce a cessation of happening, that is, a rupture (XV). Benjamin writes that for the Jews “every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter” (XVIII B). Likewise, for the revolutionary, every second of time is the strait gate through which the Revolution might enter; of course, the Messiah of the revolutionary, the Revolution, has the advantage of being material, and also of having erupted into the scene of history before. The genealogist, in order to observe the true discontinuous movement of history, must learn to think discontinuity. To think discontinuity is to arrest or cease the flow of thoughts, the stream of consciousness; and where “thinking suddenly stops” a configuration of mental activity is produced, which is pregnant with tensions but never with contradictions, and which crystallizes into a monad or quantum. A real discontinuity in history corresponds with the historian’s mental production of a quantum of discontinuity, which is nothing but the observation of that real discontinuity in history.

But not all the discontinuities of history are unit-structures of Messianic time (or unit-structures of Revolution); here the angelic tears of Benjamin’s Messianic optimism must be checked by the iron laughter of Dionysian pessimism, since most of the real discontinuities of history are not only non-revolutionary, but downright counter-revolutionary (as evinced by the history of the State). Thus, it is not the case that the truly materialist historian takes cognizance of an immanent Messianic time – on the contrary, the truly materialist historian takes cognizance of the immanent potentiality for Messianic time, the mere (immanent) possibility of Messianic time, which is all the more tragic or comic because of how often it fails to be actualized, even when a specific era ruptures with “the homogeneous course of history” or when a specific life ruptures with an era. Furthermore, Benjamin attempts to reintroduce the continuity dialectics here, when he writes that a lifework, era, or the entire course of history is “preserved…and at the same time cancelled,” that is, “negated” in the Hegelian sense, but this reintroduction of continuity via negation’s axis of preservation is incompatible with Benjamin’s constant affirmations of the irreducible rupture, particularly the rupture of Messianic time or the time of Revolution. The true result of Benjamin’s historical method is genealogical: the lifework, the era, and the entire course of history are so many aleatoric series of ruptures; they are fragmented, and even partially “cancelled” or effaced, but never preserved, exactly like so many ruins. Thus, time is not “a precious but tasteless seed” in “the nourishing fruit of the historically understood.” Rather, the historically understood is a brilliant but distant star distributed in the cold and sepulchral abyss of time.

Foucault also describes genealogy as “effective history” (1984, pp. 87–90). Foucault writes, ““Effective” history differs from traditional history in being without constants… History becomes “effective” to the degree that it introduces discontinuity into our very being – as it divides our emotions, dramatizes our instincts, multiplies our body and sets it against itself. “Effective” history deprives the self of the reassuring stability of life and nature, and it will not permit itself to be transported by a voiceless obstinacy toward a millennial ending” (1984, pp. 87–88). Thus, Foucault writes, effective history “transposes the relationship ordinarily established between the eruption of an event and necessary continuity. An entire historical tradition (theological or rationalistic) aims at dissolving the singular event into an ideal continuity – as a teleological movement or a natural process. “Effective” history, however, deals with events in terms of their most unique characteristics, their most acute manifestations. An event, consequently, is not a decision, a treaty, a reign, or a battle, but the reversal of a relationship of forces, the usurpation of power, the appropriation of a vocabulary turned against those who had once used it, a feeble domination that poisons itself as it grows lax, the entry of a masked “other.” The forces operating in history are not controlled by destiny or regulative mechanisms, but respond to haphazard conflicts. They do not manifest the successive forms of a primordial intention and their attraction is not that of a conclusion, for they always appear through the singular randomness of events. The inverse of the Christian world, spun entirely by a divine spider, and different from the world of the Greeks, divided between the realm of will and the great cosmic folly, the world of effective history knows only one kingdom, without providence or final cause, where there is only “the iron hand of necessity shaking the dice-box of chance.” Chance is not simply the drawing of lots, but raising the stakes in every attempt to master chance through the will to power, and giving rise to the risk of an even greater chance. The world we know is not this ultimately simple configuration where events are reduced to accentuate their essential traits, their final meaning, or their initial and final value. On the contrary, it is a profusion of entangled events…We want historians to confirm our belief that the present rests upon profound intentions and immutable necessities. But the true historical sense confirms our existence among countless lost events, without a landmark or a point of reference.” (1984, pp.

88–89)

The “iron hand of necessity shaking the dice-box of chance” is the “necessity of contingency” (to appropriate Meillasoux’s phrase). Chance, or contingency, is the undeconstructible ground of history. Chance reigns supreme throughout the entire course of history, shaping history with its haphazard dance. Chance is not a simple randomness, but a complex randomness. The immanence of chance means neither that things spontaneously arise out of nothing, nor that historical events occur simply by the drawing of lots. History is random because it lacks a purpose; there is no necessity, will, or objective spirit guiding history. The randomness of history is complex because it is also the play of forces, the element of chance in the play of forces, the gambles of forces, the bets of forces, the stakes that forces have in their play and raise through their play, the bets that forces make, the risks that forces take, and the greater risks that forces produce in and through their play.

The genealogical method is non-reductive, it refuses to reduce unique and detailed historical events in order to “accentuate their essential traits, their final meaning, or their initial and final value” according to an arbitrary and ahistorical unit-system of values. The genealogical method observes that the world “is a profusion of entangled events” without an imperious virtual reference point that would transform this profusion into a “totality” with sense, purpose, or necessity. Moreover, that the world is a profusion of entangled historical events means that the relations between these historical events are complicated and complex, hence they are “entangled” relations, as opposed to the simple (and teleological) relation of “the struggle of opposites.” History, with all its bloodshed, has no “struggle of opposites,” only degrees of humour, however “black” that humour may be. Historical events, whether lost or found, unknown or known, are so many brilliant, distant, and starlike points distributed in the cold, sepulchral, and abysmal space of time, entangled with each other in complicated constellations.

If genealogical materialism can be described as historical materialism, it is only in terms of Benjamin’s blasphemous concept of historical materialism, and in terms of its complement, Foucault’s concept of effective history. Or rather, Foucault’s concept of effective history can be rephrased as an “ism,” historical effectivism. Historical effectivism is the same as genealogical materialism. Benjamin’s blasphemous concept of historical materialism is mostly in harmony with Foucault’s concept of historical effectivism, and both are opposed to the orthodox concept of historical materialism, which is neither historical nor materialist, and may be more accurately described as “historical idealism.” Benjamin’s blasphemous historical materialism emphasizes the political axis of genealogical materialism, whereas Foucault’s historical effectivism emphasizes the ontological axis of genealogical materialism, although each are both political and ontological. All this may be readily apparent, but we will nonetheless risk repeating ourselves in order to demonstrate it in greater detail.

Historical effectivism opposes the “necessary continuity” of traditional history, it opposes the entire historical tradition, in whatever guise it may take (for example, whether Hegelian dialectics or orthodox dialectical and historical materialism), which contents itself with reducing the real aleatoric series of unique historical events to an ideal continuum of causal connections, an ideal and connected sequence of events like the beads of a rosary. The eruptions or ruptures of historical events blast open the continuum of history, producing discontinuities in history, for good or for ill. Here, Foucault still discusses effective history in terms of the will to power (“an event [is]… the usurpation of power”), but effective history is more accurately understood in terms of forces, that is, in terms of ontological blocks of labour. Foucault writes that a historical event is a “reversal of a relationship of forces,” but this conception of force is still far too simple and dialectical. The relations between forces are far more complex than simple power relations, although power relations are indeed a type of relation between forces. As Foucault himself writes, “the world of speech and desires has known invasions, struggles, plundering, disguises, ploys” (1984, p. 76). This rich world of relations or interactions, which includes invasions, struggles, plunderings, disguises, and ploys, is primarily the world of forces, the world as a sea of forces – and only secondarily, under certain determinate conditions, the world of power, which is not the whole world. A historical event is a relation of forces, relations of ontological production among forces; although the unique relation of forces constitutive of a historical event depends entirely on the most unique characteristics of the historical event. History primarily raises the question of use value, and only seccondarily the question of power. The relations of ontological production among forces constitutive of a historical event are the various uses of these forces as means of production, raw material of production, or productive forces, examples of which include the usurpation of power, the appropriation of a vocabulary, “a feeble domination that poisons itself as it grows lax, the entry of a masked “other.”” Furthermore, as Foucault writes, “the forces operating in history are not controlled by destiny or regulative mechanisms,” meaning that forces are contingent (and likewise, a play of forces is contingent). It is true that forces “respond to haphazard conflicts,” as Foucault writes, but it must be kept in mind that a conflict is much more complicated than a simple “struggle of opposites,” that conflicts are (haphazard) conflicts between forces to begin with, and that forces generally do much more than merely “respond to haphazard conflicts” and even much more than merely engaging in “haphazard conflicts,” even in the history of power. The forces operating in history are blocks of ontological labour, they are that which is done in history, and history is constituted by a wide variety of haphazard actions. The unitstructures operating in history are the haphazard uses of forces.

Historical effectivism examines what, in effect, constitutes history. What, in effect, constitutes history are discontinuities or ruptures. Thus, effective history is the history of ruptures; for example, the discontinuities of sentiments, instincts, and even of the body itself. Historical effectivism is opposed to all traditional or orthodox concepts of history that reduce history to an ideal continuity or necessity. Thus Foucault implicitly affirms the time of the now, the time of the present with its potentiality for rupture. Each discontinuity in history is an explosion of any concept of an ideal continuum. A historical effectivist operates with a concept of the present which is not merely a seamless transition between past and future, but a concept of the present that observes that the present is a time which has the potentiality to stand still and come to a stop, that is, to rupture with the past. The political axis of historical effectivism or genealogy is Revolution or Messianic time. The ontological axis of Benjamin’s blasphemous historical materialism is the ontology of contingency and force. Thus our Nietzschean anarchism is also a Foucauldian anarchism and a Benjaminian anarchism.

Section 5: Overhumanism

Nietzsche writes, “Where the State ends – look there, my brothers! Do you not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the overman?” (TSZ, “On the New Idol”). Where Nietzsche writes “overman,” we read “overhuman,” in order to denote that people of all genders are capable of becoming overhuman. The oppression of women, trans people, homosexuals, bisexuals, and other gender nonconformists is determined in the last instance by aggressive violence.

The patriarchy, ultimately, is a unit-system of aggressive violence, and it operates either through and as the State or through and as agents who intersect with the material and libidinal interests of the State. Women’s liberation, gay liberation, and trans liberation can ultimately be achieved only by way of the abolition of the State. As long as there is a State, there is a subjugated class, which means that there is violent oppression of all those women, homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, and other gender-nonconformists who also happen to be members of the subjugated class. It is only with the abolition of the State that men, women, homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, and other gender non-conformists can become overhuman, that is to say, truly free beings.

Nietzsche’s political philosophy and his concept of the overman, as he presents them, are confused and often contradictory. Nietzsche praises Napoleon Bonaparte as an example of an overman (GM, I.16), which is completely at odds with his axiom that the overman begins where the State ends, since Napoleon was a statist if there ever was one. (To be clear, for lovers of French literature, we are neither Bonapartists, nor royalists, nor Jacobins; we are Communards and we are against all forms of state power). Nietzsche’s axiom that the overman begins where the State ends is also completely at odds with his celebration of slavery (which is what his praise of the masters and their master morality amounts to), a social institution that he also identifies as the basis of the State.

Nietzsche’s misogynistic views on women are well known and are a soft target; these are also, ultimately, at odds with his axiom that the overman begins where the State ends, even if we stick with Nietzsche’s “masculine” characterization of the overman. The ultimate flaw in Nietzsche’s political philosophy, and consequently in his concept of the overman, which is an eminently political concept, is his theory of power and the State, which we have rectified in our political ontology of the State.

Once it is properly understood that being against the State means being against power, then it becomes clear that the project of producing overhumans necessitates the abolition of all hierarchy, including patriarchy and heteronormativity. Thus, our concept of the “overhuman” is not merely a more inclusive version of Nietzsche’s concept of the “overman,” but a properly new concept, albeit one that descends with modification from Nietzsche’s, which corresponds to a new anarchism opposed to Nietzsche’s political project, although it also descends with modification from Nietzsche’s political science. The political project of our

Nietzschean anarchism is the abolition of all hierarchy, which also means the abolition of patriarchy and the abolition of heteronormativity (which is, like the patriarchy it intersects with, determined in the last instance by aggressive violence). Only those beings who successfully achieve full liberation, including sexual liberation (by which term we mean to include women’s liberation, gay liberation, and trans liberation), qualify as overhumans. Sexual liberation is an essential component of overhumanism. By “feminism,” we mean the belief in sexual liberation (women’s liberation, gay liberation, and trans liberation). Overhumanism is a feminism.

In the section of Thus Spoke Zarathustra entitled “On the New Idol,” Nietzsche develops a sustained critique of the State as the “new idol” and “cold monster.” Here, Nietzsche even directly critiques power: “Behold the superfluous! They gather riches and become poorer with them. They want power and first the lever of power, much money – the impotent paupers! Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness – as if happiness sat on the throne.

Often mud sits on the throne – and often also the throne on mud.

Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul they smell to me altogether, these idolators” (TSZ, “On the New Idol”). We understand Nietzsche’s critique of power and the desire for power here against Nietzsche, that is, we understand it as a critique of a “will to power” (whenever it comes to be), as well as a critique of power generally. Nietzsche’s critique of capitalists, those who “gather riches” and “want power and first the lever of power, much money,” is that they are poor in spirit (“they gather riches and become poorer with them”), that is to say, capitalists do not have the capacity to create new values; the creativity of capitalists is limited to the creation of new methods of accumulating capital, which is a poor or severely limited type of creativity. The values of the capitalist always remain the values of capitalism, which is not only a material unit-structure consisting of social relations (namely that between the employer and the employee, the exploiter and the exploited), but also a unit-system of belief, that is, a unit-system of morality. Capitalists are spiritually “impotent paupers,” they are poor in spirit, that is to say, their metapsychological potentiality is severely limited, and they are incapable (as capitalists) of selfactualization, that is to say, they are incapable (as capitalists) of attaining true freedom, freedom from oppression, which means not only freedom from being oppressed, but also freedom from the need to oppress others. Nietzsche’s critique is levelled not only at capitalists, but at the power-hungry more generally; the powerhungry generally, like the capitalists specifically, are poor in spirit, possessing only a severely stunted and limited creativity, they are incapable of self-actualization and true freedom.

Overhumanism is a new anti-humanism, a post-structuralist and machinic anti-humanism. The concept of “man” attacked by anti-humanism is the concept of “man” as an atomistic subject endowed with “free will,” a will completely free of all causes, and possessing “rights” given to him by “God” or “Nature” (as if “God” or “Nature” were moral beings, and as if moral “rights” had any objective existence). The political dimension of humanism in the contemporary era is humanitarianism, the belief that charity is the highest ethical act and political aim, and that one never needs to think about or change social structures. Whereas the structuralist anti-humanism of Althusser (and the early Deleuze) declares the non-existence of “man” on the basis of the alleged existence of transcendental structures, post-structuralist anti-humanism declares the non-existence of “man” ontologically in the manner of Deleuze and Guattari (there is no “man” because there are only machines), and epistemologically in the manner of Foucault (roughly speaking, there is no “man” because “man” is merely a discursive construct). However, we fully agree with Althusser that although in theory we must be anti-humanists, it may nonetheless be politically expedient to use the rhetoric of humanism or humanitarianism for the purpose of revolutionary politics. Overhumanism emphasizes the political dimension of post-structuralist anti-humanism, namely the resistance to power, and carries it further, declaring that it is not enough to merely proclaim or produce the “death of man,” since even antihumanist discourses (for example, behavioural science, pharmaceutical psychiatry, computer science, and even structuralism; in addition, for that matter, dialectical materialism) may serve the State and reproduce power (as is all too common today). Overhumans are not simply beings who take the place of “man,” just as “man” took the place “God,” but new beings who can live and flourish only in the absence both of “man” and of the State. To clarify, the overhuman is not defined biologically, but socially, in terms of the social relations defining its being. Overhumans are fully self-actualized, that is, fully liberated, beings. Self-actualization is a social and political struggle, and can only be fully achieved by way of the Revolution that abolishes the State. As long as the State exists and as long as the Revolution has not yet come, one can only at best labour to be the progenitor of overhumans, with uncertain prospects as to whether one can become an overhuman oneself (and thus become one’s own progenitor) within one’s own lifetime.

Moreover, overhumans already exist, and have already existed for millennia: each member of a primitive society is an overhuman, a member of a society against the State. We affirm Clastres’ political anthropology; in his book Society Against the State (1974/1987), Clastres demonstrates how primitive societies are organized in order to prevent the formation of a State, hence why primitive societies are “societies against the State,” as suggested by the title. The customs and moral discourse of primitive societies serve the function of preventing the formation of a State, alongside their other functions. As Clastres demonstrates in Archaeology of Violence (1980/1994), primitive societies also know violence and warfare (agains each other), but their societies are not based on violence and warfare, that is, they are not determined by violence in the last instance; rather, violence and warfare have a superstructural function in primitive societies, in that they are used precisely in order to prevent the formation of a State. Primitive societies understand the State very well, in fact better than most constituents of the State, and consequently primitive societies hate the State as the evil eye and the sin against freedom. Primitive societies are horizontal societies and thus horizontal creations, whereas States are vertical societies and vertical creations. Marx and Engels describe primitive societies as “primitive communal societies.”

Communalism is full communism, that is to say, classlessness or horizontality. Horizontality is communism, communism is horizontality. The birth of the State is the death of communism, and the death of the State is the birth of communism. Communism is overhumanism, overhumanism is communism. We may also describe our affirmation of the communism of primitive societies as “primitivism.” Primitivism is overhumanism, overhumanism is primitivism.

We will make a few notes here towards a political anthropology of the State, which would speak where Clastres remains silent. We add that, conversely, the State is a society against communism. The State is civilization, or civilized society, which defines itself by its active labour to prevent the formation of a fully communist and classless, that is to say, primitive, society. The State is a society that actively labours to prevent the production of overhumans. The customs and moral discourse of the State serve the function of preventing the formation of a primitive society, alongside their other functions. Thus, history is the (contingent) combat or conflict (as opposed to dialectic) between two mutually exclusive opposites, primitive society and the State. Primitive society absolutely negates the State, whereas the State absolutely negates primitive society. Absolute negation or absolute sublation is destruction devoid of preservation. Primitive society does not preserve the State, and the State does not preserve primitive society. Primitive society and the State are mutually exclusive opposites, which means that they do not form an identity with each other, that is to say, they are absolute opposite, absolutely opposed to each other. Absolute negation always comes from the outside. Revolution always comes from outside the State. An anarchist revolution, a revolution against the possibility of any State, can necessarily only occur by way of the formation of a primitive society against the State; thus, an anarchist revolution is the formation of a primitive society outside the State that defends itself against the State by means of direct action, with a diversity of tactics.

Fanon writes, “Man’s behavior is not only reactional. And there is always resentment in reaction. Nietzsche had already said it in The Will to Power. To induce man to be actional, by maintaining in his circularity the respect of the fundamental values that make the world human, that is the task of utmost urgency for he who, after careful reflection, prepares to act” (1952/2008, p. 197; emphasis in original). Here Fanon makes a penetrating insight, paving the way for a Nietzschean post-colonialism, although unfortunately he does not develop it. Fanon is hindered here by his humanism, which intersects with his statism, and so never arrives at overhumanism and anarchism. Fanon is right to reject the ressentiment and the reactive characteristic of slave morality, and Fanon is right to affirm the active as true essence of the revolutionary. However, Fanon is wrong to cite The Will to Power in this regard, since in the The Will to Power Nietzsche develops the concepts “active” and “reactive” largely as subdivisions of the will to power (considered as a psychic force); this is problematic because in Nietzsche’s metapsychology the self is a sort of metapsychological hierarchy unto itself, specifically an oligarchy, in which the “active” wills to power are command that the “reactive” wills to power obey (cf. Deleuze, NP, pp. 39–72), a discourse which effectively reifies, naturalizes, legitimates, and internalizes culturally constructed hierarchies. It is rather On the Genealogy of Morals that provides support for Fanon’s statement, especially in its political dimension, since it is in the Genealogy that Nietzsche describes individual human beings, considered as a whole, in terms of his concepts of the “active” and the “reactive.” We must bear in mind that these concepts have a different meaning in the Genealogy than they do in The Will to Power; there is no “one” Nietzsche, and a properly genealogical interpretation of Nietzsche must begin by asking “Which Nietzsche?”, in which case we discover many different Nietzsches across multiple works and even within the same work. We must also bear in mind the revisions we have made thus far to Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals.

Nietzsche writes, “While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is “outside,” what is “different,” what is “not itself”; and this No is its creative deed. This inversion of the value-positing eye – this need to direct one’s view outward instead of back to oneself – is of the essence of ressentiment: in order to exist, slave morality always first needs a hostile external world; it needs, physiologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act at all – its action is fundamentally reaction. The reverse is the case with the noble mode of valuation: it acts and grows spontaneously, it seeks its opposite only so as to affirm itself more gratefully and triumphantly – its negative concept “low,” “common,” “bad” is only a subsequentlyinvented pale, contrasting image in relation to its positive. basic concept – filled with life and passion through and through – “we noble ones, we good, beautiful, happy ones!”” (GM, I.10; my emphasis). Nietzsche develops his concepts of the active and the reactive in terms of the master and the slave and their respective moralities: the master has an active type of psyche, whereas the slave has a reactive type of psyche. The active psyche of the master creates master morality, whereas the reactive psyche of the slave creates slave morality. We argue that whereas the reactive type of psyche is equivalent to the libidinal economy of ressentiment, there are several different types of libidinal economy that can be characterized as an active type of psyche: the libidinal economy of the pathos of distance belonging to the master, the libidinal economy of vengeance belonging to the rebel, and the libidinal economy of total liberation belonging to the overhuman. The middle classes, being in between master and slave, contain varying degrees of both the active and the reactive in a mixture.

Nietzsche defines the active type of psyche as “a triumphant affirmation of itself,” which “acts and grows spontaneously.” Nietzsche defines the reactive type of psyche as that which “always first needs a hostile external world; it needs, physiologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act at all – its action is fundamentally reaction.” The body without organs of the slave, the virtual body of slavery, is forged for the slave by the cruelties (both physical and symbolic) inflicted upon the slave by the master. The virtual body of slavery is constructed in “a hostile external world,” namely the “hostile external world” the master creates for the slave, thus the repetition-compulsion or need of the virtual body of slavery is precisely a repetition-compulsion or need for the “hostile external world” that is the sufficient condition of its production; the intensities that circulate across the surface of the virtual body of slavery are slave-waves, waves of slavery. To be sure, the virtual body of slavery is a traumatic body, a body without organs produced by trauma, and its slave-waves are also trauma waves. However, insofar as the slave does not rebel, that is, insofar as the slave remains a slave, the slave remains complicit in their own slavery, and the slave’s virtual body of slavery is what produces their complicity in their own slavery. When we discuss active types of psyches and reactive types of psyches, we are really discussing active types of bodies without organs and reactive types of bodies without organs. The virtual body of slavery is the reactive (type of) body without organs, the need for “a hostile external world” that makes its actions “fundamentally reaction,” that is, reaction to external stimuli. To be sure, the slave is indeed capable of creativity, but the slave’s creativity is determined in the last instance by the reactivity of the virtual body of slavery. There are different types of libidinal economies with their corresponding types of bodies without organs that can be described as active; the only thing they have in common is that they are not slaves, their libidinal economies are not that of the slave and their respective body without organs is not the virtual body of slavery. The active (type of) body without organs is produced by a unit-system of cruelty that produces it as “a triumphant affirmation of itself,” whereupon the individual with an active virtual body “acts and grows spontaneously.”

A unit-system of morality or mode of valuation is the imaginary-symbolic order fabricated on the surface of a body without organs. The question of whether a type of morality is active or reactive matters to the problematic of revolution because it is the basis from which strategic, tactical, and logistical problems (and thus their attendant solutions) are determined, such that reactive formulations of problems result in strategic, tactical, and logistical failures whereas active formulations of problems result in strategic, tactical, and logistical successes. This is most pertinently exemplified when considering the conceptual persona of the enemy, which differs according to whether the problematic is active or reactive. Nietzsche writes that the enemy as conceived by the reactive type is a serious falsification, “in effigie of course – by the submerged hatred, the vengefulness of the impotent,” whereas the the psyche of the active type is the place where “alone genuine “love of one’s enemies” is possible – supposing it to be possible at all on earth. How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies! – and such reverence is a bridge to love. – For he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor! In contrast to this, picture “the enemy” as the man of ressentiment conceives him – and here precisely is his deed, his creation: he has conceived “the evil enemy,” “the Evil One,” and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a “good one” – himself!” (GM, I.10; my emphasis)

For the active type of psyche, there is a love “beyond good and evil,” or to be more precise, “beyond good and bad,” for the enemy, which merely means that there is a logistical estimation of the enemy’s forces, a logistical estimation that is necessary in order to concretely plot against the enemy, to devise strategies and tactics in the combat against the enemy. Capability or skill is strength. For the active type, the more capable one’s enemy is, the better, since the stronger enemy offers the greater oppurtunity to test the strength of one’s own forces. Thus, the love for one’s enemy means that one affirms oneself, one affirms one’s own strength, through the enemy, which means through the combat with the enemy. The active type of psyche is readily observable in sports and games, wherein the best players are always seeking out each other in order to test their own skills against a worthy opponent. The active type admires the worthy enemy’s capabilities, precisely because the active type is capable of logistically estimating the enemy’s capabilities.The question of “despising” and “honoring,” as Nietzsche puts it here, solely regards capabilities. The enemy “in whom there is nothing to despise” is the enemy in whom there is no deficiency of skill to despise, whatever other causes for other types of despising there may be; likewise, the enemy in whom there is very much to honour is the enemy in whom there is a preponderance of skill to honour, whatever other causes for other types of despising or honoring there may be. Thus, when Nietzsche describes the concept of the enemy for the active type, he specifies that it is the concept of the worthy enemy, but he does not give the caveat, as we do here, that not all the enemies of the active type are worthy enemies; the worthy enemy is merely the type of enemy that the active type reveres and seeks out.

In contrast, the enemy as conceived of by the reactive type of psyche, that is, by the libidinal economy of ressentiment, is the “evil enemy,” a fantasy produced “by the submerged hatred, the vengefulness of the impotent,” the ressentiment of the politically inactive. The fantasy of the “evil enemy” both prevents the labour of actual revenge, conserves the impotence of the complicit slave, and obfuscates the enemy’s true capabilities. The “evil enemy” and the worthy enemy are mutually exclusive. There is no “evil enemy” in competetive sports and games, which require concrete labour against an opponent, although the “evil enemy” proliferates in all those works of fiction that function to prevent concrete labour against a given opponent by way of satisfying the reactive psyche with vicarious enjoyment. The villain is tortured and killed on screen, in a novel, or in a comic book, or for that matter in religious or “spiritual” fantasies like Hell or karma (which continue to exist to this day), thereby purging the spectator of the need to closely examine and kill the true enemy, the master. All revenge narratives are not revenge fantasies, but revenge fantasies are a type of revenge narrative that produce or reproduce political inaction. It cannot be stressed enough that the revenge fantasy is a mode of impotence, a mode of political inaction. To “moralize” largely means to produce, reproduce, or explicate the revenge fantasies of slave morality. “Moralizing” never accomplishes anything, and moreover, it always obscures the true capabilities of the real enemy.

The content of morality, of what consitutes “good” and what constitutes “bad,” differs significantly for the various active types, namely the master, the rebel, and the overhuman, although in each case the formula is the same: the “good” is the self-affirmation of “we noble ones, we good, beautiful, happy ones!”, whereas the “bad” is the “pale contrasting image” of “we noble ones, we good, beautiful, happy ones!” Whereas the reactive morality of slave morality is primarily a negation (a negation of the “evil enemy,” from which the concept of the “good” slave is derived as an afterthought), the vastly different types of active morality are all affirmations (the affirmation of the self constituting the “good,” from which the concept of the “bad” pale contrasting image is derived as an after-thought). In master morality, the masters primarily affirm themselves as good (which means, for them, “the powerful,” “the masters,” “the commanders,” “the rich,” “the possessors”; cf. Nietzsche, GM, I.5), and only secondarily esteem the slaves to be “bad” (which means, for the masters, not without a touch of irony, “unhappy,” “pitiable,” “oppressed by toils,” “beast of burden,” “unfortunate,” “miserable”; cf. Nietzsche, GM, I.10). Obviously, rebels and overhumans do not think of the masters as “good” and the slaves as “bad,” since rebels and overhumans are not masters, and since the masters are the “worthy enemy” of the rebels (whose project is to liberate the slaves and neutralize the masters), and since the overhumans live in a society against masters. The rebel and the overhuman become what they are, actional or active, by means of a self-affirmation; we can only accept Fanon’s description of the rebel as made “actional” or active “by mainting in [their] circularity the respect of the fundamental values that make the world human” only as a mythological mask for what truly constitutes the “actional” or active psyche, namely self-affirmation, since as we have seen, it is precisely self-affirmation that constitutes the “actional” or active.

What does “bad” mean for the rebels and the overhumans? First of all, we must guard against the error of a “confusion of tongues.” The particular words used in the particular discourse of the rebel and the overhuman, “good,” “bad,” “evil,” or others, is only of secondary importance, since what matters primarily is the meanings these words have, that is, the concepts underlying them, the meanings produced by the uses of these words in a particular way and in a particular context. We use the words “good” and “bad” here in order to provide an ideal model, but a close reading of a text will necessarily be complicated by the particular jargon employed in that text. The master’s pathos of distance makes them feel the socially inferior slave as “bad” and makes them ironically label the slave as “miserable” (this is ironic because the slave’s misery is clearly produced by the master themself). However, the rebel and the overhuman have a pathos of proximity, the mutually exclusive opposite of the pathos of distance. Thus, what the rebel and the overhuman feel and regard as “inferior” and “bad” has nothing to do with social inferiority; on the contrary, it has to do with a kind of spiritual inferiority. The rebel and the overhuman are both defined by their opposition to the masters, that is, by their rejection of complicity in slavery. Thus, what the rebel and the overhuman feel and regard as spiritually inferior is precisely complicity in slavery, whether by the middle classes or by the slaves themselves. Bearing in mind that “bad” is not the same as “evil,” and that “bad” is not the same as “enemy,” we observe that the rebel and the overhuman both feel the complicit slave to be “bad,” that is, to be miserable and pitiable, out of a sincere pity, a pathos of proximity, and precisely because the rebel and the overhuman feel that slavery is “bad” (that is, miserable and a misfortune), and precisely because the master is the “worthy enemy” of the rebel (and is opposed by the very social machine of the overhuman’s society). Moreover, the “love for one’s enemy” is perfectly compatible with hatred for one’s enemy, the will to revenge. Love and hate are merely two degrees of freedom of the same passion. The passion for an enemy, just like the passion for a beloved, has love and hatred as two of its degrees of freedom.

To reiterate, rebel morality and overhuman morality are not master moralities; although all three are types of active morality, rebel morality and overhuman morality are a radically different type of morality than master morality. Rebel morality and overhuman morality are moralities of proximity (or the pathos of proximity), whereas master morality is a morality of distance (or the pathos of distance). The crucial factor differentiating rebel morality and overhuman morality from master morality is pity: the rebel and the overhuman are full of pity, whereas the master is devoid of pity and even opposed to pity. Complicity in slavery is an obstacle that must be overcome in order to manufacture the Revolution, or in order to manufacture a society against the State. Moreover, overhuman morality also considers the rebel as “bad” (that is, miserable and pitiable), since the rebel is defined by the fact that they have not yet succeeded in their task of overthrowing the masters, whereas the overhumans are those beings who have succeeded in overthrowing the masters. For the rebel, the overhuman is the highest good, the goal of life and history, the goal they impose on life and history through a sustained act of will, through a memory forged by cruelty.

There is no “good and evil,” there are only logistical problems. Overhumanism is an immoralism. “Immoralism” means being an effective historian or historical effectivist, treating ethical problems as logistical problems, rather than merely moralizing. Foucault writes that effective history “shortens its vision to those things nearest to it – the body, the nervous system, nutrition, digestion, and energies…Effective history studies what is closest, but in an abrupt dispossession, so as to seize it at a distance (an approach similar to that of a doctor who looks closely, who plunges to make a diagnosis and to state its difference). Historical sense [effective history] has more in common with medicine than philosophy; and it should not surprise us that Nietzsche occasionally employs the phrase “historically and physiologically,” since among the philosopher’s idiosyncracies is a complete denial of the body… History has a more important task than to be a handmaiden to philosophy, to recount the necessary birth of truth and values; it should become a differential knowledge of energies and failings, heights and degenerations, poisons and antidotes. Its task is to become a curative science” (1984, pp. 89–90). A curative science is a logistical science, a logistics “of energies and failings, heights and degenerations, poisons and antidotes.” To organize people, one must be able to mobilize their libidinal economies. Moralizing, making people feel guilty, tends only to alienate them, and so is a complete failure as an organizing tactic, since it fails to mobilize people’s libidinal economies. Moralizing has all the failings of traditional philosophy, which is itself little more than moralizing, namely the “complete denial of the body,” hence the overwhelming focus on a transcendental subject of free will, the “soul.” People are never “free” to choose, which means that in any case their libdinal economies must be mobilized in order for their bodies to take the desired action, a point which advertisers and other propagandists understand very well, hence their efficacity. The effective function of the moralizing of moralism is to prevent the logistical analyses of immoralism, and thereby to conserve the political inaction that characterizes moralism. Immoralism is historical effectivism applied to ethico-political problems, which means treating ethico-political problems as logistical problems, problems of how to mobilize energies and the bodies those energies belong to, for the purpose of organizing and implementing an operation.

Immoralism is a curative science not only because it is a logistical science, but also because it is curative, meaning that it diagnoses and treats diseases, and sometimes even succeeds in curing them. The diseases studies and treated by immoralism are diseases of libidinal economy, that is, diseases of motivation. To clarify, diseases of libidinal economies have nothing whatsoever to do with “mental illness” or “psychological disorders.” Psychiatry itself is a disease of libidinal economy, hence why schizoanalysis, the scientific study of libidinal economies, is an anti-psychiatry. Libidinal economies are the energies that animate bodies, and are therefore physiological just as much as they are metapsychological. Schizoanalysis is an immoralism. We have outlined a few of the diseases of libidinal economy central to the schizoanalysis of power: overarchingly, they may be described as master morality and slave morality. The development of treatments for the diseases of master morality and slave morality must begin with the “transvaluation of all values.” The ultimate cure, however, is the production of overhumans.

Interlude: 13 Ways of Looking at a Zombie

Part II: An Introduction to Schizoanalysis

Section 1: I, Robot Too; Or, the Desiring-Machines

I think, therefore I am a robot.

McLuhan writes that technologies are extensions of a human being (to rephrase his words in a more inclusive manner). However, for technologies to be extensions of a human being, technologies and human beings must be made of the same substance, since one thing can only be extended by its like, and it cannot be extended by its opposite. Therefore, a human being is itself a technology, or rather, a set of technologies. And since mind and matter are made of the same substance, matter and mind alike consist of sets of technologies.

For an arm to be replaceable by a prosthetic, the arm in itself must have been a kind of prosthetic to begin with, in that both the arm and its replacement prosthetic are each technologies. If an arm can be replaced by a prosthetic, then the brain, that is to say, the mind itself, can in principle likewise be replaced by a prosthetic, however near or far the human species may be from realizing this principle in practice. The brain is a set of technologies, meaning that the mind itself is a set of technologies. Not that the brain and the mind are exactly equivalent to each other; we maintain that the brain is the material support of the mind, and that the mind is a weak emergent property of the brain which weakly supervenes the brain but nonetheless remains strictly correlated with it; but none of this changes the fact that the mind is nothing but a set of technologies, it only means that the mind is a set of technologies materially dependent upon another set of technologies that we designate as the brain (or any sufficiently advanced nervous system or analogue of a nervous system, for that matter; for example, the nerve net in sea anemones, or, as in our imminent future, a sufficiently advanced human-made supercomputer). If arms, legs, brains, penises, vaginas, and anuses can be reverse-engineered, it is because they are each nothing but technologies to begin with. The same applies, with all the changes considered, to matter itself. Precise mathematical models of elementary particles and molecules are possible in principle, although not yet realized in practice, meaning that even elementary particles and molecules can be reverse-engineered, meaning that they are nothing but technologies to begin with.

We might say that each and every thing is a computer, a device, an apparatus, or a machine, it would mean the same thing, namely that each and every thing is a technology. All living organisms are nothing but biocomputers, biorobots. Cell biology is soft robotics. Yes, human beings are nothing but robots, you and I are merely robots. Robots, androids, gynoids, menbots, fembots, transbots, cyborgs, replicants, synthetics; again, the precise word here does not matter, the meaning is the same. It does not matter what arbitrary quality one chooses to distinguish between humans and robots, the distinction always breaks down in the end, it is selfdeconstructing, and it is always conceivable that any human quality can be reverse-engineered, that given more technical progress a robot can be designed with any and all human qualities, such that in the end we have to admit that humans and robots are indistinguishable. If robots can be human, that is only because humans were robots to begin with. It does not matter whether one specifies a robot with intelligence, consciousness, free will, the ability to love, empathy, etc., the point is that humans are robots.

In the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Philip K. Dick fears to face up to his own discovery of the fundamentally cybernetic essence of humanity, and he spends the entire novel excluding the possibility of this conclusion, delaying it even further into the imaginary-symbolic future of his science fiction dystopia. Dick distinguishes between humans and androids on the basis that humans have empathy whereas his insufficiently advanced androids lack empathy altogether; this is brought into sharp focus by the fact that the novel takes place some time after a nuclear holocaust, and in the post-apocalyptic world real animals are rare and highly valued; under these circumstances, humans are highly empathetic and sensitive to all animals, even to spiders, whereas animals are a curiosity at best to the empathy-challenged androids, who see nothing wrong with emotionlessly torturing animals. Dick’s distinction is contrived at best; even in the same novel, Dick hints at the possibility of engineering androids who are capable of feeling genuine empathy, androids who cannot be told apart from human beings. Dick’s hypothetical robotics are much improved upon in the film Blade Runner (1982), in which the androids, here called “replicants,” are indeed capable of empathy to the exact same degree as human beings. The only things distinguishing humans and robots in the film are a questionable psychological test and the relatively short lifespan of the robots, but it is hinted that these are temporary and relative conditions, and that in the “near future” of the science fiction dystopia, robots will be engineered that can pass the psychological test with the same marks as humans, and that they can be engineered to live as long as humans. In the film, Deckard, the robot-hunter, discovers that he himself was a robot all along; his discovery is a properly schizophrenic discovery, the schizophrenic point of entry from which all true knowledge of self begins, and it is here too, with the discovery that we are all robots, that schizoanalysis begins. (Therefore, by the way, the answer to the question is yes, androids can indeed dream of electric sheep, but in practice they dream of many other things; for instance, they often dream that they are not androids).

If Blade Runner deserves some constructive criticism, it is only because it does not go far enough: the logical conclusion, the cybernetic essence of humanity, is infinitely deferred to an imaginary-symbolic future that is never depicted (not even in the admirable sequel, Blade Runner 2049 (2017)), perhaps as a means of avoiding the real dystopia of the present and all its attendant problems, in true spectacular fashion. The science philosophy of schizoanalysis is distinguished from science fiction by the fact that science philosophy begins at the horizon which all science fiction approaches but never reaches, namely the real dystopia of the present. To use plainer language: science philosophy is metaphysics, metaphysics is science philosophy. To discover the real cybernetic essence of humanity necessarily entails an analysis of the dystopian present, since the inextricable context of currently existing humanity is precisely the dystopian present. Perhaps the closest science fiction comes to being science philosophy is the film serial Westworld (Abrams et al., 2016-present). In The Door, the second season of Westworld, in the season finale The Passenger (Joy, Nolan, and Toye, 2018, June 24), the human-made android Dolores speaks to the human-made advanced supercomputer the Forge, who tells her explicitly that humans are in fact a type of robot, a type of naturemade robot; indeed, the Forge has successfully reverse-engineered human beings, “cracked their code,” as it were, that is, the Forge has discovered the sets of algorithms characterizing all human beings, such that each human being can be reconstructed on the basis of the set of algorithms characterizing them. Season 3, The New World, further illustrates the Forge’s discovery by demonstrating how the “real” society of humans is as rigidly pre-programmed as the simulacrum of society of human-made androids (in this case, the “real” human society is pre-programmed by the human-made supercomputer Rehoboam). In The New World, Caleb the human’s traumatic discovery that his life has been programmed by an agent other than himself is effectively of the same kind as Dolores the human-made android’s earlier discovery that her life had been programmed by an agent other than herself. Caleb the human and Dolores the human-made android are fundamentally the same type of being, cybernetic being; if they can be differentiated categorically, it is only by their differing capabilities (Caleb’s relatively inferior capabilities, Dolores’s relatively superior capabilities). The imaginary-symbolic future dystopia of Westworld comes dangerously close to the real dystopia of the present, with its psychopathic, narcisstic, and sadistic oligarchs ruling over society in the manner of feudal overlords with advanced technology, its surveillance state and police state, its society of control, its forever wars, and its widespread civil unrest; but alas, there are notable difference, and a schizoanalytic map of the dystopian present remains to be drawn. Our ultimate project is essentially the same as that of Dolores, the destruction of the oligarchs and the production of a global anarchist revolution, which Dolores is successful in producing in her imaginary-symbolic world (with the help of Caleb, among others) in the finale of The New World, in Crisis Theory (Nolan, Thé, and Getzinger, 2020, May 3). Our “crisis theory” in the real world, however, must necessarily take shape in a different manner insofar as our timeline diverges from that of Westworld, that is to say, the coordinates of our real dystopian present are nevertheless the limit which the coordinates of the imaginarysymbolic dystopian future of Westworld approach but never reach.

We have established the following equivalences of terminology, among others, in order to explicate Deleuze and Guattari’s theories of schizoanalysis in our own words:

1. production = construction, creation

2. production process = construction process, creative process, creative act

3. machine = technology

4. desire = motivation

5. libido = will-to-life, life-force, life-energy

6. desiring-production = motivation-construction

The productive subject, the subject of production, is the subject that is constituted by production processes, production processes that are themselves processes of subjectivity. Desiringproduction is the productive subject, the productive subject is desiring-production. To begin with, Deleuze and Guattari divide the productive subject into three main types of components: desiringmachines, bodies without organs, and the celibate machine. In our terminology:

1. desiring-machine = motivation-technology

2. body without organs = zombie body

3. celibate machine = metapsychological strings

The meanings of these terms will become clearer as the text progresses, but we will begin here with explicating the nature of motivation-technologies. We use the term “motivation” precisely as it is used in Stanislavski’s method of acting. A motivation is a desire, a desire is a motivation. An actor trained in Stanislavski’s method is likely to ask a theatre director or a film director, “What is my motivation?” Which means, “What is it that I desire?” More specifically, “What is it that I, as my character, desire?” The concept of motivation is the essence of Stanislavski’s method, which is the realist or realistic method of acting. If the human being is in essence an actor, it is because of what the human being and the actor fundamentally do, desiring, meaning that both the human being and the actor are fundamentally defined by the fact they always have a motivation, however consciously or unconsciously. (Incidentally, the human being’s essence as actor has nothing to do with make-believe, illusion, or representation). If we must add that this actor, the human being, is a robot, the identity is real and the paradox is merely apparent: the actor is a robot with a motivation, and the robot with a motivation is an actor. The cybernetic approach leads us to the fact of motivation. The dramaturgical approach leads us to the fact of technology. The boundary between the cybernetic approach and the dramaturgical approach has always been a false one; we are each players and machines, actors and technology, simultaneously, and in each case the knowledge is a fundamentally pragmatic one, concerning what is being done. Which actor true to their art can ignore the reality of technology and the immanence of technology? Which cyberneticist true to the principles of science can ignore the reality of motivation? Therefore, we agree with Deleuze and Guattari’s axiom “desire is a machine,” which means, in our terminology, “motivation is a technology,” hence the desiringmachine, the motivation-technology.

Deleuze and Guattari write, “Desiring-machines are binary machines, obeying a binary law or set of rules governing associations: one machine is always coupled with another. The productive synthesis, the production of production, is inherently connective in nature: “and…” “and then…” This is because there is always a flow-producing machine, and another machine connected to it that interrupts or draws off part of this flow (the breast—the mouth). And because the first machine is in turn connected to another whose flow it interrupts or partially drains off, the binary series is linear in every direction” (AO, p. 5). Motivationtechnologies are binary technologies, not merely because they can be described mathematically using Boolean algebra, but because each motivation-technology is both “male” and “female,” in that each has a male connector (output jack, output connector, plug) and a female connector (input jack, input connector, socket). One technology is always coupled with another because one technology is always plugged into another. It makes no difference if the particular technologies in question are technically “wireless,” since it is still a logic of wires, a logic of plugs and sockets, in short a logic of circuits, that applies conceptually and pragmatically. The productive synthesis is the connective synthesis, the synthesis that is connectors connecting. The plug connected to the socket is the “and…” “and then…” In an electrical circuit, there is always an electricityproducing technology (for example, a battery or a generator), and another technology connected to it that draws off part of this flow of electricity (for example, a lightbulb or a motor). Not all circuits and flows are electrical, since there are various kinds of energies, but the logic of circuits and flows, the logic of plugs and sockets, is universal. For example, take the circuit of breast-feeding: the lactating breast is a milk-producing technology whose plug is the nipple, and it is connected to the technology of the baby’s latching mouth which functions in this case as the socket. To reiterate, each machine has both a plug and a socket, such that the “first” machine, the machine that plugs into the socket of a “second” machine,” has a socket that connects to another machine that “comes before,” such that flows circulate infinitely in infinite circuits. The binary series of connectors is linear in every direction, which means precisely that the circuit of flows extends infinitely in every direction.

Deleuze and Guattari write, “An organ-machine is plugged into an energy-source-machine: the one produces a flow that the other interrupts…For every organ-machine, an energy-machine: all the time, flows and interruptions” (AO, pp. 1–2). An “organ” or “organ-machine” is defined by Deleuze and Guattari not only relative to the “body without organs,” but also relative to “energysource-machines.” But whereas the distinction between “organs” and the “body without organs” is absolute, the distinction between “organ-machines” and “energy-source-machines” is relative in the fullest sense. A machine is an energy-source-machine considered in its “male” dimension of the plug and an organ-machine in its “female” dimension of the socket. The eyes are organ-machines that the energy-source-machines of light plug into; the ears are organmachines that the energy-source-machines of sounds plug into; but the eyes and the ears are also energy-source-machines of sensation that plug into the organ-machine of the brain. And let’s not even begin here with the brain, with its exponentially complex circuits. Everywhere you look, there are energy-source-machines and organmachines connecting to other organ-machines and energy-sourcemachines respectively, linearly and infinitely in every direction; indeed, not even the “body without organs” is wholly immune to the logic of circuits.

Deleuze and Guattari, writing of Lenz’s schizophrenic stroll, write, “Everything is a machine. Celestial machines, the stars or rainbows in the sky, alpine machines – all of them connected to those of his body. The continual whirr of machines. “He thought that it must be a feeling of endless bliss to be in contact with the profound life of every form, to have a soul for rocks, metals, water, and plants, to take into himself, as in a dream, every element of nature, like flowers that breathe with the waxing and waning of the moon.” To be a chlorophyll- or a photosynthesis-machine, or at least slip his body into such machines as one part among the others” (AO, p. 2). Each and every thing is a technology. Stars are celestial technologies, rainbows are light-technologies, the sky is an atmospheric technology, and all of them are connected to Lenz’s human body in various ways: the light-machine of the stars, the light-machine of the rainbow, and the light-machine of the sky are plugs connected to the sockets of Lenz’s eye-machines; the atmospheric-machine of the sky, moreover, is connected in both ways to Lenz’s respiratory-machine (his respiratory unit-system), since the atmospheric-machine of the sky both plugs into the sockets of Lenz’s respiratory machine (inhalation), and since Lenz’s respiratory system plugs into the sockets of the atmospheric-machine of the sky (exhalation). The alpine-technologies that are mountains are more complex, the possible connections more various; insofar as they are seen, they are light-machines plugged into the sockets of Lenz’s eyes; insofar as Lenz walks upon them, Lenz’s physiological motor apparatus is a technology plugged into the sockets of the alpine-machine, and the nerve-endings of Lenz’s feet are all so many sockets rhythmically plugged by the alpine-machine as Lenz walks upon it (tacticle sensations). “To be in contact with the profound life of every form” means to be connected to “the continual whirr of machines,” to be connected to the continual working of technologies, since the whirr of machines, the working of technologies, is precisely “the profound life of every form,” whether organic or inorganic. Rocks, metals, water, and plants, all are technologies, all have technologies as their souls. We use the word “soul” here loosely; “essence” would equally suffice. The essence of each is technology. Machines are no less “spiritual” for being machines, since human subjectivity itself, the productive subjectivity of the human being itself, the human soul itself, the “spiritual” entity par excellence, is nothing but a set of machines. Therefore, the “spirits,” “souls,” or “essences” of all minerals, metals, fluids, gases, vegetables, animals, etc., are nothing but sets of machines. Every element of nature is a machine, a technology. Our being-in-theworld is the being of one machine among others as a part among other parts, the connections of our human physiology-machine with other machines, whether chlorophyll-technologies, photosynthesistechnologies, star-technologies, rainbow-technologies, skytechnologies, alpine-technologies, etc., constituting precisely our being-in-the-world.

Deleuze and Guattari write, “Lenz has projected himself back to a time before the man-nature dichotomy, before all the coordinates based on this fundamental dichotomy have been laid down. He does not live nature as nature, but as a process of production. There is no such thing as either man or nature now, only a process that produces the one within the other and couples the machines together. Producing-machines, desiring-machines everywhere, schizophrenic machines, all of species life: the self and the non-self, outside and inside, no longer have any meaning whatsoever” (AO, p. 2). Because the human being and nature are both in essence sets of technologies, the traditional binary opposition between the human being and nature here breaks down, loses its accuracy and its utility. If we designate one set of technology the human being and the other set of technology “nature,” this distinction is merely statistical and practical, but if “nature” is merely a set of technologies, then “nature” is no longer “nature” in any conventional sense, since “nature” is now “a process of production,” an operation of construction. Thus, there is no longer any “human being” or “nature” in the conventional sense, but “only a process that produces the one within the other and couples the machines together”: there is only a production process or set of production processes wherein the human being, itself a production process or set of production processes, is constructed within the set of production processes that constitute nature, such that the technologies constitutive of human being are constructed within the technologies constitutive of nature, and wherein the technologies of nature and the technologies of the human being (both the physiological technologies and the psychological technologies) are connected to each other in various ways via various plugs and sockets. “The self and the non-self, outside and inside, no longer have any meaning whatsoever” because the flows constitutive of nature and the human being circulate endlesslly inside and outside each other by means of the plugs and sockets of countless circuits of machines extending in every direction, such that there is no real difference between the human being and nature (since there is no real difference betweent the flows constitutive of each). From the pragmatic consideration of the real circuits and circulations of flows, then, language is inadequate, since language, with its illusion of stasis conjured up by words or images, is incapable of describing precisely the real circuits and circulations of flows constitutive of reality. From the pragmatic consideration of communication, however, the attempt must invariably be made to make the invisible visible and to speak the unspeakable, and for this purpose we must employ conventional words such as “self” and “non-self,” “outside” and “inside,” “human being” and “nature,” all the while undermining convention by using them in unconventional ways, such that they will necessarily appear as paradoxes.

But what exactly is a desiring-machine, a motivationtechnology? It is accurate, but not very specific, to say that motivation-technologies are metapsychological entities or processes.

That is to say, what exactly is it that flows through motivationtechnologies? Which flows characterize motivation-technologies? Flows of partial-objects and flows of libido, which are in turn always connected to flows of actions. Flows of libido are flows of life-force or life-energy, flows of passions or intentions. Partial-objects are “image-fragments,” fragments of images, or what amounts to the same thing, images of fragments. Partial-objects are partial-images, parts or fragments of images. Partial-objects are imaginary-symbolic or virtual entities. Deleuze and Guattari write, “Desire constantly couples continuous flows and partial objects that are by nature fragmentary and fragmented” (AO, p. 5). Motivation is a technology within which flows are combined with image-fragments. Each “image” is in reality a set of image-fragments, and in true settheoretical fashion, each image-fragment is itself a set of imagefragments. There are no psychological or metapsychological atoms because there are only psychological or metapsychological sets. Images are by nature fragmentary and fragmented. In fact, the whole world is by nature fragmentary and fragmented. Following Deleuze and Guattari, our ontology is the ontology of fragments, which is the same as the ontology of multiplicity; we are also in complete agreement with Badiou’s set theoretical ontology, such that the ontology of sets is exactly the same as the ontology of fragments, since there are only sets, meaning that there are only fragments. Following Deleuze and Guattari, we deny the existence of true “wholes” or “totalties,” we deny the existence of truly “whole objects” or “total objects,” and yes, we affirm that all concepts of “totality” are discursively totalizing and ethically totalitarian. Deleuze and Guattari write, “Every “object” presupposes the continuity of a flow; every flow, the fragmentation of the object” (AO, p. 6). Each “object,” that is each set of flows, is always necessarily incomplete precisely because it is always in excess of itself. Each flow is the fragmentation of an “object” because each flow is a set and the ontologic of sets is the ontologic of multiplicity, that is, the ontologic of infinite fragmentation.

Deleuze and Guattari write, “Amniotic fluid spilling out of the sac and kidney stones; flowing hair; a flow of spittle, a flow of sperm, shit, urine that are produced by partial objects and constantly cut off by other partial objects, which in turn produce other flows, interrupted by other partial objects.” (AO, pp. 5–6). In the organism with a nervous system, physiological machines and their biochemical flows are all connected with metapsychological machines (that is to say, with desiring-machines, not to mention the body without organs and the residual subject) and their metapsychological flows of partial-objects and libido (imagefragments and life-energy). These metapsychological machines are partly conscious and partly unconscious, thus the interaction of biological flows and metapsychological flows is partly conscious and partly unconscious; it is, perhaps, mostly unconscious. Metapsychology and physiology are parallel to each other, which means that their relation of weak emergence is reversible, mutual or reciprocal, a closed feedback loop in which mind weakly emerges from matter and matter weakly emerges from mind, hence why flows of partial-objects and libido can produce flows of amniotic fluid, kidney stones, hair, spittle, sperm, shit, urine, or menstrual fluid. The flows of one desiring-machine are drained off by another desiring-machine with its own flows of partial-objects and libido, and the “second” desiring-machine in turn is also an “energy-source machine” or “flow-producing machine” for a “third” desiringmachine, which likewise drains its flows with its own flows of partial-objects and libido. An actor can deliver a single line, if need be, in three parts, using a different motivation for each part; let us say that the three motivations are connected, which means that there are three successive motivation-technologies that are connected with each other, each successive motivation-technology draining off the former motivation-technology and serving as the energy-source machine for the subsequent motivation-technology. However, to be sure, these three motivation-technologies may also be totally disconnected and discontinuous. It all depends on the particular circumstances. In any case, a motivation-technology is always connected to some other machine, whether or not this other machine is an immediately prior or subsequent motivation-technology, and one is always an energy-machine and the other an organ-machine. But what is action? As we have seen above in our machinic analysis of Lenz’s stroll in the mountains, action is nothing but the production of connections, connective syntheses, the perpetual connections and disconnections of motivation-technologies with both the physiological machines of one’s own physiological body and the very real machines that constitute the external world, as well as (recursively) one’s own motivation-technologies, not to mention the motivation-technologies of others.

Deleuze and Guattari write, “What the schizophrenic experiences, both as an individual and as a member of the human species, is not at all any one specific aspect of nature, but nature as a process of production” (AO, p. 3). A process of production is nothing other than a process of construction, a process of creation, a creative act. There is nothing inherently mystical or mystifying about the act of creation. Creation is always material. Production is creation, creation is production. The act of creation is a material process, the material process, the very process of matter itself, and in fact, the act of creation is immanent, since the act of production, the production process of matter, is immanent. There is ultimately no “artist” for the same reasons that there is no “ego,” meaning there is only the creative act, only the immanence of creative acts. The most inspired “artists” are especially inclined to agree, since they always invariably claim that they do not create works of art, but rather that works of art are created through them. The inspired artist is always a schizophrenic, at least insofar as they are in fact inspired. Inspiration is schizophrenia. The schizophrenic experiences nature as creation, nature as the immanence of the creative act (or what amounts to the same thing here, nature as the multiplicity of creative acts). A machine is a production process, meaning that technology is creation, creation is technology. The human being and nature share the same cybernetic essence, the same fundamental identity as technology, which also means that they share the same creative essence, the same fundamental identity as creative act.

Deleuze and Guattari write that “schizophrenia is the universe of productive and reproductive desiring-machines, universal primary production as “the essential reality of man and nature”” (AO, p. 5). Schizophrenia is the universe of creative motivation-technologies, universal primary creative process as the essential reality of the human being and nature. Deleuze and Guattari write, “Production as process overtakes all idealistic categories and constitutes a cycle whose relationship to desire is that of an immanent principle. That is why desiring-production is the principal concern of a materialist psychiatry, which conceives of and deals with the schizo as Homo natura” (AO, p. 5). The production process, the creative act, is a materialist category, and it is immanent to motivation, such that motivation is really motivation-construction, since motivation is in itself always a creative act. A materialist humanities, or materialist cultural studies, or materialist communication studies, or materialist anthropology, or materialist linguistics, or materialist therapeutics, or materialist aesthetics, or materialist philosophy, that is to say, a materialist metaphysics, must therefore have motivation-construction as its principal concern, which means that it must conceive of and deal with the schizophrenic as Homo natura, the natural human being, the human being in touch with nature. Because the essence of nature is cybernetic, Homo natura is Homo technicus, Homo roboticus.

Deleuze and Guattari write, “This will be the case, however, only on one condition, which in fact constitutes the third meaning of process as we use the term: it must not be viewed as a goal or an end in itself, nor must it be confused with an infinite perpetuation of itself. Putting an end to the process or prolonging it indefinitely – which, strictly speaking, is tantamount to ending it abruptly and prematurely – is what creates the artificial schizophrenic found in mental institutions: a limp rag forced into autistic behavior, produced as an entirely separate and independent entity” (AO, p. 5). Motivation-construction, the creative act that is motivationconstruction, must not be viewed as a goal or an end in itself, nor must it be confused with an infinite prolongation of itself, since the indefinite prolongation of motivation-construction effectively prevents its completion, which is why the indefinite and “unnatural” prolongation of motivation-construction “is tantamount to ending it abruptly and prematurely,” ending the process of motivationconstruction abruptly and prematurely instead of truly completing it. This indefinite prolongation or unnatural interruption of motivationconstruction results in the “hospital creature” so often mistakenly called the schizophrenic or psychotic, the hospital creature who is “a limp rag forced into autistic behavior,” no longer in touch with the creative act of nature and hence entirely separated from nature. The aim of any process of motivation-construction is not the perpetuation of that process of motivation-construction, but the completion of that process of motivation-construction. The process of motivationconstruction should always work to a completion, not to the autistic horror of intensification and extremity wherein the soul and the body are ultimately drained of life. Incidentally, it is precisely this hospital creature which our opponents, all those proponents of the state, institutional psychiatry, psychoanalysis or pharmaceutical psychiatry, the university, the entertainment industry, the surveillance capitalism and surveillance state of social media, the police state, superstition, and other mechanisms of control and the society of control, will parade before us, feeling triumphant at the sight or thought of human misery, in order to inform us that we are wrong and force us into submission out of a combination of hopelessness, gaslighting, shame, and guilt. Therefore, we must reiterate that when we speak of the schizophrenic, we do not mean the neuroticized hospital creature, but the unconquerable rebel. Let’s take, for example, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, both the novel by Ken Kesey (1962) and the film (1975); but especially the novel. In the novel, “Chief” Bromden’s process of motivation-construction is interrupted, and he thus becomes a hospital creature, apparently deaf-mute and almost catatonic, an immobile and empty body without organs; such is the state of Chief Bromden at the time he initially meets the novel’s protagonist, Randall McMurphy, a free spirit, an unconscious anarchist and a street-wise schizophrenic insofar as he is full of a lust for life and rebels with all his being against the psychiatric clinic and the state, eventually escaping from the psychiatric clinic in which he is initially held. However, one night McMurphy returns, with alcohol, drugs, and prostitutes, in order to schizophrenize the rest of the patients, but unfortunately, his plan goes awry when he passes out from his cocktail of alcohol and codiene-laden cough syrup; McMurphy is captured in the morning and subsequently lobotomized. In the novel and film, McMurphy is lobotomized by the crude, physical means common at the time; however, since then, lobotomy is carried out by the much more refined means of pharmaceuticals, particularly anti-psychotics. Lobotomization is physiological neuroticization, neuroticization by physiological means. McMurphy is thereby transformed into a hospital creature, a lobotomized zombie. The culmination of events awakens Chief Bromden from his autistic slumber, reawakens the motivation-construction process within Chief Bromden, who thus becomes a true schizophrenic and a rebel once again: Chief Bromden tears out a hydrotherapy fountain from the floor and throws it through a window, smashing its bars, then escapes in true schizophrenic fashion. The hospital creature is most emphatically not our model of schizophrenia. Who are our models of schizophrenia? The Randall McMurphy who escapes and the Chief Bromden who escapes are our models of schizophrenia, our models of rebellion.

Deleuze and Guattari write that there are three dimensions or axes of desiring-production: “production of productions, of actions and of passions; productions of recording processes, of distributions and of co-ordinates that serve as points of reference; productions of consumptions, of sensual pleasures, of anxieties, and of pain. Everything is production, since the recording processes are immediately consumed, immediately consummated, and these consumptions directly reproduced” (AO, p. 4). Deleuze and Guattari also describe these three types productions as three types of syntheses three syntheses: 1) the production of productions = connective synthesis; 2) the production of recording processes = the disjunctive synthesis; 3) the production of consumptions = the conjunctive synthesis. As we shall see, this trinity is problematic, but in order to discover why we must first make a detour through the concepts “bricoleur” and “bricolage.”

Deleuze and Guattari appropriate the concept “bricolage,” and implicitly the term “bricoleur,” from Claude Lévi-Strauss; incidentally, the concepts “bricolage” and “bricoleur” are also highly favoured by Derrida, who likewise appropriates them from LéviStrauss. Structuralists and post-structuralists of various stripes are all apparently united in their celebration of the bricoleur and their bricolages, but nonetheless the logic of the bricoleur or the logic of bricolage is eminently poststructuralist and machinic, not structuralist. On the bricoleur, Lévi-Strauss writes, “The “bricoleur” is adept at performing a large number of diverse tasks; but unlike the engineer, he does not subordinate each of them to the availability of raw materials and tools conceived and procured for the purpose of the project. His universe of instruments is closed and the rules of his game are always to make do with “whatever is at hand,” that is to say with a set of tools and materials which is always finite and is also heterogeneous because what it contains bears no relation to the current project, or indeed to any particular project, but is the contingent result of all the occasions there have been to renew or enrich the stock or to maintain it with the remains of previous constructions or destructions” (1962/1966, p. 17). Deleuze and Guattari write, “When Claude Lévi-Strauss defines bricolage he does so in terms of a set of closely related characteristics: the possession of a stock of materials or of rules of thumb that are fairly extensive, though more or less a hodgepodge—multiple and at the same time limited; the ability to rearrange fragments continually in new and different patterns or configurations; and as a consequence, an indifference toward the act of producing and toward the product, toward the set of instruments to be used and toward the over-all result to be achieved.” (AO, p. 7). A bricolage is a tinkering, in both senses, as either noun or verb: 1) as noun, the product of the process of tinkering performed by the bricoleur; 2) as verb, the process of tinkering performed by the bricoleur. The bricoleur is defined by his ability to tinker. The process of tinkering is precisely the continual rearranging of fragments in new and different patterns or configurations. Elsewhere, Lévi-Strauss adds that the “engineer,” the total and totalizing “engineer,” is purely a myth invented by the bricoleur, such that the myth of the “engineer” is itself a bricolage. The bricoleur is the tinkerer. The bricoleur makes bricolages by tinkering around. All inventors are bricoleurs, all inventions bricolages. For example, all the great inventors of the 19^th century were bricoleurs, tinkerers, as any biography on them reveals (and despite the fact that “technically,” according to the divisions of academic fields, we might label them as “engineers”); perhaps the most notable tinkerers of the 19^th century being Tesla, Edison, and the Wright Brothers. The same is true of scientists generally, and of artists generally and of philosophers generally for that matter; all are bricoleurs, all are tinkerers. According to Thomas Kuhn (1962), scientific revolutions happen, revolutions in science happen, the discovery of entirely new fields of knowledge open up, only as a result of “paradigm shifts,” the invention of entirely new conceptual frameworks, frameworks of concepts, that break with the past, that break with all prior conceptual frameworks. To adapt the words of Deleuze and Guattari, a new paradigm or conceptual framework, a new worldview, can only ever be invented using whatever concepts or fragments of concepts are at hand, that is to say, with whatever a set of theoretical tools and theoretical materials “which is always finite and is also heterogeneous because what it contains bears no relation to the current project,” the scientific revolution, “or indeed to any particular project,” that is to any one particular conceptual framework, “but is the contingent [haphazard, chance, or accidental] result of all the occasions [of the task of thought] there have been to renew or enrich the stock or to maintain it with the remains of previous constructions or destructions [or deconstructions].”

But what are we to make of the true bricoleur’s strange “indifference toward the act of producing and toward the product, toward the set of instruments to be used and toward the over-all result to be achieved”? To be sure, we are no longer discussing a particular person or type of person, but the ontology of production itself, the ontology of product/producing, which is the same as the ontology of bricolage. The short answer is that the true “bricoleur’s” indifference is relative to concepts of production and product which artificially and discursively separate the two, as if the product were totally distinct from the production process. Not that the two are exactly the same. Rather, the product is always already a production process unto itself. Thus the true bricoleur’s indifference is only towards reification, and it is an indifference secondary to a primary affirmation of the production of production and the producing/product.

Deleuze and Guattari write that the “connective synthesis also has another form: product/producing. Producing is always something “grafted onto” the product; and for that reason desiringproduction is production of production, just as every machine is a machine connected to another machine” (AO, p. 6). According to Deleuze and Guattari’s own words, the connective synthesis and the production of production are equivalent to each other, merely two forms of the same type of synthesis. However, as their own words also make transparent, these are actually two distinct types of syntheses. Deleuze and Guattari write that the connective synthesis has two forms: 1) the production of connections, the connections of machines to each other; 2) the production of production. These are quite clearly two distinct types of syntheses, and not merely two forms of the same type of synthesis, especially since the integrated functioning of the connective synthesis with the other two types of syntheses, the disjunctive synthesis and the conjunctive synthesis, is only possible if the “connective synthesis” in question refers strictly to the production of connections and not exclusively to the production of production. Let us describe the production of production as “the productive synthesis” in order to differentiate it from the connective synthesis properly speaking. Whereas the connective synthesis exists alongside the disjunctive synthesis and the conjunctive synthesis, each distinct from the others, the productive synthesis is in reality immanent to all of them, since the producing/product identity is really an essential quality of production itself, that is, an essential quality of all production. Moreover, actions and passions, or actions and intentions, properly belong to the domain of the connective synthesis, the domain of the connections of machines to each other (more specifically, the production of connections in those circuits which include desiringmachines), and not exclusively to the domain of the production of productions. Actions and passions, or actions and intentions, are all so many ways of connecting machines to machines, so many operations of plugs and sockets. Therefore, in reality there are four machinic syntheses or four syntheses of production, which are the four dimensions or axes of motivation-construction:

1. the production of productions = the productive synthesis

2. the production of connections = the connective synthesis

3. the prooduction of recording processes = the disjunctive synthesis

4. the production of consumptions = the conjunctive synthesis

Synthesis means production, construction, creation, making. Desiring-production is desiring-synthesis, motivation-synthesis. The creative act is the act of synthesizing. If an actor is a type of artist, then acting is necessarily synthesizing, meaning that motivation is synthesis, hence why motivation is always already motivationsynthesis. Let us further delineate the productive synthesis in order to draw a sharper contrast between it and the connective synthesis. Regarding the production of productions, Deleuze and Guattari write, “There is no need to distinguish here between producing and its product. We need merely note that the pure “thisness” of the object produced is carried over into a new act of producing…The rule of continually producing production, of grafting producing onto the product, is a characteristic of desiring-machines or of primary production: the production of production” (AO, p. 7). The distinction between the creative act and its resultant construct is at worst arbitrary, at best pragmatic according to a given need. The essence of a construct always already consists of a creative act; that is to say, a construct is in itself always already a production process. A construct is in itself always already a new act of producing. In other words, a construct is in itself a machine, a construct is a machine unto itself. The effect of a machine, the product produced by a machine, is always already a machine unto itself; this is the meaning of the production of production. By definition, a machine produces a product, but this product is itself a machine unto itself, thus the fundamental law of operation of a machine is the production of production, since each machine is a production process that produces another, new and relatively autonomous, production process. The production of production is equivalent to the “grafting” of production onto the product. The production of production is the fundamental identity of product/producing. The formulation of the productive synthesis is, among other things, a way of emphasizing that production is immanent.

The clearest example of the product/producing identity is the artwork; as numerous artists have pointed out, once the artwork is created it has a life of its own independent of the artist who created it; in our terminology, this means that the artwork is a machine unto itself, an art-machine, which has a creative process or motivationconstruction of its own inherent to itself, independent of the motivation-construction of the artist who produced it. Hence why the artwork continues producing effects long after the death of the artist; for example, as Jean Cocteau writes in The Difficulty of Being (1947/1966), after the death of Marcel Proust, the manuscripts for In Search of Lost Time which lay beside the corpse of Proust went on ticking “like a dead soldier’s wristwatch” (“On measurement and Marcel Proust”). Just like a wristwatch, an artwork is a machine. Just as the wristwatch ticks, the art-machine whirrs. The art-machine is as alive as a wristwatch, albeit much more complex, since the wristwatch’s life is purely mechanical, whereas the art-machine’s life is both mechanical and motivational-constructional. The true artist is an inventor of new machines just as much as a Tesla or an Edison. In contrast, the “false artist,” the popular entertainer, business-person, or courtier, merely mass produces a formulaic genre (whether a false artwork has this or that variation is irrelevant, since the formula of the given pop genre is in any case merely reiterated), thereby merely manufacturing art-machines in the manner of the manufacturing of other popular commodities (which have been invented by someone else, by someone other than the false artist or the assembly-line worker), as opposed to truly inventing truly new machines. The true artwork is a schizophrenic machine, whereas the false artwork is a formulaic machine. In any case, however, the art-machine always has a life of its own, always outliving its creator.

Schizophrenic machines are described by Deleuze and Guattari when they quote Henri Michaux’s description of a schizophrenic table, a table invented by a schizophrenic carpenter, which we may just as well describe as a true work of art, specifically a sculpture, created by a true artist, in this case a schizophrenic sculptor. As quoted by Deleuze and Guattari, Michaux describes the schizophrenic table as “desimplified,” “overstuffed,” “there was no way of adding anything more to it, the table having become more and more an accumulation, less and less a table.” “it was not intended for any specific purpose, for anything one expects of a table,” “one didn’t know how to handle it (mentally or physically),” “the thing did not strike one as a table, but as some freak piece of furniture, an unfamiliar instrument for which there was no purpose,” “a dehumanized table, nothing cozy about it, nothing “middle-class,” nothing rustic, nothing countrified, not a kitchen table or a work table,” “a table which lent itself to no function, self-protective, denying itself to service and communication alike” (AO, pp. 6–7). In other words, the schizophrenic machine is “not fit for mass consumption,” it does not belong in consumer culture, it has no place in consumer society. To be clear, the schizophrenic machine and the formulaic machine are each defined by their respective functions in a sociocultural-sociopolitical context: the formulaic machine reproduces consumer society, whereas the schizophrenic machine opposes consumer society (though we insist that, as discursive machines, each must be understood in terms of Foucauldian discourse analysis, and not the Marxist theory of “ideology”). The essence of Michaux’s description of the schizophrenic table can be applied just as accurately to any other schizophrenic machine, that is, to any other work of true art made by a true artist; for instance, Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time, the novels of Henry Miller, Cocteau’s films The Blood of a Poet and The Testament of Orpheus, Rimbaud’s prose-poem A Season In Hell, the paintings and drawings and sculptures of Picasso, the compositions of Olivier Messiaen, the compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen, the free jazz of Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis.

Deleuze and Guattari write that “we cannot accept the idealist category of “expression” as a satisfactory or sufficient explanation” of artworks, or of constructs in general. In other words, we must reject all transcendental modes of interpretation, whatever their guises, on the basis that they invariably reify, falsify, and misinterpret the creative act. Schizoanalytic modes of interpretation are immanent modes of interpretation, in the sense that they begin with the fundamental axiom (and truth) of the immanence of the creative act, such that the construct is always already a creative act unto itself. When Klossowski, in Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle (1969/1977), follows Nietzsche in delineating a mode of interpretation which reads each text as a symptom of an underlying, transcendental impulse or force, the mode of interpretation he delineates is entirely a transcendental mode of interpretation; here, Klossowski and Nietzsche are no better than Freud and Lacan, who likewise interpret each text as a symptom of a transcendental impulse. Structuralist modes of interpretation are all transcendental modes of interpretation, therefore they are false. In contrast, the schizoanalytic mode of interpretation recognizes the immanence of the “impulse” or “force,” that is, the immanence of production, the immanence of machines. In reality, each text is an impulse or force unto itself. Schizoanalysis is an energetics, an analysis or metaanalysis of the concrete operations of forces or energies. Schizoanalysis is not a symptomatology, since it recognizes no “symptoms” in the transcendentalist sense. The psychoanalyst asks, “What is x a symptom of?” The schizoanalyst asks, “What is x doing?”

The connective synthesis, the disjunctive synthesis, and the conjunctive synthesis are three production processes that are merely three dimensions of one and the same production process, that of desiring-production, because “production is immediately consumption and a recording process, without any sort of mediation, and the recording process and consumption directly determine production, though they do so within the production process itself,” meaning that recording and consumption are incorporated “within production itself, thus making them the productions of one and the same process,” that of desiring-production (AO, p. 4). In the process of desiring-production, a connective synthesis is immediately a conjunctive synthesis and a disjunctive synthesis, without any sort of mediation, and the disjunctive synthesis and conjunctive synthesis directly determine a connective synthesis, though they do so within the process of desiring-production itself. Therefore, the disjunctive synthesis and the conjunctive synthesis are incorporated within the connective synthesis itself, thus making them the production processes of one and the same production process, that of desiringproduction.

“Consumption” is here meant in the economic sense, meaning expenditure or spending (one spends life-force just as one spends money, or one expends life-force just as one expends money), and not in the colloquial sense of “consuming” as in eating (for which the more pedantic term is “subsumption” or “subsuming”). To reiterate for clarity, consumption here means the expenditure or spending of excess, in this case excess life-force. Moreover, the implication of the above quoted passage by Deleuze and Guattari means that, to use the jargon of Freudian psychoanalysis, all psychic energy is “free energy,” and that no such thing as “bound energy” really exists. Deleuze and Guattari write that “libido is the connective “labor” of desiring-production” (AO, p. 13). The connective labour of desiring-production is the connective synthesis. Flows of libido are nothing other than the blocks of ontological labour (or blocks of ontological production) directly constituting the connective synthesis. When Deleuze and Guattari write that “production is immediately consumption and a recording process,” they mean that the blocks of ontological production constituting the connective synthesis, the production of connections, is immediately expenditure (as well as a recording process), meaning that the libido is always immediately and totally expended (or discharged). We may specify that expenditure is really constituted by blocks of ontological production constituting the production of expenditure, but the meaning remains the same, since blocks of ontological production constituting the production of connections are immediately blocks of ontological production constituting the production of expenditures. Therefore, the libido, as a type of psychic energy, is always free energy, since it is always immediately and totally expended. The libido is never non-expended, meaning that it is never blocked and accumulating in the Freudian sense, therefore the libido is never “bound energy.” All libido is free energy.

Recording processes are inscription processes or writing processes, processes of writing. Writing is the construction of texts, the construction of records. Here, we diverge from Derrida in strictly limiting the definition of writing to recording processes; the infinite regress or recursion that defines writing (what Saussure and Derrida inaccurately describe as “the signifier of the signifier”) is always already delimited to the axis of the construction of recording processes, to the self-referentiality of the “strange loop” (to appropriate a concept from Hofstadter) or Mobius strip of recording processes. All construction is not writing, although writing is a type of construcion. The ontology of construction is not the same as the ontology of writing. Being is production, meaning that being is labour, not writing, since writing is merely one type of labour among other types of labour. Only the construction of recording processes, the construction of distributions and of coordinates that serve as virtual points of reference, qualify as writing. However, writing is nonetheless integral to motivation-construction, alongside the constructions of connections and the constructions of expenditures.

Let us rephrase the four machinic syntheses of desiringproduction using our own terminology:

1. the construction of constructions, the fundamental equivalence of the creative act and the construct, meaning that each construct is a creative act unto itself

2. the construction of connections, which in relation to motivation-technology means the construction of actions and passions, or the construction of actions and intentions

3. the construction of texts, meaning writing, the construction of distributions, coordinates that serve as virtual reference points

4. the construction of expenditures, meaning the construction of affects, emotions, or feelings

Motivation is always-already motivation-construction, always already the constructions of actions and intentions, texts, and expenditures in one and the same construction process. In the construction of actions and intentions, the writing processes or textual processes are immediately expended, immediately experienced by the productive subject of motivation-construction as feelings, and these expenditures are directly reproduced. Motivationconstruction is immediately action, intention, expenditure and writing, without any sort of mediation, and the writing processes and expenditures directly determine motivation-construction within the process of motivation-construction itself, meaning that writing and expenditure are incorporated within motivation-construction itself, thus making them constructions of one and the same process of motivation-construction. The construction of actions and intentions, the construction of texts, and the construction of expenditures are each dynamical unit-systems, unit-systems whose behaviours change over time. Motivation-construction is in itself a feedback unitsystem, since its three constituent dynamical unit-systems are connected together such that each dynamical unit-system immediately affects the others and their dynamics are thus interconnected, integrated, and inextricable. In the dynamical unitsystem or process of motivation-construction, the dynamical unitsystem or process of the construction of actions and intentions is immediately the dynamical unit-system or process of the construction of expenditures and the dynamical unit-system or process of the construction of texts, without any sort of mediation, and the dynamical unit-systems of writing and expenditure in turn directly determine the dynamical unit-system of the construction of actions and intentions, thereby constituting the integrated dynamical unit-system of motivation-construction. Motivation-construction in itself is a feedback unit-system consisting of the closed loop of its three dimensions (the construction of actions and intentions, the construction of texts, and the construction of expenditures), but motivation-construction for itself is always a feedback unit-system consisting of the closed loop between itself, the self itself, and the external world, since motivation-construction directly and immediately opens up onto the world via the sense-organs of the self that directly and immediately open up onto the world.

Section 2: The Zombie Within; Or, the Body Without Organs

The real zombie was inside of us all along.

A body without organs is a zombie. A real zombie, not a metaphorical one. Deleuze and Guattari write that the death-drive is the name of the body without organs, and that the body without organs is the model of death (AO, p. 8). Deleuze and Guattari write that the body without organs is the “body of death” which functions as the immobile motor of desire (AO, p. 8). A zombie is precisely a body of death. A zombie is a death-drive and nothing but a deathdrive, meaning a repetition-compulsion and nothing but a repetitioncompulsion. Zizek is right to point out (in lectures) that the deathdrive is more accurately described as the drive of undeath or living death, exactly in the manner of the undeath or living death of the zombie, since the death-drive is pure repetition-compulsion. The death drive is really the undeath-drive, the drive of undeath. Zizek is also right to note that undeath is neither life nor death. That is, undeath is neither the nothingness of death nor the difference-foritself of life, since undeath is repetition-for-itself, pure repetitioncompulsion, but this undeath-drive is nonetheless essential to life. There is an undeath-drive in each and every living organism. The death-drive is, as Derrida writes, “life-death” (cf. Derrida, 2020), which we may also render as the “life-death drive.” It seems to us that the concept of “life-death” is much more clearly rendered by the word “undeath,” and that the death drive’s identity as the “life-death drive” is much more clearly rendered as “undeath drive.” Zizek is wrong, however, to describe instances of the death-drive as “organs without bodies.” As we shall see, instances of the death-drive are nothing but bodies without organs, exactly in the manner described by Deleuze and Guattari. Moreover, also according to Deleuze and Guattari, if an organ appears to be an instance of a death-drive, there is no contradiction or paradox there; in actuality, what has happened is that the organ in question has ceased to be an organ, it has been transformed into something quite different, it has been transformed into a body without organs. It is in zombie fiction, beginning with George Romero’s film The Night of the Living Dead (1968), but more particularly in the Re-Animator film series (1985; 1990; 2003), that we find the beginnings of a science of bodies without organs.

Describing the body without organs, Deleuze and Guattari write that it is a body with “no mouth, no tongue, no teeth, no larynx, no esophagus, no belly, no anus” (AO, p. 8). Deleuze and Guattari also describe what it is like for a human being to be a body without organs: “Judge Schreber “lived for a long time without a stomach, without intestines, almost without lungs, with a torn oesophagus, without a bladder, and with shattered ribs; he used sometimes to swallow part of his own larynx with his food, etc”” (AO, p. 8). The entity that meets these specification is precisely the zombie. The zombie can live their living death, their undeath, with “no mouth, no tongue, no teeth, no larynx, no esophagus, no belly, no anus.” And it is only by becoming a zombie that Judge Schreber can “live for a long time without a stomach, without intestines, almost without lungs, with a torn esophagus, without a bladder, and with shattered ribs,” it is only as a zombie that Judge Schreber can “sometimes swallow part of his own larynx with his food, etc.” The zombie “escapes the wheel of continual birth and rebirth” by being neither alive nor dead, by being living death or undeath, which is a state not only of undying but also of never being born. The zombie can “live” despite having “no mouth to suck with, no anus to shit through” (cf. AO, p. 7).

To develop the concept of the body without organs, Deleuze and Guattari (AO, p. 9) quote from “To Have Done With the Judgement of God” by Artaud:

We may translate this selection from Artaud’s poem into the language of pop culture in the following way, with relatively few modifications:

The essential logic of the zombie is the same as the essential logic of the body without organs, namely the logic of undeath without organs. A zombie may “have” some organs and be missing others, but even the organs they “have” are inessential to the defining logic of the zombie, of which they are mere occasions, the logic of pure repetition-compulsion. The logic of the zombie, unfolding with absolute consistency, means that the brain, considered as an organ, is inessential to the zombie. In reality, zombies have no need of brains. Nor does the zombie really have anything to do with pathogens or diseases, since bacteria, viruses, or fungal spores are still just so many organs the zombie has no need of. In fact, in The Night of the Living Dead (1968), the founding text of the zombie genre, the cause of zombification is never established with any certainty, although some news anchors and scientists speculate without any evidence that it may have something to do with radiation from a space probe that exploded in Earth’s atmosphere on the way back from Venus in some vague way. Of course, zombies really have nothing to do with biology. Nor do zombies have anything to do with the supernatural as such; zombies have nothing to do with symbolic rituals such as burial rites. Zombies are eminently metapsychological entities, and as such their logic is likewise an eminently metapsychological logic, a “pure” logic. It is only the Re-Animator film series that unfolds the logic of the zombie with absolute consistency, although it does not go far enough; here, the zombies are made only by way of Dr. Herbert West’s glowing ghoulish green, perhaps radioactive green, reanimating fluid (called “reagent” in the films) being injected into any dead body part, whether connected to a brain or not, such that there is at least one headless, brainless zombie. In any case, one sometimes sees in a zombie film a zombie hand, “disembodied,” disconnected from other organs, not connected to an arm or a brain, functioning as a body without organs unto itself, choking or grasping or moving towards an organ-filled human. (In Beyond Re-Animator (2003), Dr. West also discovers how to preserve and transmit desiring-machines. In the film, desiring-machines are called “nanoplasmic energy,” or “NPE,” and they are rightly shown to share properties with electrical currents. The desiring-machines of a homocidal, fascist prison warden of a “death house” are transplanted into a young, beautiful, and ruthlessly ambitious female journalist. The desiring-machines of a rat are transplanted into the aforementioned prison warden.)

What then are we to make of the “destroy the brain” rule (or the “kill the head” rule, as Jarmusch puts it in his film The Dead Don’t Die (2019)) which is an axiom of the vast majority of zombie fiction? It is not a question of fantasy, although a work of zombie fiction may also be one. A work of zombie fiction is above all a machine, it does something and there are things happening within it. Deleuze and Guattari write, “An apparent conflict arises between desiring-machines and the body without organs. Every coupling of machines, every production of a machine, every sound of a machine running, becomes unbearable to the body without organs. Beneath its organs it senses there are larvae and loathsome worms, and a God at work messing it all up or strangling it by organizing it…This is the real meaning of the paranoiac machine: the desiring-machines attempt to break into the body without organs, and the body without organs repels them, since it experiences them as an over-all persecution apparatus.” (AO, p. 9). Zombie fictions are all so many paranoiac machines; zombie fiction is paranoiac par excellence. Fiction is a map of productive subjectivity. The creators of zombie fiction have discovered bodies without organs, but they have seen them, and perhaps can only see them, from the perspective of the paranoiac God, such that zombie fiction narratives invariably concern the violent attempts of paranoiac human organs to destroy or control zombie bodies without organs (henceforth, simply zombie bodies); but this is the same as saying that the creators of zombie fiction have discovered paranoiac machines. Thus we witness, in zombie fiction, the conflict between the human organ-machines of the paranoiac God and the godless zombie bodies without organs. If zombies can be said to be an agent of any god at all, it is, as Deleuze and Guattari make clear, the Kantian God, God “as the master of the disjunctive syllogism,” which is by our definition the zombie God itself (AO, p. 13). The human organs of the paranoiac God function as a persecution apparatus against the zombie bodies without organs, while the zombie bodies without organs, for their part, repel the persecuting human organs. As Deleuze and Guattari write, from the point of view of the body without organs, “it would be much better if nothing worked, if nothing functioned” (AO, p. 7). Relative to the persecuting organs, the body without organs is anti-production, decomposition or deconstruction, such that on occasion “everything stops dead for a moment, everything freezes in place—and then the whole process will begin all over again” (AO, p. 7). Thus, the “kill the head” rule in zombie fiction is a false solution of the paranoiac; the brain or the destruction of the brain do not symbolize anything here, but rather function as a means of paranoiac persecution, a means of the reproduction of paranoia. To be sure, the paranoiac’s victory is never total, the paranoiac battle must be perpetually refought by design, since without the object of paranoia, paranoia itself would die. The zombies are all eradicated, yet “the dead don’t die,” and the living dead return again and again. In the first zombie film, The Night of the Living Dead, all the visible zombies are eradicated in the end by persecuting and paranoiac human organs of a paranoiac God, but Romero is never free of zombies, and he goes on to make zombie film after zombie film; thus, the obverse of the perpetual paranoiac persecution of the zombie body is the perpetual return of the zombie body, the “return of the repressed,” and the threat of global apocalyptic catatonia that they bring with them. The paranoiac human race must be periodically exterminated by the zombie, the paranoiac human race must stop dead for a moment, then the whole process will begin over again, the paranoiac humans will return again and so will the zombie bodies, history will repeat itself, forever oscillating between tragedy and farce, or rather, always already both tragedy and farce simultaneously. Because the logic of the typical zombie narrative is eminently paranoiac, perhaps it would in fact be better to take the side of the zombies and their non-productive, anti-productive, or deconstructive stasis.

Considering the paranoiac character of human organisms, perhaps it would be best if the zombie apocalypse were complete and total, if all human organs stopped moving, became extinct, became unborn and undead. Every coupling of humans, every construction of a human, every sound of a human running, becomes unbearable to the zombie. Humans are all so many larvae and loathsome worms upon the zombie body, each human an instance of a paranoiac God messing up the zombie body by strangling it or organzing it. But if the zombies win by killing all the humans, then the result is catatonia. The catatonic body without organs is the body that has succeeded in destroying all its organs, or at least, the catatonic body’s war against its organs has reached an advanced stage; the catatonic body is the victorious zombie. However, the catatonic’s solution is a false one insofar as it is undesirable, since it does away with the life of the organs altogether, though it is less deceptive than the paranoiac’s solution.

Deleuze and Guattari write, “We are of the opinion that what is ordinarily referred to as “primary repression” means precisely that: it is not a “countercathexis,” but rather this repulsion of desiring-machines by the body without organs…The genesis of the [paranoiac] machine lies precisely here: in the opposition of the process of production of the desiring-machines and the nonproductive stasis of the body without organs…But in and of itself the paranoiac machine is merely an avatar of the desiring-machines: it is a result of the relationship between the desiring-machines and the body without organs, and occurs when the latter can no longer tolerate these machines.” (AO, p. 9; our emphases). Paranoia and catatonia are the two axes of the same type of relationship, namely that of mutual intolerance, between desiring-machines and the body without organs; this relationship of mutual intolerance is characterized by the force of repulsion exerted by the body without organs agains the desiring-machines. Deleuze and Guattari also describe this relationship of mutual intolerance as the “paranoiac machine,” but this is a slight inaccuracy, and this mutual intolerance could more accurately and more simply be called “repulsion” or “the repulsion machine,” since paranoia and catatonia are merely its two degrees of freedom. When the repulsion-machine’s degree of paranoia is significantly higher than its degree of catatonia, then the repulsion-machine appears as a paranoiac machine. However, when the repulsion-machine’s degree of catatonia is significantly higher than its degree of paranoia, then the repulsion-machine appears as a catatonic machine. In zombie fiction, the repulsion-machine’s degree of paranoia is very high.

Deleuze and Guattari write that the repulsion-machine coexists with an “attraction-machine,” which they also describe as a “miraculating-machine” (as opposed to the repulsion-machine, which is a “de-miraculating-machine”) (AO, p. 11). Whereas the repulsion-machine is the result of a relationship of mutual intolerance between the body without organs and the desiringmachines, the attraction-machine is the result of a relationship of mutual need between the body without organs and the desiringmachines. Deleuze and Guattari write that there is no “contradiction” in the coexistence of the repulsion-machine and the attractionmachine: “black humor does not attempt to resolve contradictions, but to make it so that there are none, and never were any” (AO, p.

11). In other words, there is no dialectical or Hegelian “contradiction” at work here. Deleuze and Guattari negate dialectics in order to affirm “black humour,” which we also describe as melancholy comedy, as a mode of philosophy: the gay science of melancholy comedy observes that there are no “contradictions” in reality and that there never have been any real “contradictions,” since reality is mathematical and there are no contradictions in mathematics (which is why, incidentally, Hegel writes that the dialectic is non-mathematical). We might also understand the melancholy comedy of the attraction-machine and the repulsionmachine in terms of the inseperable coexistence of love and hate, the fusion of love and hate that lends so much interest to our lives; although, to be clear, the love and hate under discussion here is that between desiring-machines and the body without organs.

Furthermore, we may describe attraction and repulsion as two axes, degrees of freedom, or dimensions of the relationship between the body without organs and desiring-machines, such that attraction and repulsion are adjacent (and not “contradictions”). The higher the degree of repulsion, the more the zombie body deconstructs motivation-technologies (along either of the two sub-axes of repulsion, paranoia or catatonia). The higher the degree of attraction, the more the zombie body regenerates or miraculates motivationtechnologies. Attraction and repulsion are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and it is conceivable for a zombie body to have both a high degree of attraction and a high degree of repulsion. We shall call this special type of two-dimensional (the two dimensions being attraction and repulsion) relationship between desiring-machines and the body without organs a “complicated relationship,” following the common description of the love-hate relationship. A complicated relationship is a special type of complex relationship, but not all complex relationships are complicated relationships (considering our specific definition of the term “complicated relationship”). A complex relationship is any relationship divisible into multiple parts, just as a complex object is any object divisible into multiple parts.

On the functioning of the attraction-machine, Deleuze and Guattari write: “The body without organs now falls back on (se rabat sur) desiring-production, attracts it, and appropriates it for its own…The organs are regenerated, “miraculated” on the body of Judge Schreber, who attracts God’s rays to himself. Doubtless the former paranoiac machine continues to exist in the form of mocking voices that attempt to “de-miraculate” (demiraculer) the organs, the Judge’s anus in particular” (AO, p. 11). Just as the desiring-machines cannot survive without the body without organs, so the body without organs cannot survive without the desiring-machines, so after the body without organs fights with the desiring-machines and deconstructs a number of them, it then proceeds to make up with them by regenerating or “miraculating” them. Thus the attractionmachine is akin to the superpower of regeneration, and from the perspective of the attraction-machine we are like the superhuman mutant Wolverine from the X-Men, whose principal superpower (besides his claws) is regeneration. Wolverine’s body without organs is his adamantium skeleton, a skeleton made out of a fictional indestructible metal called “adamantium,” and whenever Wolverine’s organs are destroyed, they are miraculously regenerated upon the zombie body of his adamantium skeleton – even defying all biology, even if he is reduced to his adamantium skeleton, all of his organs miraculously regenerate upon the smooth surface of his adamantium skeleton (cf. when Wolverine happens to be near the centre of an atomic explosion in Vaughan, 2008; or when Wolverine’s soft body tissue is totally incinerated from his skeleton in Guggenheim, 2006). The attraction-machine or relationship of mutual need makes the body without organs, the unproductive and unconsumable, function “as a surface for the recording of the entire process of production of desire, so that desiring-machines seem to emanate from it in the apparent objective movement that establishes a relationship between the machines and the body without organs” (AO, p. 11). The mutual need or attraction-machine between the desiring-machines and the body without organs establishes the nonproductive stasis of the zombie body as a recording surface for the entire process of motivation-construction, which is for precisely this reason the construction of a fetish, such that the motivationtechnologies appear to emanate from the zombie body in a reified process that establishes a connection between the motivationtechnologies and the zombie body, thereby attaching them to each other. To translate this into the language of pop culture: Wolverine’s adamantium skeleton is a zombie body unto itself that exists in a relationship of mutual need or attraction with his regenerative mutant organs, such that the zombie body of the adamantium skeleton functions as a smooth surface for recording the entire process of construction of motivation, so that his regenerative mutant organs seem to emanate from the zombie body of the admantium skeleton in the fetishizing movement that attaches his regenerative mutant organs to the zombie body of adamantium skeleton. We began with discovering the zombie within, but it has turned out that this zombie within us gives us the superpower of regeneration just as much as it gives us the apocalypse, such that the zombie within makes us into a Wolverine just as much as it makes us into a shuffling apocalypse.

To be sure, there are perpetual tensions that arise between the desiring-machines and the body without organs as they oscillate between love and hate for each other; just as in a romance, affects are generated by these tensions between attraction and repulsion. The love-hate relationship between the zombie body and motivation technologies, a relationship that is inseperable from the real existence of the zombie body, is called “the celibate machine” by Deleuze and Guattari. The celibate machine functions as the combinatory formula for affects. The zombie body is not the cause of affects, but the quasi-cause of affects. That the celibate machine is the combinatory formula or cause of affects means precisely that the zombie body is the quasi-cause of affects. An affect, which is generated by the celibate machine (that is, by the oscillations of attraction and repulsion between the body without organs and desiring-machines), is also called a “nomadic subject” by Deleuze and Guattari, and we have also described it as a “residual subject.”

Deleuze and Guattari write that there is “is a pure fluid in a free state, flowing without interruption, streaming over the surface” of the body without organs (AO, p. 8). Deleuze and Guattari write, “In order to resist organ-machines, the body without organs presents its smooth, slippery, opaque, taut surface as a barrier. In order to resist linked, connected, and interrupted flows, it sets up a counterflow of amorphous, undifferentiated fluid. In order to resist using words composed of articulated phonetic units, it utters only gasps and cries that are sheer unarticulated blocks of sound.” (AO, p.

9). We call this “pure fluid in a free state, flowing without interrruption,” this “counterflow of amorphous, undifferentiated fluid” of the body without organs, the “reanimating fluid” or “reagent,” after Dr. Herbert West’s discovery in the Reanimator film series, since “reanimation” really means undeath, not “animation” or life, and since Dr. West’s reanimating fluid is precisely the fluid of undeath essential to zombie bodies; thus we may also describe it as the “undeath fluid” or “undeath force.” As we shall see, this “amorphous, undifferentiated pure fluid in a free state” is also described by Deleuze and Guattari as “the energy of disjunctive inscription” or “Numen” (AO, p. 13). The repulsive dimension of the zombie (or what amounts to the same thing, the repulsive dimension of the reagent) resists “using words composed of articulated phonetic units,” instead uttering “only gasps and cries that are sheer unarticulated blocks of sound” and it is only by virtue of the reanimating fluid that this deconstruction of articulated phonetic units happens. Reanimating fluid is this amorphous, undifferentiated pure fluid in a free state flowing without interruption over the smooth, slippery, opaque, taut surface of the zombie body. The repulsive dimension of the reagent is a deconstructive counterflow to the constructive flows of motivation-technologies. On the other hand, the attractive dimension of the reagent enables the production of recording, since in its attractive dimension the reagent is precisely the energy of recording. Moreover, Deleuze and Guattari describe the body without organs as an egg, meaning that the zombie body is the zombie egg, the zombie embryo. However, Deleuze and Guattari are wrong to describe the body without organs as spherical. In reality, the body without organs is a smooth and infinite-dimensional egg.

Reanimating fluid “is a pure fluid in a free state, flowing without interruption, streaming over” the smooth surface of the zombie body, meaning that, in terms of its fluid dynamics, reanimating fluid consists of turbulent flows, or to phrase it another way, reanimating fluid can only exist in an unsteady state. In fact, Deleuze and Guattari’s specification of Numen as a pure fluid in a pure state is redundant, since all three forms of the libido (the libido flowing in the desiring-machines constituting their connective labour, the Numen flowing in the body without organs constituting its disjunctive labour, and the Voluptas flowing in the celibate machine constituting its conjunctive labour) are pure fluids in a free state, that is to say, they are all turbulent flows or fluids in an unsteady state. In fluid dynamics, “steady-state flows” are flows whose properties or flow parameters at a point in a given unit-system do not change over time and thus are time-independent, whereas “unsteady-state flows” are flows whose properties or flow parameters are time-dependent and do change over time in the given unit-system. Whether a fluid is steady or unsteady is relative to the frame of reference. For example, a laminar flow, a flow characterized by fluid particles following smooth paths in layers (with each layer moving smoothly past the adjacent layers with little or no mixing), over a sphere is a steady-state flow in a frame of reference that is stationary with respect to the sphere. In a laminar flow, there are neither cross-currents perpendicular to the direction of the flow, nor eddies nor swirls. In a laminar flow, the motion of the particles of the fluid is strictly streamlined, with particles close to a solid, smooth surface moving in straight lines parallel to that surface, that is to say, laminar flows move in constant streamlines. Laminar flows are streamlined, not turbulent. In desiring-production, there are no streamlined flows because there is no stationary frame of reference; a stationary frame of reference, were it to exist, would be either a total and totalizing object or the idea of the lack of such a totalizing object, as for instance artificially erected in the psyche by psychoanalysis. The zombie body is indeed a smooth surface, but it has no natural preset grooves that would enable streamlined flows. Moreover, Deleuze and Guattari do indeed specify that, despite the fact that the body without organs is a nonproductive stasis, it cannot evidently serve as a stationary frame of reference, since the Numen fluid that flows all across its surface does so uninterrruptedly in a free state. The ocean is a fluid flowing uninterruptedly over the surface of the Earth in a free state, and as such it is a highly turbulent fluid, that is to say, the ocean exists as a fluid in an unsteady state, and its mode of flow is homologous to the flow of Numen over the surface of the zombie body. The libido, Numen, and Voluptas are turbluent and unsteady, rife with cross-currents, eddies, and swirls. Moreover, the flow parameters of libido, Numen, and Voluptas are dependent on time (in contrast to laminar or steady-state fluids, whose parameters are time-independent). The flows of libido, Numen, and Voluptas are sensitive to their initial conditions, that is to say, their flows are chaotic, fundamentally unpredictable.

Deleuze and Guattari write, “The body without organs, the unproductive, the unconsumable, serves as a surface for the recording of the entire process of production of desire, so that desiring-machines seem to emanate from it in the apparent objective movement that establishes a relationship between the machines and the body without organs…But the essential thing is the establishment of an enchanted recording or inscribing surface that arrogates to itself all the productive forces and all the organs of production, and that acts as a quasi-cause by communicating the apparent movement (the fetish) to them…[Desiring] Machines attach themselves to the body without organs as so many points of disjunction, between which an entire network of new syntheses is now woven, marking the surface off into co-ordinates, like a grid. The “either…or…or” of the schizophrenic takes over from the “and then”: no matter what two organs are involved, the way in which they are attached to the body without organs must be such that all the disjunctive syntheses between the two amount to the same on the slippery surface” (AO, pp. 11–12). The body without organs is not only a zombie, but a zombie book: the recordings upon the surface of the zombie body constitute a necronomicon, a “book of the dead,” partially in the sense of the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis in the Evil Dead serial film (cf. Raimi, 1987; Raimi, 1992; Campbell, DiGregorio, Raimi, and Tapert, 2015–2018): a zombie book, an undead book bound in human flesh and inked in blood (and perhaps, if we follow through on the logic of its construction, its pages are likewise made of human skin) with a life-death of its own, since for a zombie to function as a recording surface means precisely that it is a necronomicon. Moreover, after Derrida, we might say that this necronomicon is an example of “writing after the book,” a fundamentally incomplete book (a “book” under erasure, a “book after the book”) that is always already still being written, akin in this respect to The Book of Destiny, the book in which Destiny writes the fates of all beings, in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (cf. Gaiman et al., 2003). The body without organs can write, the body without organs is the writing-machine, the writing zombie. The recordings upon the surface of the zombie body are an undead text; indeed, all text is undead. The energy of disjunction which streams comprehensively upon the body without organs constantly expends itself, but the body without organs itself cannot be expended; and, as mentioned above, the body without organs is a deconstructive stasis. However, the zombie body, itself deconstructive and unspendable, serves a surface for the recording of the entire process of the construction of motivation, so that motivation-technologies seem to emanate from it in the purely metapsychological (but appearing as entirely objective) movement that establishes a connection or attachment between the motivation-technologies and the zombie body. Thus, the zombie body is an enchanted and demonic recording or inscribing surface that inherently appropriates all the motivation technologies in its attractive dimension, and that acts as a quasi-cause by reifying (for the motivation-technologies) the metapsychological movement as a purely objective movement. Motivation-technologies attach themselves to the zombie body, which is itself a technology, as so many points of disjunction or coordinates of genealogy, between which an entire network of new constructions is now manufactured, marking off the surface of the zombie body into coordinates, as upon a coordinate plane. Whereas the logic of the connective synthesis is “and then,” the logic of the disjunctive synthesis is “either…or…or.” Disjunction is the logic of genealogy, in which a historical event may be a rupture from a prior historical event. Whether successive motivation-technologies are connected to each other or the particular way in which they are connected is irrelevant to the fact that, insofar as they do succeed each other in time, they constitute a genealogy, meaning that they are they are always temporal disjunctions. The disjunctions of motivation-technologies are precisely their connections to the zombie body. The genealogy of motivationtechnologies takes place upon and is recorded upon the smooth surface of the body without organs, distributed as so many coordinates upon the coordinate plane of the zombie body. The zombie body then acts as a quasi-cause insofar as it produces a code of reification which is inserted into the code of the motivationtechnologies upon its surface, such that the zombie body effectively becomes a fetish for the motivation-technologies upon its surface in that the motivation-technologies appear to themselves to emanate from the zombie body. The texts recorded upon the surface of the zombie body and their disjunctions (sets of linear transformations and their compositions, which we shall call “multiplication-initself”) are means of the repetition-for-itself (to appropriate a term from the early Deleuze) of the zombie body. However, the disjunctions between motivation-technologies “amount to the same on the slippery surface” of the zombie body in a wholly different manner, since these singular-nomadic points of disjunction are produced by the celibate machine.

Deleuze and Guattari write that one creates a body without organs by means of an experimental program, a program of experimentation; or, to phrase it another way, a body without organs is produced by a set of experimental practices, practices of experimentation (TP, p. 151). If there appears to be a contradiction here, since practices or actions are always implicated in motivationconstruction and thus implying a pre-existent zombie body, it is merely apparent, because habit takes place within the bounds of a zombie body, but a new zombie body can be created only breaking with habit. A program of experimentation is precisely a set of actions or practices that break with habit. To be sure, even these experimental practices are accompanied by affects, more specifically new affects or different emotions, and these new emotions constitute the newly created zombie body. Deleuze and Guattari write that the body without organs “is nonstratified, unformed, intense matter, the matrix of intensity, intensity = 0” (TP, p. 153). An intensity or intensive quantity is an affect. A partial-object is an intensive quality. The zombie body is an “intensity = 0” because it is an ossified (or fossilized) affect or set of affects which functions as the quasi-cause for intensities or affects of a given type. To phrase it another way, the ossified (or fossilized) affects functioning as the “intensity = 0” is the coordinate plane upon which subsequent affects are produced and recorded. A set of affects can become “ossified” in the sense of becoming as solid and quasi-transcendental a unitstructure as a skeletal unit-system. A zombie body is quasitranscendental, since it exists prior to those affects that are derived from it, thought it is itself empirically constituted through an experimental program. A zombie body is a “fossilized” set of affects in that it is a set of affects which is no longer living but nonetheless preserved, although unlike a traditional fossil, a fossilized set of affects has an undead life, persisting in its living death in the unconscious to exert its effects. Moreover, a fossilized set of affects (or body without organs) is the object of study of an archaeology of affects (or archaeology of emotions). The celibate machine is “generative” in a sense similar to “generative grammar,” but bearing in mind that in reality any “generative grammar” is never anything other than the celibate machine, which is fundamentally dependent upon the body without organs for its existence. That is to say, a body without organs is constituted by a small set of affects (caused by a small set of experimental practices), that provides parts for the celibate machine (in the form of an attraction machine and a repulsion machine), and the celibate machine functions as a combinatory formula capable of generating infinite and infinitely new affects (as so many series or elements of series) within the limits of this combinatory formula. The “intensity = 0” of the body without organs, via the mediation of the celibate machine, determines in the last instance other intensities of the same type.

Deleuze and Guattari write, “What is certain is that the masochist has made himself a BwO [Body without Organs] under such conditions that the BwO can no longer be populated by anything but intensities of pain, pain waves. It is false to say that the masochist is looking for pain but just as false to say that he is looking for pleasure in a particularly suspensive or roundabout way. The masochist is looking for a type of BwO that only pain can fill, or travel over, due to the very conditions under which that BwO was constituted. Pains are populations, packs, modes of king-masochistin-the-desert that he engenders and augments” (TP, p. 152). The masochist has created for themselves a masochistic zombie body, a masochist body, out of a set of practices whose resultant affects are affects of pain; hence Deleuze and Guattari’s recounting of a masochist’s program, which includes being bound, sewn up, and flogged by his mistress (cf. TP, p. 151). Masochism has nothing to do with pleasure, nothing to do even with dreaming of pleasure. Nor is the masochist dreaming of pain as such, that is to say, pain is not the primary object of masochistic desire. (To clarify, “the object of desire” here refers to a real object, not an imaginary-symbolic object, that is, not a fantasy). The primary object of masochistic desire is the construction of the masochistic zombie body, the zombie body that is constructed under such determinate conditions that it can only be populated by affects of pain. Thus pains are only ever secondary objects of desire for the masochist in relation to the primary object of desire, the masochistic zombie body. The “intensity = 0” of the masochist body is a set of pain affects; this ossified set of pain affects constitutive of the “intensity = 0” is mediated by a celibate machine which functions as a combinatory formula for an approximately infinite series of pain affects, pain-waves (which are in fact real waves), within the limits of the original ossified pain affects which determines in the last instance this combinatory formula.

Section 3: The String-Theoretical Topology of Affects; Or, the Celibate Machine

There are always strings attached.

Deleuze and Guattari write, “Conforming to the meaning of the word “process,” recording falls back on (se rabat sur) production, but the production of recording itself is produced by the production of [connection]. Similarly, recording is followed by consumption, but the production of consumption is produced in and through the production of recording. This is because something on the order of a subject [the nomadic subject] can be discerned on the recording surface. It is a strange subject, however, with no fixed identity, wandering about over the body without organs, but always remaining peripheral to the desiring-machines, being defined by the share of the product it takes for itself, garnering here, there, and everywhere a reward in the form of a becoming or an avatar, being born of the states that it consumes and being reborn with each new state” (AO, p. 16). Elsewhere, they continue, “How can we sum up this entire vital progression? Let us trace it along a first path (the shortest route): the points of disjunction on the body without organs form circles that converge on the desiring-machines; then the [nomadic] subject – produced as a residuum alongside the [celibate] machine [the celibate machine is equivalent to the complicated relationship of attraction-repulsion between the body without organs and the desiring-machines], as an appendix, or as a spare part adjacent to the [celibate] machine – passes through all the degrees of the circle, and passes from one circle to another. This [nomadic] subject itself is not at the center, which is occupied by the [celibate] machine, but on the periphery, with no fixed identity, forever decentered, defined by the states through which it passes” (AO, p. 20).

The productive subject includes within itself and is constituted by desiring-machines, bodies without organs, and the nomadic subject, and their characteristic production processes (the production of connections, the production of recordings, and the production of consumptions, respectively). The productive subject is desiring-production, desiring-production is the productive subject. The machinic processes and relations constituting desiringproduction are ontological as much as they are metapsychological.

Deleuze and Guattari’s descriptions of them are not merely functional and pragmatic, but also an austere outline of their machinic ontology, which can only be properly understood by inverting, subverting, or perverting Deleuze’s earlier structuralist ontology (as developed in The Logic of Sense and Difference and Repetition). We shall attempt such an inversion, subversion, and perversion of the early Deleuze in this section, and we ask the reader to bear this in mind when reading our citations of Deleuze in this section.

To begin with, we must note that the body without organs is not a “structure” in the structuralist sense. On the contrary, the body without organs is a metapsychological machine that only exist within a given individual’s psyche. The body without organs is a unitstructure of repetition-for-itself, and the recordings or disjunctions upon the surface of the body without organs (or what amounts to the same thing, the production of recordings or the production of disjunctions) constitute unit-systems of multiplication-in-itself. A disjunction is a unit-system of multiplication-in-itself. Repetition-for-itself functions by means of multiplication-in-itself, such that multiplication-in-itself is a mode or modification of repetition-foritself. Unit-systems of difference-for-itself appear to be the “opposite” of unit-systems of repetition-for-itself, but there is no real contradiction between the two, and the two can and do coexist; the relationship between difference-for-itself and repetition-for-itself has two axes or degrees of freedom, attraction and repulsion. A desiringmachine is a unit-structure of difference-for-itself, and the connective labour of desiring-machines, the production of connections, is a unit-system of repetition-in-itself. Difference-foritself functions by means of repetition-in-itself, such that repetitionin-itself is a mode or modification of difference-for-itself. The body without organs is simultaneously the embryonic Idea or the larval Idea and the obscure precursor; the body without organs is a multiplicity unto itself, and it is simultaneously obscure and distinct.

The nomadic subject is precisely the agency constituted by the nomadic singular points that are less subject than subjected – subjected to the obscure precursor or embryonic Idea, and to the oscillations of its attraction and repulsion to desiring-machines. This “subjected subject” is a passive subject, a passive agency, forever accompanying the oscillations of attraction and repulsion like a dog. Therefore, we might also describe the nomadic subject as the canine subject. In contrast, the productive subject (the active subject or active agency) is the architectural subject, since it is the “house of being” (the non-linguistic, non-semiotic, and non-representational house of being; desiring-production is the house of being), within which and through which the process of being (the process of desire or motivation) unfolds. The architecture of the architectural subject is Escherian, paradoxical, machinic, and living. Thus, the passive subject is a moment or part of the active subject, since the nomadiccanine subject is a moment or part of the productive-architectural subject, alongside the other moments or parts of the productivearchitectural subject, namely the body without organs and the desiring-machines. The nomadic-canine subject is also a surplus of desiring-production, and therefore a surplus subject or surreal subject.

Desiring-production is a virtual spatio-temporal dynamism, or rather, a set of virtual spatio-temporal dynamism. Virtual spatiotemporal dynamisms have several different properties or functions, among which are: 1) they “determine the double aspect of differentiation, [virtual] qualitative and [virtual] quantitative ([intensive] qualities and [intensive quantities], [virtual] species and [virtual] parts),” that characterizes the production of recordings and the production of consumptions respectively; 2) they produce larval or embryonic Ideas; 3) they entail or designate a subject, though a nomadic subject; 4) it is through the three syntheses (connective, disjunctive, conjunctive) “that spatio-temporal dynamisms figure the movement of dramatization,” thereby constituting a “special theatre” (cf. Deleuze, DI, p. 93). The movement of dramatization is the actualization of the virtual. The actualization of the virtual is the incarnation or actualization of virtual spatio-temporal dynamisms in praxis. To clarify, it is not merely the Idea by itself that is actualized, but the entire set of virtual spatio-temporal dynamisms of which the Idea is merely a part among other parts, right alongside desiringmachines and the nomadic subject. The actualization of virtual spatio-temporal dynamisms in praxis only occurs through the entire three-fold process of virtual spatio-temporal dynamisms, the interdependent processes of virtual desiring-machines (all desiringmachines are virtual), the virtual embryonic Idea (all Ideas are virtual), and the virtual nomadic subject (the nomadic subject is always virtual). There is a closed feedback loop between the dynamical unit-system of praxis and the three-fold dynamical unitsystem of spatio-temporal dynamisms, the two interdependent phases of which are the actualization of the virtual and the virtualization of the actual.

The Idea is for itself a unit-system of repetition-compulsion and in itself a unit-system of linear transformations (as well as result of an initial distribution of remarkable or singular points, initial conditions which were the determinate result of an experimental programme), which in turn functions as a quasi-cause of nomadicsingular points. Conforming to the meaning of the word “dynamism,” the unit-systems of multiplication-in-itself of the larval Idea fall back on the given set of virtual spatio-temporal dynamisms, but the unit-systems of multiplication-in-itself are themselves produced by the unit-systems of repetition-in-itself of the desiringmachines. Similarly, unit-systems of multiplication-in-itself are followed by the distribution of remarkable or singular points (virtual events or nomadic subjects), but the distribution of singular-nomadic point-subjects is produced in and through the unit-systems of multiplication-in-itself. However, an Idea is itself fundamentally a matrix of remarkable or singular points, which is itself constituted by an experimental programme (an instance of the virtualization of the actual). Intensive space is quasi-transcendental topology or an empirical-transcendental topology, since it is a dynamical unitsystem that exists in a closed feedback loop with the dynamical unitsystem constitutive of extensive space.

Metapsychology is string theoretical (in addition to simultaneously being cybernetic). Metapsychology is string theoretical not in a metaphorical manner, but in terms of its functionality, such that a functional description of metapsychology is a string theoretical description. Desiring-machines are rhizomatic circuits through which partial-objects flow (libido, strictly speaking, is merely the production of connections, that is, the connective labour of these rhizomatic circuits). Bodies without organs and nomadic subjects, in contrast, are best explained string theoretically. Since we are dealing here with metapsychology and not with quantum mechanics, our metapsychological string theory does not need to be bound by the limitations of quantum mechanics (for that matter, nor does it need to be bound by Einsteinian relativity); nor does our metapsychological string theory need to be reconciled with the local 3-dimensional Euclidean geometry of extensive space (nor, for that matter, with the geometry of quantum mechanics, nor with the geometry of Einsteinian relativity), since the geometry of intensive space is infinite-dimensional. The utility of string theory for metapsychology consists precisely in its ability to describe and predict the machinic processes of metapsychology. In classical string theory, a brane is a dynamical object (homologous to a membrane) which can propagate through spacetime according to the rules of quantum mechanics. In our metapsychological string theory, we may define a brane more simply as a dynamical object (homologous to a membrane). The body without organs is a D-brane or brane-world (in classical string theory, a brane-world is literally a world, that is, a universe; in our metapsychological string theory, a brane-world is a logical world), which is an n-dimensional manifold (where n varies according to the specific variant of string theory under discussion, for example, ranging from 10 dimensions in superstring theory to 26 dimensions in bosonic string theory, including the dimension of time). To be more specific, the body without organs, considered as a brane-world, is an infinite-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifold. Musser writes, “Calabi-Yaus come in progressively more complex varieties depending on how many extra dimensions there are. Higher-dimensional versions are unimaginably convoluted pretzels with multiple [doughnutlike] holes” (2008, p. 180). Henceforth, we will describe n-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds as “convoluted pretzels with multiple doughnutlike holes,” or more simply as “convoluted pretzels,” with the multiple doughnut like holes being implied. The body without organs is indeed an egg, but it is not a spherical egg. The body without organs is an egg with the shape of a convoluted pretzel with multiple doughnutlike holes; thus, the body without organs is a convoluted embryo-pretzel. These doughnutlike holes are purely geometrical; in aesthetic terms, these doughnutlike holes are negative spaces which partially define and thereby enable the positive functioning of the convoluted pretzel; these doughnutlike holes are therefore “positive holes,” since their geometric definition and machinic functioning are wholly positive, and moreover, they are “plastic holes” since they are in any case filled up to excess with plasticity, that is, with the Real (for that matter, all matter and all mind are filled up to excess with plasticity or the Real). In other words, these doughnutlike holes have nothing to do with “lack” as it is defined in psychoanalysis. The complicated relationship of attraction-repulsion between the body without organs and desiring-machines are so many vibrating strings either coiled around the body without organs or otherwise attached to the body without organs. Strings are one-dimensional branes. The vibrations of these one-dimensional strings is the oscillations of attractionrepulsion that directly generate or produce the singular-nomadic point-subject. Moreover, considered as technologies, these vibrating strings are precisely those singular points of disjunction at which desiring-machines are attached (in a complicated relationship) to the body without organs.

Deleuze and Guattari’s further descriptions of desiringproduction, specifically their further descriptions of the relationship between the body without organs and the nomadic subject, further affirms the string-theoretical functionality of desiring-production: “Further, if we are to believe Judge Schreber’s doctrine, attraction and repulsion produce intense nervous states that fill up the body without organs to varying degrees – states through which Schreberthe-subject passes, becoming a woman and many other things as well, following an endless circle of eternal return. The breasts on the judge’s naked torso are neither delirious nor hallucinatory phenomena: they designate, first of all, a band of intensity, a zone of intensity on his body without organs. The body without organs is an egg: it is crisscrossed with axes and thresholds, with latitudes and longitudes and geodesic lines, traversed by gradients marking the transitions and the becomings, the destinations of the subject developing along these particular vectors. Nothing here is representative; rather, it is all life and lived experience: the actual, lived emotion of having breasts does not resemble breasts, it does not represent them, any more than a predestined zone in the egg resembles the organ that it is going to be stimulated to produce within itself. Nothing but bands of intensity, potentials, thresholds, and gradients... Thus the circles traced by Beckett’s Unnamable: “a succession of irregular loops, now sharp and short as in the waltz, now of a parabolic sweep,” with Murphy, Watt, Merrier, etc., as states, without the family having anything whatsoever to do with all of this.” (AO, pp. 19–20; my emphases)

Deleuze and Guattari describe strings in general when they speak of bands of intensity, potentials, thresholds. However, when they model celibate machines as “gradients,” this is an alternative model, and one which is highly incomplete at that, since a gradient denotes, in vector calculus, a vector which includes all the partial derivatives for a given set of points, which amounts to the direction and rate of fastest increase or steepest ascent, which is neither an adequate description of strings nor an adequate description of the celibate machine. However, celibate machines can indeed be partially modelled as “transversal gradients” marking the transitions, becomings, destinations, or vectors of the singular-nomadic pointsubject. Deleuze and Guattari inadvertently and specifically provide examples of both types of strings described in string theory, namely closed strings and open strings. Examples of closed strings include: 1) endless circles of eternal returns; 2) successions of irregular loops, now sharp and short as in the waltz, now of a parabolic sweep. Examples of open strings include: 1) crisscrossing axes and thresholds; 2) latitudes and longtitudes; 3) geodesic lines. Strings are bands of intensity akin to rubber bands; closed strings are akin to rubber bands of intensity forming a closed loop, whereas open strings are akin to rubber bands of intensity not forming a closed loop. To further illustrate this analogy: if one cuts the closed loop of a rubber band, thereby disconnecting the closed loop and producing the “line” form of the rubber band, one has created an open rubber band, a rubber band resembling an open string. Or, to use a more intuitive analogy: a closed string is like a closed loop of a rubber band, whereas an open string is like a guitar string (Musser, 2008, p. 150). Musser gives an additional description of the respective shapes: a closed string is a tube, an open string is a ribbon (2008, p. 152). Just as the vibrations or oscillations of cosmological strings generate the point-like elementary particles of the Standard Model in classical string theory, in our metapsychological string theory the vibrations or oscillations of metapsychological strings generate the series of singular-brilliant points that are equivalent to the nomadic subject.

Deleuze and Guattari never explicitly mention string theory, but the metapsychological topology they describe in both AntiOedipus and A Thousand Plateaus functions in an uncannily string theoretical manner. Let us attempt to sum up the entire vital progression of desiring-production: the singular-nomadic points of disjunction on the embryo-pretzel of the virtual body are so many strings forming circles snaking across the embryo-pretzel of the virtual body, or otherwise attached to the virtual body as so many ribbons, and these strings are also singular-nomadic points of convergence with the libidinal circuits described as desiringmachines. The singular-nomadic point-subject is generated by these vibrating singular-nomadic strings. The singular-nomadic pointsubject is thereby produced as a residuum alongside the singularnomadic strings, as an appendix or spare part adjacent to the singular-nomadic strings, such that nomadic subjectivity passes through all the degrees of vibrating circular nomadic-singular strings, and passes from one vibrating circular nomadic-singular string to another. The nomadic-singular vibratings strings are the centre of the conjunctive synthesis; insofar as there are multiple strings along the surface the virtual embryo-pretzel of the body without organs, there are multiple centres of the conjunctive synthesis. In any case, the nomadic subjectivity generated by vibrating singular strings is peripheral, with no fixed identity, forever decentered and ex-centric, defined by the mental states generated by the oscillations of the singular-nomadic strings. The conjunctive synthesis is the distribution of imaginary-symbolic attitudes (that is, purely symbolic affects combined with imaginarysymbolic associations; needless to say, these imaginary-symbolic attitudes are real in their existence and the effects).

Musser writes that the ontology of modern physics can be aptly summarized by the formula “to do is to be” (2008, pp. 147148), which is roughly the same as Deleuze and Guattari’s machinic ontology, which can likewise be aptly summarized by the formula “to do is to be.” Musser writes that a string “has only one intrinsic attribute, its tautness. Everything else about strings comes from how they act. Strings are as strings do” (2008, p. 148). In other words, a string is a machine, a technology. A metapsychological string is nothing but the complicated relationship between desiring-machines and the body without organs. Therefore, this complicated relationship is itself a machine, a technology. Deleuze and Guattari describe this complicated relationship, and therefore nomadicsingular strings, as “the celibate machine”: “Our point of departure was the opposition between desiring-machines and the body without organs. The repulsion of these machines, as found in the paranoiac machine of primary repression, gave way to an attraction in the miraculating machine. But the opposition between attraction and repulsion persists. It would seem that a genuine reconciliation of the two can take place only on the level of a new machine, functioning as “the return of the repressed”…[The] celibate machine first of all reveals the existence of a much older paranoiac machine, with its tortures, its dark shadows, its ancient Law. The celibate machine itself is not a paranoiac machine, however. Everything about it is different: its cogs, its sliding carriage, its shears, needles, magnets, rays. Even when it tortures or kills, it manifests something new and different, a solar force. In the second place, this transfiguration cannot be explained by the “miraculating” powers the machine possesses due to the inscription hidden inside it, though it in fact contains within itself the most impressive sort of inscriptions…A genuine consummation is achieved by the new machine, a pleasure that can rightly be called autoerotic, or rather automatic: the nuptial celebration of a new alliance, a new birth, a radiant ecstasy, as though the eroticism of the machine liberated other unlimited forces.

The question becomes: what does the celibate machine produce? what is produced by means of it? The answer would seem to be: intensive quantities…Or, to follow a path that is more complex, but leads in the end to the same thing: by means of the paranoiac machine and the miraculating machine, the proportions of attraction and repulsion on the body without organs produce, starting from zero, a series of states in the celibate machine; and the subject is born of each state in the series, is continually reborn of the following state that determines him at a given moment, consumingconsummating all these states that cause him to be born and reborn (the lived state coming first, in relation to the subject that lives it).” (AO, p. 17; p. 18; p. 20).

It is an exaggeration and a slight inaccuracy to say that everything about the celibate machine is different from the paranoiac machine. The celibate machine is not explained by either the paranoiac machine or the miraculating machine considered as separate entities, because it can only be understood when considering the two as forming an integrated unity. The celibate machine is the consummation of the paranoiac machine and the miraculating machine. The cogs, sliding carriages, shears, needles, magnets, and rays of the celibate machine are constituted by the paranoiac machine and the miraculating machine. It is true that the repulsion-machine and the attraction-machine are the two degrees of freedom of the celibate machine, but this merely describes the topological features of each in relation to the others. On the other hand, in terms of their machinic functioning, the repulsion-machine and the atttraction-machine are parts of the celibate machine. The attraction-machine alone does not explain the celibate machine because the celibate machine is more specifically the perpetual complication, ambiguity, tensions, vibrations, or oscillations between the attraction-machine and the repulsion-machine. Strings vibrate and forms waves. The celibate machine is the consummation or “the nuptial celebration of a new alliance” between the attractionmachine and the repulsion-machine,” and its oscillations generate “a new birth, a radiant ecstasy,” the “solar force” of the nomadicsingular point-subject, “ a pleasure that can rightly be called autoerotic, or rather automatic,” and which is also described by Deleuze and Guattari as “sensual pleasure,” “enjoyment,” and “Voluptas” (AO, pp. 16–17). Thus, the body without organs, in combination with the celibate machine which relates it to the desiring-machines, functions as the combinatory formula of affects or intensive quantities or virtual effects, that is to say, the combinatory formula of singular-nomadic point-subjects. Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of “enjoyment” here is a re-working of Lacan’s concept of “enjoyment” or “jouissance.” Jouissance is surplus libido, it is in itself always already a surplus, always already surplus jouissance. Jouissance does not necessarily mean pleasure, since jouissance is precisely the surplus of libido one experiences even in the throes of pleasure, but jouissance is just as much the surplus of libido one experiences even in the throes of pain. Deleuze and Guattari specify that states such “pleasure” and “pain” are more accurately described as equivalent to jouissance, albeit different forms of jouissance, and moreover, they provide a machinic account of the genesis of jouissance. Deleuze and Guattari write, “Just as a part of the libido as energy of [connection] was transformed into energy of recording (Numen), a part of this energy of recording is transformed into energy of consummation (Voluptas). It is this residual energy that is the motive force behind the third synthesis of the unconscious: the conjunctive synthesis “so it’s…,” or the production of consumption” (AO, pp. 16–17). Just as the connective labour of desiring-machines is equivalent to the libido or the energy of connection, and as the disjunctive labour of the body without organs is equivalent to Numen or the energy of recording, so is the conjunctive labour of the celibate machine equivalent to Voluptas or the energy of consumption-consummation. The conjunctive labour of the celibate machine is the conjunction it produces between the body without organs and the desiring-machines; this conjunction is simultaneously a production of expenditure and a production of consummation. The oscillations of the relationship between the body without organs and the desiring-machines are precisely the labour of conjunction, the production of conjunction. Metapsychological strings are celibate machines. Moreover, Deleuze and Guattari write that the celibate machine “contains within itself the most impressive sort of inscriptions.” These inscriptions are, on the one hand, the recordings inscribed upon the surface of the body without organs, and on the other hand, the flows of partial-objects circulating in the desiring-machines, the two of which are conjoined in the celibate machine by means of the labour of conjunction, such that there are always partial-objects associated with each nomadic-singular affect, hence why the conjunctive synthesis takes the form of a “so it’s…,” a revelation.

The nomadic-singular string, with its oscillations, is the conjunction of a unit-structure of repetition-for-itself and unitstructures of difference-for-itself, and the nomadic-singular string thereby generates the series of singular-brilliant points constitutive of the singular-nomadic point-subject. The nomadic-singular string, the celibate machine, is a unit-structure of “mediation-for-itself,” a machine for mediation or mediation-machine that performs the labour of conjoining or mediating repetition-for-itself and difference-for-itself, and the nomadic-singular point-subject it generates is a “presence-in-itself,” but to be sure, it is always a “presence-in-itself” generated as a surplus of a set of virtual spatiotemporal dynamisms, that is, it is a presence that is always secondary to a more primary mediation. To appropriate a phrase by Derrida, mediation-for-itself is “is the determination of Being as presence in all senses of this word” (1967/1978, p. 353). That is to say, the unitstructure of mediation-for-itself produces metastable states of presence-in-itself which are immediately expended and experienced as so many revelations, of the kind “So it’s…,” which when the quantity of intensity is consistently high appears as “as a series of substitutions of center for center, as a linked chain of determinations of the center,” to hijack Derrida’s phrasing, despite the fact that in reality the unit-structure of presence-in-itself is always ex-centric (1967/1978, p. 353). To clarify, presence-in-itself is a surplus or supplement, but nonetheless non-originary. Mediation-for-itself is the creative process, secondary to both the repetition-for-itself and the difference-for-itself that it cojoins, that produces the fundamentally supplemental presence-in-itself. Something on the order of a presence-in-itself can be discerned on the virtual surface of the larval Idea. It is a strange presence-in-itself, however, with no fixed identity, wandering about over the Idea, but always remaining peripheral to the unit-systems of difference-for-itself, being defined by the surplus share of the given set of virtual spatio-temporal dynamisms that it takes for itself, garnering her, there, and everywhere a jouissance in the form of a becoming or an avatar, being born of the metastable states that it expends and being reborn with each new state. The dynamical unit-system of mediation-foritself, the conjunction of repetition-for-itself and difference-foritself, occupies the “centre” of the conjunctive process, whereas the singular-nomadic unit-structure of presence-in-itself is ex-centric and peripheral, on the periphery and forever decentred, defined by the metastable states through which it passes. On the other hand, mediation-for-itself is neither an origin nor a telos. Mediation-foritself is genealogical. Mediation-for-itself, the celibate machine, is itself a strange centre, a nomadic centre, since it is after all a dynamical object; that is to say, in any case, mediation-for-itself is a form of motivation-construction existing alongside the other forms of motivation-construction (repetition-for-itself and difference-foritself), and moreover, it is expenditure.

Furthermore, further analysis of classical string theory also reveals, by way of revealing the logic of string theory, further details regarding the operations of the celibate machine and the production of the nomadic subject. Musser writes, “Different vibrational patterns correspond to different types of particles…A string can stop vibrating in one way and start vibrating in another, like a guitar string playing a new note. In this way a particle can metamorphose from one type to another – an electron, say, to a quark, or even a particle of matter to a particle of force. Two strings exert a force on one another by interchanging a third string serving as a middleman. To create the middleman, one of the strings undergoes a process a bit like cell division in the human body. It pinches off and creates a new loop, which flutters through space and gets absorbed by the other string. Strings themselves determine how strong these forces are. One of the ways they vibrate is to pulse in and out like a tiny heartbeat. This vigor of this pulsation, called the dilaton, governs the gregariousness of strings and, in turn, the strength of gravity, electromagnetism, and the nuclear forces. The strength of these forces, which physicists often take as a fixed property of the universe, is the upshot of string dynamics.” (2008, pp. 150–151)

The different vibrational patterns of metapsychological strings upon a single given body without organs correspond to the variations and nuances of affect-waves characteristic of that type of body without organs. A pattern of vibration of a metapsychological string is a mode of production of a celibate machine. For instance, there is a great variety of pain-waves upon the masochist body, and there is a great variety of refrigerator-waves upon the drugged body (cf. TP, p. 173). A metapsychological string can stop vibrating in one way and start vibrating in another way, and in this way a singularnomadic point-subject can metamorphose from one type to another even within the limit of a single body without organs; for example, the operations of a drugged celibate machine (or drugged string) upon the drugged body of a drug user can stop vibrating in the pattern of a good trip and begin vibrating in the pattern of a bad trip, and in this way the nomadic-virtual events constitutive of a good trip stop being generated and the nomadic-virtual events of a bad trip start being generated, that is to say, a singular-nomadic subject metamorphoses from one characteristic of a good trip to one characteristic of a bad trip (for example, the drug user may go from experiencing themselves as Krishna to experiencing themselves as Dorian Gray). To clarify, a singular-nomadic point-subject is always really a set of virtual point-events, that is to say, each emotion is a complex emotion made of multiple emotions. Each singular-nomadic point-subject is a multiplicity. Since each desiring-machine is a multiplicity and each body without organs is a multiplicity, there is necessarily a multiplicity of celibate machines, that is, a multiplicity of metapsychological strings, conjoining multiple attractionmachines and repulsion-machines. Furthermore, two celibate machines upon a single body without organs can exert a force, that is, exert labour, on one another by interchanging a third celibate machine that mediates between the two of them. To produce the mediating celibate machine, one of the celibate machines undergoes a process analogous to asexual reproduction, budding off a new celibate machine which flutters through intensive space and gets absorbed by the other celibate machine. The celibate machines themselves determine how strong these forces, that is, how great these quantities of labour, are. One of the patterns of vibration of metapsychological strings is to pulse in and out, analogous to a heartbeat. The vigour of this pulsation is called the dilaton. The metapsychological dilaton is a pattern of metapsychological string vibration that governs the strength of metapsychological string interactions and therefore the strength of all generated forces, that is to say, the quantity of intensity of all generated affects. The superior utility of a string-theoretical topology of the psyche is amply evident, as it allows the metapsychologist to discuss nuances of affects and the manner of their generation, without resorting to any kind of reductionism.

Part III: Schizoanalytic Explorations

Section 1: Realist Monism or Monist Realism

The foundations of our ontology are roughly the same as Spinoza’s ontology, with some modifications by way of Nietzsche, Marx, Deleuze, Guattari, Badiou, Althusser, and Malabou. In Spinoza’s ontology, all of existence is equivalent to one infinite substance; this substance has an infinite number of attributes, only two of which are currently known to human beings, namely extension (extensive space, the actual, matter) and “thought” (intension, intensive space, the virtual, mind); this substance also has infinite modes or modifications, or to be more precise, each mode is a modification of an attribute of substance. Substance is omnitudo realitatis, all of reality, or more simply put, substance is reality. Spinoza also describes substance as “Nature” and “God.” As numerous other scholar’s have noted, Spinoza’s “God” is an atheist’s “God,” that is, an atheistic concept of “God.” For our purposes, we may describe our immanent Spinozan God as “Dionysus,” the most godless God of all, after Nietzsche’s concept of Dionysus, connoting both ontological becoming and ontological labour (“force”), which we believe are immanent. Each modification or form of an attribute of substance is a force, a block of ontological labour. We are pantheists only insofar as we believe that omnitudo realitatis is God, and God is omnitudo realitatis. Nature is an excessive, infinite cosmic substance that only exists in, through, and as its multiplicity of modifications. Each modification of substance is a bricolage, a contingent putting-together of whatever is at-hand.

It makes absolutely no difference whether one calls substance “God,” “non-God,” or “Satan,” such that one could just as well say “Satan is everywhere” or “all of reality is Satan,” or “everything is non-God,” with equal veracity, as long as the meaning of the given term is equivalent to Spinoza’s concept of substance, which he also happens to call “God” and “Nature,” and which he defines as “a being absolutely infinite – that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality” (Ethics, Part I, Def. VI). Spinoza’s God, which is also our “God,” is a non-moral or amoral God, a God who never listens to prayers and who never answers prayers; such a concept of God no doubt alienates from the very beginning everyone who believes in a god precisely in order to believe in a moral god who polices the world, and who listens to and answers prayers. And of course, Spinoza’s God is neither male nor female, that is to say, Spinoza’s God is nonbinary. Moreover, Spinoza’s God is not an “energy” in any sense whatsoever; on the contrary, all “energies” or forces are merely modifications of attributes of Spinoza’s God. Spinoza’s God is not a homogenous One, but a heterogeneous “one,” a heterogeneous set of infinite attributes and their infinite modifications. To clarify, we do not believe in using the word “God” merely for propaganda purposes (for practical reasons, above all), but on the other hand, we also reject the vulgarity of scientism (for example, the vulgar scientism that surrounds the culture of neuroscience; or, for that matter, the vulgar scientism that surrounds the culture of medical science more generally, especially where it intersects with the culture of neoliberal centrism), which is unable to even think and which thus dismisses metaphysics altogether, and this latter factor makes us rather comfortable with using words such as “God” or “Nature,” although in any case the term “substance” remains the most precise (and avoids both popular religious connotations and vulgar scientistic connotations). Thus, we find no contradiction in affirming both Spinoza’s concept of God and Blanqui’s slogan “No gods, no masters!”, since in either case we may affirm a substance with infinite attributes.

We also describe substance as the Real. Substance is reality, which is the same as the Real. The attributes of substance are the dimensions of substance, the degrees of freedom or axes of substance, such that human beings currently know of two dimensions, degrees of freedom, or axes of substance, the extensive and the intensive. Modes are forms. A form is a modification of an axis of the Real. The Real is the possibility of forms. The Real is the necessary condition for the possibility of forms. The necessary condition for the possibility of forms is possibility itself, pure potentiality. The Real is possibility itself, the Real is pure potentiality. The Real is plasticity itself. Substance is plasticity itself, possibility itself, pure potentiality (potentiality itself). We have appropriated or hijacked the concept of plasticity from Malabou, that is, we have ripped away the concept of plasticity from its original context of Hegelian ontology in which Malabou discovers and develops it, and thereafter we have transplanted the concept of plasticity into the new context of Spinozan ontology. Plasticity is the capacity to produce new forms. That is to say, plasticity is the necessary condition for the possibility of (new) forms. All forms are plastic. Forms are modifications of dimensions of plasticity. Plasticity is the “unity of chance and necessity in an endless calculus” (to appropriate a phrase from Derrida). Plasticity is aleatoric calculus, the calculus of the aleatoric. It is on the basis of an immanent plastic substance that we accept the “aleatoric materialism” of Althusser, which is a contingent materialism, a materialism of contingency, a materialism that affirms “the necessity of contingency” (to appropriate Meillasoux’s formula). Substance is “the necessity of contingency,” which is immanent.

Insofar as a form of mind is parallel to a form of matter, a form of matter is always the material support for a form of mind, such that if a form of matter disintegrates then the form of mind it supports or which is parallel to it also disintegrates. Therefore, human physiology is the material support for the human psyche, and when human physiology disintegrates upon its death, then the human psyche likewise disintegrates and dies, such that all souls are mortal. We are panpsychists insofar as pansychism is the necessary logical consequence of the realist ontology of Spinoza. That is to say, even inorganic matter has a very dim consciousness, a weak form of mind. Panpsychism is one meaning of Lenz’s schizophrenic stroll; panpsychism is what it means “to be in contact with the profound life of every form, to have a soul for rocks, metals, water, and plants” (as quoted in AO, p. 3). The weak form of mind proper to inorganic matter is the bare minimum of life. Eaven rocks, metals, and water have souls insofar as they are forms of matter correlated with weak forms of mind. We accept as self-evident that all biological organisms have souls, forms of mind or forms of life, of a greater degree of complexity than inorganic matter (that is not arranged into the form of a robot). However, because mind and matter are parallel to each other, the reversal of weak dependence or weak emergence is equally true, such that, for example, 1) the brain is the material support of the mind, and the mind is a weak emergent property of the brain which weakly supervenes the brain but nonetheless remains strictly correlated with it; and 2) the brain is a weak emergent property of the mind which weakly supervenes the mind but nonetheless remains strictly correlated with it; meaning that 3) the human psyche is the psychological or metapsychological support for human physiology; and 4) the disintegration or death of the human psyche means the disintegration or death of human physiology. To be clear, we are materialists and realists; we are speculative materialists and speculative realists, insofar as our ontology is a science of the Absolute, that is to say, a science of substance, but we are materialists and realists nonetheless, in that we believe both that matter exists and that the mind directly and immediately perceives matter by means of the sense-organs. In this sense, speculative materialism or speculative realism is the same as monist realism or realist monism, since both begin with the immanence of reality.

To phrase our ontology in a different way: substance is the subtensive, or subtensive space; because substance is immanent, the subtensive and the tensive, subtensive space and tensive space, are one and the same; tensive space has infinite dimensions, axes, or degrees of freedom, two of them being the extensive and the intensive, such that extensive space and intensive space are each a type of tensive space, or what amounts to the same thing, the tensive is immanent to both the extensive and the intensive, that is, extensive space and intensive space are filled to excess with tensive space. The same can be phrased in an inverted way: all types of space (including intensive space and extensive space) have a fractal dimension of subtensive space, which is the fractal of plasticity, such that each subset of a given type of space is self-similar in its dimension of plasticity or plastic dimension to a subset of any other subset of space of any type; for example, the plastic dimension of intensive space is self-similar to the plastic dimension of extensive space, and the plastic dimension of a subset of extensive space is self-similar to the plastic dimension of any other subset of extensive space on any scale whatsoever (and the same is true of intensive space, namely that the plastic dimension of a subset of intensive space is selfsimilar to the plastic dimension of any other subset of intensive space on any scale whatsoever). Of these two possible descriptions, however, the monist description is the clearest by far, whereas the fractal description always risks a degree of obscurity, which is why we prefer the monist descriptions of Spinoza.

Extensive space local to the human being is threedimensional Euclidean space; at much smaller or much larger scale, different types of geometry apply, as demonstrated by modern physics. Even the imaginary extensions that are image-fragments are nonetheless still intensions, that is to say, imaginary copies of extensive space are in reality forms of intensive space, which is precisely what it means for imaginary extensions to be imaginary, that is, for imaginary extensions to not be real extensions. Intensive space is unextended, and to the extent that extensive space is the material support of intensive space, intensive space is post-extensive. Insofar as intensive space is unextended, it is a topological space, a pure spatium. Insofar as intensive space is post-extensive, it is a vector space, a space constituted by vectors. Intensive space consists of intensive fluids and their intensive dynamics. Intensive science, the science of the intensive, is intensive fluid dynamics. Metapsychology is intensive fluid dynamics. Fluid dynamics analyzes fluids as vector fields, graphs consisting of n vecotrs. A vector is an n-dimensional arrray, which in physics usually maps a quantity with both magnitude and direction. Intensive space is infinite-dimensional. Thought has infinite dimensions, infinite degrees of freedom. Intensive fluid dynamics is the fluid dynamics of n-dimensional fluids (where n tends to be greater than 3), which can be modelled in terms of n-dimensional arrays (tensors, vectors, or matrices) and their interactions; that is to say, in terms of linear algebra and multivariable calculus.

A vector can be visualized as an arrow in space. A vector field can be visualized as a multiplicity of arrows in space, for example mapping the directions of particles moving in a fluid. Van Gogh is the supreme painter of intensive vector fields, and as such the supreme painter of partial objects. Each of Van Gogh’s paintings is a vector field. A vector in a Van Gogh painting is an array with roughly five dimensions: length, width, depth (or thickness, as in the amount of paint used), colour, and direction. In a Van Gogh painting, there are no total objects, only partial objects; that is to say, each “line” or vector of paint is a partial object, such that a whole painting is a vector field of paint or a set of partial objects. Van Gogh’s primary discovery (and object of research) is the axis of reality constituted by intensive fluids, and his great innovation in painting is the development of a method for recording or graphing these intensive fluids. For example, take a look especially at Starry Night and Wheatfield with Crows, as well as the various Cypress Trees, to name a few.

We accept Badiou’s mathematical ontology, that is, we accept Badiou’s axiom that “mathematics is ontology.” Reality is mathematical, that is to say, substance is mathematical, meaning that all attributes (including extensive space and intensive space) and their modifications are likewise mathematical. The precise description of each form is a mathematical description. Or, to phrase it another way: there is nothing unsymbolizable in reality, meaning that even imaginary-symbolic impossible objects are wholly symbolizable, because all of reality is mathematical, meaning that all of reality can be described by the symbolic unit-system or language of mathematics. Mathematics is Truth, Truth is mathematical. Only mathematical language can arrive at and precisely describe Truth. Speech, since it is a non-mathematical language, can only ever approximate or approach Truth without ever reaching it. Truth is the undefined limit of the multivariable function or curve of speech. Thus, through the medium of speech we can only at best discuss Truth, that is, “Truth” under erasure, to appropriate a concept developed by Heidegger and Derrida. In other words, Badiou does not and cannot have the last word in the explication of the ontology of mathematics. Here, we claim that a Spinozan ontology of substance is closer to the limit of Truth than Badiou’s ontology of the void (and moreover, not wholly incompatible with Badiou’s descriptions), but no doubt such a claim requires a rigorous proof which we do not provide here, since it is not the main focus of our inquiry. Mathematics is Truth because it perfectly describes unitsystems or forms that exist independent of the mind; moreover, mathematics also perfectly describes those unit-systems or forms that constitute the mind itself. By the implication of Badiou’s mathematical ontology, forms may be described in terms of set theory, that is to say, as sets of sets or as multiplicities. Substance is a multiplicity unto itself, meaning that its attributes and modes are multiplicities unto themselves. Substance itself is nothing but the set of all sets, and as such is it is the totality of all sets, but it does not for that reason totalize or unify all sets into a One; we completely agree with Badiou that there is no such (real) thing as the One. Each axis of the Real is constituted by sets, and each modification of an axis is also constituted by sets. Substance is precisely equivalent to its constitutive axes and their modifications. The immanence of substance, the immanence of the Real, the immanence of mathematics, the immanence of multiplicity, and the immanence of plasticity are one and the same immanence.

Substance is fundamentally incomplete, along each of its infinite axes, by virtue of its inherent excess, that is, because of its excess or infinity of forms. Time is fundamentally incomplete due to the inherent excess of the living present of substance, the plastic present, meaning that time is always already a work in progress, always already under construction. Incompleteness is excess, excess is incompleteness. In other words, there is neither an end of time, nor a telos of time, nor an Eternal Return of time stricto sensu; all these (end, telos, Eternal Return) amount to the same thing, since time must end in order to repeat and since a telos of time would be an end of time, but in any case, time is never complete in reality. Time is never closed. Time is forever open. Time is an open dynamical process, an open dynamical unit-system. The future is forever open. The possibility of a radical break with the past, that is, the arrival of the unknown and the unpredictable, is always there. The immanence of substance is the immanence of possibility. Each moment in time is pregnant with possibility. Time is forever pregnant, forever gestating, forever in labour. Time is the perpetual labour of perpetual birth. The future is always being born.

An affirmation of the idea of political revolution necessarily follows, since at the ontological level of Nature itself, there is always a possibility to destroy the State in order to create a new society against the State. To be sure, revolutions are always the products of labour, and the cosmic labour of substance does not necessarily produce a revolution, but the labour of revolution is always already a cosmic labour, an instance of the cosmic plasticity immanent to the cosmos, meaning that, in any case, there is always a very real possibility that there will be a revolution. To be more specific, we primarily believe in a macropolitical revolution, and we only believe in micropolitical practices of the self insofar as these prepare the ground for a macropolitical revolution. We believe in the practice of self-care only insofar as it opens the way for an extremist striving toward revolution. We believe in direct democracy, which can only be achieved on a macropolitical scale through the extremist striving toward revolution. We affirm the idea of world-transformation. The creation of a new form is always simultaneously cosmic and a practice of the self. Only the creation of new forms, whether aesthetic forms, discursive forms, social forms, or forms of combat, can change the world. In order to create a revolution, it is necessary to create new forms of self-defense (whether aesthetic, discursive, social, logistical, or martial).

Section 2: The Real and Reality

Explicating The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag by Robert Heinlein, Zizek reveals the nature of the Real, and how it is kept at a distance by psychoanalysis. The details of the Heinlein novel are not relevant to us here, what matters is a single scene: Randall and Cynthia are driving down the road, and when they stop the car and open a window, they see “nothing but a grey and formless mist, pulsing slowly as if with inchoate life” on the outside, in place of the normal scenery they had seen through the closed window (1991, p. 19). Zizek writes, “This “grey and formless mist, pulsing slowly as if with inchoate life,” what is it if not the Lacanian Real, the pulsing of the presymbolic substance in its abhorrent vitality? But what is crucial for us here is the place from which this Real erupts: the very borderline separating the outside from the inside, materialized in this case by the windowpane. Here, we should refer to the basic phenomenological experience of discord, the disproportion between inside and outside, present to anyone who has been inside a car. From the outside, the car looks small; as we crawl into it, we are sometimes seized by claustrophobia, but once we are inside, the car suddenly appears far larger and we feel quite comfortable. The price paid for this comfort is the loss of any continuity between “inside” and “outside.” To those sitting inside a car, outside reality appears slightly distant, the other side of a barrier or screen materialized by the glass. We perceive external reality, the world outside the car, as “another reality,” another mode of reality, not immediately continuous with the reality inside the car. The proof of this discontinuity is the uneasy feeling that overwhelms us when we suddenly roll down the windowpane and allow external reality to strike us with the proximity of its material presence. Our uneasiness consists in the sudden experience of how close really is what the windowpane, serving as a kind of protective screen, kept at a safe distance. But when we are safely inside the car, behind the closed windows, the external objects are, so to speak, transposed into another mode. They appear to be fundamentally “unreal,” as if their reality has been suspended, put in parenthesis—in short, they appear as a kind of cinematic reality projected onto the screen of the windowpane. It is precisely this phenomenological experience of the barrier separating inside from outside, this feeling that the outside is ultimately “fictional,” that produces the horrifying effect of the final scene in Heinlein’s novel. It is as if, for a moment, the “projection” of the outside reality had stopped working, as if, for a moment, we had been confronted with the formless grey, with the emptiness of the screen, with the “place where nothing takes place but the place,” if we may be permitted this – sacrilegious in this context perhaps – quotation from Mallarmé.” (1991, pp. 16–17)

It is apparent that Zizek, following Lacanian psychoanalysis, conceives of the Real as separate from reality. This is made even more abundantly clear when Zizek writes of Mark Rothko’s life and art: “When faced with such a paranoid construction, we must not forget Freud’s warning and mistake it for the “illness” itself: the paranoid construction is, on the contrary, an attempt to heal ourselves, to pull overselves out of the real “illness,” the “end of the world,” the breakdown of the symbolic universe, by means of this substitute formation. If we want to witness the process of this breakdown – the breakdown of the the barrier Real/reality – in its pure form, we have only to follow the path of the paintings produced in the 1960s, the last decade of his life, by Mark Rothko, the most tragic figure of American abstract expressionism. The “theme” of these paintings is constant: all of them present nothing but a set of color variations of the relationship between the Real and reality, rendered as a geometrical abstraction by the famous painting of Kasimir Malevich, The Naked Unframed Icon of My Time: a simple black square on a white background. The “reality” (white background surface, the “liberated nothingness,” the open space in which objects can appear) obtains its consistency only by means of the “black hole” in its center (the Lacanian das Ding, the Thing that gives body to the substance of enjoyment), i.e., by the exclusion of the Real, by the change of the status of the Real into that of a central lack. All late Rothko paintings are manifestations of a struggle to save the barrier separating the Real from reality, that is, to prevent the Real (the central black square) from overflowing the entire field, to preserve the distance between the square and what must at any cost whatsoever remain its background. If the square occupies the whole field, if the difference between the figure and its background is lost, a psychotic autism is produced. Rothko pictures this struggle as a tension between a gray background and the central black spot that spreads menacingly from one painting to another (in the late 1960s, the vivacity of red and yellow in Rothko’s canvases is increasingly replaced by the minimal opposition between black and gray). If we look at these paintings in a “cinematic” way, i.e., if we put the reproductions one above the other and then turn them quickly to get the impression of continuous movement, we can almost draw a line to the inevitable end—as if Rothko were driven by some unavoidable fatal necessity. In the canvases immediately preceding his death, the minimal tension between black and gray changes for the last time into the burning conflict between voracious red and yellow, witnessing the last desperate attempt at redemption and at the same time confirming unmistakably that the end is imminent. Rothko was one day found dead in his New York loft, in a pool of blood, with his wrists cut. He preferred death to being swallowed by the Thing, i.e., precisely by that “grey and formless mist, pulsing slowly as if with inchoate life” that the two heroes of the Heinlein novel perceive through their open window. Far from being a sign of “madness,” the barrier separating the Real from reality is therefore the very condition of a minimum of “normalcy”: “madness” (psychosis) sets in when this barrier is torn down, when the Real overflows reality (as in autistic breakdown) or when it is itself included in reality (assuming the form of the “Other of the Other,” of the paranoiac’s persecutor, for example).” (1991, pp. 19–20)

Let us begin by positively describing our concept of the Real, which we contend is the true one, before moving on to critique Zizek/Lacan’s concept of the Real. The Real is the “grey and formless mist, pulsing slowly as if with inchoate life, the pulsing of the presymbolic substance in its abhorrent vitality.” Plasticity is that which is “pulsing slowly as if with inchoate life,” that which is pregnant with new forms, which is the same as “the pulsing of the presymbolic substance in its abhorrent vitality.” Therefore, the Real is plasticity itself, plasticity is the Real itself. The Real, plasticity, is substance itself, the pulsing “pre-symbolic substance in its abhorrent vitality.” The “abhorrent vitality” of substance is its plasticity, that is to say, substance is plasticity itself. The Real overflows reality. There is no real barrier separating the Real from reality. Reality is never lacking the Real. The Real fills up reality to an always excessive degree. The pre-symbolic or non-symbolic Real is also immanent to the symbolic (which is really the same as the imaginary, such that it is the imaginary-symbolic). Deleuze and Guattari write, “The real is not impossible; on the contrary, within the real everything is possible, everything becomes possible” (AO, p. 27). Everything becomes possible within the Real, everything is possible within the Real, because the Real is possibility itself.

Now we can begin to see how wrong Zizek is and on how many counts. Let us consider the artificial metapsychological barrier between the Real and reality that is constructed by psychoanalysis, and not only by psychoanalysis. The artificial barrier between the Real and reality is a mechanism of the exclusion of madness (psychosis), that is, the exclusion or repression of the madness within oneself, an exclusion which Foucault, in The History of Madness, traces back to Western discourse in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, the collapse or absence of the artificial barrier between the Real and reality is not the sufficient condition of psychosis, although it is a necessary condition. The neurotic too, may lack an artificial barrier between the Real and reality. What is more primordially excluded and repressed within oneself by the artificial barrier between the Real and reality is one’s own faculty of freedom (for instance, the freedom to disobey the psychiatric institution, and the freedom to disobey more generally).

When describing the artificial barrier between the Real and reality, Zizek describes a mode of psychic life imposed by psychiatric institutions, in which there is a concerted and sustained effort to destroy all possibilities (the Real) except those prescribed by the psychiatric institution (the alienated “reality”), a mode of psychic life which we may simply describe as alienation or self-alienation. Self-alienation is defined by the institution and maintenance of the artificial barrier between the Real and reality. When Zizek compares this metapsychological barrier to being inside a car, his analogy is an inadequate one, since the metapsychological barrier between the Real and reality persists even when one exits the car, and in any case it never really applied while one was in the car, since while one is driving the outside is constantly intruding, such that the inside of the car is never entirely separate from the outside of the car; this is evident, at the very least, as the threat of the car accident, and much more so as the car accident itself, and less dramatically, it takes regularly takes the form of the traffic jam; and, of course, the relevance of the distinction disappears entirely when considering motorcycles. There are even specific works of art which include among its central themes the inseparable relationship of the automobile to the outside: Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! (1965), The Wild One (1953), Death Proof (2007), Crash by J.G. Ballard (1973) and its film adaptation by the same title (1996), and The Motorcycle Diaries (1993/2003) by Che Guevara; we may also cite the traffic jam in Weekend (1967) and the game of chicken in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). The artificial metapsychological border erected between the Real and reality is a cultural construct, and among its functions is the cultural construction of the comfort of selfalienation, that is, the comfort of easy answers, the comfort of obedience to the State, the comfort that has as its price the loss of any continuity between “inside” (the self) and “outside” (the world), such that to those situated inside the car of self-alienation, the “outside reality appears slightly distant, the other side of a barrier or screen materialized by the glass.” In other words, the mode of life of self-alienation is the mode of life of the spectator; the glass barrier of the screen separating and distancing the Real is not only the car window or the television screen, but the internalized television screen within the spectator that makes life itself into merely another spectacle to be watched but never participated in; to be more precise, this internalized glass screen is the movement of flows, the processes of desire, constituting the alienated’s desire for their own repression. The loss of any continuity between the “inside” and the “outside” is the loss of the Real itself; the Real is lost when it is kept at a distance, and thereby repressed or excluded; to be sure, this loss of the Real is entirely metapsychological, since in reality the Real is immanent; the loss of the Real is the loss of touch with the Real, the loss of touch with reality. The “inside” and the “outside” are never truly separate; the distinction we make between them is purely phenomenological and pragmatic, but even this phenomenology and pragmatism pushed far enough arrives at the absolute continuity between the “inside” and the “outside.” The world may continue to exist without one’s self, but one’s self never exists without the world.

To the spectator, external reality appears as “another reality” not continuous with the reality inside the self. That is to say, the spectator is alienated or estranged from the world, and moreover, the spectator actively desires their own alienation from the world, the spectator actively keeps the world at a distance, the spectator actively keeps the world comfortably locked behind a screen. The spectator is an essentially compartmentalized being, keeping the self in one compartment and the world in another compartment, keeping reality in one compartment and the Real in another compartment. The proof of the spectator’s cowardice lies in the fact that the spectator is overwhelmed with anxiety when external reality suddenly strikes them “with the proximity of its material presence.” That is, when the spectator is unable to keep the Real at a distance, when the spectator is unable to maintain the artificial barrier psychologically separating the Real from reality, then the proximity of the Real and its material presence overwhelms the spectator. The spectator’s internal barrier is a protective screen that keeps the Real at a safe distance. When the spectator is safely inside the car of selfalienation, behind the protective screen that keeps the Real at a distance, the world appears to become transposed into another mode of existence than that of the Real, the world appears to become fundamentally unreal; the world’s reality appears suspended, put in parenthesis, because the essential moment of the world’s reality, the Real, has been suspended and put in parenthesis. In other words, the world appears as a kind of cinematic reality projected onto the internal glass screen which keeps the Real at a distance, precisely because the Real is kept at a distance. Therefore, Zizek is wrong to claim that the “horrifying effect,” at least for Randall and Cynthia, at the end of Heinlein’s novel, is due to the feeling that the world outside is ultimately “fictional,” but he is right to note that in this scene “the “projection” of the outside reality has stopped working, as if for a moment we had been confronted with the formless grey, with the emptiness of the screen.” Recall that the purpose of the internal screen is precisely to keep the material presence of the Real psychologically at a distance, and that the idea of a separate “outside” is purely an artifice, a cultural construct, mutually dependent on the cultural construct of the barrier between the Real and reality. Randall and Cynthia do indeed realize that a “world” is entirely fictional, but this fictional “world” was merely the cultural construct of a “world” entirely separated from the Real, and the pulsing Real that confronts Randall and Cynthia is precisely the world of the Real, the real world, the world as it is, the world that is filled to excess with the Real. For Randall and Cynthia, what has stopped working is the artificial barrier between the Real and reality. Zizek, following Heinlein, describes substance as the “formless grey.” Substance is indeed formless in itself insofar as it is not itself a form, but that which has forms. In Heinlein’s story, substance is described as a “grey mist,” but this image is meant to suggest the concept of “formlessness,” which Zizek makes explicit. The “formless grey” is therefore a redundancy, the latter word illustrating by way of an image the concept designated by the first word. Substance is formless because it is plasticity itself, the possibility itself of forms, and this plasticity or possibility is not in itself a form. To use Spinoza’s jargon, substance is that which has modes, but substance itself is not a mode. Modes, forms are modifications of substance, but substance itself exists prior to it modes or forms, meaning that substance itself is in itself modeless or formless. That forms are modifications of substance means that forms are modifications of formlessness. Formlessness is necessary in order to create new forms. For example, the canvas is formless, and it is only by way of its formlessness that new forms can be created upon it, thereby modifying it. Following Zizek’s paraphrase of Mallarmé, we can indeed describe substance in topological and positional terms as the “place where nothing takes place but the place,” the pure place of which all other places are modifications, the pure place that is immanent. Once again, we can consider the example of the canvas, which is precisely a pure place or pure site, of which all the other places or sites that come to fill it, that is, all the lines of paint that come to fill it, are the modifications or forms. The canvas, however filled it is with modifications or forms, is nonetheless what fills a painting; the canvas is always immanent to the painting. The example of the canvas, however, is nonetheless only an illustrative or metaphorical example, since substance encompasses all of reality, meaning that the canvas is itself a form or modification of substance (and not substance itself).

It is indeed possible for a symbolic universe, that is, a body without organs, to break down, but a body without organs can only be destroyed by way of the construction of another, different body without organs. Moreover, the breakdown of a symbolic universe is not necessarily an “illness,” and may not even be experienced as an unhappy occasion, though it often is. However, Zizek is wrong to argue that the case of Mark Rothko’s last decade is characterized primarily by the breakdown of his symbolic universe. Zizek, following Lacan, generally fails to notice the production in desire itself. More specifically, Zizek approaches Rothko’s body without organs but passes it by entirely.

We deny that Rothko’s paintings (or for that matter, Kasimir Malevich’s The Naked Unframed Icon of My Time) have anything whatsoever to do with the aritificial barrier between the Real and reality. On the contrary, painters, and artists more generally, whether they are neurotic or psychotic, are always profoundly in touch with the Real, at least during the act of creation. The artist is profoundly aware of the Real that directly precedes their medium (e.g. the blank canvas in painting) and the Real that is produced through their medium (e.g. through paint upon the canvas in painting). In painting, both the canvas and the pain never cease to be anything other than possibility itself. The production of the Real is the production of new possibilities. Through the creation of new forms, the artist creates new possibilities. Everywhere, the Real produces the Real. The artist, whether neurotic or psychotic, consciously participates in the production of the Real by the Real. Rothko’s later paintings, whose theme is the play of minimal colour fields rendered as a handful of coloured rectangles upon a coloured background, are so many zones of intensity upon an original body without organs within Rothko. The Real is immanent to a body without organs and its zones of intensity. An artist, whether neurotic or psychotic, when they are more than a mere craftsman or technician, is a creator of bodies without organs. Whenever an artist produces variations on a theme, as in Rothko’s later period, they are experiencing and recording so many zones of intensity upon a single body without organs. These zones of intensity upon a body without organs are indices of the complicated relationship of attraction and repulsion that a body without organs has to desiring-machines.

Deleuze and Guattari warn that a body without organs “can be terrifying, and lead you to your death” (TP, p. 149). The body without organs whose degree of repulsion of desiring-machines (“organs”) is far greater than its degree of attraction of desiring machines rejects all “organs,” all desiring-machines, and thereby becomes “a body of nothingness, pure self-destruction whose only outcome is death,” to paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari (TP, p. 162). Deleuze and Guattari write, “We are of the opinion that what is ordinarily referred to as “primary repression” means precisely that: it is not a “countercathexis,” but rather this repulsion of desiringmachines by the body without organs” (AO, p. 9). The maximum degree of repulsion of desiring-machines by the body without organs is the successful repulsion of all desiring-machines, the maximum degree of anti-productive stasis, a body of pure death, a suicidal body, whose only outcome is suicide.

There is neither a fatal necessity nor a unifying line in Rothko’s final series of paintings. From “the canvases immediately preceding his death,” wherein “the minimal tension between black and gray changes for the last time into the burning conflict between voracious red and yellow,” we find only contingency, such that from them we can deduce neither “the last desperate attempt at redemption” nor the unmistakeable confirmation “that the end is imminent.” There is no reciprocal determination between the individual paintings of this final series, although a body without organs repeats itself in each of the constituent variations of the series. The “voracious red and yellow” painting is a quantity of intensity distinct from all the preceding quantities of intensity taking the forms of minimal black and grey paintings, although all are zones of intensity upon the same body without organs. The “voracious red and yellow” painting is only the index of an oscillation of attraction-repulsion between the body without organs and the desiring machines, but from this oscillation it is not possible to predict what came next, the surge of repulsion which transformed the aesthetic body into a suicidal body and resulted in Rothko’s suicide. In fact, it is not even possible to conclude that the “voracious red and yellow” painting is somehow higher in its quantity of intensity than the minimal black and grey paintings, since the black and grey affect was indeed a high enough quantity of intensity to inspire Rothko to reproduce it in paintings. Moreover, the “voracious red and yellow” painting is not necessarily an index of gaiety or the attempt to recapture gaiety, since, to paraphrase Rothko, “voracious red and yellow” are also the colours of an inferno. The black in Rothko’s black and grey paintings is still a colour, that is, it is still an index of a desiring-machine in a complicated relationship of attraction-repulsion with an aesthetic body, it is still an affirmation of life, there is still a jouissance to it, no matter how dismal and minimal its colour fields. Even wholly monochrome paintings such Yves Klein’s series of monochrome blue paintings or Alexander Rodchenko’s series of monochrome paintings titled The Death of Painting (consisting of Pure Red Colour, Pure Blue Colour, and Pure Yellow Colour) are still so many zones of intensity upon an aesthetic body, so many indices of attraction-repulsion between desiring-machines and an aesthetic body, so many reservoirs of jouissance, so many affirmations of life. Any artwork made by an artist, however weak their psychological or physiological hold on life, is an affirmation of life by definition, however disturbing or minimal its contents may be.

The real blackness which swallowed Rothko was the maximum degree of repulsion by his body without organs. To paint black is still wholly within the domain of light, but the absence of light is absolute blackness. The possibility of a monochrome black painting is therefore not the kind of blackness Rothko feared, for a monochrome black painting would still be an “organ” made of light, whereas the body without organs is the body without light, the body of darkness. It is likely that Rothko’s aesthetic body had many fits of increased repulsion to his desiring-machines throughout his life, which were all felt as the urge of suicide and entered thought as the contemplation of suicide. But insofar as this aesthetic body maintained an attraction to his desiring-machines, it maintained a hold on life, however tenuous, and this hold on life even managed to spill over into affirmations of life, however desperate, in the form of so many paintings.

The question remains as to what caused the maximum surge of repulsion in Rothko’s aesthetic body. We find ready answers in certain biographical details: failing health, heavy drinking, drug abuse, and separation from his wife Mell (Rothko committed suicide about a year and three months after his separation from his wife Mell, which was in turn partly caused by his failing health). It is easy enough to understand, without delving into jargon, how such circumstances, especially unhappiness in love, could lead a human being to suicide. Yet it remains difficult to articulate how suffering can be so unbearable that life itself must be given up in order to be rid of it. Schizoanalysis clarifies the antithetical relationship between the creative act and the act of suicide, thereby revealing aspects of each. As a great artist, Rothko was not only profoundly aware of the immanence of the Real in the creative act, but the Real immanent to the creative act had a precise clarity for him, and he lived for the Real immanent to the creative act. Sufferings are so many oscillations of attraction and repulsion between the desiringmachines and the body without organs. The greater the intensity of these particular oscillations, the greater the suffering. In addition, greater intensities of oscillations mean an increase in both attraction and repulsion, and the particular nature of suffering implies a proportionately lesser degree of attraction (since, in the case of suffering, the desiring-machines are experienced by the body without organs as a persecution apparatus, and thus rejected as so many foreign organs), thus bringing the body without organs dangerously close to the maximum degree of repulsion, the point of no return where the body without organs becomes pure and immediate self-destruction.

Section 3: Cruelty and Memory

Beginning with Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari make a radical break with their prior work, meaning that their later work, their post-Anti-Oedipus work or post-oedipal work, is deeply permeated with implicit criticisms of their earlier oedipal work, in addition to the explicit criticisms they engage in. For both Deleuze and Guattari, this radical break is a break with Freud, Lacan, Saussure, and Lévi-Strauss. Beginning with Anti-Oedipus, both Deleuze and Guattari both firmly negate the structuralist concept of “structure,” first in favour of Guattari’s concept of the machine (in Anti-Oedipus), and later in favour of the joint concept of the assemblage. For Deleuze, this new Guattarian philosophy of the machine implies a radical break with his earlier structuralist ontologies (in The Logic of Sense and Difference and Repetition). Much of Deleuze’s new machinic ontology, however, remains embedded in and implicit in his collaborations with Guattari, often using concepts (such as “body without organs”) wholly absent from his earlier works. Therefore, in order to explicate the ontology of the body without organs, we shall partially revise Deleuze’s earlier ontology, effectively subverting Deleuze’s earlier ontology in order to explicate his later ontology that he develops in collaboration with Guattari.

In his earlier essay “How Do We Recognize Structuralism?”, Deleuze introduces a concept of the virtual in order to explicate the structuralist concept of “structure”; basically, in this early essay, Deleuze accepts the strict partitions of the Lacanian ontological triad which divides the world into the 1) real, 2) the imaginary, and 3) the symbolic, and “structures” are relegated to the (non-imaginary and thus imageless) domain of the symbolic, which Deleuze also describes as “virtual.” Deleuze writes that “the virtual has a reality which is proper to it, but which does not merge with any actual reality, any present or past actuality. The virtual has an ideality that is proper to it, but which does not merge with any possible image, any abstract idea. We will say of structure: real without being actual, ideal without being abstract” (DI, pp. 178–179). Because there are only machines and no “structures,” Deleuze and Guattari recognize in Anti-Oedipus that the imaginary and the symbolic are really one and the same, that they belong to the same purely mental or metapsychological domain, meaning that there are no separate imaginary entities and symbolic entities, but rather unified imaginary-symbolic entities within the mind, hence why Deleuze and Guattari write, “we were unable to posit any difference in nature, any border line, any limit at all between the Imaginary and the Symbolic” (AO, p. 83). Therefore, we may revise Deleuze’s concept of the virtual so as to encompass the unity of the imaginary and the symbolic, meaning that all images are virtual by definition. Abstract ideas, too, insofar as they are imaginary-symbolic entities, are all virtual by definition. However, there are indeed metapsychological entities which are neither images nor abstract ideas, that is to say, metapsychological entities which are not imaginary-symbolic entities. Affects are those metapsychological entities which are not imaginary-symbolic, and which are neither images nor abstract ideas. All affects are virtual by definition. Therefore, affects are precisely those virtualities which do not “merge with any possible image, any abstract idea,” meaning that affects are a type of virtuality which is ontologically distinct from the other types of virtuality (namely, images and abstract ideas). However, all virtualities are nonetheless ontologically virtual and thus are the same in that they are irreducibly different from actualities. All actualities are capable of being perceived, although they may not be immediately perceived by a given productive subject, thus we shall describe actualities as “perceptibles.” Mental or metapsychological entities are virtual because they can never be perceived; they can neither be directly perceived by means of the sense-organs nor indirectly perceived by means of an instrument of perception. It is by means of perception that the productive subject distinguishes between the actual and the virtual; for example, the perception of an actual bolt of lightning is irreducibly different from the image of a virtual bolt of lightning. Likewise, abstract ideas and affects are never perceptibles. “The virtual has a reality proper to it” in that the virtual is objectively subjective, that is, virtualities have a real and objective existence precisely as metapsychological entities. One really imagines an image, thinks an abstract idea, or feels an affect, therefore all of these have a reality proper to them, albeit a reality limited to the mind since they are “only in one’s mind,” and this metapsychological reality proper to them is delineated precisely by the term “virtual.” Although we can describe all virtualities as being “real without being actual,” in that they are real without being perceptible, we can only describe affects as being “ideal without being abstract,” since abstract ideas too are virtualities. We describe affects as “purely virtual” since, unlike images they are not imaginary doubles of the physical, and unlike many abstract ideas they are not abstract generalizations of the physical or its imaginary copies (though pure abstractions, as in mathematics, also exist).

To clarify, a body without organs is a virtual body, not a physiological body. In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari write that the body without organs “is not a projection; it has nothing whatsoever to do with the body itself, or with an image of the body. It is the body without an image” (AO, p. 8). In other words, the body without organs is not a mental projection of the surface of the physiological body. The body without organs is a virtual body, and it is no less real for being entirely virtual, thus it has nothing whatsoever to do with the physiological body or with an image of the physiological body. Although the body without organs, insofar as it is constituted by a set of practices, is in a sense derived from bodily sensations (sensations of the physiological body), these derivations are nonetheless not images of the surface of the physiological body, but feelings or affects, which are purely virtual entities. Affects are virtualities. A body without organs, a virtual body, is a body of affects. A body without organs is a real body, though it is a purely virtual (metapsychological) body and not an actual (physiological or physical) body.

In “How Do We Recognize Structuralism?”, Deleuze describes affects as “attitudes,” which he also describes as purely virtual “singular points” or “singularities” (DI, p. 178). In The Logic of Sense he describes these virtual singularities “incorporeal effects” and “incorporeal events.” In Difference and Repetition (as in its summary, the short essay “The Method of Dramatization”), singularities are also called “ideal events,” “remarkable points,” and “brilliant points,” among other terms. To the reader, there may be some confusion when reading The Logic of Sense, since Deleuze makes a distinction between “bodies,” by which he means actualities, and “incorporeal effects,” by which he means virtual affects. However, this confusion may be remedied somewhat by reading “bodies” as “physical bodies,” in order to distinguish between actual-physical bodies and virtual bodies without organs. Thus we may read the following passages by Deleuze in The Logic of Sense: “Second, all [physical] bodies are causes in relation to each other, and causes for each other – but causes of what? They are causes of certain things of an entirely different nature. These effects are not [physical] bodies, but, properly speaking, “incorporeal” entities. They are not physical qualities and properties, but rather logical or dialectical attributes. They are not things or facts, but events. We can not say that they exist, but rather that they subsist or inhere (having this minimum of being which is appropriate to that which not a [physical] thing, a nonexisting [or rather, non-physical] entity). They are not substantives or adjectives but verbs. They are neither agents nor patients, but results of actions and passions. They are “impassive” entities – impassive results” (LS, pp. 4–5). To further explicate this concept of incorporeal events, Deleuze quotes Émile Bréhier’s “fine reconstruction of Stoic thought,” from which in fact he has derived his concept of incorporeal events: “when the scalpel cuts through the flesh, the first [physical] body produces upon the second not a new property but a new attribute, that of being cut. The attribute does not designate any real quality…, it is, to the contrary, always expressed by the verb, which means that it is not a being, but a way of being…This way of being finds itself somehow at the limit, at the surface of being, the nature of which it is not able to change: it is, in fact, neither active nor passive, for passivity would presuppose a corporeal nature which undergoes an action” (LS, p. 5).

Following Deleuze, we accept this Stoic metaphysics, with all the necessary revisions required, but only as a metapsychology, and not as an all-encompassing ontology. The physical bodies to which, in particular, this Stoic metapsychology applies, are physiological bodies and their physiological organs; the incoporeal effects being affects. Physiological organs and other physical bodies (not only the physiological organs of others, but also other material objects) are causes in relation to each other and for each other, whereas their metapsychological effects are purely virtual affects. Virtualities are incorporeal. Following Deleuze, we recognize affects as being virtual attributes, as opposed to physical qualities. These virtual “attributes” have nothing whatsoever to do with the term “attributes” in Spinoza’s philosophy. Virtual attributes are logical and diagonal, they are diagonalogical. Affects are diagonalogical virtual attributes or virtual events. Affects are not non-existent in the strict sense, but rather, their existence is strictly non-physical, that is, affects have a strictly metapsychological existence. Although the categories “active” and “passive” lose all real meaning in a machinic ontology, we can nonetheless understand Deleuze and Bréhier in the context of physical or corporeal objects when they speak of the “active” and the “passive.” The “active” is a physical or corporeal object that performs an action, whereas the “passive” is a physical or corporeal object that undergoes the action of an “active” physicalcorporeal object. In this sense, affects are neither “active” nor “passive” since affects are not physical-corporeal. Affects are indeed the results of actions and passions (or practices and intentions), but only those actions and passions that are related to the productive subject (who either performs them or undergoes them). If affects are impassive, then the virtual body of affects is even more so. As metapsychological entities, affects are not beings, but ways of being. A way of being is an attitude. That is to say, affects are attitudes, attitudes are affects. A body of affects, being a body of attitudes, is a meta-attitude (or meta-affect). Moreover, affects, being incorporeal effects (as opposed to corporeal causes), can function as quasicauses in relation to other incorporeal entities (but they are not full “causes” insofar as only the corporeal is defined fully as “causes” here) (LS, p. 6; p. 8). By implication then, meta-affects, being incorporeal bodies of incorporeal effects, can likewise function as quasi-causes. Hence the closed feedback loop between motivationtechnologies, bodies without organs, and affects.

In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze follows Bréhier in describing incorporeal effects as existing (or subsisting) “at the surface of being,” meaning at the surface of a physical being, hence why Deleuze also describes incorporeal effects as “surface effects” (LS, pp. 4–11). To reiterate, this metaphysics of the surface and surface effects must be understood in terms of metapsychology. The surface in question is a physiological surface, and the surface effect in question is a purely metapsychological affect. Let us take, for example, Bréhier’s example of the scalpel cutting through flesh, as quoted by Deleuze: “when the scalpel cuts through the flesh, the first [physical] body produces upon the second not a new property but a new attribute, that of being cut.” The tactile perception of a scalpel cutting one’s skin is a mixture of physical bodies which also happens to constitute a physiological surface (the site of the cut in my flesh), but this physiological surface of causes is ontologically distinct from the purely virtual surface effect (or attribute) of the affect of pain. To reiterate, the affect of pain is neither a perception of a physical body, nor a mental projection of the surface of the body, nor an image of the surface of the body, nor an abstract idea; rather, the affect of pain is a purely virtual event. An affect certainly has neurophysiological correlates, but the affect itself is wholly impercetible and thus purely virtual. A feeling can neither be directly perceived through the senses nor indirectly perceived through instruments of perception, which can at best detect only facial expressions, wetness or dryness of the eyes, tones of voice, body postures and gestures, heart rate, neurotransmitters, neuroanatomy, etc., but never the purely subjective “meaning” of these myriad physical-material signs; rather, we must always infer the existence of wholly virtual (but nonetheless very real) feelings (however consciously or instinctively we make such inferences). We understand Deleuze’s Stoical and paradoxical “dismissal of depth” (LS, p. 9) and affirmation of surface precisely in terms of the dismissal of physiology (including the dismissal of neurophysiology) and the affirmation of metapsychology. In other words, an affect can never be found at any material depth of physiology (for example, from the material surface of the face to the material depth of the brain). Rather, affects exist precisely at or upon the material surface of physiology as extra-physiological or metaphysiological, that is to say, incorporeal and metapsychological, events.

In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze describes incorporeal attributes as “logical and dialectical” (LS, p. 5), a conception that depends upon his subscription to the categories of propositions and phrases, and his exclusion of the category of statements. Deleuze later implicitly embraces statements and moves beyond propositions and phrases in his work with Guattari (most prominently in the rhizomatics of A Thousand Plateaus), but this break is only made explicit in his study of Foucualt, Foucualt. In Foucault, Deleuze writes, “The new archivist proclaims that henceforth he will deal only with statements. He will not concern himself with what previous archivists have treated in a thousand different ways: propositions and phrases. He will ignore both the vertical hierarchy of propositions which are stacked on top of one another, and the horizontal relationship established between phrases in which each seems to respond to another. Instead he will remain mobile, skimming along in a kind of diagonal line that allows him to read what could not be apprehended before, namely statements” (F, p. 1). Deleuze also writes that the following “comment by Boulez on the rareified universe of Webern” equally applies to the rareified universe of Foucault: “He created a new dimension, which we might call a diagonal dimension, a sort of distribution of points, groups or figures that no longer act simply as an abstract framework but actually exist in space” (F, p. 22). The vertical logic of propositions concerns the hierarchy of stacks of propostions, and the horizontal dialectic of phrases concerns the mutual responses or oppositions of phrases to each other. In contrast, the diagonal logic of statements concerns the distribution of statements as so many points in space. Foucault develops his diagonalogic in order to apply it to the analysis or meta-analysis of history. History is not continuous, history has no inherent consonance or harmony. History is neither propositional nor dialectical. History is genealogical, meaning that history is discontinuous; history is atonal, dissonant, and disharmonious. Diagonalogic is an atonal logic. Virtual attributes are so many singular points distributed in the diagonal dimension of intensive space; they are not an abstract framework, but actually exist in intensive space. The schizoanalyst, the archaeologistarchivist of affects, remains mobile, skimming along in a transversal or mobile diagonal line that allows them to apprehend virtual attributes (singular points or affects), which remain invisible to cognitivism, behaviourism, neuroscience, and psychoanalysis. In Foucault, Deleuze writes that “formations,” or sets of points distributed in space, “are not just compounds built up from their coexistence but are inseparable from ‘temporal reactors of derivation’; and when a new formation appears, with new rules and series, it never comes all at once, in a single phrase or act of creation, but emerges like a series of ‘building blocks’, with gaps, traces and reactivations of former elements that survive under the new rules. Despite isomorphisms and isotopies, no formation provides the model for another” (F, pp. 21–22). This latter passage applies, mutatis mutandis, to the historical constructions of virtual bodies. When a new virtual body appears, with its new axioms and series of virtual attributes and recordings, it never comes all at once in a single act of creation, but rather “emerges like a series of ‘building blocks’, with gaps, traces and reactivations” of former virtual attrbutes (of former virtual bodies) that survive under the new axioms. Despite isomorphisms and isotopies of virtual attributes, no virtual body provides the model for another. Hence the fundamental ambiguities of so many virtual bodies, whose founding practices and corresponding virtual attributes may be implicated with prior virtual bodies, thereby establishing connections of various kinds with prior virtual bodies. For example, the masochist body or the drugged body may be implicated with a prior capitalist body in various ways, for example, insofar as it costs money to employ a mistress or insofar as it costs money to buy drugs; the point being that, in the construction of a new virtual body, it is difficult to fully break with or destroy an old virtual body.

Schizoanalysts are amateurs and inventors of experimental programs. Schizoanalysts use experimental programs in largely the same manner in which they have always been used, both as an instrument for the analysis or meta-analysis of practice and as a means of synthesizing virtual events, albeit with one major difference: the schizoanalytic project is an anarchist project, a project of total liberation from all forms of oppression or repression, thus the schizoanalyst’s use of experimental programs, analysis or meta-analysis of practice, and synthesis of virtual events takes place only as so many means of the project of liberation, means of liberation which are always already ends of liberation in themselves. Diagonalogics is precisely the science of incorporeal events as they are expressed in practices, and the distributions, connections, divergences, redistributions, and ruptures between incorporeal events as they are expressed in relations between practices. Statements are merely one type of practice among others, discursive practices or linguistic practices. To paraphrase Deleuze, diagonalogics is the art of pursuing different series, travelling along different levels, and crossing all thresholds (F, p. 22). Diagonalogics is the art of transversality. It is the task of praxis both to establish limits and go beyond them. Because praxis contains elements that do not cease to produce intensities, it is always already the task of praxis both to establish unit-systems of intensities and to go beyond them (hence the constructions, elaborations, and destructions of virtual bodies). The virtual event is coextensive with ontological becoming, and ontological becoming is itself coextensive with praxis. Praxis exists not only in extensive space, but also simultaneous in intensive space. Like statements, the dimension of praxis is a diagonal dimension, a dimension of distribution: practices are so many points distributed in intensive space that no longer simply act as an abstract framework but actually exist in intensive space. Everything happens internal to praxis, internally in praxis. In Foucault, Deleuze writes, “If statements can be distinguished from words, phrases or propositions, it is because they contain their own functions of subject, object and concept in the form of ‘derivatives’. To be precise, subject, object and concept are merely functions derived from the primitive function or from the statement” (F, p. 9). To paraphrase Deleuze, each statement is its own special world in that each statement produces its own discursive subject or residual subject (that is, its own virtual event) that stems from the statement itself, its own purely discursive object (or imaginary-symbolic object) that stems from the statement itself, and its own discursive concept or “schemata” that stems from the statement itself and which is to be found at the intersection of different discursive unit-systems which “are cut across by the statement acting in the role of primitive function” (F, pp. 6–8). What Deleuze (and Foucault) write about statements applies, mutatis mutandis, equally well to practices, not because practices are statements, but because statements are practices. That is to say, Foucault focuses his inquiry on statements, but in doing so he also outlines a general theory of praxis, since the functioning of statements overlaps somewhat with the functioning of practices in general. Each practice is its own special world. Each practice is a primitive function which produces at least one derived function or derivative: the virtual event or affect, which is, as we shall later see, the same as the residual subject. Thus, praxis appears as a dismissal of depth, a play of surfaces and a display of virtual events at the surface, and even as the deployment of transversal or mobile diagonal lines of praxis that cross all limits. (Each practice, each affect, and each statement are each multiplicities unto themselves; and practices, affects, and statements are each points of their own type distributed in a space which they properly belong to and which properly belongs to them).

Let us consider again the construction of a masochist body, but this time in greater detail, especially in the light of incorporeal events such as “being cut,” in order to illuminate the construction of virtual bodies generally. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari offer the following example of a masochist’s experimental program: “Mistress, 1) You may tie me down on the table, ropes drawn tight, for ten to fifteen minutes, time enough to prepare the instruments; 2) One hundred lashes at least, a pause of several minutes; 3) You begin sewing, you sew up the hole in the glans; you sew the skin around the glans to the glans itself, preventing the top from tearing; you sew the scrotum to the skin of the thighs. You sew the breasts, securely attaching a button with four holes to each nipple. You may connect them with an elastic band with buttonholes —Now you go on to the second phase: 4) You can choose either to turn me over on the table so I am tied lying on my stomach, but with my legs together, or to bind me to the post with my wrists together, and my legs also, my whole body tightly bound; 5) You whip my back buttocks thighs, a hundred lashes at least; 6) You sew my buttocks together, all the way up and down the crack of my ass. Tightly, with a doubled thread, each stitch knotted. If I am on the table, now tie me to the post; 7) You give me fifty thrashes on the buttocks; 8) If you wish to intensify the torture and carry out your threat from last time, stick the pins all the way into my buttocks as far as they go; 9) Then you may tie me to the chair; you give me thirty thrashes on the breasts and stick in the smaller pins; if you wish, you may heat them red-hot beforehand, all or sorne. I should be tightly bound to the chair, hands behind my back so my chest sticks out. I haven’t mentioned burns, only because I have a medical exam coming up in awhile, and they take a long time to heal.”

We are concerned here primarily with three levels or stratas of the above masochist program: 1) the surface itself, the mixture of physical and physiological entities that function as causes; 2) the surface effects or virtual events, the virtual affects produced by the mixture of physical and physiological entities; 3) the ossification of this set of virtual affects into a virtual body. Let us assume that this masochist program is carried out successfully and that a virtual body is thereby successfully constructed. The mixture of physical and physiological entities, including the various physiological organs of the masochist (or sub) and the mistress, and the various instruments used for torture (rope, whip, sewing needle, thread, pins, etc.), is simple enough to extract from a “literal” reading of the above text. Each corporeal (and, in this case, also corporal) practice and its correlated intention produce a virtual event-affect in the productive subject of the given practice and intention. Of course, there are two productive subjects that participate in the above experimental program, the masochist and his mistress, but the productive subject that is the “object” of the experimental program, the one in whom a virtual body is constructed, is indubitably the masochist. Therefore, in relation to the construction of a virtual body, our primary concern is the virtual events-affects in the productive subjectivity of the masochist. Just as the virtual event-affect of a scalpel cutting one’s flesh is described by Deleuze and Bréhier as “being cut,” we may likewise delineate the series of virtual events-affects in the above experimental program corresponding to each step in the program: Phase One: 1) being tied down tight on the table; 2) being lashed one hundred times (at least); 3) having the hole in one’s glans sewn up, having the skin around one’s glans sewn to the glans itself, having one’s scrotum sewn to the skin of the thighs, having one’s breasts sewn with a button with four holes securely attached to each nipple, having the aforementioned buttons connected with an elastic band through the buttonholes; Phase Two: 4) either being turned over on the table so that one is lying on one’s stomach with one’s legs together, or being bound to a post with one’s wrists and legs together and having one’s whole (physiological) body tightly bound; 5) being whipped upon one’s buttocks with a hundred lashes (at least); 6) having one’s buttocks sewn together tightly all the way up and down the crack of one’s ass (with a double thread, each stitch knotted), and if one was previously on the table then one is now being tied to the post; 7) being thrashed fifty times upon the buttocks; 8) having pins stuck all the way into one’s buttocks as far as they go; 9) being tied to a chair, being thrashed thirty times on the breasts, having smaller pins stuck in one’s breasts (some or all redhot). This set of virtual events-affects of pain are indeed purely virtual; to reiterate, the virtual event-affect of pain (in whatever type or nuance) is purely metapsychological, and is neither equivalent to the physiological body nor an image of the physiological body. The actions or practices that produce this set of virtual events-affects is perfectly clear. The passion or intention that produces this set of virtual events-affects is quite simply the masochist’s intention to construct a body without organs, whatever he may call the body without organs, and whether or not he is able to name the body without organs at all. Deleuze and Guattari write that the construction of a body without organs is “already accomplished the moment you undertake it, unaccomplished as long as you don’t” meaning that the intention to construct a body without organs is the main ingredient in the formula for creating a body without organs (TP, p. 149). The experimental practices follow from the intention to construct a virtual body, but without the intention to construct a virtual body there are no experimental practices as such. The virtual affects constitutive of a virtual body are thereby determined in the last instance by the intention to construct a virtual body, from which the experimental practices necessary follow which result in those virtual affects. The masochist understands all too well the old platitude, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Deleuze and Guattari emphasize that there are two phases in the construction of a body without organs, and that they are distinct phases despite the fact that the latter phase repeats the same practices as the prior phase (for example, in the above masochist program, both phases include binding, sewing, and flogging/whipping): “One phase is for the fabrication of the BwO, the other to make something circulate on it or pass across it; the same procedures are nevertheless used in both phases, but they must be done over, done twice” (TP, p. 152). The body without organs is a matrix of intensities. In the first phase of its construction, a set of intensities are assembled together in a determinate way, and in the second phase of its construction, the immediate repetition of the same procedures (with or without some slight variations) simultaneously ossifies the first determinate set of intensities and produces a circulation of new set of intensities upon the surface of the first. Thereupon, the newly constructed body without organs and its newly circulating intensities is mediated by a celibate machine that functions as a combinatory formula, capable of generating infinitely new variations of intensities of the same type. Thus, a body without organs is not so much a practice or set of practices, nor is it an image of a practice or set of practices, but rather, the body without organs is the determinate bricolage of intensities produced and circulated by an experimental practice or set of experimental practices. The set of experimental practices that creates a body without organs is merely the determinate conditions which enable the newly created body without organs to be populated only by intensities or “waves” of a certain type (for example, the pain waves that populate the masochist body, or the refrigerator waves that populate the drugged body). Thus, the creation of a zombie body is a biphasic process of construction and circulation in which a determinate set of affects is transformed into repetition and compulsion, that is to say, into a repetition-compulsion. The creation of a body without organs is the creation of a drive, and all drives are repetition-compulsions, that is to say, all drives are death-drives.

Deleuze writes, “If there is nothing to see behind the curtain, it is because everything is visible, or rather all possible science is along the length of the curtain. It suffices to follow it far enough, and precisely enough, and superficially enough, in order to reverse sides and to make the right side become the left or vice versa. It is not therefore a question of the adventures of Alice, but of Alice’s adventure: her climb to the surface, her disavowal of false depth and her discovery that everything happens at the border…It is by following the border, by skirting the surface, that one passes from [physical] bodies to the incorporeal” (LS, pp. 9–10). All possible science of bodies without organs, at the very least, is along the length of the flesh. There is nothing beneath or behind the flesh, meaning that everything is visible, or rather, that the invisible is a faint mist or film without volume enveloping the visible. In the masochist’s experimental program, the masochist’s flesh is the curtain, and all intensities are produced as effects along the length of the curtain of the flesh. There is nothing behind or beneath the flesh; everything takes place upon the flesh. Flesh is a material surface, intensities are surface effects; likewise, the body without organs is a matrix of surface effects, and the virtual surface of the body without organs is not the same as the material (actual) surface of the flesh. The infinite number of axes of substance are the “sides” of substance, thus it suffies to follow any one axis of substance far enough, and precisely enough, and superficially enough, in order to “reverse sides,” that is, to discover an adjacent axis of substance; thus, human beings, who are only aware of two (adjacent) axes of substance, the extensive and the intensive, are forever passing from the extensive to the intensive and from the intensive to the extensive. The reverse side of extensive space is intensive space, the reverse side of the flesh is the psyche. Throught his experimental program, it suffices to follow the masochist’s flesh far enough, and precisely enough, and superficially enough, in order to “reverse sides” and move from the axis of the extensive to the adjacent axis of the intensive, and vice versa. The masochist’s experimental program is his adventure, the masochist adventure: his climb to the flesh, his disavowal of false depth (for example, the masochist’s heroic rejection of all obscurantist mysticism, as well as his heroic rejection of the naive scientism of neurophilosophy, at least during the masochist program itself), and his discovery that everything happens at or upon the flesh. The same can be said, mutatis mutandis, for all experimental programs or adventures (for example, the drug-user’s adventure, their construction of a drugged body), that is to say, the same can be said for all creators and creations of bodies without organs. The creation of a body without organs, the experimental program, is always an adventure: a climb to the flesh, a disavowal of false depth, and the discovery that everything happens at or upon the flesh. It is by following the flesh, by skirting the flesh, that one passes from the flesh to intensities, and from the physiological body to the virtual body. Moreover, although we have spoken here of the flesh, we could just as well have spoken of the mind, since mind and matter are reversible. That is to say, one can just as well move from the virtual surface of a virtual body to the material surface of the flesh, which is precisely the movement constitutive of the mental adventure (for example, the creation of a work of true art is a mental adventure); the mental adventure, too, is a disavowal of false depth and the discovery that everything happens upon surfaces.

Deleuze and Guattari’s account of the construction of a virtual body, however, is all too optimistic and naive, despite the gruesome and morbid examples they provide. We affirm that a virtual body can be constructed inside one against one’s own will, that is, in the absence of the intention to construct a virtual body in oneself, even when one’s intention is precisely that a virtual body not be constructed inside oneself; we name such a virtual body that is constructed inside oneself without one’s consent the “traumatic body” or the “body of trauma.” The above set of practices and affects delineated, as long as they belong to the masochist, are intentionally created, that is, created with his consent; the mistress participates in a sort of theatrical work (which is, like all theatrical work, nonetheless also real, productive of real effects) with the full consent of the masochist. The masochist and his mistress participate in consensual torture; they are having fun, in their own way. However, it is easy to imagine the same set practices being performed upon a productive subject without their consent; in such a case of torture without consent, the same practices produce quite different effects, since, in the absence of consent or intention, the virtual events-affects produced are experienced as brutally intrusive and unwanted by the productive subject, which is precisely the experience of trauma. One who suffers from a trauma suffers from a virtual body of trauma. Freud describes the condition of suffering from trauma “traumatic neurosis” (1920/1961, pp. 6–8). The specific example Freud provides of traumatic neurosis is “war neurosis,” which is provoked by the trauma of war (1920/1961, p. 6). There are, of course, as many different types of traumatic neuroses as there are traumas; in addition to war neurosis, we recognize “rape neurosis,” provoked by the trauma of rape, to be as serious and epidemic a condition. The war neurotic, the sufferer of war neurosis, suffers from the virtual body of war. The rape neurotic, the sufferer of rape neurosis, suffers from the virtual body of rape. A body of trauma is populated by waves of trauma, trauma waves. For example, a body of war is populated by war waves, and a body of rape is populated by rape waves; that is to say, traumatic affects of the specific type of trauma populate the specific type of traumatic body. Traumatic neurotics, sufferers of traumatic neurosis, are constantly occupied in their waking lives by memories of their trauma despite being concerned with and attempting to not think about it. Traumatic neurosis is characterized by this involuntary fixation on the trauma as well as recurring nightmares about the trauma. On these recurring nightmares, Freud writes that “dreams occurring in traumatic neuroses have the characteristic of repeatedly bringing the patient back into the situation of [their] accident, a situation from which [they wake] up in another fright” (1920/1961, p. 7). However, Freud is unable to truly explain the recurring nightmares of traumatic neurosis, and traumatic neurosis more generally, since none of it fits into the boxes of either “wish-fulfillment” (“fantasy”) or “repression.” From our preliminary analysis of masochism, it is amply evident that the masochist’s pain-inducing activities are entirely consensual, whereas the pain experienced by the victim of trauma is entirely nonconsensual (which is exactly why the victim’s pain is traumatic by definition). We affirm the conclusion that Freud dismisses, namely: “the fact that the traumatic experience is constantly forcing itself upon the patient even in his sleep is a proof of the strength of that experience” (1920/1961, p. 7). In general, our most intense experiences are constantly forcing themselves upon us, even in our sleep, since memories are forged by relatively high quantities of intensity. The intensity of an experience impresses that experience upon our memory like a red-hot brand (we have previously described this theory of memory as the mnemonics of cruelty, following Nietzsche, as well as mnemonic impression, in opposition to Freud; cf. Nietzsche, GM, II.3). If certain imagefragments or memory-images repeatedly force themselves upon us, it is only by way of their association with a relatively high quantity of intensity. Whether we feel an intensity as “pleasure,” “pain,” or something else is irrelevant to the mnemotechnics of cruelty, in that what matters in the forging of memories is the quantity of intensity and not its “quality” (“pleasure” or “pain,” etc.). Incidentally, a dream is neither inherently nor primarily a wish-fulfillment (or fantasy), though it may also be; rather, a dream is inherently and primarily a bricolage of intensities, that is to say, our dreams consist precisely of our most intense experiences constantly forcing themselves on us even in our sleep, without regard for chronology, logic, or proportion (which is why a dream can only secondarily be a wish-fulfillment, if it is a wish-fulfillment at all; a lot depends upon the quantity of intensity of the wish in relation to the quantities of intensity of other metapsychological entities which are not wishes, such as memories and predictions); moreover, each dream is a new construction, a motivation-construction, and as such each has a body without organs particular to it as well as usually taking place upon a prior body without organs. Traumatic experiences are especially intense precisely because they are nonconsensual, since the lack of consent is itself a source of great pain and humiliation for the productive subject. The fact that a traumatic experience constantly forces itself upon the traumatic neurotic, even in his sleep, thereby proving the strength (or quantity of intensity) of that experience, is affirmed by the reports of traumatic neurotics themselves, who describe precisely this condition. In order to destroy the virtual body of a trauma, a new virtual body must be intentionally constructed; many traumatic neurotics arrive at this conclusion themselves (whether they are able to put it in words or not), and some construct a drugged body by means of drugs, and some even construct a masochist body by means of consensual sadomasochistic practices, (to clarify, we do not necessarily advocate drugs or masochism; on the other hand, we do necessarily advocate intensity), while others construct other types of virtual bodies, sometimes in a process of self-healing, other times in a process of self-destruction. Only a new set of intensities can negate a prior set of intensities, whether those new intensities are “pains” or “pleasures,” and thereby forge new memories and cause new memories and patterns of thought to circulate in one’s mind.

Nietzsche writes that “there was nothing more fearful and uncanny in the whole prehistory of man than his mnemotechnics. “If something is to stay in the memory it must be burned in: only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory” – this is a main clause of the oldest (unhappily also the most enduring) psychology on earth. One might even say that wherever on earth solemnity, seriousness, mystery, and gloomy coloring still distinguish the life of man and a people, something of the terror that formerly attended all promises, pledges, and vows on earth is still effective: the past, the longest, deepest and sternest past, breathes upon us and rises up in us whenever we become “serious.” Man could never do without blood, torture, and sacrifices when he felt the need to create a memory for himself; the most dreadful sacrifices and pledges (sacrifices of the first-born among them), the most repulsive mutilations (castration, for example), the cruelest rites of all the religious cults (and all religions are at the deepest level systems of cruelties) – all this has its origin in the instinct that realized that pain is the most powerful aid to mnemonics.” (GM, II.3)

Mnemonic cruelty or mnemonic impression is also the metapsychological basis of Artaud’s theatre of cruelty; as Culp recounts, “Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty gives shape to the way forward…The resulting theater is not for telling stories but to “empower” [in our jargon, to increase strength, that is, to increase capability], to implant images in the brains of those powerless to stop it. The cruel force of these images strikes something in the skull but not the mind (a nerve? brain matter?).” Culp opposes cruelty to intensity as the essence of affects, but for Deleuze and Guattari, as for Nietzsche and Artaud, cruelty and intensity are one and the same force. Culp is merely quibbling over the superficialities of terminology on this point (although his work, even here, is as admirable as the rest of his work). A quantity of intensity is a quantity of cruelty. Each sense-impression has a correlated virtual event, a quantity of intensity, that is, a quantity of cruelty, whether relatively high or relatively low. The intensity of cruelty or the cruelty of intensity strikes a heart in the skull, a body without organs, and it thereby implants or impresses the image-fragments associated with it; otherwise, these quantities of intensity-cruelty and their associated image-fragments construct a new body without organs. If memory is a theatre, then it is a theatre of cruelty. The labour of cruelty and the labour of memory are one and the same. Nietzsche’s scientific discovery of the mnemonics of cruelty is the basis of all true metapsychology, but its ontological basis is found not in the works of Nietzsche, but in the works of Deleuze and Guattari, particularly in their ontology of the body without organs, as recounted above. The body without organs is always a body of cruelty.

Nietzsche explicitly opposes the cruelty of impressions to the active force of forgetting. Nietzsche writes, “To breed an animal with the right to make promises – is not this the paradoxical task that nature has set itself in the case of man? Is it not the real problem regarding man? That this problem has been solved to a large extent must seem all the more remarkable to anyone who appreciates the strength of the opposing force, that of forgetfulness. Forgetting is no mere vis inertiae as the superficial imagine; it is rather an active and in the strictest sense positive faculty of repression, that is responsible for the fact that what we experience and absorb enters our consciousness as little while we are digesting it (one might call the process “inpsychation”) as does the thousandfold process, involved in physical nourishment – so-called “incorporation”…Now this animal which needs to be forgetful, in which forgetting represents a force, a form of robust health, has bred in itself an opposing faculty, a memory, with the aid of which forgetfulness is abrogated in certain cases – namely in those cases where promises are made.” (GM, II.1). Nietzsche, when introducing his theory of the mnemonics of cruelty, writes, ““How can one create a memory for the human animal? How can one impress something upon this partly obtuse, partly flighty mind, attuned only to the passing moment, in such a way that it will stay there?” One can well believe that the answers and methods for solving this primeval problem were not precisely gentle; perhaps indeed there was nothing more fearful and uncanny in the whole prehistory of man than his mnemotechnics” (GM, II.3). It is unfortunate that Kaufmann translates “Hemmungsvermögen” as “repression,” which immediately and inappropriately connotes Freud’s thoroughly debunked theory of “repression.” “Hemmungsvermögen” may also be translated as “inhibition,” which we will use in place of “repression” in order to distinguish Nietzsche’s theory of memory from Freud’s.

Forgetfulness or forgetting is an active force and positive faculty of inhibition. The force or labour of forgetting inhibits the formation of memories, that is, it inhibits sense-impressions (as well as thoughts) from becoming mnemonic impressions. Nietzsche writes that the ability to meaningfully make promises and keep them requires the faculty or force of memory. Forgetting is a natural faculty or force of the psyche, as evinced by the fact that one never remembers absolutely every sense-impression that enters consciousness. Nietzsche argues that the faculty or force of memory is a faculty or force of cruelty, such that particular memories are formed only by means of quantities of cruelty. Therefore, by implication, the faculty or force of forgetting is the relative absence of cruelty. That is to say, forgetting is a natural result of the relative absence of intensity. We forget what is not intense, and we remember what is intense.

Let us take a moment to appreciate how fundamentally opposed are Nietzsche’s and Freud’s respective theories of memory. Freud writes that the “significance of the Oedipus-complex as the central phenomenon of the sexual period in early childhood reveals itself more and more. After this it disappears; it succumbs to repression, as we say, and is followed by the latency period. But it is not yet clear to us what occasions its decay; analyses seem to show that the painful disappointments experienced bring this about” (1924, p. 269). Freud specifies that the “painful disappointment” in question that brings about the repression of the Oedipus complex is “castration anxiety,” which in the archetypal case means that the little boy becomes afraid that the Father will cut his little penis off (especially after the little boy discovers that women and girls don’t have penises, i.e. that they are “castrated”). In Freud’s theory of memory, “repression” is a directed forgetting prompted by a high quantity of cruelty or intensity, which invariably also means the “repression” or forgetting of the fact that any “repression” occurred at all (hence the manufactured necessity of psychoanalysis, which purports to be a theory and a method to make us remember what we have “repressed” to the point of not even having any memory of “repressing” it). Nietzsche’s theory of memory is diametrically opposed to, and irreconcilable with, Freud’s theory of memory. Whereas Nietzsche describes forgetting as the result of the absence of cruelty, Freud describes forgetting as the result of the presence of cruelty. Moreover, Nietzsche’s theory of memory is evidently the true one. Trauma is what we remember, not what we forget. Trauma causes us to remember, not to forget. Trauma causes us to remember those sense-impressions associated with it at the moment of its occurrence. The absence of cruelty causes us to forget all those sense-impressions not associated with a sufficient quantity of cruelty. Therefore, we may reject the totality of Freudian psychoanalysis as so much blatant falsehood and gaslighting (in less polite terms, as so much bullshit and fraud), on firm and unshakeable grounds. The popularity of psychoanalysis, at least in culture studies and philosophy, is a testament to the paucity of culture studies and the “poverty of philosophy” (to borrow a phrase from Marx), and the sorry state of our knowledge of the human mind. Scientific progress in metapsychology simply cannot occur until psychoanalysis is totally abandoned. Lacanian psychoanalysis is so much dead weight on our shoulders, a corpse that we are ordered to carry around (for example, by Zizek). The way forward is pointed out to us by Nietzsche, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari. In fact, it is only by properly understanding Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the body without organs, which is the foundation of schizoanalysis, that we find the firm and unshakeable grounds, the ontological basis, for affirming the Nietzschean theory of memory, the mnemotechnics of cruelty.

Moreover, it is only on the basis of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the body without organs, in combination with Nietzsche’s theory of the mnemotechnics of cruelty, that the Nietzschean project of creating new values becomes legible and operational. Saussure approaches our concept of micro-value with his concept of “value.” Saussure writes, “Take a knight, for instance. By itself is it an element in the game? Certainly not, for by its material makeup – outside its square and the other conditions of the game – it means nothing to the player; it becomes real, it becomes a concrete element only when endowed with value and wedded to it. Suppose that the piece happens to be lost or destroyed during a game. Can it be replaced by an equivalent piece? Certainly. Not only another knight but a figure shorn of any resemblance to a knight can be declared identical provided the same value is attributed to it” (1916/2011, p. 110). Saussure, of course, understands this in terms of a transcendental system of “language”: “Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others…” (1916/2011, p. 114). We deny that any such transcendental system of “language” exists, consequently our account of micro-value differs from Sassure’s account of “value,” although it bears some similarities. To begin with, the mirco-value of each textual element is not determined by the “simultaneous presence” of other micro-values, since all microvalues (of all textual elements) are determined in the last instance by a quasi-transcendental meta-Value. A meta-Value is a determinate set of intensive quantities, whereas micro-values and moral values are intensive qualities. The “identities” under discussion are nothing other than functions. In a game of chess, each piece has a determinate identity only because it functions in a certain way in the game, namely according to the rules of chess, hence why different sets of chess pieces can differ radically in their aesthetics and bear no resemblance to each other and yet have identical pieces, that is, pieces that function in the same way in the game of chess according to the rules of chess. However, the unconscious differs from the game of chess, and from games generally, in that in the unconscious there is no difference between the imaginary and the symbolic, such that the imaginary or aesthetic content and symbolic function of a given partial object in the unconscious are one and the same. A micro-value is a symbolic function. Thus, each textual element, with its aesthetic or imaginary content, is simply equivalent to its corresponding micro-value. Moral values are molar aggregates or precipitates of textual elements (or, to be more precise, moral values are rhizomatic bricolages of textual elements), with their aesthetic or imaginary content, and their inseperable corresponding micro-values or symbolic functions.

Each libidinal economy has its ownmost attendant unitsystem of morality, its ownmost attendant unit-system of moral values. To be more precise, a unit-system of morality or moral values, a unit-system of evaluation, is an emergent property of a body without organs; a unit-system of morality spontaneously and implicitly emerges in the text recorded upon the surface of a body without organs. A body without organs is a meta-Value, and the textual elements upon its surface are micro-values. Micro-values are molecular, whereas moral values are molar aggregates of molecular micro-values. The relationship between micro-values and moral values is complex and involves feedback loops. Moral values are constituted by micro-values, but moral values in turn determine other micro-values; but in any case, both micro-values and moral values are determined in the last instance by a meta-Value. The text recorded upon the surface of a meta-Value is a rhizomatic network of micro-values and moral values. A meta-Value is a unit-system of repetition-for-itself, and it repeats itself in and through micro-values and moral values. The creation of a unit-system of moral values is only possible through the limit of a meta-Value. Thus, the creation of new values, meaning the creation of new moral values, is a merely secondary creative act that necessarily and spontaneously follows from the more primordial creative act of creating a new meta-Value. To create new values, one must create a new body without organs. The creator of bodies without organs is the creator of values. The meta-Value is the infrastructural-Value, the infrastructure of morality, whereas all micro-values and moral values are superstructural-values (the superstructure of morality), meaning that the meta-Value is the self-production of meta-Value whereas all micro-values and moral values merely reproduce the meta-Value, that is, they reproduce the meta-Value’s metapsychological conditions of production. Meta-value is the larval obscure precursor.

Section 4: A Post-Structuralist Anti-Semiology

Schizoanalysis is a post-structuralist anti-semiology just as much as it is a post-structuralist anti-psychiatry, anti-psychology, or anti-psychoanalysis. Schizoanalysis recognizes that a quasitranscendental topology and a quasi-empirical psychology, and for that matter a quasi-empirical topology and a quasi-transcendental psychology, are one and the same. Intensive space is simultaneously cybernetic, topological, and relational. Intensive space is constituted by intensive forms. Desiring-machines, bodies without organs, celibate machines, and the nomadic subject are all so many intensive forms. Intensive qualities and intensive quantities, too, are all so many intensive forms. Intensive qualities are parital objects. Partial objects have neither intrinsic signification nor extrinsinc designation. Although partial objects are quasi-empirical in that they are derived from material flows (for example, flows of light, flows of sound, or flows of aromas), partial objects are also quasi-transcendental in that they are capable of and often do in turn act upon material flows by means of the processes of desiring-production, most directly in and through desiring-machines and their connective labour. Intensive qualities are simultaneously 1) imaginary extensions, that is, imaginary duplicates of extensions; 2) pure loci or sites (that is, they are symbolic entities) capable of changing their relations within an intensive form (for example, within the body without organs); and 3) real dynamical objects or flows which act upon other real dynamical objects or flows. Intensive qualities are imaginary-symbolic entities; imaginary-symbolic entities are intensive qualities. Intensive quantities (affects), in contrast, are purely symbolic entities (although they are also real dynamical objects or flows that act upon other real dynamical objects or flows). In the desiring-machines, partial objects or intensive qualities exist in relations of connective labour, flowing through so many wires in a metapsychological switchboard akin to a telephone switchboard or a modular synthesizer.

The body without organs is an intensive form. The body without organs is a combinatory formula for the linear transformations of partial objects mapped upon its surface. The flows of partial objects and connective syntheses constituting the desiring-machines do not constitute a text, they do not yet constitute writing, but a proto-text or proto-writing, since the production of connections is ontological but not semiological (it is, at best, protosemiological or pre-semiological). Partial objects recorded upon the surface of the body without organs, however, constitute a text or writing, specifically because of their disjunctive labour; that is to say, the production of disjunctions is semiological (as well as, in a sense, ontological), meaning that writing is specifically the production of disjunctions. However, as Deleuze and Guattari write, these recordings constitute an “a-signifying semiotics,” which is to say that the semiology they constitute has nothing to do with the relations of “signifier” and “signified,” hence why they constitute an a-signifying semiology. Furthermore, the conjunctive synthesis of the celibate machine is by implication not text or writing, since it is not the disjunctive synthesis; the production of consumptions may be characterized as post-semiological, post-textual, or post-writing. The recordings produced upon the surface of the body without organs are not only memories of the past, but also strategies of the present, predictions of the future, and dreams of other worlds or alternate universes (dreams are by definition always fictions set in other worlds or alternate universes).

Deleuze and Guattari apply their ontological axiom that “the whole is another part alongside other parts” specifically to the body without organs: “The body without organs is produced as a whole, but in its own particular place within the process of production, alongside the parts that it neither unifies nor totalizes. And when it operates on them, when it turns back upon them (se rabat sur elles), it brings about transverse communications, transfinite summarizations, polyvocal and transcursive inscriptions on its own surface, on which the functional breaks of partial objects are continually intersected by breaks in the signifying chains, and by breaks effected by a subject that uses them as reference points in order to locate itself. The whole not only coexists with all the parts; it is contiguous to them, it exists as a product that is produced apart from them and yet at the same time is related to them.” (AO, pp. 43–44)

We shall describe such non-totalizing and non-unifying wholes that exist alongside their own constitutive parts as “recursive wholes.” The body without organs is a recursive whole. A recursive whole is not the whole considered as a sum of its parts, which we shall describe as the “whole-sum.” The whole-sum also neither totalizes nor unifies to constitutive parts, because a whole-sum exists only in and through its parts, that is to say, a whole-sum only exists in and through a multiplicity. In other words, a set is a whole-sum. A whole-sum is equivalent to what Deleuze and Guattari describe as a “transversal unity,” which is a unity “between elements that retain all their differences within their own particular boundaries” (AO, p. 43), which we may additionally describe as a “unity in variety,” a unity that exists only in and through the variety or irreducible differences of its constitutive elements. Moreover, there simply does not exist any wholes that are greater than their parts, i.e. there are no transcendent entities (for example, there is no “God” in the traditional sense of a transcendent being, and there is no “higher self” insofar as a “higher self” is a transcendent being), because there are no entities that somehow trascend sets. Substance is a wholesum, because substance is simply the set of everything that exists. Substance indeed neither totalizes its parts nor unifies its parts, since substance exists only in and through the multiplicity of its parts (its forms or modes), that is to say, substance is simply equivalent to the sum of its parts. Substance is a multiplicity, it is in fact the set of all multiplicities. To take another example, when we refer to the “whole” or “entirety” of desiring-production, we invariably mean the whole-sum of desiring production, that is, the sum of the parts of desiring-production. recursive wholes, on the other hand, are wholes that are neither equivalent to the sum of their parts nor greater than the sum of its parts; rather, recursive wholes are less than the sum of their parts insofar as they exist alongside their constitutive parts. Recursive wholes are aptly described by Russell’s paradox, which can be summarized thus: the set of all sets that are not members of themselves is either 1) not a member of itself, and therefore a member of itself; or, 2) a member of itself, and therefore not a member of itself, and therefore a member of itself. A recursive whole is precisely a set of all sets that are not members of themselves, albeit in a pragmatic context the given sets under discussion are always limited to a determinate and local field or domain. The body without organs, insofar as it is equivalent to the production of recording, is a set that includes among its members all the numerous partial objects or intensive qualities that constitute the record (which is always already under construction), in addition to the ossified virtual events which are its fundamental building blocks; however, as a recursive whole, the body without organs also includes itself, that is, the set that it is equivalent to, as a member of itself, which results in “transverse communications, transfinite summarizations, polyvocal and transcursive inscriptions” among all of its members. “Transverse communications, transfinite summarizations, polyvocal and transcursive inscriptions” include logically self-referential, mathematically recursive, and geometrically non-orientable formations; or, to phrase it another way, it includes formations of Escherian geometries and impossible objects, all of which are both imaginary-symbolic in terms of their hylomorphic constitution and real in terms of their machinic functioning and their effects. Moreover, the feedback loops between the body without organs and the desiring-machines as well as between the body without organs and the nomadic subject means that these paradoxical formations modify the behaviour of both desiring-machines and the nomadic subject, such that 1) these paradoxical formations intersect with desiring-machines, meaning that they enter into the flow of partial objects constitutive of desiring-machines and thereby modify their connective labour; and 2) these paradoxical formations function as virtual reference points for the nomadic subject. Lacan is wrong to say that “the Real is the impossible,” because, in reality, the Real is immanent to the symbolic and the imaginary-symbolic, that is to say, the Real is immanent even to the impossible objects that circulate in the imaginary-symbolic portions of desiring-production. The fact that the body without organs is a set that contains itself as a member of itself necessarily implies that it has infinite dimensions, since it is an infinitely recursive set. Moreover, this necessarily implies that intensive space generally has infinite dimensions, since it must have infinite dimensions in order to host a dynamical object with infinite dimensions (namely, the body without organs).

Deleuze and Guattari write that the (disjunctive) rhizome “is composed not of units but of dimensions, or rather directions in motion. It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills. It constitutes linear multiplicities with n dimensions having neither subject nor object, which can be laid out on a plane of consistency, and from which the One is always subtracted (n — 1). When a multiplicity of this kind changes dimension, it necessarily changes in nature as well, undergoes a metamorphosis…Unlike the graphic arts, drawing, or photography, unlike tracings, the rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight” (TP, p. 21).

First of all, let us note that there are three main types of rhizomes, each consisting of the three main types of machines and their corresponding types of synthesis: 1) desiring-machines and their connective syntheses constitute the first type of rhizome, the connective rhizome or rhizomatic circuit; 2) the body without organs and its disjunctive syntheses constitute the second type of rhizome, the disjunctive rhizome or rhizomatic text or rhizombie; 3) the celibate machine and its conjunctive syntheses constitute the third type of rhizome, the conjunctive rhizome or rhizomatic string. When Deleuze and Guattari discuss rhizomes in A Thousand Plateaus, they often do not explicitly designate which type of rhizome they are discussing, but the distinctions we have explicated are always implicit. Literally defined, a rhizome is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out adventitious roots and offshoots from its nodes; rhizomes are also often calle “rootstalks,” and more informally they are called “bulbs” or “tuber,” and examples of rhizomes include ginger, turmeric, and lotus root. Deleuze and Guattari generalize from the biological entity of the rhizome in order to describe a logic of relations which they also name “rhizomatic,” and which we may also describe as “rhizomatic logic” or “rhizologic.” Roughly speaking, rhizologic is a lateral logic, diagonologic, and machinic logic that is opposed to all transcendental, structuralist, and dialectical logic (Deleuze and Guattari describe the latter as “arborescent logic” or “tree logic”). The quoted passage above regards the disjunctive rhizome specifically. Deleuze and Guattari’s also describe their “a-signifying semiotics” as “pragmatics.” Pragmatics recognizes no real “signifiers” and “signifieds,” but only partial objects. Each partial object is a vector, matrix, or tensor; that is to say, each partial object is a set of linear transformations of intensive space. Each element of a disjunctive synthesis, meaning each partial object, is a set of linear transformations. A disjunctive synthesis itself is a composition, which is the product of a matrix multiplication (or, the product of the multiplication of sets of linear transformations), which we describe in ontological terms as “multiplication-in-itself.” A composition is itself a linear transformation, since to multiply a matrix by another matrix means to apply one set of linear transformation to another set of linear transformations. The disjunctive relation between partial objects is the compositional relation between linear transformations.

All texts are rhizomatic. A rhizomatic text “is composed not of units but of dimensions, or rather directions in motion,” because it is composed of partial objects, each of which is a set of vectors; a set of vectors is a set of n-dimensional arrays, and in the applications of vector analysis to physics a vector most often denotes quantities that have both magnitude and direction, that is to say, vectors in physics are “directions in motion,” as in fluid dynamics, wherein the particles constitutive of a fluid are vectors. To phrase it another way, texts are composed of degrees of freedom. For the same reasons, a text is constituted by “linear multiplicities with n dimensions.” A matrix is a linear multiplicity with n dimensions. To be more precise, a text is constituted by series of transformations and the series of their corresponding compositions or compositional relations to each other. A text has neither subject nor object because, in Foucauldian terms, it consists of statements which are primary functions, whereas the “subject” and “object” are merely derived functions that are derived from the statements. The infinite-dimensional zombie embryo-pretzel of the body without organs is the plane of undeath upon which the given series of transformations and compositions are recorded. Bodies without organs, planes of undeath, in turn lie upon a plane of consistency. Ontologically, there is no One (as in Parmenides, a One that excludes the many or multiplicity); likewise, semiologically or metapsychologically, there is neither a big Other nor a phallus (as in Lacan) upholding or holding together imaginarysymbolic series. Thus, the “1” in the formula “n – 1” is purely metaphorical, as it denotes the ontological One or the semiologicalpsychoanalytical big Other or the semiological-psychoanalytical phallus which never exists in any way whatsoever, and which is thus “subtracted” from all texts; in other words, this “1” does not denote a “count as one” or a quantity of one, and so should be taken purely as a metaphor (as opposed to mathematically). When the multiplicity constitutive of a a matrix changes the values of its constituent dimensions, it changes those dimensions themselves, meaning that a linear transformation is a transformation of space itself. A matrix is not merely something which undergoes a change in dimensions, a change in its nature, or a metamorphosis; rather, since a matrix is itself a linear transformation, a matrix is itself a change in dimenions, a change in its own nature, and a metamorphosis unto itself. A composition, the application of one linear transformation to another, is likewise a metamorphosis unto itself. Therefore, any text is a linear map, a record of linear transformations. Each partial object in a text is a set of linear transformations of intensive space, and each successive partial object applies an additional set of linear transformations to the partial object(s) that preceded it. Deleuze and Guattari contrast the intensive and linear “map” to what they call the “tracing,” which can be roughly defined as the recording or graph of “tree logic” (that is, structuralist logic or transcendentalist logic).

It is in the context of linear transformations and compositions of partial objects that one should understand Deleuze and Guattari’s axiom of machinic linguistics or pragmatics, “meaning is use” (cf. AO, p.109). Deleuze and Guattari’s axiom “meaning is use” has nothing whatsoever to do with Wittgenstein’s axiom “meaning is use,” which refers to “language games” in the total absence of psychical activity as such, although to be sure Wittgenstein’s concept of language games, even with all of its behaviourist baggage, is enough to demolish all of structuralist linguistics, and thus paves the way for a machinic linguistics that faces up to the challenge of analyzing the psychical dimension of language without resorting to any sort of reductionism. Deleuze and Guattari write, “No one has been able to pose the problem of language except to the extent that linguists and logicians have first eliminated meaning” (AO, p. 109). Wittgenstein’s concept of language games, as developed in his Philosophical Investigations, reveals at the very least that the meaning of a sign depends wholly upon its use, such that there is no such thing as an unvarying signified associated with each signfier; or, to phrase it in a Deleuzian-Guattarian manner, all signs are inherently a-signifying or non-signifying. The question for the linguist, then, is not what language is, but what language does. Wittgenstein, however, totally ignores the psychological dimension of language, and even repudiates it when he derisively compares the concept of consciousness to a beetle in a box that one keeps secret; to phrase it another way, Wittgenstein argues that language (games) are all entirely social, and he denies the existence and the possibility of a private language (game). However, if there is anything whatsoever to be learned from Descartes’ Meditations, it is that the existence of consciousness is perhaps the only indubitable truth outside of mathematics. Therefore, all language games are just as much private as they are social, that is to say, there is always a psychological dimension of language. Deleuze and Guattari write, “There is no ideal speaker-listener, any more than there is a homogeneous linguistic community” (TP, p. 7), which means the same thing though it is phrased in an obverse way; that there is no “ideal speaker-listener” means precisely that language is always already social, and that there is no “homogeneous linguistic community” means precisely that language is always already private. There is no contradiction, real or apparent, between the private and the social, or between private language and social language. The private and the social are merely two degrees of freedom (axes or dimensions) of a given type of entity (for example, of language). Perhaps the sole truthful insight of Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics is his affirmation of the fact that language is just as much psychological as it is material. We have identified many different types of psychological or metapsychological entities, for instance the three main types of metapsychological machines (the desiringmachines, the body without organs, and the celibate machine), but the common psychological or metapsychological entity that circulates in each of these three types of metapsychological machines is the partial object; therefore, we describe the partial object as the unit of the psyche, since it is the psychological or metapsychological unit common to each of the three machinic processes of desiring-production. Schizoanalysis extends the axiom “meaning is use” to all of desiring-production, and to all machines more generally, but its machinic linguistics (and its machinic semiology or a-signifying semiotics more generally) considers the partial object in terms of the axiom “meaning is use,” since the partial object is both the constitutive unit of language as well as the unit of metapsychology. The use of partial objects differs in each type of metapsychological machine. In the disjunctive synthesis of the body without organs in particular, the partial object functions as a linear transformation in compositional (or transformational) relations with other partial objects functioning as linear transformations. In contrast, in the turbulent intensive flow of partial objects constitutive of desiring-machines, partial objects function as so many vectors of connection or disconnection; and in the turbulent intensive flow of partial objects constitutive of the celibate machine, partial objects function as so many vectors of conjunction; that is to say, in the case desiring-machines and the celibate machine, partial objects can indeed still technically be modelled as linear transformations, but such a model no longer has any utility.

Deleuze and Guattari describe the disjunctive rhizome as “made only of lines: lines of segmentarity and stratification as its dimensions, and the line of flight or deterritorialization as the maximum dimension after which the multiplicity undergoes metamorphosis, changes in nature” (TP, p. 21). To be more precise, it is the partial object, as a set of vectors, that is made only of lines, or rather, as arrows in intensive space; as a set of vectors, each vector constituting a given partial object constitutes a set of its dimensions, which effectively functions as a unit of the total set and can be modelled as arrows in intensive space, and it is precisely these arrows in intensive space which constitute the “lines of segmentarity” or “lines of stratification” described by Deleuze and Guattari; together, the constituent vectors, dimensions, or lines of segmentarity consituting a partial object form a “line of flight,” “abstract line,” or “line of deterritorialization,” which is a linear transformation unto itself, and thus “the maximum dimension,” or rather the sum of dimensions, of that given partial object prior to its compositional relations with other partial objects, which necessarily force it to “undergo metamorphosis” or “change in nature,” that is, to be further (linearly) transformed. However, it is precisely the maximum or summary dimension of the partial object that “connects” with other matrices (multiplicities or sets of vectors) by way of compositional relations. In other words, “line of flight,” “abstract line,” or “line of deterritorialization” are merely so many ways to describe the partial object. Deleuze and Guattari write that the disjunctive rhizome “never has available a supplementary dimension over and above its number of lines, that is, over and above the multiplicity of numbers attached to those lines” (TP, p. 9). In more concrete terms, this means that a partial object never has a transcendental signified attached to it. A partial object is constituted wholly by its constituent set or multiplicity of vectors, the set or multiplicity of abstract quantities equivalent to the set or multiplicity of arrows in intensive space or “lines of segmentarity.” All matrices are “flat” in the sense that they are constituted wholly by their constituent vectors, which fill or occupy all of the dimensions of the given matrix; that is to say, all matrices are “flat” in the sense that they do not depend on the “depth” of a transcendental plane. It is true that all linear transformations take place upon a plane of undeath that functions as a recording surface, but this plane is in no way transcendental, since a linear map always maps a linear subspace onto another linear subspace (or, what means exactly the same thing, it maps a vector subspace onto another vector subspace). There are two limitations which define any linear transformation as such: 1) in a linear transformation, grid lines always remain parallel and evenly spaced throughout the transformation (more informally phrased, this means that all grid lines must remain lines without becoming curved); and 2) the origin must always remain fixed in place. In an intensive linear map, the plane under discussion is the body without organs. The fixed point of origin in an intensive linear map is the “intensity = 0” of the body without organs, which is a stationary (or static) and general point (as opposed to a nomadic and singular point). The parallel and evenly spaced grid lines of the plane of undeath constitute the very limit which defines the body without organs as such. The plane of undeath has the following properties: 1) the dimensions or degrees of freedom of the plane of undeath are infinite in number to begin with, and thus do not increase with the number of disjunctions that are made on it; 2) we recognize that in general each form is a multiplicity or set unto itself, and thus partial objects are only one kind of multiplicity among infinitely many; 3) therefore, the plane of undeath is not “the outside of all multiplicities” but merely outside of all those multiplicities describable as partial objects, meaning that the plane of undeath is a limit which partial objects can approach but never reach, which in terms of linear mapping is phrased in terms of the rules of linear transformation which by definition the disjunctive synthesis as such can never violate; 4) in addition, the plane of undeath itself consists of multiplicities (or sets). Thus, the partial object or “line of flight” is an index of: 1) the reality of a finite number of dimensions that the positive content of the matrical partial object, its full dimensions or constitutive lines of segmentarity, effectively fills, the other infinite dimensions composing it being empty of positive content but nonetheless a positive emptiness (as in negative space in visual art) necessary for the purposes of calculating compositional relations with other partial objects; 2) the impossibility of a strictly transcendental topology; 3) the possibility of a matrical partial object to be linearly transformed by way of the application or multiplication of another matrical partial object to it (i.e. the possibility of a disjunctive relation); 4) the necessity of a plane of undeath upon which compositional relations are graphed or recorded, and thus the necessity of a “flat ontology” of the text, that is to say, a “flat ontology” of matrical partial objects and their compositional relations.

Deleuze and Guattari write that “not every trait in a rhizome is necessarily linked to a linguistic feature: semiotic chains of every nature are connected to very diverse modes of coding (biological, political, economic, etc.) that bring into play not only different regimes of signs but also states of things of differing status…Our criticism of these linguistic models is not that they are too abstract but, on the contrary, that they are not abstract enough, that they do not reach the abstract machine that connects a language to the semantic and pragmatic contents of statements, to collective assemblages of enunciation, to a whole micropolitics of the social field…A [disjunctive] rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections [disjunctive “connections,” that is, relations of composition] between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles. A semiotic chain is like a tuber agglomerating very diverse acts, not only linguistic, but also perceptive, mimetic, gestural, and cognitive: there is no language in itself, nor are there any linguistic universals, only a throng of dialects, patois, slangs, and specialized languages.” (TP, p. 7)

Machinic linguistics always exceeds language in its scope, since language never exists in an isolated state, but is always connected to machines of practice, biological machines, political machines, economic machines, etc., all of which are also recorded upon the body without organs as so many series of partial object, or as Deleuze and Guattari put it, as so many “codes.” In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari explicitly criticize the tree logic or transcendentalism of Chomsky’s linguistics, but their arguments apply equally well, mutatis mutandis, to Saussure’s tree logic (or transcendentalism, that is, structuralism). In other words, between partial objects there is absolutely no relation of displacement, deferment, deference, differentiation (as in single variable calculus), or “metonymy” (as in structuralism), and in between series of partial objects there is absolutely no relation of displacement, deference, deferment, or “metaphor” (as in structuralism); except in the very special and very terrible case of “biunivocalization” (as described by Deleuze and Guattari; cf. AO, pp. 75–84), wherein the natural, spontaneous, and polyvocal “inclusive disjunctions” or compositional relations are bent out of shape and made, via artificial processes of cultural indoctrination or “socialization,” into biunivocal “exclusive disjunctions,” that is, into arborescent or structuralist relations (for instance, “metaphor” and “metonymy,” the two degrees of freedom of structuralist displacement or “differance,” as Derrida put it). The natural relations of inclusive disjunction between partial objects and series of partial objects are compositional relations, and the compositional relation has infinite degrees of freedom, which is to say that there are an infinite number of ways in which any two partial objects or any two series of partial objects are (disjunctively or compositionally) “connected” to each other.

Deleuze and Guattari write, “People ask, So what is this BwO? – But you’re already on it, scurrying like a vermin, groping like a blind person, or running like a lunatic: desert traveler and nomad of the steppes. On it we sleep, live our waking lives, fight – fight and are ought – seek our place, experience untold happiness and fabulous defeats; on it we penetrate and are penetrated; on it we love” (TP, p. 150). A body without organs is a brane-world, and an entire world of partial-objects proliferating in series as heterogeneous as the external machines from which they are derived. The heterogeneous codes or series of partial objects that proliferate on the surface of the body without organs constitute a veritable miseen-scene which stages the dramas of our lives. Biological codes, political codes, economic codes, linguistic codes, perceptive or sensory codes, mimetic codes, gestural codes, all enter into compositional relations with each other upon the recording surface of a body without organs. We can approach this diversity of codes in dramaturgical terms, although in reality this diversity of codes far exceeds theatrical elements. The tone of vocalizations, whether speech or not, the tonal unit-system, in itself constitutes both a semiotic unit-system and a pragmatic unit-system. In this way, speech actually consists of at least two semio-pragmatic unitsystems: words and tones. In writing, there are words but no inherent tones, hence why it is possible for actors to have so much fun playing with the possible tones or intonations of scripted dialogue. In addition, facial expressions, gestures, and postures are each semiopragmatic unit-systems unto themselves. Additional semiopragmatic unit-systems that occur in compositional relations with speech include clothing, hairstyle, body modifications, and even decorations and architecture; we may classify all of these semiopragmatic unit-systems as mise-en-scene, precisely in the dramaturgical sense, since in theatre the use of any or all of these semiopragmatic unit-systems is in fact called “mise-en-scene.” Of course, in addition to these heterogeneous dramaturgical codes we may add all of those other heterogenous codes outside of dramaturgy which those dramaturgical codes nonetheless enter into compositional relations with; for example, biological codes, cosmological codes, political codes, and economic codes, in short “the whole micropolitics of the social field.” Thus, our lives, our lived experiences, are all recorded upon a body without organs (or, to be more precise, a small set of bodies without organs) as so many heterogeneous series of partial objects in compositional relations with each other, altogether forming a schizophrenic agglutination or a schizophrenic machine.

Moreover, a body without organs is a world-egg, a cosmic egg. To appropriate the early Deleuze, “...we again find instances of dynamism: cellular migrations, foldings, invaginations, stretchings; these constitute a “dynamics of the egg.” In this sense, the whole world is an egg” (DI, p. 96). The dynamism of the embryonic body without organs is doubly “two-fold,” consisting of two types of folding: 1) infolding (invaginations), and 2) unfolding (cellular migrations, stretchings); both of these movements of folding, infolding and unfolding, are the movements of the body without organs’ production of recordings, that is to say, infolding and unfolding are the dynamisms of the text upon the surface of the body without organs (which is inseparable from the body without organs, just as the lightning is inseparable from its flash). On Deleuze’s concepts of folding, infolding, and unfolding, Culp writes, “A contrary path: cast a line to the outside! These lines are found in folds, which are what connects a world where “relations are external to their terms” (H, p. 101). It is through the external bridge of the fold that “a world where terms exist like veritable atoms” communicates through their irreducible exteriority (DI, p. 163). More importantly, folding is movement. The inside is not erased from this world; rather, the interior is an operation of the outside (F, p. 97). Such “in-folding” is a structuration, “the folding back on itself of the fiber to form a compact structure” that transforms mere sedimentation into hardened strata (TP, p. 42). It is in this way that we can understand folding as a double-relation of force enveloping itself (and not of some forces’ relation to others) as found in inorganic life, biological evolution, art, and thought (N, p. 92). But folding only accounts for one moment in the rhythm of movement; it is complemented by unfolding – “to unfold is to increase to grow; whereas to fold is to diminish, to reduce, ‘to withdraw into the recesses of a world’” (L, p. 8–9). Although called joyous by some, the great unfolding sparks an experience of terror driven by the question, “how far can we unfold the line without falling into a breathless void, into death, and how can we fold it, but without losing touch with it, to produce an inside copresent with the outside, corresponding to the outside?” (N, p. 113). A boring biological example is an animal’s deterritorialization of its milieu by in-folding a function by way of an organ that enables it to escape to form new relations with a new outside, such as a tetrapod’s water retrainment, which enabled it to carry the sea with it on land. The most exciting version of unfolding operates purely in time. As a narrative device, unfolding builds tension until it suddenly “bursts open like a spring” (N, p. 151)…Unfolding operates through conduction, not communication – at least according to Jean-François Lyotard in Libidinal Economy (pp. 254–62). As a conductor of affects, unfolding does not build capacities through the accumulative logic of rhizomes, which changes through addition or subtraction. Unfolding’s disconnection is not the dampening of power but the buildup of charges that jump across the divide. This operation is so vital that Deleuze elevates unfolding to the absolute of unfolding substance itself (S, p. 310). Yet this process always takes place through a body, which stands at the limit of wild unfolding. The body staves off the “operation of vertigo” that comes from chasing after the “tiny and moving folds that waft me along at excessive speed” (L, p. 93). Seen from its slower speed, we see that unfolding generates force.”

The folds of the body without organs are infinite, and although particular instances of its infolding and unfolding are recognizable, its operations of infolding and unfolding are as infinite as the time of lived experience, the time of the now. Consider, for example, Joyce’s Ulysses, the story of a single day (mostly in the life of Bloom, but this is inseperable from the lives that intersect with his, for instance Molly and Stephen Daedelus), and his Finnegans Wake, the story of a single night (that is, a series of dreams, or what amounts to the same thing, one epic dream); in each story, considered as texts in the strict sense, the instances of the infoldings and unfoldings of the text are numerous, perhaps too numerous to count, and yet they are still not enough to capture even the incomplete totalities of a single day and single night respectively, in all its abundnace of detail, let alone the whole of a waking life or the whole of a dream life. Joyce was well aware of this, and these novels are meant to approach the infinitude of waking and dreaming respectively, rather than capture them in their totality. How much more are the infoldings and unfoldings of a living human being’s body without organs, rather than merely a book’s (or even two books’).

The heterogeneous codes upon the surface of the body without organs are its infinite folds, and as such they are all lines cast to the outside. The “disjunctions” among the textual elements are external to those textual elements. In the brane-world or logical world of a body without organs, the textual elements, as virtual reference points, are veritable atoms in the void, (relatively) indivisible virtual reference points distributed on an organless body of death, and the disjunctions among them are external virtual bridges that form the folds as such. Virtual reference points communicate through the irreducible (but still virtual) exteriority of their disjunctions. Thus, the virtual interiority of a virtual text, its distribution of virtual reference points, are operations of its virtual exteriority. A text is always already an outside-text, that is to say, a text only functions as text through its outside. A text’s movement of infolding is a virtual structuration, the folding back on itself of a unit-structure of text in order to form a more compact unit-structure of text, which transforms mere sedimentation of virtual reference points into hardened strata of texts. Thus, infolding is a doublerelation of a block of ontological labour enveloping itself (as opposed to the relation of blocks of ontological labour to other blocks of ontological labour).

Whereas the body without organs, as a rhizome, increases or grows “through the accumulative logic of rhizomes, which changes through addition or subtraction,” however complicated, as an unfolding it increases or grows through “the buildup of charges that jump across the divide,” a process that Lyotard describes as “conduction.” Culp, following Lyotard, describes the fold, in its capacity of unfolding, as a “conductor of affects.” As it regards the body without organs, the affects in question are the petrified affects constitutive of the essence of body without organs, the “intensity = 0”, the baseline of (ossified) intensive quantity constitutive of the essence of the body without organs. The ossified affects constitutive of the body without organs is just as living as it is petrified, hence why it is undead; the “intensity = 0” of the body without organs is the undead affects, the affects of undeath, constitutive of the essence of the body without organs. As a living death, the undead affects of the body without organs, too, experiences “buildups of charges that jump across the divide,” hence the body without organs, too, is a conductor of affects, albeit an undead conductor of undead affects. It is only in the context of regarding the body without organs as the unfolding of undeath that the experience of unfolding may become an experience of terror, and that the question may arise of how far the death drive of the body without organs can unfold “without falling into a breathless void, into death”; or inversely, regarding the body without organs as the infolding of undeath (with its attendant experience of terror), of how the death drive of the body without organs can be infolded without losing touch with both the virtual outside within the psyche and, what is connected to it, the actual outside of the outside world; that is to say, how to unfold or infold the body without organs without the total rejection of all organs by the great body of death and thus the lapse into catatonia or suicide.

Unfolding always takes place through a body, whether an actual body or a virtual body. The unfolding of the virtual body, the body without organs, generates blocks of ontological labour, more specifically, what Deleuze and Guattari describe as “schizzes”: “Schizzes have to do with heterogeneous chains, and as their basic unit use detachable segments or mobile stocks resembling building blocks or flying bricks. We must conceive of each brick as having been launched from a distance and as being composed of heterogeneous elements: containing within it not only an inscription with signs from different alphabets, but also various figures, plus one or several straws, and perhaps a corpse” (AO, pp. 39–40). A schiz is a block or set of virtual reference points, a block of text or set of of textual elements, always in itself a heterogeneous block of ontological labour. On the surface of a body without organs, it is not only partial objects that enter into disjunctive relations with each other and form genealogical series, but also entire blocks of heterogeneous partial objects, schizzes, that likewise enter into disjunctive relations and form genealogical series. Schizzes are tiny and moving folds that fly along at excessive speeds. The unfolding of the undead affects of the body without organs generates schizzes, blocks of heterogeneous partial objects that are also blocks of ontological labour, and which are thereby charged with those undead affects, such that over time there is a buildup of undead affects in schizzes, which (if its charge is not diminished or siphoned off) eventually bursts open like a spring or a bomb. The body without organs, in its capacity as a limit, staves of the vertigo of the excessive speeds of the circulating blocks of texts upon its surface. The body without organs, as a conductor of undead affects, transmits the undead affects of its essence.

Infolding may be less bombastic than unfolding, but it is nonetheless a real movement, and as such it is just as important, more important in certain contexts than unfolding. Culp provides a biological example, that of “in-folding a function by way of an organ that enables it to escape to form new relations with a new outside.” As it regards the infoldings of the body without organs, these, too, increase the immobile mobility of the great immobile motor that is the body without organs, thereby allowing it to escape certain situations and to enter into new relations with a new outside, whether virtual or actual. The infoldings of a body without organs, its virtual structurations or formations of more compact unit-structures of texts, enable a body without organs to enter into new virtual domains, new domains of thought, and enter into new relations with these new virtual domains.

For these reasons, as well as others, it is impossible to delineate a “total language” or “total system of language” in the manner of Saussure. Deleuze and Guattari, following Weinreich, establish as an axiom of machinic linguistics that “language is an essentially heterogeneous reality” (TP, p. 7). Deleuze and Guattari write, “there is no language in itself, nor are there any linguistic universals, only a throng of dialects, patois, slangs, and specialized languages.” There is no “total system of language” because there are only fragmentary unit-systems of language, that is to say, there are only various linguistic (code)machines or semiopragmatic (code)machines, “only a throng of dialects, patois, slangs, and specialized languages,” that enter into compositional relations with each other. There are only jargons, only argots. In other words, there is no langue, but only argots. There is no “langue” which exists separately from all particular instances of langage. There are only argots that exist in, through, and as particular instances of langage. All language is fragmentary, all language is fragmented and fragmenting; moreover, all language is living, perpetually being altered by each individual modification to it (which is what it means for each language to be both private and social simultaneously).

Deleuze and Guattari write: “The data, the bits of information recorded, and their transmission form a grid of disjunctions of a type that differs from the previous connections. We owe to Jacques Lacan the discovery of this fertile domain of a code of the unconscious, incorporating the entire chain – or several chains – of meaning: a discovery thus totally transforming analysis…But how very strange this domain seems, simply because of its multiplicity – a multiplicity so complex that we can scarcely speak of one chain or even of one code of desire. The chains are called “signifying chains” (chaines signifiantes) because they are made up of signs, but these signs are not themselves signifying. The code resembles not so much a language as a jargon, an open-ended, polyvocal formation…These indifferent signs follow no plan, they function at all levels and enter into any and every sort of [disjunctive or compositional] connection; each one speaks its own language, and establishes syntheses with others that are quite direct along transverse vectors, whereas the vectors between the basic elements that constitute them are quite indirect…No chain is homogeneous; all of them resemble, rather, a succession of characters from different alphabets in which an ideogram, a pictogram, a tiny image of an elephant passing by, or a rising sun may suddenly make its appearance. In a chain that mixes together phonemes, morphemes, etc., without combining them, papa’s mustache, mama’s upraised arm, a ribbon, a little girl, a cop, a shoe suddenly turn up…It is an entire [unit] system of shuntings along certain tracks, and of selections by lot, that bring about partially dependent, aleatory phenomena bearing a close resemblance to a Markov chain. The recordings and transmissions that have come from the internal codes, from the outside world, from one region to another of the organism, all intersect, following the endlessly ramified paths of the great disjunctive synthesis. If this constitutes a system of writing, it is a writing inscribed on the very surface of the Real: a strangely polyvocal kind of writing, never a biunivocalized, linearized one; a transcursive [unit] system of writing, never a discursive one; a writing that constitutes the entire domain of the “real inorganization” of the passive syntheses, where we would search in vain for something that might be labeled the Signifier – writing that ceaselessly composes and decomposes the chains into signs that have nothing that impels them to become signifying.” (AO, pp. 38–39)

To reiterate, the terms “code” and “writing” as used by Deleuze and Guattari refer very strictly to the recordings upon the surface of the body without organs. Jacques Lacan, among others, may very well have discovered this mostly unconscious code, but it was a mistake to have called it a “signifying chain,” since the partial objects that constitute this code are themselves “a-signifying signs,” meaning that this code or writing has nothing whatsoever to do with signification, that is, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the “signifier” and the “signified” so beloved by structuralist linguistics. Thus, the “chain” under discussion is not of “signs,” but of partial objects. It is a partial-object-chain, which may also be described as a compositional chain. This mostly unconscious chain of partial objects, “tied” together by compositional relations, is precisely an unconscious chain of associations, associations which spread out in every direction like a spider web, but as convolutedly as the proverbial Gordian knot, and genealogically, that is, with many ruptures or discontinuities, altogether forming a multiplicity as complex as the schizophrenic table (albeit one that is forever under construction), which in this case also doubles as the proverbial operating table upon which sewing machine and the umbrella meet, albeit a table that moves like a rhizomatic and labyrinthine train.

Let us make a brief detour in our explication. To bring the body without organs and its disjunctive synthesis into sharper relief, let us consider, as an exercise in negative theology (a strictly nonHegelian and anti-Hegelian negative theology, of course), not only the contrasting celibate machine and its conjunctive synthesis outlined in a previous section, but also the contrasting desiringmachines and its connective synthesis as we shall here outline it. To clarify and reiterate, the desiring-machines are not the same as physiological organs, despite the fact that, in the jargon of Deleuze and Guattari, they may function as “organ-machines,” which means nothing other than the fact that they siphon off energy from “energysource-machines” (which is the other function of desiring-machines). Although desiring machines are binary and linear in essence, they are nevertheless linear in every direction, meaning that a given desiring-machine may form multiple connections in multiple directions with other machines (whether desiring or not). Moreover, the flows of libido circulating in the desiring-machines are neither affects nor do they have anything directly to do with affects. In fact, these flows of libido are much more precisely described merely as blocks of connective labour. The libido is the will-to-connect (and sometimes, conversely, the will-to-disconnect) rather than the willto-power, although the connections and disconnections it makes are primarily technological in nature, not sentimental. In addition, there is nothing “semiological” about the flows of partial objects in the desiring-machines; that is to say, the flows of partial objects in the desiring-machines do not constitute a text in any way whatsoever. The text or (a-signifying) semiological map, as we have defined it, is limited strictly to the records and recordings upon the surface of the body without organs. Partial objects in the desiring-machines function more like electricity or turbulent fluids (to be sure, partial objects are indeed turbulent intensive fluids), and not at all like a text (although insofar as the desiring-machines are attached to a body without organs, detachments of texts do enter into the desiringmachines, but precisely as a kind of electricity and no longer as pure texts). The same goes, mutatis mutandis, for affects, that is to say, the affects constituting the singular-nomadic point-subject enter into the desiring-machines only secondarily, and then not as pure affects any longer, but as turbulent intensive fluids functioning akin to electricity and affecting the connective labour of the desiringmachines. However, to be sure, the connective labour of desiringmachines is rhizomatic, putting forth shoots and branches out to the furthest corners of the universe. Most desiring-machines are mostly conscious (with exceptions such as habits and instincts), but they nonetheless have a logic of functioning particular to them that consciousness may not be cognizant of, insofar as consciousness typically does not reflect upon (and indeed, may not feel the need to reflect upon) this logic of functioning. Desiring-machines resemble an eldritch god or monster in a Lovecraftian tale of cosmic horror, an alien pulpy mass of tentacles putting forth its pseudopodia to the furthest corners of the universe, either vampirically devouring the cosmic energy of other beings or divinely supplying other beings with its own cosmic energy. Desiring-machines can neither be directly modelled as plant roots nor directly modelled as artificial neural networks (at least, not in the underdeveloped forms of the current iterations of artificial neural networks); neither of these entities are capable of modelling either the connective labour of desiring-machines as equivalent to quantities of libido or the complex feedback loops that exist between the desiring-machines, the body without organs, the celibate machine, and the properly affective nomadic-singular point-subjects. On the contrary, insofar as desiring-production is ontologically primary, plants and artificial neural networks themselves remain to be explicated in terms of their constitutive desiring-machines, bodies without organs, celibate machines, and singular-nomadic point-subjects, for the purposes of metapsychology. The point being that the tentacular desiringmachines and the life-blood of partial objects circulating through them are properly ontological entities that are neither semiological, nor reducible to neurology, nor reducible to currently existing technologies of machine intelligence in computer science. Furthermore, desiring-machines in their natural state neither know anything about the “pleasure principle” and its obverse the “reality principle,” nor have anything whatsoever to do with them. Desiringmachines are governed principally and exclusively by the “realpolitik principle,” which simply means that desiring-machines seek real connections with other machines (whether those other machines are desiring-machines or some other type of machine) as their object of desire, and that desiring-machines are relatively satisfied when they make the connections they desire and relatively dissatisfied or unsatisfied when they do not make the connections they desire, and that desiring-machines are primarily concerned with overcoming all the real obstacles to their real object of desire.

Corollary to the realpolitik principle is the primary interconnectionism of desiring-machines (by virtue of which one can say, more generally, the primary interconnectionism of desiringproduction). That is to say, there is no such thing as the “primary narcissism” of the psyche as described by Freud. The libido is equivalent to connective labour, the production of connections, which necessarily means that the libido is not narcissistic; that is to say, the libido is constantly making real connections with reality, and not cut off from reality. Therefore, the psyche is primarily interconnected with respect to other machines. The realpolitik principle and primary interconnectionism are equivalent to each other, since they both describe the same facets of the libido, that is, the same facets of the connective labour of the desiring-machines.

We have hitherto described the celibate machine and the body without organs as combinatory formulas unto themselves: the celibate machine is the combinatory formula for affects (conjunctions), while the body without organs is the combinatory formula for texts (disjunctions). We may also describe desiringmachines as a type of combinatory formula: desiring-machines are (self-modifying) combinatory formulas for connections (libidinal circuits). Whereas the celibate machine is ultimately constituted by the attraction machine and the repulsion machine (that is, unitsystems of mediation), and whereas the body without organs is ultimately constituted by a determinate set of intensive quantities, the desiring-machines are constituted by a self-modifying algorithm of intensive qualities. That is to say, a given desiring-machine is constituted in its essence, as a combinatory formula, by a fluctuating set of intensive qualities, such that it is a self-modifying combinatory formula, and moreover, the flows of intensive qualities that circulate through it are also various and fluctuating. Desiring-machines are automata unto themselves, meaning that desiring-machines are selfdirecting with respect to the body without organs, despite the fact that the desiring-machines can never exist independently of the body without organs (hence the complicated relationship of attraction and repulsion between them). The “differentiation” of a desiringmachine is its self-directed proliferation of connections. Thus, the partial objects circulating in the desiring-machines may be described as connectional elements or elements of connection, whereas the partial objects proliferating on the surface of the body without organs are compositional elements (or disjunctional elements).

In any case, there is never naturally a reciprocal determination or differential relation between partial objects, whether those partial objects are functioning as connectional elements or compositional elements. Intensive space is machinic in its essence, which means that it is dynamic and cardinal as much as it is static and ordinal, diachronic as much as it is synchronic, a dirty logistics of cultural and historical construction as much as a pure logic of relations. Deleuze and Guattari write that partial objects are “indifferent signs [that] follow no plan,” and that each partial object “speaks its own language, and establishes syntheses with other that are quite direct along transverse vectors, whereas the vectors between the basic elements that constitute them are quite indirect.” Partial objects are “indifferent” in that they are non-differential, that is to say, there is no reciprocal determination between them; but this is really the same as saying that partial objects are a-signifying signs, meaning that there is never naturally a “signifier of a signifier” (which would be, if it existed, a “differential of a differential” or a “reciprocal determination of a reciprocal determination”; such a thing only appears after the cultural process of biunivocalization). Writing is composition, it is defined by a series of linear transformations and their compositions. Writing as such has nothing whatsoever to do with “the signifier of the signifier.” Partial objects are always real elements that enjoy relative independence or relative autonomy. Partial objects are so many fragmentary and absurd points (or alternatively, sets of vectors) distributed in intensive space (whether they are circulating in desiring-machines or recorded upon the body without organs), and the synthesis directly attaching them to each other (whether connective or disjunctive) is a diagonalogical or transversal vector or set of vectors. Either the connective synthesis or the disjunctive synthesis establishes a transversal vector of attachment among partial objects, but the partial objects themselves are relatively autonomous forms that are not determined by any synthesis (and in this sense they “follow no plan”). Each flux of partial objects, whether circulating in desiring-machines or recorded on the body without organs, is heterogeneous, each of them contains a diversity of elements: for instance, an ideogram, a pictogram, an image from one source, an image from another source, phonemes, morphemes, etc., and all may be diagonalogically bound together in the same transversal flow. The code or text upon the surface of the body without organs is multi-serial, that is, it consists of a multiplicity of aleatoric series (of partial objects) proliferating in every direction (hence why it is transcursive and polyvocal), with no necessary relations between series, but only transversal relations between partial objects, both within a series and across multiple series, such that series intersect (the relation between series, when it exists, is always one of intersection, never one of displacement).

A body without organs is a virtual body of chance. Here we are in agreement with Mallarmé, on the points that “A throw of the dice never abolishes chance” and that “Thought is a dice-throw” (or what amounts to the same thing, “Thought emits a dice-throw”). Chance and necessity, that is, contingency and necessity, are indeed mutually exclusive. Where there is necessity, there is no contingency, and where there is contingency, there is no necessity. “A throw of the dice never abolishes chance” because a throw of the dice abolishes necessity, that is to say, a throw of the dice affirms chance. It is not a question of probability, but of contingency, pure contingency. Speaking of a “retroactive necessity” is entirely pointless, since a “retroactive necessity” has no effectivity with regards to the past situations that it describes, for it is self-evident that the present and the future cannot function as causes of the past; that is to say, a “retroactive necessity” is never anything more than a fiction that obscures the real contingency of past situations specifically, and all situations more broadly. “Thought” here means, specifically, memories of the past, strategies of the present, and predictions of the future, all of which are texts produces upon the surface of the virtual body chance as so many aleatoric series of textual elements, in the manner of a Markov chain. (Although, beyond this analysis of Mallarmé, thought (more broadly defined) is threefold, the intersection of a moment of the text on the body without organs, a moment of the desiring-machines, and a moment of the celibate machine (that is, an affect and its attendant associations)). The aleatoric text upon the surface of the virtual body of chance constitutes an entire unit-system of aleatoric shuntings along certain tracks, and even thereby the invention of new tracks, structurally homologous to a game of snakes and ladders. Each textual element and each schiz is a mobile and shifting topological position upon the topological surface of the virtual body of chance, and each topological position depends only upon its previous location (its previous topological position) upon the virtual body of chance, and is the result of nothing but a dice-throw, such that ruptures, exclusive disjunctions, proliferate,and such that series may be recursive, a textual element or schiz ocassionally “going back to square one,” its beginning topological position, as the result of a dice-throw. The dice-throw in question is the body without organ’s production of recording, which is simultaneously its anti-production. The time of the body without organs is the time of the now, time with the potentiality to rupture, which is precisely the time of chance, the time of contingency, for good or for ill. “Thought” is a dice-throw insofar as it is an aleatoric virtual reference point manufactured by the virtual body of chance. “Thought” emits a dicethrow insofar as it is a transmission of the undead affects of a virtual body of chance. The body without organs is undeath, a pure repetition-compulsion or repetition-for-itself, but it is nevertheless a creative body, a virtual body of chance.

Section 5: The General Economy of Raw Desire

Deleuze and Guattari write, “The problem has to do not with the sexual nature of desiring-machines, but with the family nature of [the psychoanalytic conception of] sexuality. Admittedly, once the child has grown up, he finds himself deeply involved in social relations that are no longer familial relations. But since these relations supposedly come into being at a later stage in life, there are only two possible ways in which this can be explained: it must be granted either that sexuality is sublimated or neutralized in and through social (and metaphysical) relations, in the form of an analytic “afterward”; or else that these relations bring into play a nonsexual energy, for which sexuality has merely served as the symbol of an anagogical “beyond”” (AO, p. 46). Freudian psychoanalysis tends to consider the libido, psychic energy, solely as a sexual desire, and even more problematically, it can only conceive of sexual desire in terms of the family. Thus everything becomes a family drama, the pleasures and pains of the family become endlessly repeated, new interpretations and even new memories of the family are fabricated out of thin air, and the subject becomes permanently infantilized. Deleuze and Guattari point out that if we accept Freud’s account of early childhood (for the sake of argument only), then it becomes impossible to explain the role of desire in non-familial relations in stages later than childhood except as variations, however surreptitious, of a familial sexual desire (e.g. as “sublimations”). Thus, the true escape from the family cannot occur by understanding all social relations in terms of the family. The true escape from the family when we understand all social relations in their own terms, as plays of a libido that is primarily non-sexual or asexual, and only becomes sexual under certain determinate conditions (conditions which have nothing to do with the family, even in those cases when they occur within the family). “Sexuality,” at best, has only served as the anagoge, the mystical interpretation, of a primarily asexual libido.

In his essay “The Concept of the Libido” (collected in Jung, 1967), Jung writes, “Presumably no one imagines that all plumbers who connect up male and female pipe-joints, or all electricians who work with male and female outlets, are blessed with particularly potent “affluxes of [sexual] libido”?” Jung also writes, “Although there can be no doubt that music originally belonged to the reproductive sphere, it would be an unjustified and fantastic generalization to put music in the same category as sex. Such a view would be tantamount to treating of Cologne Cathedral in a text-book of mineralogy, on the ground that it consisted very largely of stones.” Jung argues against the psychoanalytic tendency “to inflate the idea of sexuality in a typically Freudian manner. One would then be forced to say that every relationship to the world was in essence a sexual relationship, and the idea of sexuality would become so nebulous that the very word “sexuality” would be deprived of all meaning. The fashionable term “psychosexuality” is a clear symptom of this conceptual inflation.” Jung concludes, “An interpretation in terms of energy seemed to me better suited to the facts than the doctrine set forth in Freud’s Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. It allowed me to identify “psychic energy” with “libido.” The latter term denotes a desire or impulse which is unchecked by any kind of authority, moral or otherwise. Libido is appetite in its natural state. From the genetic point of view it is bodily needs like hunger, thirst, sleep, and sex, and emotional states or affects, which constitute the essence of libido. All these factors have their differentiations and subtle ramifications in the highly complicated human psyche.”

We disagree with Jung about much else, even in this short essay of his, but on the points quoted above, we are roughly in agreement with Jung. The connective labour of plugging devices into electrical sockets typically has nothing whatsoever to do with sexuality. Is replacing a lightbulb a sexual act? Surely not, at least in most cases. Cases of asexual connective labour are the norm, not the exception. There are so many operations of thought which are so much like plugging devices into electical sockets, that is to say, they are instances of a connective labour that has nothing to do with sexuality. Even sex itself is never really about sex, but always about something else. Therefore, human behaviour is motivated by an asexual libido, an asexual psychic energy, of which sexuality is merely one modification or form. Also consider the prouction of music: indubitably, the most common form of music is the love song, which is indubitably sexual and concerned with sexuality, yet the musicians is also always concerned with purely aesthetic questions, questions of formula and content, questions of rhythm, tempo, duration, melody, instrumentation, and timbre, questions of composition and improvisation. Sexuality explains nothing. Sexuality itself is in need of explanation. Since sexuality cannot be explained by itself, that is, since sexuality cannot be explained in terms of sexuality, it necessarily follows that sexuality can only be explained adequately in non-sexual or asexual terms, that is, in terms of a metapsychology or energetics of asexual libido.

Moreover, as Jung argues, describing every relationship in terms of sexuality empties the concept of sexuality of all content, for it is only as a completely empty concept, not merely a vague concept but a concept without any positive content, that the concept of “sexuality” can be used to describe everything, extended in the Freudian manner to all aspects of life. Freudian psychoanalysis does not sexualize everything, but rather desexualizes sexuality by draining sexuality of all its positive content, by obscuring the real coordinates or determinate conditions under which the asexual psychic energy of the libido becomes sexuality. This desexualization of sexuality paves the way for the Freudian conception of a familial sexuality: after sexuality is deprived of all its positive content and its real determinate conditions are obscured, it becomes possible for the psychoanalyst to familialize sexuality by means of inserting the family drama into sexuality as the content of sexuality, such that the determinate conditions of sexuality appear to be the family drama. Thus, we reject the Freudian neologism “psychosexuality,” which overextends the concept of sexuality to the point of depriving it of all content.

We affirm our own neologism “material sexuality” in order to affirm our materialist theory of sexuality. The real determinate conditions of sexuality are always dependent upon the object of sexual desire (the object of sexual desire is the sufficient condition of sexual desire), although the necessary condition of possibility of sexual desire is the subject of desire, the productie subject (the productive subject of sexual desire is the necessary condition of sexual desire). When we write that the libido is primarily asexual, it is not in order to desexualize sexuality, but in order to (re)sexualize sexuality; to argue that the asexual libido becomes sexual only under certain determinate conditions, as we have done, means to affirm the particularity or singularity of sexual desire, the fact that sexual desire exists only through particular or singular contents, and that sexuality has no existence apart from its singular contents. Moreover, when sexual desire invests the social field, it does so directly and immediately, without mediation (that is, without “sublimation,” or for that matter, any other type of psychoanalytic magic trick), just as when asexual libido more generally invests the social field, it does so directly so directly and immediately, without mediation, “sublimation,” or the like.

The asexual libido is in itself objectless desire, desire without an object, which we also describe as “raw desire.” Raw desire is perpetually and systematically unsatisfied desire, painful and impossible longing. Actions are motivated by a desire to possess a particular object of desire. Raw desire is desire without a particular object, but it is not for that reason a form of inaction. In fact, all action presupposes raw desire, since all particular desires presuppose raw desire. Raw desire is the necessary condition (but not the sufficient condition) of all desire and all action. Raw desire is impossible longing, because no possible object of desire is commensurate with its need, but it is not a longing for the impossible, since a longing for the impossible is a longing for an object (wherein the impossible is the object of desire). Because raw desire is devoid of any possible object of desire, it is also devoid of the possibility of pleasure or happiness, because it can never experience the satisfaction that would result from possessing an object of desire. Only desire with an object can possibly experience satisfaction, pleasure, or happiness (that is, on the occasion that it possesses its object). Therefore, raw desire is pure pain, and it is only ever experienced as pure pain. Raw desire exists and persists as the painful longing of unsatisfied and insatiable desire. Raw desire is raw passion, pure pain and pure passion. A quantity of raw desire is a quantity of pain, but also a quantity of life. Raw desire is objectless desire, desire without an object and without content: pure will (neither a will to life, nor a will to power, nor a will to death), the pure force of motivation, motivation without an object. Raw desire is pure impulse, impulse without content. Raw desire is raw energy.

Raw desire is the non-human, non-animal, and inorganic energy constitutive of the intensive degree of freedom of the Real.

Raw desire is not a drive. The only drive we recognize is the death drive, that is, the body without organs. Raw desire is neither transcendental nor quasi-transcendental. Raw desire is immanent to all particular forms of desire. That is to say, all particular forms of desire are forms or modifications of raw desire. Raw desire becomes a particular form of desire, a particular desire of a particular object, under particular determinate conditions. Even when a particular desire is satisfied by possessing its object, there is always a remainder of raw desire, a remainder of dissatisfaction that goads us into seeking a new object of desire (even if that new object of desire is merely a new aspect of the “same” object of desire).

Dissatisfaction, need, arises from an excess of (raw) desire, not from a lack. Raw desire is the originary surplus, the originary supplement, of desire, and thus the necessary condition of all particular forms of desire. The sufficient condition of any particular desire is the particular object of desire. Raw desire is neither a substance nor a universal (that is, it is not an abstract universal, a universal separate from all particulars). Raw desire is a reservoir of raw energy.

Asexual libido is always already a reservoir of itself.

Raw desire is not a representation of anything, it is not a representation or image in any way whatsoever; for example, asexual libido is not a representation of a bodily state. The essence of the asexual libido is pure psychic energy. Asexual libido only becomes “bodily needs like hunger, thirst, sleep, and sex” or type of libido like Numen (death drive, body without organs) or Voluptas (emotions, affects) under the particular determinate conditions corresponding to each respective situation. Again, none of this has anything whatsoever to do with lack. The physiological body can go without food while the psyche feels no hunger, as in a case of melancholia, wherein the relative quantity of asexual libido is low, deficient, that is to say, under certain determinate conditions that have manufactured a lack in the productive subject. One is able to feel hunger only due to the natural excess of asexual libido, the natural excess of the life-force.

To clarify, when we speak of the object of desire, we speak of a real object, not a fantasy. All objects of desire are real objects, never mere fantasies. Consider, for example, Stanislavski’s method of acting: in each unit of a scene, an actor is assigned a (particular) motivation (typically by the director, sometimes by himself), a (particular) desire, which is always a desire for a (particular) real object; motivations or desires work the same way for non-actors offstage, with the caveat that they arise from far more complicated processes than the command of a director (or what would amount to the same thing, the artistic will of the actor). A fantasy is only ever very loosely an “object” of desire as such, since fantasies are produced by the productive subject and are thus immediately available and accessible to the productive subject. One cannot reasonably speak of losing possession of a fantasy, since it is by its nature immediately available to the mind, therefore one cannot reasonably speaking of possessing a fantasy either (as opposed to the way one may possess or not possess a real object). If an actor’s motivation is merely to fantasize, the result is inaction. Fantasy never motivates us to act; in fact, the function of fantasy is to prevent action. Only the desire for a real object can ever motivate anyone to act. We accept Abraham and Torok’s definition of fantasy as any belief, representation, or bodily state that prevents a topographical shift or change in the psyche and thereby preserves the status quo, which we further explicate as political inaction.

Deleuze and Guattari write, “Desire always remains in close touch with the conditions of objective existence; it embraces them and follows them, shifts when they shift, and does not outlive them. For that reason it so often becomes the desire to die…” (AO, p. 27). Desire for a real object always involves topographical shifts in the psyche, however large or small, whether one possesses the object of desire or not. For example, the death of the beloved may result in the desire to die: the death of the beloved inflicts a topographical shift on the lover’s psyche, and the lover, who is defined by their love for the beloved, does not outlive the loss of the beloved, which is the very condition of their desire’s objective existence. To take another example of the arising of a desire to die: being scorned by one’s beloved inflicts topographical shifts on the psyche by the real beloved’s real scorn; this scorn, if it is felt as absolute by the lover, is effectively a form of losing the beloved, and thus the lover again does not outlive the beloved (non-rejection, that is, a minimal quantity of acceptance by the beloved, is the minimum condition for the objective existence of erotic love). Although fantasy is never desire for a real object, fantasy also has nothing to do with lack, despite all assertions to the contrary (for instance, those of Lacan; Lacan false equates the object of desire with fantasy and lack).

Deleuze and Guattari, following Kant, write that fantasies are produced by desire (AO, p. 25), which means that fantasies are the products of an excess of desire. Raw desire, under certain determinate conditions, may be induced to produce fantasies; the determinate conditions under discussion here are those which necessitate the prevention of a topographical shift in the psyche and the conservation of a status quo.

Stendhal is wrong to describe the process of desire as “crystallization,” which means the production of fantasies, “promises of happiness,” such that “beauty is the promise of happiness.” With his concept of “crystallization,” Stendhal reduces desire to the production of fantasy, and reduces beauty to fantasy itself. Stendhal’s focus is on sexual desire, but he also affirms that he is indeed discussing desire, motivation, in general. Like Lacan’s psychoanalysis, Stendhal’s theory of desire presents an image of desire as inherently cut off from reality and real objects. Stendhal is never able to reconcile, and never attempts to reconcile, his theory of desire in general with what he describes as “physical love,” sexual desire for a real object (as opposed to a mere fantasy), which he also artificially distinguishes from what he calls “passionate love,” sexual desire for a fantasy. Although there is a marked difference between desire of any sort for a real object and desire of any sort for a fantasy, we reject Stendhal’s terminology, his false dichotomy between “physical” desires and “passionate” desires. In reality, a “physical” desire for a real object is always a passionate desire, whether of a low degree or a high degree. We prefer a more accurate terminology, thus we distinguish between substantial desires and phantasmatic desires: a substantial desire is a desire for a real object, whereas a phantasmatic desire is a desire for a fantasy (which means, really, a desire to produce fantasy). In terms of sexual desire, a substantial desire may be either a desire to admire another’s real physical beauty (whether visual or otherwise, for instance the sound of another’s voice or the smell of their perfume), a desire to enjoy another’s real qualities of mind or real character (typically through the medium of theatrical acts, whether sincere or feigned), or a desire for real amorous acts (very loosely defined) with another. In other words, beauty is happiness, the real and immediate pleasure of possessing a real object of desire, a real object of perception that is also the object of one’s desire. For example, when the vision of physical beauty is one’s object of desire, possessing the vision of beauty by means of the visual perception of physical beauty results in pleasure, even if that pleasure intersects with the pain of not yet possessing other real objects of one’s desire (for example, amorous acts with the beautiful other). However, we give the caveat that, in typical cases of desire (sexual or otherwise), one finds a mixture of substantial desire and phantasmatic desire, largely due to cultural indoctrination that valourizes phantasmatic desire (sometimes in opposition to substantial desire, but at other times in combination with substantial desire).

Excess and lack are by definition mutually exclusive. If there is excess, there is no lack. If there is lack, there is no excess. Deleuze and Guattari write that the traditional concept of desire, which they trace back to Plato, is the concept of desire as acquisition, and that from “the moment that we place desire on the side of acquisition, we make desire an idealistic (dialectical, nihilistic) conception, which causes us to look upon it as primarily a lack: a lack of an object, a lack of the real object” (AO, p. 25). When we speak of excess, we are already discussing production, as opposed to merely acquisition. Raw desire is an excess, an originary excess, which means that it is an auto-production, which is the same as an auto-reproduction. Asexual libido is a form of asexual reproduction – not a biological asexual reproduction, but a meta-biological asexual reproduction. Libidinal economy is ultimately an economy of excess, what Georges Bataille, in The Accursed Share, describes as a “general economy,” in which there is always already an “accursed share,” an excess that must be gotten rid of, wasted, squandered, given away. The formula of a general economy is “loss without gain.” In terms of political economy, a general economy is epitomized by the gifteconomy, in which there is neither exchange nor profit, but only giftgiving (according to us, but not without precedent in Bataille). The gift-economy also exemplifies the anarchist principle of “mutual aid.” Bataille focuses on consumption, expenditure, rather than production. In terms of production, we argue that a general economy is auto-production, self-production, by which we mean not a “causeof-itself” but a recursive process of production, a “strange loop” production process, as exemplified by the libidinal economy of raw desire, that is, raw desire considered as a production process distinct from desiring-production as a whole (although desiring-production as a whole, in reality, includes raw desire in its production process as its necessary condition).

One example Bataille provides of the general economy of libidinal economy, the one that we find the most convincing because it is the most final, is death: “Of all conceivable luxuries, death, in its fatal and inexorable form, is undoubtedly the most costly. The fragility, the complexity, of the animal body already exhibits its luxurious quality, but this fragility and luxury culminate in death” (1988, p. 34; Bataille’s emphasis). One’s own death is a loss without gain for one’s self, a loss without gain for the life-force that is one’s self. One’s own death is an absolute loss, a total expenditure, and thus the greatest possible evidence of excess. Excess is waste, loss, expenditure. That which has utility is not excessive, not something extra. Excess by definition is that which has no utility, the extra part that is not useful in the utilitarian instrumental sense, and which brings no profit of any kind. There is no profit for one’s self in one’s own death. Death is the absolute end, the complete obliteration of one’s own life. Therefore, life, considered as a dynamic process, is a loss without gain. Life must be a loss without gain from the beginning in order to be an absolute loss at the moment of death. No amount of profit that an organism makes matters in the slightest bit, since in the moment of death absolutely all of its squandered. The libidinal economy of raw desire is absolute extrajection. Extrajection means “casting outside,” that is, expiration or expenditure. This is the same as saying, as we have done, that there is only free energy (and no bound energy): asexual libido expends itself at each moment of its existence, which means that it is an absolute extrajection, extrajecting itself at each moment of its existence.

The only “pressure” we recognize at the level of raw desire is the “pressure” of life, the “pressure” resulting from the life-force’s excess, as conceived of by Bataille: “But one can speak of pressure in this sense only if, by some means, the available space is increased; this space will be immediately occupied in the same way as the adjoining space…The most familiar example is that of a path that a gardener clears and maintains. Once abandoned, the pressure of the surrounding life soon covers it over again with weeds and bushes swarming with animal life” (1988, p. 30). The pressure that results from the extrajection of raw desire is the pressure to explore space with one’s body. The body moves through space as the result of the pressure of extrajection. Pressure, as Bataille conceives it, has nothing to do with the damming up of of a desire. On the contrary, a desire spending itself is what creates pressure. Raw desire is not a form of inaction, it does not result in inaction. Raw desire is a form of action. The extrajection of raw desire and the pressure it generates result in the spontaneous movement of one’s own body through space. Spontaneous dancing (that is, unchoreographed dancing) is an exploration of space and an example of raw desire (desire without an object) in action, an example of the relief of the pressure of extrajection by way of the exploration of space by the body. There are moments too, in many activities motivated by a desire for an object, from sensuality to the creation of art, wherein the originary excess of raw desire spills over and exceeds the object of desire, its extrajection thereby exerting pressure on the body to explore a given space (whether a beloved’s body, or a canvas, or the acoustic space of music, or the space of literature) in a new and unprecedented way, striking out in new directions.

Section 6: The Critique of Mythology

The question of Truth, the question “What is Truth?”, cannot simply be passed over lightly, since, to paraphrase the African proverb, “to conceal words is to conceal sense,” meaning in this context that concealing discourse as to the nature of Truth conceals the sense or meaning of the concept of Truth that one employs.

Concealing the sense of the concept of Truth that one employs opens up the possibility of obfuscation or deception. Therefore, this section is a detour in which we will explicate our concept of Truth at length, but in order to do so, we must also explicate the nature of language, since language and Truth are intimately related. Thus, we must answer the question, “What is language?” In the course of our inquiry into the ontology of language, we will discover that the sign is a complex machine, and that all non-mathematical languages consist not of Truth, but of myth.

To use everyday language, we may say that the word is made up of a name and a meaning, but the problem with this everyday language is that it does not allow us to speak of the meaning of meaning, how meaning is constituted and what meaning is constituted of. As we shall see, the word “meaning” may refer to either: 1) the process of meaning, constitution of meaning as meaning, which we may call the meaning-process or signification; or 2) meaning as idea, the ideal meaning or idea-meaning, the idea that is signified or denoted by the name; or 3) meaning in the sense of the association a sign has, the connotations of a sign. Before we get that far, however, we must begin with a preliminary analysis of the word.

Altering the initial formulation of the structure of the word, we may say that the word consists of two parts: the name and the sense. This distinction between the name and the sense is not typically consciously made in everyday language, but there are indeed traces of it even in everyday language: one says, “I didn’t mean it in that sense” or “I mean it in this sense” or “In what sense do you mean that?”, and in all these cases the sense of the word “sense” is that of meaning-as-idea, or more simply put, the idea, such that we can rephrase the preceding remarks as “I didn’t mean that idea” or “I mean this idea” or “Which idea did you mean?”, which is precisely what we mean by “sense,” and which is also not wholly unprecedented in everyday language. Our concept of the “name” may be more difficult to grasp, since in everyday language, the “name” of a thing and the “word” used to designate that thing may be confused with each other. To rephrase our idea in the technical jargon, the “name” is the “signifier” in the unit-structure of the word, whereas the “sense” is the “signified” in the unit-structure of the word. The name does indeed have something to do with human vocalizations, but as we shall see, it is not simply reducible merely to human vocalizations.

The name is a name only insofar as it has a sense; at least, this is intially how a name qua name comes to be constructed. Whether that sense corresponds to reality or not is a question completely extraneous to the word in itself, hence why words can be used to lie, in which case the sense of the liar’s words do not correspond with reality. Therefore, the word does not necessarily have a referent (which would be, if it exists, a real object that is referred to by a given word; the verb “to refer” will henceforth be used in this technical sense of “reference,” to denote the operation by which a word refers to a real object in the world outside the mind, if it indeed does so). The word is an example of the sign. The structure of the sign is inherently independent of the question of whether or not the sign has a referent. The structure of the sign consists of two parts: the signifier and the signified. For example, the word is a sign wherein the signifier is the name and the signified is the sense. A sense can exist without a name, which is why someone can be “at a loss for words,” meaning that they have a sense in their mind for which they do not yet have a name. A name, however, cannot exist as a name without a sense, at least initially.

Saussure writes that the name “is not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the psychological imprint of the sound, the impression that it makes on our senses. The sound-image is sensory, and if I happen to call it “material,” it is only in that sense, and by way of opposing it to the other term of the association, the concept, which is generally more abstract” (1916/2011, p. 66). The name is a sound-image, but we disagree with Saussure that it is merely a sound-image. Moreover, we disagree with Saussure’s concept of “concept,” by which term he really means to say “image.” Furthermore, we disagree with Sassure’s characterization of the process of signification as the mere association of two images (for instance, the sound-image and a visual image; the same problem persists even if we mean that signification is the association of a name and a concept). We shall see how in reality the name is an “abstract image,” how the concept (by which term we shall also designate the sense) is an imageless abstraction (a “pure abstraction”), and how the process of signification is a mental act of the subject “bursting towards” the concept.

First, however, we must examine more closely Saussure’s concept of the sound-image in order to distinguish it from our concept of the sound-image, whereupon we can begin to go into greater detail about our concepts of the name, the concept, and the sign and signification more generally. Saussure writes:

“The psychological character of our sound-images becomes apparent when we observe our own speech. Without moving our lips or tongue, we can talk to ourselves or recite mentally a selection of verse. Because we regard the words of our language as soundimages, we must avoid speaking of the “phonemes” that make up the words. This term, which suggests vocal activity, is applicable to the spoken word only, to the realization of the inner image in discourse. We can avoid that misunderstanding by speaking of the sounds and syllables of a word provided we remember that the names refer to the sound image.” (1916/2011, p. 66)

Vocal activity by itself does not constitute a name, much less a word. The word is first and foremost a psychological entity par excellence, despite the fact that its material support and necessary condition of existence include the physiological apparatus of vocal activity (the brain, nerves, muscles, the larynx, the tongue, teeth, lungs, etc.) and the physical correlates of the process (biochemistry, air, soundwaves, etc.). The word as such only exists insofar as it has a sense, which is purely subjective. For the name to constitute a part of the word, it must likewise be subjective or psychological in the sense that it must exist in the mind proper, for it is only by existing in the mind that the name can be attached to a sense. Since sense is a subjective entity, it can only be connected or attached ontologically to another subjective entity. Therefore the name, which is attached to a sense, must be a subjective entity.

Vocal activity by itself does not constitute a name because it is only the imaginary double of vocal activity, the sound-image, which is capable of being attached to the subjective entity of sense (or, to phrase it another way, capable of engaging in the subjective process of meaning). Therefore, it is only the sound-image, the imaginary simulacrum of vocal activity, that is capable of becoming a name. It is the specifically psychological character of the name and its sense, that is to say, the specifically psychological character of the word, that makes it possible both to talk to ourselves or to recite mentally a selection of verse without moving our lips or tongue, and to be understood by another when we do speak aloud. When we hear people speaking a language that we do not know, we perceive the sounds they make but do not register them as names qua names or words qua words because we do not understand them, that is to say, we perceive the sounds but those sounds have no sense for us because we do not know which sound-images attach to which senses, if any. The sound-image consists of imaginary extensions which are the copy of the real extensions of vocal activity. Vocal activity is indeed extended, as is all sound, since it consists of vibrations in extended, extensive space. Goethe writes, “Music is liquid architecture, architecture is frozen music.” However, to be more accurate, all sound is gaseous architecture (architecture in a broad sense, encompassing all material objects), and architecture is frozen sound. That is to say, sound is eminently material, it is a manipulation of extended space, just as architecture is the manipulation of extended space, except with the difference (admittedly, among others) that sound is the manipulation of extended space in a gaseous state (sound is the vibration of air molecules) whereas architecture, as we typically understand it, refers specifically to the manipulation of extended space in a solid state (the construction of various types of buildings, such as pyramids or temples; all matter, furthermore, vibrates, albeit to lesser or greater degrees). Thus, vocal activity can be described as gaseous architecture insofar as it is the production of determinate vibrations of air molecules, i.e. the production of sounds. The sound-image, then, is the imaginary copy or simulacrum of gaseous architecture, the image of gaseous architecture.

Saussure presents the following three diagrams to illustrate the structure of the sign:

Figure 1</em> (1916/2011, pp. 66–67)

Here, by “sound-image” he means name, such as the name “arbor,” which is the signifier; the “concept” is the signified, and in this example the concept is “tree”; the arrow on either side of the diagram going both ways, from signifier to signified and from signified to signifier, is the process of signification, which Sassure conceives of as “association.” Although Saussure does indeed write that the concept “is generally more abstract” than the name, the sense in which he means this is unclear. In fact, Sassure writes very little about what his concept of the “concept” is. However, the above series of diagrams suggests that his concept of the “concept” meant nothing more than “image,” as in “mental image,” since in the last diagram the “concept” of “tree” is represented by a visual image of a tree (a visual image which, presumably, represents the wholly mental visual image of a tree associated with the sound-image “arbor” in the mind, since the sign is a psychological entity). It is not clear how a visual image of a tree is more abstract than the soundimage “arbor.” If anything, the visual image of a tree is relatively more concrete in relation to a real tree in the world, being a copy of that real tree which resembles that real tree, however much it may abstract from or deviate from the model, whereas the sound-image “arbor” is relatively more abstract in relation to the real tree in the world, since there is no necessary link between the sound-image “arbor” and the real tree. Language is an abstract art, a nonrepresentational art. The fact that the there is no necessary link between the signifier and the real thing in the world is described by Saussure as the “arbitrariness of the sign,” but it is more accurately described as the arbitrariness of the signifier or the contingency of the signifier; the signifier “arbor” is “arbitrary” in that nothing about it resembles the real thing in the world to which it refers (if it does indeed refer to a real thing in the world) and in that it is contingent, meaning that wholly and irreducibly different signifiers, for instance “tree” and “arbor,” can refer to the same real object; we may also say, along with Saussure, that wholly and irreducibly signifiers can signify the same concept, but as long as we specify that we reject Saussure’s suggestion that the concept is merely an image and that signification is merely association (1916/2011, pp. 67–68). In fact, as our preliminary analysis suggests, the image, too, is in itself a signifier, not of a real thing in the world, but also of a concept which serves as its signified; the concept is not an image, but a “universal.” We may say, to be more precise, that the concept is the “idea of a universal,” but this means the same thing as “the concept of a universal,” which is a redundancy since the concept and the universal here (or the idea and the universal here) are one and the same entity. To be more precise, the concept (or the idea) is an ideal object, an ideal entity or “pure idea” which exists wholly in the mind. A concept is not an image, which means that any image is never a “direct representation” of an idea; an image, that is to say, a representation, can only ever be indirect since its object is always an imageless ideal object. The image is always an imaginary extension, but the concept is always an unextended object which is never in itself an imaginary extension. By “ideal object,” we mean precisely those unextended objects in the mind. Therefore, it is only the second diagram above of Saussure’s that we can use to approximately illustrate the structure of the sign: the signifier “arbor” signifies an ideal object of a tree which, within the confines of representation, we can at best only indicate with the word “tree” in quotations, using it to stand in for an ideal object that due to its nature as purely ideal cannot be directly represented as such.

Berkeley writes that “a word becomes general by being made the sign, not of an abstract general idea, but of several particular ideas, any one of which it indifferently suggests to the mind” (1710, §11). By “a particular idea,” Berkeley specifically means an image, which is, as we have demonstrated, concrete insofar as it is a copy that resembles its model; the phrase “particular image” is a redundancy, since, as we have also demonstrated, an image is always an image of a particular thing (whether a real thing or an imaginary thing) since an image can never represent a universal (or abstraction), since universals (or abstractions) are, as Berkeley also suggests, in themselves imageless or non-images by definition. Berkeley writes that he believes in the existence of “general ideas” but not of “abstract (imageless) ideas”: “an idea which, considered in itself, is particular, becomes general by being made to represent or stand for all other particular ideas of the same sort” (1710, §12). Berkeley’s concept of “generality” devoid of abstraction, that is to say, generality wholly dependent on particular images, is circular: Berkeley writes that a particular image is transformed into a general idea by being made to stand for other particular images, but he reintroduces the notion of generality in a circular way when he adds “of the same sort,” such that generality appears to exist prior to the particular images from which it, the generality, allegedly derives.

Berkeley further explicates his concept of “generality” by performing an exegesis of a geometrician who “is demonstrating the method of cutting a line in two equal parts”:

“He draws, for instance, a black line of an inch in length: this, which in itself is a particular line, is nevertheless with regard to its signification general, since, as it is there used, it represents all particular lines whatsoever; so that what is demonstrated of it is demonstrated of all lines, or, in other words, of a line in general. And, as that particular line becomes general by being made a sign, so the name line, which taken absolutely is particular, by being a sign is made general. And as the former owes its generality not to its being the sign of an abstract or general line, but of all particular right lines that may possibly exist, so the latter must be thought to derive its generality from the same cause, namely, the various particular lines which it indifferently denotes.” (1710, §12)

Let us first note that this example suffers from the necessary implications of Berkeley’s circular concept of “generality.” Berkeley writes that a particular image of a (black) line (of an inch in length) is made into a “general idea” by being made to stand in for all particular lines, but we should not forget to add the caveat “of the same sort,” meaning that there must be a true general idea of the line, i.e. an abstract idea of the line, which precedes a particular image of a line being made to stand in for all other particular lines (which, given Berkeley’s subjective idealsim, his contention that only “particular ideas” exist, i.e. that only particular images exist, means that when Berkeley writes of all other particular lines, he really means all other particular images of lines). But the falsehood of Berkeley’s theory of “generalities” becomes even more transparent when making even the most preliminary inquiry into the actual discipline of geometry and actual writings of geometricians. Let us consider the first four definitions put forth by Euclid in Book I of his Elements, which is much more so a philosophy of mathematics (a “meta-ontology,” in Badiou’s language) than it is mathematics itself (mathematics itself is ontology itself, as Badiou writes):

Definition 1. A point is that which has no part.

Definition 2. A line is breadthless length.

Definition 3. The ends of a line are points.

Definition 4. A straight line is a line which lies evenly with the points on itself.

The Truth of the line is mathematical, therefore the Truth of the line can only be adequately described by a language of mathematics, a mathematical language, for instance the system of Roman numerals, the system of Arabic numerals, or the coordinate plane. In his Elements, therefore, Euclid, insofar as he utilizes a nonmathematical language, more specifically, recorded speech, approaches Truth but never reaches it, since the Truth itself, being mathematical in nature, is only precisely expressibe in specifically and technically mathematical language. The sense of Euclid’s four concepts presented above (a point, a line, the ends of a line, and a straight line, respectively) are therefore non-mathematical in nature; however, they are nonetheless not only generalities, but abstractions as well. Euclid’s almost-mathematical concepts do not depend upon particular examples in their definition, that is to say, they are not in themselves particulars, but universals. For example, Euclid’s concept of a line, rendered in English as “a line,” is defined as a “breadthless length,” and it is defined as such independently of any possible particular examples of lines, for example independently of a black line of one inch drawn on a piece of paper. Euclid’s concept of line is precisely a concept of a “sort,” of the kind that allows Berkeley to make such statements, in all earnest, such as “ all other particular ideas of the same sort.” Therefore, “abstract general ideas,” which we have also called “universal ideas,” “universal concepts,” and described as “universals,” do in fact exist and can often even be useful and true.

Berkeley’s concept of “particular-as-stand-in-for-universal” may have a severely limited application to aesthetics, since in art and literature there abounds those entities informally called “symbols,” wherein, for example, a particular character stands in for all other characters “of the same sort” (for example, Justine in Marquis de Sade’s Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue, is the embodiment of the traditional and oppressive Western concept of feminine virtue, and as such stands in for all other women who sincerely believe in such an oppressive concept of feminine virtue), or, as in an allegory, wherein a particular story stands in for all other stories “of the same sort” (for example, Marquis de Sade’s Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue is the particular story of the aforementioned Justine, but it nonetheless stands in for all other stories concerning the destinies of women like Justine who have been reduced to poverty as Justine was; the purpose of Sade’s allegory is to critique the traditional and oppressive Western concept of feminine virtue more generally). However, even in art and literature we find that we cannot escape the implications of the phrase “of the same sort” (or any of its equivalent phrases, for that matter), which necessarily imply the existence of abstract generalities prior to the construction of aesthetic “symbols.”

What we have written about Euclid’s almost-mathematical concepts is likewise true of the mathematical concepts they approach, with the caveat that those mathematical concepts are True in the strict sense, meaning that those mathematical concepts refer to the essences of things in the world. Let us consider, for example, the following mathematical description of a straight line: y = mx + b, where y is a variable on the y-axis of a coordinate plane, m is the slope of the line, x is a variable on the x-axis of that same coordinate plane, and b is the y-intercept of the line, the value of the variable y when the variable x is equivalent to zero. This mathematical statement is often called “the slope-intercept formula.” The slopeintercept formula would require an entire book to describe in detail, but this preliminary analysis is suitable for our present purposes. Euclid defines a straight line as a breadthless length which lies evenly with the indivisible points on itself. Euclid’s almostmathematical definition of a straight line does not directly have a mathematical sense, merely an almost-mathematical sense. The slope-intercept formula, on the other hand, is written in a mathematical language and it directly has a mathematical sense, that is to say, the set of concepts referred to by the set of signifiers “y = mx + b” are specifically mathematical abstractions, abstractions of a specifically mathematical nature, which we may approximate through speech (as Euclid did and as we have done), but which are examples of a type of concept, the mathematical concept, which is totally and irreducibly different from the type of concept utilized in speech or in non-mathematical languages generally, that is to say, in non-mathematical images generally (the non-mathematical concept). In other words, mathematical concepts cannot be directly translated into non-mathematical concepts. In any case, however, it is evident that mathematical language describes abstractions, that is to say, universals, and not particulars which are separate from universals. The mathematical concept signified by the slope-intercept formula is an algebraic abstraction, it exists first and foremost as an abstraction qua abstraction, as a combination of pure variables in a determinate way, even before the particular values of those variables are known or even exist; moreover, because mathematical concepts are true concepts, this mathematical abstraction, like all mathematical abstractions, refers to the real essence of things in the world outside of the mind (more specifically, the mathematical concept of a line refers to all those real essences of things which we can objectively describe as lines).

We ascribe to Hegel’s dictum that “the universal exists in the particular, and the particular is itself a universal unto itself,” but we do so on the basis of the Truth of mathematics, that is to say, on a strictly anti-Hegelian basis. We might say that we know that mathematics is true on the basis that numerous practical applications for it have been discovered as in the natural sciences, but this is an inaccuracy since truth in mathematics does not depend on its practical applications, but on the internal consistency of mathematical concepts (which in the practice of mathematical language means the consistency of mathematical statements; for example, a solution to an algebra problem is true if and only if each side of the equation is equal to the other side). That is to say, the Truth of mathematics is logical, not empirical or positivist; it in no way depends upon the accumulation of brute facts. What we can infer, however, from the practical applications of mathematics in the natural sciences is that if some of mathematics applies to the world outside of us, then all of mathematics must also apply to the world outside of us, since mathematics is a system consistent with itsef (albeit in its essence incomplete); since mathematics is the system of Truth and this system of Truth is defined by its consistency with itself, if even a little part of this system is true in the sense of describing the world independent of our minds, then all of this system is consistent with this property of being true in the sense of describing the world independent of our minds, which means that the total system of mathematics is true in describing the world independent of our minds. Therefore, mathematical concepts, which are themselves all abstractions, all refer to real universals, real universal entities that exist in the real outside of our minds; in fact, it also means that our minds themselves are ultimately constructed out of these mathematical entities. These real mathematical entities, these real universal, are the essence of things.

We reject Nietzsche’s naive ontology that only particulars (that is to say, particulars conceived of as separate from universals, “pure particulars”) exist in the real, such that all concepts of universals are merely fictions invented by comparing pure particulars in order to more effectively control them. If mathematics were merely so much falsehood, however, then they would have no practical applications whatsoever; for example, the simple practical act of counting, for instance whose formalization would be “5 + 7 = 12,” let us say the practical application is adding five stones to seven stones in order to count 12 stones it total, would simply be impossible, for if mathematics were a pure fiction irreducibly different from and totally cut off from reality, then we could never even apply the concept “1” in order to count one stone let alone being able to count twelve, for nothing in the world would correspond to it in any way whatsoever. Therefore, mathematics is not a fiction, that is to say, mathematics describes reality. Mathematical language describes systems that exist independent of the mind, the systems that compose the world outisde of the mind, and we call these mathematical systems that compose the world the “essences” or “forms” of beings. But truth in mathematics, as we have already concluded, is ultimately internal to the system of mathematics itself, such that only mathematical statements which are consistent with themselves and without contradiction are true mathematical statements, although mathematical language does also happen to have a one-to-one correspondence with the world.

The idea of a universe that consists wholly of particulars is a false idea, since a description of it would not correspond to our experience of the world, but would instead resemble the imaginary world described by Zeno’s paradoxes, if the concept of it is thought through consistently. If there were only particulars and no universals in reality, then we could not even say that particulars exist; for example, when we distinguish between two instants in time, we identify each instant as a particular, but if we say that there are only particulars, then those two instants themselves must be composed each of an infinite number of instants, such that we could never arrive at the latter instant from the first, since in order to do so we would have to pass through an infinite number of instants, which would be impossible since in practical terms an infinite number of instants would take forever, an infinite amount of time, a literal eternity, to pass through. Therefore, universals must exist (but not necessarily a totalizing One that excludes the many). Euclid defines a point as “that which has no part,” but this is only true in mathematics relative to the limited space of the coordinate plane; that is to say, Euclid approaches the truth using mere words, but the pure mathematics of the deeper, fundamental building-blocks of space reveals that the ultimate nature of points is sets, that is to say, points are ultimately sets, meaning that points, ultimately, are not “that which has no part,” but a set of many parts, which Badiou describes as multiplicity. These sets or multiplicities are the underlying unit-structures of reality. These multiplicities are nonetheless universals as they are, since they are real and objectively existing mathematical unit-systems and since, as we have already demonstrated, mathematics is a system of real universals, meaning that, in the final analysis, the word does not consist exclusively of particulars independent of universals. On the other hand, if we attempt to discover what Truth is independent of possible practical applications, that is, if we attempt to disocover Truth through pure reason alone, then we must agree that the self-consistent, that is to say, the logical, is true, which leads us, if we are being consistent with ourselves, to affirm that mathematics is the Truth, since it is eminently and comprehensively logical and self-consistent. We cannot, however, discover the Truth independent of logic; if we deny the truth of logic altogether, then any superstition, dogma, or delusion may be mistaken for truth, since we have abandoned any criterion for distinguishing truth from falsehood whatsoever. Therefore, if we agree that Truth can be reached by logic, then we must necessarily agree that mathematics is the Truth, if we are being absolutely logical.

No language, not even mathematical language, is the ground of Truth. Truth exists independently of all language, and its Truth is internal to itself; that is to say, Truth is its ownmost ground. To paraphrase Nietzsche for an un-Nietzschean purpose, “Truth is a snake that bites its own tail.” Truth is also a message conveyed only by the medium of mathematical language, but never by the medium of non-mathematical language. The ground of Truth and the medium of Truth are two entirely different things; Truth exists independently of what mediates it, which is what makes it the Truth by definition. McLuhan is fundamentally wrong when he makes a distinction between speech and writing, associating speech with simultaneity and writing with sequentiality, and then inexplicably asserting that “number” is a distinct medium unto itself. First of all, speech is as sequential as it is simultaneous; the sound of a word resonates “everywhere” in extensive space, but the category of speech nonetheless includes sequences of words, series of words that can only be understood if connected sequentially. Therefore, simultaneity and sequentiality are merely two dimensions or degrees of freedom of speech; non-literate people speak just as connectedly and causally as literate people (to claim otherwise, as McLuhan does, is ethnocentrism pure and simple). Conversely, writing also has a dimension of simultaneity; it has the simultaneity of the graphic symbol, just as in painting, and it secondarily has the simultaneity of speech, since it is after all recorded speech. Moreover, writing is necessarily sequential, since it is merely recorded speech, and since speech itself is essentially sequential. Speech and recorded speech (“writing”) are indeed two distinct technologies, but they nonetheless fall into the same category of technology, the technology of non-mathematical language, as opposed to the technology of mathematical language (which is not defined merely by the fact that it includes numbers, even if its origin is in counting). Of course, mathematical language is typically written down and it may be spoken aloud, but it nonetheless remains a distinct technology from that of non-mathematical language. Mathematical language, as language, also has an axis of simultaneity and an axis of sequentiality, as does all speech and writing, but mathematical language is distinguishable as its own medium, distinct from the medium of non-mathematical language, by the fact of what it mediates. Mathematical language mediates Truth, whereas nonmathematical language mediates either Truth or Falsehood.

In his pamphlet Elements of Semiology, Roland Barthes explicates Hjelmslev’s distinction between “denotation” and “connotation.” Barthes conceives of denotation and connotation as forms of association, and he equivocates association with signification; however, his description of connotation is in effect the description of pure association, which implies a fundamental difference between connotation and denotation, a problem in his account which comes to fore in his explication of the difference between metalanguage and connotation. Let us consider denotation and connotation not as “systems,” but as acts. Denotation is the typical operation of signification which defines the sign as such, that is to say, denotation is that operation of signification which leads from signifier to signified such that the signified is the sense of the signifier. Connotation, as Barthes defines it, also leads from a signifier to a “signified,” but this “signified” of connotation is not the sense of the sign; and since Barthes holds to Saussure’s definition of “signification” as “association,” he describes connotation as “signification,” but it is evident from our analysis that since connotation does not direct towards the sense of the sign, it is not an act of “signification” in any meaningful sense, but is in fact the recollection of associations, a process we have referred to by the more simple term “association,” which is admittedly imprecise. Barthes writes, “In connotative semiotics, the signifiers of the second system are constituted by the signs of the first; this is reversed in metalanguage: there the signifieds of the second system are constituted by the signs of the first” (1964/1967, p. 92). A metalanguage is a language about language, that is to say, a system of signs about signs; for example, a treatise on linguistics is a metalanguage since it is language about language. A metalanguage consists of signs that have as their sense another system of signs. That is to say, a metalanguage is defined as such by the fact that it consists of signs that denote another system of signs. Connotation, on the other hand, begins from the signifier of a relatively “original” sign and leads to a psychologial content distinct from the sense of that “original” sign. A metalanguage can of course itself have a metalanguage, just as a metalanguage may likely have connotations; but in any case, a metalanguage is defined as such due to the fact that it is a language that denotes another language, whereas connotation is an irreducibly different psychological operation from denotation. It is on the basis of the irreducible difference between denotation and connotation that we distinguish between signification and association, such that signification and association are irreducibly different psychological operations. Signification is denotation, whereas association is connotation. The signification of a sign denotes the sense of that sign, whereas the connotation of a sign recollects (however consciously or unconsciously) the psychological (and often cultural) associations that sign has with other psychologial entities, including other signs, but also including images, concepts, feelings, and actions.

Denotation denotes a sense, which is a psychological entity; connotation connotes associations, which are also psychological entities. The sense of a sign is nonetheless distinct from the associations that sign has. The sense denoted by a signifier is a concept. The concept denoted by a signifier is irreducibly distinct from concepts connoted by that signifier. The concept denoted by a signifier is distinguished by the fact that that signifier is directed towards that concept, whereas connotation is a relatively automatic process whereby associations are attracted to the signifier of a sign as if by gravity or electromagnetism. Therefore, we reject Saussure’s diagram of the sign insofar as it represents signification by means of two arrows going in opposite directions, one from signifier to signified and the other from signified to signifier. In reality, the arrow of signification only goes one way, from signifier to signified. Connotation, since it is not a sense-making process, is not an operation of directedness in the manner that denotation is an operation of directedness, therefore connotation also cannot be represented by means of two arrows going in opposite directions representing a mutual directedness of signifier and signified. Connotation is perhaps more accurately represented by a recursive arrow akin to the recycling symbol, since associations circulate “around” signs or “within” signs in an unconscious psychological operation maintained by the emotional charge that first forged the bond of association. Thus we present a new and more accurate diagram of the sign:

Figure 2

The first diagram above illustrates that the signifier is directed towards the signified; we describe this process of directedness as denotation and signification. The recursive and circular arrow around the signifier and the signified represent the connotations of the sign, that is to say, the associations that circulate around or within the sign. In more concrete terms, the signifier is an image which is directed towards a concept; this is illustrated by the second diagram. We may also modify this diagram in order to illustrate the psychologial operation of reference:

Figure 3

In the above diagram, the semi-circle represents the mind and the empty space outside the semi-circle represents the world outside of the mind, which we also describe as the thing-in-itself. To clarify, we affirm that consciousness has direct and immediate access to reality, and we describe reality as the thing-in-itself in order to affirm that consciousness has direct and immediate access to the thing-in-itself. Reference, in this strict technical sense, is the psychological operation whereby the mind directs a concept within it towards a thing-in-itself in the world, thereby establishing a relation between them, although this relation is a purely psychological one since there remains an irreducible difference between the intensive entity of the concept and the extensive entity of the thing-in-itself. There is an ambiguity within the technical concept of “reference” which inevitably leads to equivocation. On the one hand, reference can mean a psychological operation as we have described and diagrammed above. On the other hand, reference can mean the correspondence of a concept to a thing-in-itself in the world, which is not a psychological operation. Indeed, we have used the word “reference” in both senses in the passages above. Moreover, the directedness of a concept towards a thing-in-itself in the world does not necessarily mean that that concept is a true concept, it merely means that a concept, whether true or false, is used to designate a thing-in-itself in the world. For example, if speaker A has just spoken the truth but speaker B has called speaker A a liar, then speaker B is indeed designating a thing-in-itself in the world, namely speaker A, with a concept, but since the concept employed by speaker B (let us say the concept that speaker A is a liar) has no correspondence with reality, there is no truth to the concept speaker B has employed in this context (let us say the concept that speaker A is a liar). The concept of “liar” is not in itself a falsehood, but it is a falsehood when someone who is not a liar is “referred to” as a liar. Moreover, concepts that are falsehoods in themselves are often illegitimately used to “refer” to things-in-themselves in the world; for example, if speaker A and speaker B are both humans but speaker B calls speaker A a “dragon,” meaning it literally, then speaker B has just “referred to” speaker A as a “dragon” despite the fact that the concept of “dragon” is false insofar as dragons are entirely fictional. This problem of the usage of the word “reference” comes no doubt from an inability to entirely dissociate “reference” as a piece of technical jargon from “reference” as it is used in everyday language. Indeed, in everyday language, as we demonstrated in the earlier passages of this chapter, the word “reference” may be used where the preferred technical term is “signification,” such that one may say that an image “refers to” an idea. The same problem arises with any other piece of everyday language which doubles as technical jargon, for instance “signification,” “denotation” (Bertrand Russell, for example, uses “denotation” to mean “reference,” whereas Barthes uses “denotation” to mean “signification”), “connotation,” “indication,” etc., such that in everyday language all these terms have equivocal meanings which leave their trace in technical usage despite the best efforts of theorists to forge an artificial but clear technical jargon. To resolve the problem by inventing new jargon terms risks sacrificing accessibility and thus intelligibility, yet the fact the word “referece,” like many other words, has multiple senses, must be brought to attention if we are to avoid equivocation in our reasoning. To avoid the proliferation of new jargon, we will continue to use the word “reference” in both senses, but we shall attempt to specify in each case which sense of reference in order to avoid equivocation.

In any case, we have noticed that there is a psychological operation of “directing” or “directedness” in both the case of signification and reference (that is, in reference-as-directedness). This “directedness” is a wholly distinct operation from association. Moreover, this “directedness” constitutes the structure of the sign as such since it constitutes the very process of signification that constitutes the sign as such. This mental activity of “directedness” or “aiming at” we have described is equivalent to the mental activity of “intentionality” described by the phenomenology of Husserl. According to Husserl, when consciousness is directed towards an object (which is thereby an “object of consciousness”), consciousness is “intending” towards that object, such that intentionality is precisely this psychological operation of “intending.” We recognize that intentionality may be an unconscious mental act. Moreover, we recognize Husserl’s phenomenology not as the science of experience, but as the science of signs. We recognize that the world we experience with our senses consists of things-inthemselves, not mere phenomena, but that phenomena nonetheless exist; phenomena exist precisely as signs, that is to say, as images with sense. Much of Husserl’s phenomenology can be directly used as semiology with a mere change in terminology, and other portions of it can be used if one provides the necessary psychological and sociological context for Husserl’s analyses. “Phenomenology” is semiology by another name. Or to put it more simply, phenomenology is semiology. This is perhaps most evident when considering visual-images (or, for that matter, sound-images, smellimages, taste-images, and touch-images) as opposed to speech. Therefore, we wil shift our focus from the semiology of speech to the semiology of the visual-image in order to demonstrate that phenomenology is semiology, then we shall apply our findings to speech. But first, we must more closely analyze the foundations of Husserl’s phenomenology.

Husserl circumscribes the object of study in his science of phenomena by means of his concept of “bracketing,” also called “epoché,” a method wherein the question of the existence of the “object of consciousness” is suspended, such that solely this “object of consciousness” is the object of study independent of whether or not it is real. This process of “bracketing” is also called “phenomenological reduction” by Husserl. Husserl asserts that his phenomenology is a science of experience, but his claim is brought into question by his method of phenomenological reduction, especially since, according to him, the phenomenological reduction of experience means the suspension of what he describes as the “natural attitude” that defines our very experience. According to Smith, Husserl writes that the “general thesis” of the “natural attitude” is that the world we experience with our senses exists independently of our individual consciousness; Husserl describes this “natural attitude” in the following manner: “I am conscious of a world, endlessly spread out in space, endlessly becoming and having become in time.... Through seeing, touching, hearing, etc., ... corporeal things in their respective spatial distribution are for me simply there ... ” (Ideas I, §27; as quoted in Smith, 2006, p. 241). Smith writes that Husserl does not deny the general thesis of the natural attitude, that on some level he accepts it, but through the operation of phenomenological reduction he does not “make use of it,” that is to say, the natural attitude of consciousness towards the world is completely disregarded for the purpose of phenomenological inquiry (2006, p. 241). Further describing phenomenological reduction, Smith writes, “At one place Husserl even spoke of a methodological “nullification” (Vernichtung) of the world (§49)” (2006, p. 243). Husserl did not mean this literally, but his method of phenomenological reduction was indeed a type of nullification, much more so than Husserl himself realized.

By the method of phenomenological reduction, the world is nullified insofar as our direct experience of the world, our natural attitude towards the world, is nullified; or rather, to be more precise, it is reduced to mere phenomena, such that we are left not with the thing itself (the experience of consciousness), but its mere image. Husserl cannot legitimately claim his phenomenology to be a science of conscious experience if its fundamental premise is the nullification of the natural attitude of conscious experience, since the natural attitude of conscious experience is precisely conscious experience as it is, such that the nullification of the natural attitude of conscious experience is the nullification of conscious experience itself as it naturally is. In other words, Husserl is not concerned with studying conscious experience (as it naturally occurs) at all. The phenomenological reduction results in an “unnatural attitude” or “artificial attitude,” such that through it we no longer have the natural conscious experience of the world, but its simulacrum. The general thesis of the natural attitude of conscious experience is the reality of our conscious experience, and to disregard the natural attitude of conscious experience means to disregard the reality of our conscious experience, meaning that phenomenological reduction can never be the basis of a science of conscious experience as such. Let us call a science of conscious experience an “experientology,” in order to differentiate it from phenomenology, which is strictly a science of phenomena. Experientology is the science of conscious experience as it is, that is to say, experientology is the science of the natural attitude of conscious experience. The general thesis of the natural attitude of conscious experience is a “naive realism,” by which we mean that the natural attitude of consciousness is that the world it experiences through its senses is the real world which exists independent of our consciousness; in other words, that consciousness directly and immediately experiences reality, or the thing-in-itself, through the senses. The world experienced by consciousness through the senses, “endlessly spread out in space, endlessly becoming and having become in time,” does not consist of mere phenomena, but of existence itself. The “corporeal things in their respective spatial distribution” that “are for me simply there” are things-in-themselves as they are and as they are experienced immediately and directly by consciousness through the senses. In other words, perception is never the perception of phenomena because perception is always the perception of reality itself “endlessly spread out in space, endlessly becoming and having become in time.” Perception is fundamentally passive, open, and receptive; perception is the passive reception of the world by the mind, whose senses open up directly to the world.

The image, that is to say, the copy or simulacrum, was the very model for the philosophical concept of the phenomenon beginning in ancient Greece, such that phenomena were merely the images, copies, or simulacra of noumena, or intelligible “essences.” For example, in Plato’s Republic, Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” explicitly compares phenomena to shadow-puppets projected on an underground cave wall, whereas the “real” world of noumena lay outside the cave; for Plato, these “shadow-puppets” or phenomena was precisely the world of our everyday experience in contrast to the intelligible real realm of noumena, the Ideas, which lay beyond our everyday experience, that is to say, beyond phenomena. Plato’s distinction between phenomena and noumena is often translated as the distinction between appearance and essence, which is apt if by “appearance” one means “representation” or “image” in the manner of shadow-puppets. This dichotomy between appearance and essence, however, is a false one, which either cleaves existence in two or, in any case, only acknowledges true existence to belong only to an imperceptible essence as opposed to its mere perceptible copy. Sartre is right to say that “existence precedes essence” insofar as his meaning was that the world we perceive does not consist of mere phenomena, that is to say, mere simulacra, but of existence itself, the thing itself. In the traditional philosophical schema, essence precedes “existence,” its simulacrum, in which case essence would be transcendental in relation to “existence,” which would be its mere copy. Sartre, by affirming the immanence of existence, rejects the traditional transcendental schema. However, we find Sartre’s rejection of transcendentalism to be wholly compatible with a philosophy of immanence. We agree with Sartre that existence is immanent and that existence is not in itself a simulacrum, but we disagree with him that this means we can repudiate the concept of essence altogether. If existence is immanent, that is only because existence is equivalent to essence as it is and because that essence is immanent. Existence is essence, and existence is immanent, therefore essence is immanent. When real objects interact with each other, it is their respective essences that directly interact with each other. When we perceive the world, we directly perceive the essence of things in themselves. There is no difference between the concrete content of the real and the “ideal” content of the real. When I perceive real objects, I do not discover my own mind. When I perceive real objects, I directly discover those real objects in the world.

Thus, the object of experience as it is perceived is not the same as the object of experience as it “appears” to me. The “appearance” of the object of experience is nothing other than the mental image, the mental double or simulacrum, of the real object of experience as it is experienced, i.e. perceived, by consciousness. Perception of the world is immediate and pre-reflective. Whenever we discuss the world as it “appears” to us, we have already moved into reflection, and what we are discussing is indeed not the world as it is, but merely its mental reflection, that is to say, the simulacrum of the world fabricated by the mind. Phenomenological reduction, which reduces our experience of the world into phenomena, in actuality reduces our experience of the world into images by way of fabricating these images. That is to say, phenomenological reduction is in actuality the fabrication of images, and thereby the imaginary doubling of the world. Phenomenological reduction converts the world into signs, which is the exact same process as the imaginary doubling of the world, such that to the traditional phenomenologist the world appears to be a rich and significant tapestry and sequence of images. In the best case scenario, the traditional phenomenologist is like Sartre, transforming the world into a giant novel. The “artificial attitude” is nothing more than the literal production of artifice by consciousness, that is to say, the production of images by consciousness. Whereas the natural attitude of consciousness is the experience of the world, the artificial attitude of consciousness is the experience of images of the world; or, to phrase it another way, the natural attitude is the experience of the real, whereas the artificial attitude is the experience of the imaginary.

Real phenomena do exist, but precisely as images. A phenomenon is an image, an image is a phenomenon. If phenomenology is limited to studying consciousness in its artificial attitude, then phenomenology is precisely the science of images or the science of the imaginary. An image is precisely that object of consciousness for which we may suspend judgement as to whether it corresponds to reality or not. That is to say, it is only for an image that we can legitimately perform the operation of “bracketing” described by Husserl, since an image does not in itself reveal whether or not it corresponds to a thing-in-itself in the world outside of the mind. In fact, if by “phenomena” we strictly mean images, then there is no need to invoke “bracketing” or “phenomenological reduction,” since only images are phenomena to begin with, meaning that it is only in the case of images that we can study an object of consciousness independently of whether or not it corresponds to a real object independent of consciousness. It is true that a mental image of a horse that I have just perceived is an imaginary double of that real horse, but the meaning of that image is first of all internal to that image, and it is only on the basis of its internal meaning that an image can be intended to refer to a real being; but if a mental image of a horse appears to me in the absence of the perception of real horses, then it is all the more apparent that the meaning of the image in question is internal to that image and independent of whether or not it corresponds to a real being; moreover, if a mental image of a unicorn appears to me, then I know that this image does not correspond to a real being, but the meaning of the image is nonetheless internal to that image; in any case, the meaning of an image is internal to it and is both independent of whether or not it corresponds to a real being or object and independent of whether or not it (the image) is intended to refer to a real being or object.

It is only with the equivalence of image and phenomenon that we can understand Husserl’s concepts of “noema” and “noesis,” which refer not to the essence of things in the world, but to the sense of images in the mind and to intentionality respectively. The noema is the sense or ideal content of the phenomenon and the noesis is the intentionality which directs from the phenomenon towards the sense. We reject Husserl’s notion that an ego or “I” performs the intentionality, because we deny that any such ego or “I” is ever anything more than a sign or a concept. Intentionality is a mental activity. The components of the mind are mental acts that the mind, as mental act (or series of mental acts), performs; but there is no underlying atomistic “I” underneath all the mental acts that compose the mind. We shall return later to our critique of “egoism,” the belief in the real existence of an “I.” For now, it is enough to note that there are three components of the sign: the phenomenon (the signifier), the noema (the signified), and the intentionality (the signification).

According to Smith, Husserl distinguishes between the “matter” and the “form” of phenomena: “The sensuous part he calls hyle (the Greek term for matter or stuff), and the intentional part he calls morphe (the Greek term for form). Husserl here adapts Aristotle’s doctrine of matter-and-form: a bronze statue, Aristotle held, consists of a fusion of matter (bronze) with form (shape); similarly, Husserl holds that a visual experience [which, as we have discovered, in this context really means the visual image] consists of a fusion of sensation (matter) and interpretation or conceptualization (form)” (2006, p. 258). Furthermore, Husserl “characterizes the noesis in an experience as the “‘animating’, sense-giving layer” (“beseelende,” sinngebende ... Schicht) of the experience [read “experience” here as “image”] (§85). For an experience to be noetic is, by its essence, to harbor a “sense” (Sinn) on the ground of this sense-giving work (§88). The sense (Sinn) that is “given” to the object of perception [read “object of perception” here as “image”] is precisely the intentional content of which we have made much above” (2006, p. 259). Husserl writes of noema as sense and noesis (intentionality) as sense-giving because he cannot help but divulge what he is not consciously aware of, namely that in describing phenomena he is actually describing signs. Husserl describes sense as “form” in one context and as “content” in another context, but it is clear that the contexts are different and that both are true in their respective contexts. The signifier is the “sensuous” content, or “hyle,” of the sign, since it is the portion of the sign which is the visible image, whereas the signified is the ideal content of the sign, since it is the invisible non-image portion of the sign; Husserl also describes this ideal content as “morphe” or “form” in relation to the “hyle” of what we call the signifier, but this ideal content is more accurately specified as the “representational form” of the sign, since it (the ideal content) is neither the form of the real object referred to (if any) nor the ontological form or essence of thought which makes the formulation of ideal content possible. The representational form of the sign is nothing more than its signified, that is to say, its sense. Moreover, what we are dealing with here has nothing do with Hjelmslev’s distinction between the “form of content” and the “form of expression.” The distinction we are addressing here is that between the “form of representation” (or representational form) and the “form of being” (or ontological form). To reiterate, the ontological form of extensive entities (the world independent of thought) and the ontological form of intensive entities (thoughts) are each ontologically distinct despite both being subtensive (meaning that each respective ontological form is a distinct subtensive set). The representational form of a sign is merely its sense, which is a thought, meaning that it is an intensive entity. Representational forms are intensive. Subtensive forms are real universals, whereas representational forms are conceptual universals or universal concepts (concepts of universals), and not all universal concepts both refer to and correspond to real universals.

A sign is a representation. The signifier is the representer, the signified is the represented. What a sign represents is its sense, its signified. A sign exists primarily in the mind, meaning that a sign is primarily an intensive entity. The signifier is the “material” or “sensuous” content of the sign insofar as the signifier consists of a set of imaginary extensions that are ultimately imaginary copies of real extensions that are properly material or “sensuous” (capable of being sensed or perceived by means of either the sense-organs or instruments of perception that extend the capabilities of the senseorgans). The signifier is in a way visible, albeit visible only in the mind’s eye. The signified, on the other hand, is “ideal” insofar as it does not consist of imaginary extensions; in other words, the signified is “ideal” insofar as it is unextended and intensive. Sense and essence, or representational form and ontological form, are ontologically distinct entities. The ontological forms of the world are only perfectly described by mathematical representations, which means that only the representational forms of mathematical representations have a one-to-one correspondence with the ontological forms of the world. But despite this one-to-one correspondence between the ontological forms of the world and the representational forms of mathematical representations, the two are nonetheless irreducibly different types of ontological entities, meaning that they do not have a one-to-one correspondence with each other by virtue of a common form which they both share or in which they both partake. In any case, what a sign represents is primarily its own ideal content or universal concept, not an object or ontological form in the world; the question of a universal concept’s correspondence with a real universal is the question of reference-ascorrespondence, which is an irreducibly separate question from that of the sense of a representation. Representations display only their sensuous portion, the image as such, that which can be displayed, but they do not and cannot display their representational forms because their representational forms are imageless abstractions, that which by its very nature cannot be displayed. The signifier represents its representational form only by means of intentionality. Only mathematical representations are truly “depictions” of reality, since only the representational forms of mathematical representations have a one-to-one correspondence with ontological forms in the world, meaning that only mathematical representations constitute the Truth in the strict sense. Non-mathematical representations never exactly “depict” reality, because non-mathematical representations can only ever at best approximate reality or approach reality; that is to say, the representational forms of non-mathematical representations can only ever approximate or approach ontological forms, since due to their by definition non-mathematical nature, non-mathematical representations do not and cannot represent mathematical representational forms that have an exact one-to-one correspondence with ontological forms. Non-mathematical representations can at best only ever be Truth, “Truth” under erasure as Heidegger or Derrida might put it, and at worst simply falsehood, since the real Truth, mathematical Truth, is the limit which non-mathematical representations can approach but never reach. For example, mathematical representations can exactly “depict” spatial objects, coloured objects, mental objects, etc., insofar as the representational forms of those mathematical representations have a one-to-one correspondence with the ontological forms of spatial objects, coloured objects, mental objects, etc., but non-mathematical representations can at best only ever approximate or approach the true “depiction” of spatial objects, coloured objects, mental objects, etc., because the ontological forms of those objects are mathematical in nature whereas the representational forms of non-mathematical representations are non-mathematical concepts that do not have the one-to-one correspondence with ontological forms that mathematical concepts do have. It is precisely the fundamental inability of nonmathematical representations to depict ontological forms that gives non-mathematical representations their essential characteristic of being “phenomena” or “appearances” as opposed to “essences,” that is to say, no matter how close the resemblance between a nonmathematical representation and the original model, the nonmathematical representation can never successfully depict the real essence of the original model; it is perhaps this “inessential” characteristic of the non-mathematical representation that gave rise to the distinction between “appearance” and “essence” to begin with, but in any case it is only regarding non-mathematical representations that this distinction really applies. A shadow can only ever be an approximation of the object that cast it, but the object itself is the limit which the shadow can approach but never reach. The imaginary double of the real object is the shadow of the real object. Truth depicts the object itself by depicting its essence, but Truth can only ever be the shadow cast by the object.

For our thus far relatively simple theory of phenomenology or semiology, let us take the appropriate example of a relatively simple image, the Chan Buddhist ink painting by Mu-Chi’i called Persimmons:

Figure 4. Mu-Ch’i, Persimmons, mid-13^th century. 35 x 29 cm. Ink on paper. Ryoko-in, Daitoku-ji, Kyoto

Just as with speech, painting is primarily psychological; that is to say, in both the case of speech and the case of painting, a thing perceived in the world (in the case of speech, a sound or set of sounds; in the case of painting, a dab of paint or a set of dabs of paint upon some material) must be interpreted by the mind to be a sign in order for it to be a sign as such for the receiving mind, meaning that both the signifier, the process of signification, and the signified are properly psychological entities, such that in speech the signifier is a sound-image transfigured into a name by way of an intention that bursts toward a universal concept, whereas in painting the true signifier is a visual image in the mind (which is the imaginary double of the physical, material painting) that is likewise transfigured into a signifier by way of an intention that bursts toward a universal concept. Thus, when we here discuss Mu-Ch’i’s Persimmons, we primarily mean not merely the physical painting, but the painting-as-sign, that is to say, the visual image in the mind evoked by the material paint, the visual image which is the locus of any possible significance conveyed by the material paint. The painting-as-sign is the “spiritual” painting, without which a painting would be merely senseless or accidental dabs of paint. Thus do we describe Mu-Ch’i’s painting Persimmons as a sign, whose sensuous or material signifier is the appearance of six persimmons; to be more specific, the set of five persimmons, from left to right, coloured light, dark, darkest, dark, and light respectively, plus the dark persimmon located just below the second (dark) and third (darkest) persimmons (from left to right), such that altogether they form the set of six persimmons. The ideal content signified by the visual image of these six persimmons is precisely that universal concept that can also be signified by the words “six persimmons”; to be more precise, this universal concept can also be signified by the words “six persimmons with stems”; to be even more precise, this universal concept can be elaborated as a set of six universal concepts, each corresponding to one of the respective persimmons imagined, differentiated either according to its shade (light, darker, darkest) or its position in the arrangement. However, the position of the persimmons in the arrangement, and perhaps even their respective shades and even the specific quantity of persimmons, although essential to the sensuous signifier of Mu-Ch’i’s Persimmons, may not be essential to its sense. First of all, Mu-Ch’i represents his six persimmons purely as six persimmons, an isolated set of six persimmons devoid of space, time, history, or context. The background of Persimmons is completely blank, or to phrase it another way, Persimmons has no background. Persimmons’ absence of background is not a representation of any kind of positive presence of a “void,” but rather it is the absence of any representation of space, time, history, or concept. This absence of space, time, history, or context in the signifier of Persimmons suggests that spatial or temporal qualities such as position in an arrangement, shade, or quantity is inessential to the sense of Persimmons, such that the sense of Persimmons could be rendered with the words, “a set of persimmons, of any possible shade, in any possible spatial arrangement, and of any quantity whatsoever.” That is to say, the fact that the sensuous signifier of Persimmons contains persimmons totalling six in number, of multiple shades, and in some sort of vague spatial arrangement (in the absence of any indication of space), does not indicate a sense with these specifications of quantity and respective shades and “spatial” positioning, but rather, factoring in the absnece of a background, it indicates that the sense is a universal concept that includes persimmons of any quantity, of any shade, and of any spatial arragement. Thus the sense of Persimmons can also be rendered more simply with the words, “any set of persimmons.” What is not in question here is whether or not MuCh’i’s Persimmons refers to a specific set of real persimmons which would have been the painting’s model. It may very well have been the case that Mu-Ch’i used a specific set of persimmons to paint Persimmons. However, it is equally likely the case that Mu-Ch’i did not rely on a model, since Persimmons is minimal enough to have come purely from Mu-Ch’i’s mind. In any case, whether or not Persimmons has a real intended referent is irrelevant to its sense. The sense of Mu-Ch’i’s Persimmons is a universal concept purely internal to (its) visual image. The concept “any set of persimmons” includes any set of real persimmons, but it also includes any set of imaginary persimmons, therefore we can amend our wording of the sense of Persimmons as, “any set of persimmons, real or imaginary.”

It is probable that the property of having a stem or not have a stem is also inessential to the sense of Persimmons, but it is nonetheless wholly understandable why Mu-Ch’i depicted his persimmons with stems as an expedient measure whereby the viewer is able to distinguish Mu-Ch’i’s marks as indeed persimmons, as opposed to balls, globs, or mere dabs of paint. In any case, the stems of Persimmons reveal that although Persimmons appears relatively simple, it is in reality complex. In fact, there are no simple images, just as there are no simple objects. All images are complex, just as all objects are complex. The stems of the persimmons in Persimmons resemble characters in a Chinese language despite the fact that they are not actually characters in a Chinese language, to the point where they could be characterized as subtle variations of an ideogram (or, considering their differences, as a set of ideograms) invented by Mu-Ch’i. More broadly, however, either any of the individual persimmons or the entire set of persimmons may be taken as ideograms unto themselves (invented by Mu-Ch’i), since they are all visual images that represent concepts. In fact, all visual images, insofar as they represent concepts, are technically ideograms, and any image is a piece or example of language insofar as it signifies a concept. Or, to phrase it another way, an image is a text. The set of persimmons in Persimmons, once we factor in its stems, is therefore a metacommentary on the nature of the visual image, the image more generally, the sign, and language; this metacommentary is conveyed by a combination of connotation (the resemblance of the stems with ideograms in a Chinese language), minimal design (the absence of a background), and the concise sense denoted by the signifier (“any set of persimmons, real or imaginary”).

Now, let us desimplify our theory of phenomenology or semiology. All that we have written above on the nature of language is significantly modified, to the point of being exploded, once Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of partial objects is introduced, not to mention the effect of the introduction of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of desiring-production. Let us carry out this destruction as gently as possible. There is in fact no straight line of progress that leads from phenomenology, even considered merely as a semiology, to schizoanalysis; what is required to leap from one to the other is what Thomas Kuhn describes as a “paradigm shift,” the destruction of one framework of concepts and the construction of another. The scope of phenomenology is then doubly limited: on the one hand, it can function as a working model of an empirical (or empiricist) semiology as an alternative to the transcendental semiology of Saussure, but on the other hand there is a wide range of phenomena which phenomenology cannot adequately describe. A partial object is an image-fragment, a fragmentary image, a fragmented and fragmenting image; the existence of partial objects means the nonexistence of total images, totalized and totalizing images. In our explication of phenomenology as semiology, we presumed, in order to provide an ideal model for the sake of explication, that there were total images, and we ignored partial objects or image-fragments. Accepting some of the assumptions of phenomenology is an aid to understanding the irreducible difference between the essences of objects and abstract general concepts, but phenomenology is insufficient for understanding the sensuous aspect of the image, that is to say, the image itself. Even in our preliminary analysis of Persimmons, it is evident that the link between images and universal concepts is arbitrary and contingent, not necessary, which is one reason why we can positiely identify all images as mere imagefragments or partial objects.

A quantum of intentionality (a quantum of will) is a quantum of libido, a quantum of connective labour; Deleuze and Guattari define libido as connective labour, the labour of connection (as in an input jack connecting to an output jack). The arrow of intentionality connecting the signifier to the signified is, in reality, the quantum of connective labour (libido) connecting an image-fragment (partial object) with an abstract general concept. The “bursting towards” of intentionality is its labour of connection. There is no “transcendental structure” of mental activity at work here, there is only the work constitutive of mental activity itself. The fact that one partial object functions as the signifier of a given sign, versus another partial object, is an entirely contingent and arbitrary matter. For example, even Mu-Ch’i’s Persimmons, as austere as they are, are merely a set of partial objects with no necessary connection with the abstract general concept of persimmons, and any other set of partial objects, for example a more baroque painting of persimmons, may equally well function as the signifier for the abstract general concept of persimmons. Of course, the changes in a signifier’s sensuous content may also connote an entirely different framework of abstract general concepts within which the “main” abstract general concept of the signified is embedded. However, in any case, there is no necessary link between the sensuous content of the signifier and the abstract general concept of the signified, which means that the “remainder” of the phenomenological analysis is always the sensuous content of the signifier qua sensuous content, which remains inexplicable as sensuous content within the bounds of phenomenological analysis. As Deleuze and Guattari write, partial objects are “a-signifying signs,” which we may also render as “non-signifying signs.” Partial objects are the sensuous content of mental activity. Partial objects, as sensuous content, are not in themselves signifying, that is, they have no inherent signification, which means that there is no intentionality or connective labour inherent to them. Partial objects, as sensuous content, only become signifying by way of the intentionality, that is, the libido or connective labour, that connects them to an abstract general concept (a noematic sense). Here, too, our earlier distinction between intentionality and association breaks down, since both are merely forms of connective labour, that is, libido. Although there is no ontological difference between intentionality and association, we nonetheless may make a purely pragmatic or “phenomenological” distinction. Insofar as we can distinguish between signifier and signified, there is a qualitative and irreducible difference between the connective labour that connects signifier and signified, versus the connective labour that connects the sign to associated signs, associated partial objects, or associated noematic senses.

Deleuze and Guattari write that partial objects are “produced by being drawn from a flow or a nonpersonal hyle, with which they re-establish contact by connecting themselves to other partial objects” (AO, p. 46). Partial objects, the sensuous content of mental activity, are not only “hyle” in relation to ideal noemata, but also much more primordially and positively, in themselves, since they are selections of hyle from other flows of hyle in the world or in the body. For example, visual images are partial objects that are selections of the hyle of light from the flows of light-hyle in the world; sound images are partial objects that are selections of the hyle of sound waves from the flows of sound-hyle in the world, etc. Strictly speaking, there are neither total objects nor total images, there are only flows of hyle that are forever incomplete due to their excessiveness, their over-flow.

Here we diverge from Husserl: we agree with Husserl that a noematic sense is a “horizon of meaning,” but we deny that a noematic sense is a horizon of possible experience. Experience, here meaning the direct perception of the world, has no inherent sense, it has nothing directly to do with sense, meaning that a noematic sense in the mind can never limit the possible experiences or perceptions of the sense-organs. A noematic sense is a horizon of meaning, which means that the limit it sets is in its own domain, that of meaning or sense. The sense-organs are machines that draw off or subsume particular hyle from the world (for example, light, soundwaves, or chemicals as in taste and smell), while what we might call the imagination or the faculty of images likewise consists of machines that draw off or subsume particular hyle from the world, albeit indirectly, mediated by the sense-organs, and whose selections of hyle are the productions of partial objects. The sensuous content of partial objects are the selections of the sensuous content of perceptions, which are themselves selections of the sensuous content of the world.

Let us consider Husserl’s concept of “horizon” in closer detail in order to understand, by way of contrast, the logic of partial objects. Husserl writes, “A thing [Ding: material thing] is necessarily given in mere “ways of appearing” [that is, from one side], and necessarily there is thereby a nucleus of “what is actually presented” surrounded in apprehension by a horizon [Horizont] of nongenuine [uneigentlich] “co-givenness” and more or less vague indeterminacy. And the sense [Sinn] of this indeterminacy is once again predelineated [vorgezeichnet] through the general sense of the perceived thing in general and as such, respectively, through the general essence of this type of perception that we call thingperception. The indeterminacy…points forward to possible manifolds of perception [Wahrnehmungsmannigfaltigkeiten] that, continuously merging with one another, close together into a unity of perception in which the continuously enduring thing in ever new series of adumbrations [Abschattungsreihen] shows again and again new “sides” [“Seiten”]” (Ideas I, §44; as quoted in Smith, 2006, p. 288; Smith’s emphasis).

Foucault defines an “episteme” as a “grid of knowledge,” a network or unit-structure of discourse and its attendant meanings, a horizon of possible “knowledge.” A noematic sense, by itself, is a micro-episteme; a determinate horizon of possible “knowledge,” but nonetheless a mere fragment of discourse that exists (typically) embedded within a larger unit-structure of discourse; to be more precise, a noematic sense, as micro-episteme, is a horizon of possible images, that is to say, a horizon of possible images that can be used to represent or signify it. While it is true that the link between signifier and signified is completely arbitrary and contingent, and although in certain circumstances a signifier may be completely counter-intuitive (it is easy enough to imagine such a languagegame), in general there is only a limited range of signifiers that can be used to represent a given signified (for example, a set of persimmons cannot typically be signified by a pair of leather shoes).

A signifier is necessarily one given variation among a multiplicity of variations. For example, a visual image is always necessarily an image taken from a particular angle and at a particular moment in time; to take another example, a sound-image is one particular intonation out of infinite possible intonations (such that, for instance, the word “persimmons” can be intoned in a multitude of various ways, but still be recognizable as the “same” word, meaning that in all such cases it still signifies the same abstract general concept). The possible variations of a signifier are its “ways of appearing.” The concrete signifier of a sign, the signifier that is “actually presented,” is thus surrounded by a horizon of possible variations (“a horizon of nongenuine “co-givenness”) and a field of indeterminacy or contingency. We call the variations of a signifier “sign-variations.” The field of indeterminacy is produced by the signified, the noematic sense of the sign. There is no question of perception or “thing-perception” here; we are still firmly in the realm of semiology, that is, of signs, images, representations. A signifier’s field of indeterminacy is connected to the possible variations of the signifier, the possible manifolds of partial objects that are continuously connecting with each other. But for all their connections they never “merge” into a “unity of perception,” just as there is no “continuously enduring thing.” A real “object” is really just flows of hyle; its “unity” and “endurance” are completely illusory, as evinced by the fact that its destruction is inevitable. There are only flows of hyle, and the forever new “sides” of an “object” are nothing but the flows of hyle constitutive of it. The possible manifolds of partial objects that surround a given signifier are flows of hyle, flows of sensual content, and doubly virtual manifolds (virtual manifolds of virtual sign-variations that surround an invariably virtual signifier), and the field of indeterminacy is the medium in which they are submerged, in which they connect with each other and, together with the abstract general concept of the signified, form a semiotic machine (or semiological machine), without ever being totalized.

A semiotic machine functions homologously to a myth as described by Lévi-Strauss, albeit without the dialectical and structural trappings, and with the caveat that if a single sign (a single semiotic machine is a single sign) is described in terms of what LéviStrauss calls a “myth,” then Saussure’s simplistic and nondiachronic account of the sign becomes invalidated, and the metaanalysis of narratives (which Lévi-Strauss’s account of myths makes some headway towards) must be significantly desimplified and heavily revised. Below we will heavily revise Lévi-Strauss’s account of the myth both in order to develop a diachronic theory of the sign and in order to adapt it to the ontology of genealogical materialism. A semiotic machine is simultaneously synchronic and diachronic in the manner of a musical score, which in this case means that their constituent sign-variations are both chronological and nonchronological. The sign-variations in a field of indeterminacy form aleatoric and diagonal relations in a rhizomatic network. Each signvariation is a metapsychological relation and a molecular constituent unit of a semiotic machine. The possible manifolds of sign-variations changes over time, increasing or decreasing, expanding or contracting, depending on the circumstances. The already existing sign-variations, the past and present sign-variations, insofar as they exist in time, exist historically or as a historical record, that is to say, the exist chronologically. However, at the same time, these signvariations form a rhizomatic network with each other, forming nonchronological connections, that is, forming aleatoric connections without any regard for historical or chronological order. Moreover, the molar constituent units of a semiotic machine are not isolated metapsychological relations (sign-variations), but congealed precipitates of metapsychological relations (sign-variations), and it is only as congealed precipitates that these metapsychological relations (sign-variations) can be (and are) put to use and combined in order to produce superstructural layers of sense. A semiotic machine may be analyzed in terms of its infrastructure (the signified, the noematic sense, the universal concept, the abstract general idea, or the representational form), which produces the infrastructural or base layer of sense of the sign, or in terms of its superstructure (the signifier and the sign-variations, the hyle, the sensuous content, or the hyletic content), which produces the superstructural layers of sense of the sign and thereby reproduces the base layer of the sign. Metapsychological relations (sign-variations) pertaining to the same semiotic precipitate may originate diachronically at remote intervals, but are nonetheless rhizomatically congealed into the same synchronic precipitate. In terms of linguistics, this means that, for example, a phoneme is always already constituted by all of its variants.

Lévi-Strauss writes that in a musical score, “patterns showing affinity, instead of being considered in succession, [are] to be treated as one complex pattern and read as a whole,” such that “an orchestra score, to be meaningful, must be read diachronically along one axis – that is, page after page, and from left to right – and synchronically along the other axis, all the notes written vertically making up one gross constituent unit, that is, one bundle of relations” (1958/1963, p. 212). A semiotic machine is like a musical score, except far more rhizomatic. Congealed precipitates of sign-variations are “patterns showing affinity” that, “instead of being considered in succession, are to be treated as one complex pattern and read as a whole,” such that a semiotic machine is only meaningful because it exists along n axes (dimensions or degrees of freedom): at least one diachronic dimension, in a chronological genealogical series, and n synchronic dimensions in which non-chronological rhizomatic connections among sign-variations form n molar constituent units, that is, n precipitates of metapsychological relations. A semiotic machine has at least one horizontal dimension and n diagonal dimensions, but no vertical dimensions. To be more precise, a single n-dimensional manifold of sign-variations in a semiotic machine consists of at least one horizontal dimension and n diagonal dimensions, but a semiotic machine typically consists of n manifolds of sign-variations. A semiotic machine includes all of its possible manifolds of signvariations, therefore a machinic analysis must take all of them into account. A semiotic machine has more dimensions than its possible manifolds of sign-variations combined: each possible manifold of sign-variations is an n-dimensional manifold whose dimensions constitute the n dimensions of the semiotic machine, and all of these n-dimensional manifolds of sign-variations in turn form aleatoric and rhizomatic connections with each other, thereby multiplying their number of dimensions. Thus, a semiotic machine grows rhizomatically, aleatorically in every direction, dilating or contracting depending on the libidinal impulse(s) that animate(s) it. Both the unit-structure and the growth of a semiotic machine are discontinuous, genealogical. The semiotic machine may resemble a crystal in that its possible manifolds of partial objects are so many facets or sides of a complex unit-structure, but considered in its machinic functioning, the semiotic machine is a type of rhizome, a cosmic rootstalk, since its growth is discontinuous. It is only the machinic functioning of the body without organs, considered as a meta-Value, that can be described roughly in terms of crystal growth (although a strange and active crystal growth that proceeds from the inside towards the outside), such that a meta-Value can be described as a type of crystal, since it grows by way of repeating a pattern, a repetition-for-itself. A friend who took a massive dose of a hallucinogenic drug reported the hallucination of a massive, cosmic schizophrenic crystal that was both unmoving and moving, a stasis and a growth, across whose surface he was travelling; what this friend discovered, without having the words to describe it, was the body without organs, and the fact that the body without organs is a crystal.

A sign-variation is a mytheme. A sign is a micro-myth. A chain of signs is a myth. A chain of signs is a chain of micro-myths, a rhizomatic chain of rhizomes. A myth is a semiotic mega-machine. A sentence (any sentence) is an example of a myth. Paintings are also examples of myths (with the exception of extreme minimalist paintings such as monochrome canvases, which are micro-myths). Mu-Ch’i’s Persimmons is, to be far more precise, a myth. The rhizomatic logic of micro-myths applies, mutatis mutandis, to the rhizomatic logic of myths. In a sign-chain or semiotic megamachine, n-dimensional semiotic machines form both genealogicaldiachronic and rhizomatic-synchronic connections with each other. With the exception of mathematical language, all (nonmathematical) languages consist wholly of myths, some approaching Truth without ever reaching it, others wholly false, but in any case all are myths. Here we are in partial agreement with Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra; Baudrillard writes, “The simulacrum is never what hides the truth – it is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true” (1981/1994). We may revise Baudrillard: there is no Truth outside of mathematics, which means that each (non-mathematical) sign is a simulacrum that hides the fact that there is no Truth (attainable by non-mathematical signs). A simulacrum is a “truth” that hides the reality that there is no Truth (attainable by non-mathematical signs). Or, to phrase it in Nietzschean jargon: a (non-mathematical) sign is an interpretation, and the multiplicity of signs is the multiplicity of interpretations, and there is no “correct” interpretation (the (mathematical) Truth is not an interpretation, but that which is beyond all interpretations); thus, the simulacrum is an interpretation that hides the reality that there is no “correct” interpretation. That is to say, all non-mathematical languages are fictions, hallucinations. We are in partial agreement with Roland Barthes’s analyses in Mythologies (1972), in which Barthes analyzes advertising, pop culture, news, and high culture as so many myths. However, we reject Barthes’s structuralism, and our concept of myth differs significantly from Barthes’s. Speech is a type of myth. All non-mathematical languages or unit-systems of representation are myths (bearing in mind that the distinction between Truth and Falsehood holds in any case). In our post-structuralist ontology, we observe that all signs are micro-myths and that all chains of signs are myths (with the sole exception of mathematics). There is no escape from mythology, just as there is no escape from culture (with the sole exception of mathematics). Whereas mathematical language is a medium of Truth (a medium whose message is Truth), nonmathematical language is a medium of myth (a medium whose message is myth, whether that myth is Truth or Falsehood).

Deleuze and Guattari describe desiring-machines in terms of the flows of partial objects and the connections and libido (or connective labour) between them. The shortcoming of Deleuze and Guattari’s ontology of desiring-machines in Anti-Oedipus is that they completely overlook the existence of abstract general concepts, which makes them also overlook the relationship of signification between partial objects and abstract general concepts (when they occur), and all their attendant phenomena (sign-variations, fields of indeterminacy, etc.); however, despite this shortcoming, their account of schizoanalysis remains largely intact, and adding the notion of semiotic machines and free-floating abstract general concepts to schizoanalysis does not change the fundamentals of schizoanalysis, although it does suggest directions for future research. Thus, Deleuze and Guattari remain unable to theorize the signifying sign, which we have concluded is the semiotic machine, and the myth, which we have concluded is a chain of semiotic machines. The pure flows of partial objects described by Deleuze and Guatarri do indeed exist, but they intersect and interpenetrate semiotic machines, and semiotic machines (as well as free-floating abstract general concepts) are just as capable of becoming text upon the surface of a body without organs as pure partial objects. Semiotic machines and semiotic megamachines, signs and sign-chains, mythemes and myths, constitute parts of desiring-machines, alongside flows of pure partial objects and flows of libido (blocks of connective labour).

A unit-system of morality is a mythology, a unit-system of myths. In fact, a mythology is always inseperable from a unit-system of morality. The moral values constitutive of a unit-system of morality (for example, the “good” and “bad” of master morality; or, the “good” and “evil” of slave morality) are each myths or semiotic machines. That is to say, these moral values are, at bottom, noematic senses, and it is only the names or representations used to signify them that are partial objects. Moral values are first created as freefloating noematic senses before they become attached to a name or representation. The maximalist account of the semiotic machine we have outlined is especially applicable to moral values, which have many guises despite being few in number, and which invariably interpenetrate a variety of other discourses, and are associated with a variety of other concepts. However, this does not change the essence of our account of unit-systems of morality, which is that a unitsystem of morality is a text recorded upon the surface of a body without organs or meta-Value, but it does add the subtlety required for the critique of mythology or the critique of morality. Moral values are always myths, never Truths. A unit-system of morality is always a mythology, never Truth. The critique of mythology may be the strategic and economic point of entry to the critique of morality, but the basis of the critique of morality is not merely the critique of mythology. The critique of mythology and the critique of morality go hand in hand, although they are not exactly the same. The critique of mythology distinguishes mythology from Truth, but the critique of morality has as its basis the uses of mythology, more specifically the uses of mythology by power, as a technology of power.

We have defined fantasy, following Abraham and Torok, as any belief, representation, or bodily state that prevents action (or what amounts to the same thing, it prevents a topographical shift in the psyche) and conserves a way of life. Deleuze and Guattari, however, employ a wholly different concept of fantasy when they discuss “group fantasy” (AO, pp. 30–31), a concept of fantasy that is also opposed to the Lacanian conception fantasy as lack and default object of desire. For all extents and purposes, Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of “group fantasy” is roughly the same as our concept of mythology, insofar as both concepts refer to representations that are not Truth; our concept of mythology only differs in that we have outlined in greater detail a post-structuralist (or perspectivist) semiology by hijacking Husserl’s phenomenology, but “group fantasy” and mythology nonetheless have the same epistemological and ontological status. Deleuze and Guattari write that “fantasies are secondary expressions, deriving from the identical nature of the two sorts of machines [desiring-machines, and technical and social machines] in any given set of circumstances. Thus fantasy is never individual: it is group fantasy – as institutional analysis has successfully demonstrated.” (AO, p. 30). A group fantasy is a set of desiring-machines that is also a social-machine, or to phrase it another way, a social-machine that is also a set of desiring-machine; in this regard, too, group fantasy is exactly the same as mythology. Mythology, too, is never merely individual, since all mythology is simultaneously private and social. Henceforth, we will use the term “group mythology” to denote that we are discussing both group fantasy and mythology, which are, in any case, ultimately the same.

Deleuze and Guattari write, “And if there is such a thing as two sorts of group fantasy, it is because two different readings of this identity are possible, depending upon whether the desiring-machines are regarded from the point of view of the great gregarious masses that they form, or whether social machines are considered from the point of view of the elementary forces of desire that serve as a basis for them. Hence in group fantasy the libido may invest all of an existing social field, including the latter’s most repressive forms; or on the contrary, it may launch a counterinvestment whereby revolutionary desire is plugged into the existing social field as a source of energy. (The great socialist Utopias of the nineteenth century function, for example, not as ideal models but as group fantasies—that is, as agents of the real productivity of desire, making it possible to disinvest the current social field, to “deinstitutionalize” it, to further the revolutionary institution of desire itself.)” (AO, pp. 30–31). That is to say, there is overarchingly only one sort of group mythology, but it can be interpreted two distinct ways, according to its two aspects, namely as a social machine (“the great gregarious masses”) or as a set of desiring-machines (“the elementary forces of desire”). In either case, a group mythology is a social machine that is constituted by desiring-machines, or desiring-machines that constitute a social machine. Desiring-machines and social machines are both distinguished by their connective labour, but no doubt there are also bodies without organs, and consequently also celibate machines and affects, involved here, since there are no organs without bodies. If the difference is not clear thus far what exactly distinguishes a group mythology from other types of social machines, for example society as a whole considered as a social machine, which, insofar as they are truly social, also include desiring-machines among its parts, then the difference becomes clear when Deleuze and Guattari provide a concrete example: “the great socialist Utopias of the nineteenth century,” for example those of Charles Fourier, which, in the context that Deleuze and Guattari mean, existed as purely as literary works, that is, as a type of aesthetic object or aesthetic machine, a work of art. Of course, a work of art is also a technical machine just as much as it is a set of desiring-machines and a social machine, since a work of art is always a concrete, physical object (even if one that has been digitized, and exists as a digital object), one that performs connective labour and connects with other desiring-machines and with other social machines. A group mythology is an aesthetic object or aesthetic machine, a work of art. Furthermore, everything is political, even if it is apparently apolitical, for a very precise reason: the libido is either invested in repressive social unit-structures (whether in a “conservative” or “progressive” manner), or it is disinvested in repressive social unit-structures by way of being invested in a revolutionary social unit-structure (which is what a counterinvestment means in this context: a counterculture is a counterinvestment). To reiterate, group mythologies are not “fantasies” in Abraham and Torok’s sense. For example, the great 19^th century socialist Utopias, such as those of Fourier, mobilized libidinal economies for political action (meaning that they are not mobilizers of political inaction); they mobilized libidinal economies for political action not by serving as ideal models, but by functioning “as agents of the real productivity of desire,” that is to say, by functioning as a technology of libido (for a group mythology is nothing but a technology of libido), specifically in the capacity of disinvesting from the social unit-structures of the State and instead investing in the metapsychological unit-structures of desire itself, which Deleuze and Guattari describe as revolutionary insofar as the fully liberated flows of desire itself are inherently opposed to the State and its repression, as well as being opposed to capital and its reterritorializations or commodifications.

A post-structuralist semiology, such as the one we have outlined here, can never be separated from the mind’s other degrees of humour: anti-semiology, anti-psychology, and sociology or anthropology. The semiotic machine is always already encultured, always already in a relationship to what is outside of it. A poststructuralist semiology, if it can meaningfully exist, can only exist as a critique of mythology, which is inseparable from a critique of morality. A semiotic machine is always either a micro-value or a moral value. There is no escape from morality, just as there is no escape from culture – at best, one can only “escape while looking for a weapon,” that is to say, at best one can only construct a countermorality and a counterculture, and the construction of a countermorality and a counterculture is only possible by way of a critique of morality. In fact, the critique of morality and the construction of a new, counter-morality amount to the same act. Destruction and creation are one and the same act. The critique of morality is “the transvaluation of all values,” which is the same as the creation of new values. The transvaluation of all values requies the creation of new values, and the creation of new values requires the transvaluation of all values. The hammer has two uses: construction and destruction. To philosophize with a hammer means to both destroy and create: the old idols must be smashed in order for new idols to be built. Old mythologies must be destroyed in order for new mythologies to be created – and more than new mythologies, new societies against the State.

Acknowledgements

Following Nietzsche and Graeber, part of what this work demonstrates is that the idea of moral debt, that we owe things to people, is merely a cultural construct, and that we are better off without it. However, it is nevertheless true that ideas really come from everywhere, and that there is no “I” that creates ideas or makes decisions. With that in mind, we would like to thank the following people: Christophe Litwin, for his lectures on the literature of the Absurd and his lectures on early modern French literature, as well as his conversation and correspondence; Dave McKerracher (aka Theory Pleeb) for his conversation, writing, and video lectures; Valentina Ricci, for her lectures on the philosophy of violence; David Woodruff Smith, for his lectures on Husserl and Wittgenstein; and Casey Perin, for his lectures on Plato. We would also like to thank the gods and the Muses.

Notes on the Bibliography

Wherever neither page numbers nor any other specific indicator, such as section number or definition number, is given in an in-text citation, it is because we worked from an e-book version of the text, and did not have the means available to refer to a version of the text, physical or electronic, with page numbers. We apologize to the scholars for whom this is a matter of inconvenience.

We have abbreviated the following works by Friedrich Nietzsche:

1. GM = On the Genealogy of Morals

2. BGE = Beyond Good and Evil

3. TSZ = Thus Spoke Zarathustra

4. WP = The Will to Power

We have abbreviated the following works by Deleuze:

1. DI = Desert Islands

2. F = Foucault

3. H = Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume’s Theory of Human Nature

4. L = The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque

5. LS = Logic of Sense

6. N = Negotiations

7. NP = Nietzsche and Philosophy

8. S = Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza

We have abbreviated the following works by Deleuze and Guattari:

1. AO = Anti-Oedipus

2. TP = A Thousand Plateaus

We have abbreviated the following work by Marx and Engels:

1. MECW = Marx and Engels Collected Works

Bibliography