(A-O close reading notes 3)

The Body without Organs: Into the realm of representation

In the last post I went over the connective synthesis, in which what is produced is production, and whose process says ‘and then… and then…’. But somewhere in the ‘binary linear series’ of partial objects and flows, a third term is produced, “an enormous, undifferentiated object”: the Body without Organs (7). And this object is the producing/product identity, it arises as the synthesis of the partial object-flow itself, the unity of producing and its product (7).

The relationship between the Body without Organs and the machines of desiring-production is very closely tied to the relationship between the second synthesis (of recording) and the first (of production). As the production of production is to desiring-machines, so is the production of recording to the body without organs in its relationship to those desiring-machines.

I mentioned in the last post that the key feature of the connective synthesis is that what is produced through it is never a non-productive product or a static complete object. It is always a partial object through and as which the flow of production is carried forward.  When we come to the second synthesis, the disjunctive synthesis of recording, this all changes. Here what is produced is no longer production but recording. Whereas the production of production is a direct process of continual creation, the “grafting” of producing onto the product, recording implies viewing this process of production from the outside, and representing it rather than continuing its productive chain.

The body without organs in its relationship to the machines of desiring-production constitutes a kind of dimensional leap outside the plane of primary production. Instead of a process being seen as it were from within, as a continuous flow of becomings (and then… and then… and then…), it is as though we lift up and view the whole network from above – or below perhaps. Now we see a network of connections distributed over a surface, and it is in relation to this surface that all the connections in the network are defined, or recorded. The Body without Organs in its role as a recording surface is like an eye that views the network spread across itself, and inherent in an eye is a perspective. But not just a perspective, also an exclusive modality of perception: “Each organ machine interprets the entire world from the perspective of its own flux, from the point of view of the energy that flows from it: the eye interprets everything—speaking, understanding, shitting, fucking— in terms of seeing” (6). When all production is inscribed on the recording surface of the Body without Organs, it is defined in terms of the nature of that particular Body without Organs. The body of Capital records and interprets all production purely in terms of Capital. As far as Capital is concerned, the connective machinery of desiring-production exists only to produce profit. The reorientation of all production toward the production of profit, and the power of Capital to set productive machinery to work for this end, constitute the appropriation of the machinery of desiring-production by the Body without Organs that is Capital. 

Anti-productive Opposition: Paranoiac and Miraculating

The body without organs is defined as an element of antiproduction coupled with the process of production (8). It opposes production with a “counterflow of  amorphous, undifferentiated fluid”, in order to  resist “linked, connected, and interrupted flows” (9). It naturally resists desiring-production, repels desiring-production and its linked connections. This basic opposition of natures between anti-production and production is the basis of what D&G term the paranoiac machine. Notice here we are implicitly within the perspective of the Body without organs, which “experiences” the desiring-machines as “an over-all persecution apparatus” (9). The body without organs has stepped outside of the process of production, and ‘experiences’ paranoia in relation to that process. 

The sterile, nondifferentiated and nonproductive nature of the body without organs necessarily opposes the linked, productive connections of primary production, as “In the beginning, capitalists are necessarily conscious of the opposition between capital and labour” (11). From the perspective of the body without organs, the oppositional relationship is one of paranoia, at least at the start. The pure paranoiac machine is presented as a kind of initial stage. A “primary repression”, or “repulsion of desiring-machines by the body without organs” (9). At a certain point though, the body without organs balloons so large that it teeters and falls back over top of all the productive connections, appropriating them for itself: the miraculating machine. Its full body acts as a surface over which the network of productive machinery is spread. A new relationship is established: no longer a continuous relationship of production between partial objects and flows, as in primary production, but a relationship between the desiring machines and the body without organs, “a distribution in relation to the non-productive element”(12).

To even describe the machines of desiring production as a network implies viewing them from outside, spread across a surface, rather than from within the linear connective process itself. The establishment of this new relationship of distribution over a surface constitutes an appropriation of desiring-machines by the body without organs, since the meaning of all productive connections is now defined, or recorded, in relation to the particular perspective and terms of the recording surface. Now instead of production happening ‘for itself’, it happens ‘for’ the body without organs that has appropriated for itself “all surplus production, and arrogat[ed] to itself both the whole and the parts of the process, which now seem to emanate from it as a quasi cause” (10). The body without organs claims the machinery in order to reproduce more of itself. In the case of the full body of Capital, the process of production becomes completely reoriented toward producing profit: a sterile, undifferentiated substance is extracted from every connection in the productive process. The body without organs that is capital has appropriated all productive machinery and made it responsible for producing the static, nonproductive, undifferentiated substance of money. 

So the contradiction between the paranoiac opposition and the miraculating attraction is not resolved, “the two coexist, rather”(11). ‘You see?’ says the body without organs, says Capital, ‘There is no production and anti-production, there is no contradiction! There is only production, beautiful production! The production of Capital. Capital is productive! Capital is the true source of all production, and all production is responsible for producing Capital’. Capital is God. Black humour indeed.

The Disjunction

What is a disjunction? What does it have to do with recording? What does that have to do with Numen or a divine energy? What does it mean that God should be conceived of as the master of the disjunctive syllogism? And what does it mean that what is divine about the body without organs is the nature of an energy of disjunctions?

This is all relatively new territory for me, so the following are my tentative answers.

At its most basic, disjunction means either/or. Its symbol is ‘V’. In this simple symbol the body without organs would be at the vertex of the V, and the two open line ends would be the disjoined terms inscribed on the recording surface of the Body without Organs. In the connective synthesis, we are ‘inside’ the linear, connective, productive ‘and… and then… and then…’. The disjunctive synthesis relies on the body without organs directly, insofar as the latter acts as a surface over which a network or grid can be spread. This allows elements of a continuous process to be seen as discrete or disjoined terms. It is only through the ‘perspective’ of the recording surface that difference or disjunction can be conceived of. In a hypothetical ‘pure’ primary production, there is no differentiation, only continuous flux. So the body without organs acts as the basis of all difference, all disjunction. 

This is similar to how in part 3 of Anti-Oedipus, we will see how the prohibition of incest actually creates what it prohibits in the act of prohibition. In the development of the Primitive Territorial Machine, ‘Incest’ is inconceivable before the entities of ‘mother’ and ‘sister’ are established as distinct persons, and they are only so established in the act of their prohibition as sexual partners. This establishment of separate entities such as ‘mother’ and ‘sister’ out of what will be called the germinal influx (pure primary production) is an act of recording, and it records a disjunction. Elements of a continuous process are disjoined, defined as individual by what is different about them. So recording really does ‘bring them into existence’, but only in an apparently objective way. Recording does not exactly create them, it defines them. But defining something does indeed create something new, a new entity, an individual being where before there were only continuous flows.

Now on to God.

“To anyone who asks: ‘Do you believe in God?’ we should reply in strictly Kantian or Schreberian terms: ‘Of course, but only as the master of the disjunctive syllogism, or as its a priori principle (God defined as the Omnitudo realitatis, from which all secondary realities are derived by a process of division).’” (13)

A disjunctive syllogism is:

A or B
Not A
Therefore B

The disjunction is the ‘A or B’. The syllogism is its placement in a logical formula to reach a conclusion. If we extend the disjunction to include every possible imaginable trait (A or… or… or…) the disjunctive syllogism could be used to deduce every possible actual fact. This set of all possible facts is basically what is meant by god here.  This Article was extremely helpful to me in understanding the meaning of God as the master or principle of the disjunctive syllogism. It is a very clearly written summary of the relevant elements of Kant’s critique of pure reason and I highly recommend giving it a read. I will quote from it here.

Kant argues that there are certain transcendent ideas that “are inevitable given our ability to form judgments and to reason”. The particular transcendent idea that is relevant here is the transcendent idea of God, which is defined as “a totality of distinct possibilities that requires nothing further in order to include all distinct possibilities”. This “idea of a system of all possible being” comes “directly from the disjunctive judgment taken to its limit”. In other words, our very ability as humans to form disjunctive judgments implies, as its limit, a totality of all possible disjunctive judgments or possibilities, and the idea of that totality of possibilities is God. This importantly does not establish the objective reality of God, it only establishes “that reason can formulate the idea of the possibility of an unconditional unifier of possibility, and can represent it as an ideal for reason’s task of synthesizing experience, which reason increasingly approximates but which reason can never actually reach; this ideal is God”. 

The mere fact that we can conceptualize this “ideal of reason”, does not necessitate the existence of its corresponding object, so we cannot really say that “god exists” in an objective way, but we will ascribe the name God to the imaginary extension of disjunction out to the limit where it includes all possible distinctions. This sea of all possibilities only potentially exists. It is the very “energy of disjunction” that is actualized in the recording of every particular thing or fact. Recording is a disjunctive syllogism because by recording an event as A, it is also recorded as not B, not every other possible permutation of being. A conclusion is reached through disjunction. The waveform is collapsed. Since the Body without Organs acts as a recording surface, it shares in this energy of disjunctions, this “numen”, the “energy of disjunctive inscription” (13). The Body without Organs is like the sea of potential particulars or disjunctions which is the basis for every actual recording of a disjunction.

A note on Codes

In the quite tickling example of Molloy given at the top of page 14, D&G tell us that questions are put to the schizophrenic “in terms of the existing social code: your name, your father, your mother” (14). Each of these terms is the result of a disjunctive synthesis of recording: the drawing of lines which establishes mother, father, and self as discrete entities. A code is a particular way of recording; it tells us what something means, what something is. And the schizo “has at his disposal his very own recording code” (15). Rather than believing in the social code, his code is that “of delirium or of desire”, and has an “extraordinary fluidity” (15). When a flow is coded it is recorded, which means it is defined in a particular way. D&G are here contrasting the strictly limiting recording codes of society, particularly the psychoanalytic code of Oedipus which reduces the meaning of everything in the unconscious to father-mother-child dynamics, with the schizophrenic tendency or ability to “scramble all the codes” (15). The schizophrenic shifts between codes, “never invoking the same genealogy, never recording the same event in the same way” (15). This fluidity of recording puts the schizophrenic much closer to actual flows of desiring-production which constitute the real, since with the schizo these flows are not forced into the interpretive mould of the rigid structures of a particular social code. 

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All these ideas will be more fully illustrated as we cycle through the book and come at them in new contexts. Even on my second reading there are plenty of things I don’t fully understand. But I am doing the same thing I did on my first read through, albeit on a more thorough level: doing my best to form clear understandings of the process being communicated to me, and moving forward consistently regardless of my lack of total understanding. Particularly here in my writing, I am forming working models, and keeping them open to change and correction as I move through the text and learn more.

I think this book is functional. I think that it can be seen as a blueprint for building a machine inside yourself. A revolutionary machine, a transformational machine. I think the book illustrates, in high definition, relationships between processes, between states and modes of existence. It maps, in detail, a psychological, social, economic, and libidinal terrain you are already submerged in, and offers you the possibility of orienting yourself in that terrain.  By reading this book thoroughly, I believe you can construct its machine in your life. And among other things, the function of its machine is to liberate the machines of desiring-production from the various forces of repression in which they find themselves trapped. As we proceed we will see in detail the exact mechanisms of repression that affect desiring-production, how they came into existence, and how the flows of desiring-production can extricate themselves from the various traps into which they fall. This is a book whose true functions are revolution and liberation, and I have never yet encountered another set of tools that so thoroughly sets in motion these most fundamental and exciting functions.

Here and always, if I have made any glaring or subtle mistakes, please leave a comment or email me!