/lit/ - Literature

>>12674074
>Well the welfare part is also a huge portion of it because our immigration and social services are pretty indiscriminate right now

Fair enough, but that's still to a large extent to the benefit of the elite and not really Marxist. Back in the day in France being called a Social Democrat was an insult among the left, which is what happened to D&G as well.

>>12242227
I like how this dismissive post breaks up my two posts of detailed explanations.

>>12223143
Actually now that I think about it many at the time were doing it, especially Lacan.

Deleuze was a genius.

>>11916578
tbqh if you're familiar with Nietzsche a bit you can jump into Nietzsche & Philosophy and it's probably better than reading anything else first (Letter to a Harsh Critic is worth reading beforehand though).

>>11346198
Gonna start with a bit of a tangent since drug use at least implies many interactions. It gets quite complicated once the problem of stratification is introduced since for D&G strata aren't merely horizontal layers in the world (like sediments in the earth or layers of tissues in the human body), but also thresholds such as the boiling point of water. At the same time add to this emergent properties and their "relational" topology (hydrogen and oxygen in isolation work as fuels, H2O has the opposite effect of putting out fire). Basically drugs can have the effect of temporarily severing certain connections by exceeding certain thresholds (perhaps in other ways as well) thus the resonance that usually constitutes our "self awareness" from one subjective state to another can also get suspended. I mentioned this in another thread: "
D&G never take reason for granted. It's always the product of unreason. If it were otherwise you could easily convince a mad man that he's being unreasonable in his beliefs. It's more a matter of how reason, as a problem solving capacity (a plant is contemplating the water and nutrients it takes out of the soil, it's reasonable in a sense), can account for the unreason at the core of every assemblage that has its own reason. For example, someone about to commit a crime of passion has his practical reason specific to that assemblage (that is to say, his way of going about achieving his goal of revenge), even if at a different moment (while in a different assemblage) he would consider his past actions unreasonable and dangerous (ruining his life if he gets caught)." If the self gets suspended the hope is that the assemblages themselves can be more authentically experienced and even changed (most smokers struggling with addiction manage to quit smoking after taking LSD).

Of course, drug use is a vague term since there are many factors. Amphetamines and such drugs have an effect on differential speeds which also influence the genesis of thought (your thoughts seem to run away from you or come to you faster than you can process them for example) while MDMA will heighten sensations. The BwO is always created anew in many different ways as a result of all of these connections and our capacities to affect and be affected differ with it. We can do things under pressure, due to adrenaline for example, which we could not do otherwise even if we had the courage to do so.

The implications of all of this are important for D&G's critique of jouissance in psychoanalysis as always something that eludes us (we can never have that infinite enjoyment that our drives want, but we can get excessive enjoyment which turns pleasure into pain or the sadness of missing this impossible jouissance: the orgasm as le petit mort and post-orgasmic depression).

(continued in the next post)