Comments and Questions to: John Protevi
LSU French Studies
Protevi Home Page

Classroom use only. Do not cite w/o permission.
March 23, 1999
 

I. BwO as object of construction, a practice, a limit 149-50
    A. BwO is what remains after you take everything away: phantasy, signifiance, subjectification 151

II. Examples: hypochondriac, paranoid, schizo, drugged, masochist 150
    A. all empty BwOs, assembled w/o enough caution
    B. vs. the full BwO

III. masochist program 151
    A. two phases 152
        1. construct the BwO
        2. make something pass on the BwO: waves, intensities 153
    B. characteristics of BwO: 153
        1. spatium; as "intense egg"
        2. "nonstratified, unformed, intense matter"
        3. "production of the real as an intensive magnitude starting at zero"

III. Spinoza's Ethics as "the great book of the BwO" 153-4
    A. accounting for masochist and drugged body in Spinozist terms
    B. problem of the totality of all BwOs (THE plane of consistency [157])
    C. BwO = "field of immanence of desire, the plane of consistency specific to desire (w/ desire defined as     process of production [matter/energy flow] w/o reference to any exterior agency ... lack ... or pleasure" 154

IV. triple curse of the priest on desire
    A. lack
    B. pleasure
    C. ideality/phantasy

V. psychoanalyst: "the most recent figure of the priest"
    A. pleasure [interrupts desire] vs. joy [immanent to desire] 155

VI. Examples of BwO/plane of immanence of desire: masochist, courtly love, Tao
    A. masochist: materialist vs. psychoanalytic reading: against pleasure
        1. masochist is not searching for deferred pleasure via pain, but
        2. "uses suffering as a way of constituting a BwO and bringing forth a plane of consistency of desire"
        3. "becoming-animal essential to masochism. It is a question of forces."
            a. destroy instinctive forces and replace them with transmitted forces
            b. this is a training 155-6
    B. courtly love: against lack, ideality and pleasure 156
        1. pleasure: reterritorialization: affection of a subject: "finding self" in process of desire that exceeds you
    C. Tao 157

VII: plane of consistency 157: "totality of all BwOs ... movement of generalized deterr."

VIII. Summary threefold distinction:
        A. BwOs: different types: masochist, drugged: degree zero as principle of production
        B. intensities: what happens on each BwO
        C. plane of consistency: potential totality all BwOs
            1. reached by conjugating intensities produced on all BwOs 158
            2. need a great abstract Machine:
            3. Bateson and plateaus
            4. Artaud: unity of multiplicity

IX: BwO is not enemy of the organs, but of the organism 158
    A. judgment of God: operation of He who makes an organism
    B. organism = stratum on the BwO: "phenomenon of accumulation, coagulation, and sedimentation that, in order to extract useful labor from the BwO, imposes upon it forms, functions, bonds, dominant and hierarchized organizations, organized transcendences" 159
    C. BwO = "that glacial reality where the alluvions, sedimentations, coagulations, foldings and recoilings that compose an organism--and also a signification and a subject--occur"
    D. "It is the BwO that is stratified. It swings between two poles, the surfaces of stratification ... and the plane of consistency"

X. Three great strata: organism, signifiance, subjectification 159-60
    A. surface of organism; angle of signifiance and interpretation; point of subjectification
    B. BwO:
        1. disarticulation as property of plane of consistency: vs. organism
        2. experimentation as operation on that plane: vs. signifiance and interpretation
        3. nomadism as movement: vs. subjectification
    C. caution 160
        1. disarticulation of organism = opening the body to connections [different matter/energy flows of different   intensities, as long as they're immanently arranged and not externally directed.
        2. signifiance clings to soul
        3. subjectification
    D. partial retention of strata for survival:
        1. "mimic the strata'
        2. "You don't reach the BwO, and its plane of consistency, by wildly destratifying"
        3. empty BwOs: attacked organs rather than momentarily dismantle organism 161
        4. "Staying stratified--organized, signified, subjected--is not the worst that can happen; the worst ... is if you throw the strata into demented or suicidal collapse, which brings them back down on us heavier than ever."
        5. diagram of cautious experimentation for BwO: connect, conjugate, continue
            a. connection of desires
            b. conjugation of flows
            c. continuum of intensities
        6. Castenada 161-2: tonal (stratification) vs. nagual (BwO
    a. "The most important thing is not to dismantle the tonal by destroying it all of a sudden. You have to diminish it, shrink it, clean it, and that only at certain moments. You have to keep it in order to survive, to ward off the assault of the nagual. For a nagual that erupts, that destroys the tonal, a body without organs that shatters all the strata, turns immediately into a body of nothingness [corps de neant], pure self-destruction whose only outcome is death." 162

XI. BwO existing in the strata
    A. abstract distinction of BwO and strata is insufficient 162
        1. not only is there THE BwO of the plane of consistency [potentials for any type of organization, not just hierarchized, centralized, commanding]
        2. B. there is A BwO of the organism that belongs to the stratum {=limited pool of potentials of that particular organization}
    B. Dangerous replications 163
        1. Cancer--for organism
            a. cell loses its configuration and takes over everything [=hits upon replicating zone or loop attractor [?] in its phase space]
            b. organism must restratify this cancer or lose survival and chance at THE BwO
        2. signifiance
        3. subjectification
        4. social formations: of money (=inflation); of State, army, factory, city, Party, etc.
    C. conditions for dangerous replication
        1. high sedimentation rate leads to loss of configurations and articulations
        2. own specific type of tumor
        3. "The strata form their own BwOs, totalitarian and fascist BwOs, terrifying caricatures of the plane of consistency."
    D. the "three-body problem"
        1. how to fabricate a [full] BwO and avoid cancerous [fascist] or empty [druggie]?
        2. Artaud

XII. BwO as egg 164
        A. not regressive, but contemporary: "milieu of experimentation": "creative involution"
        B. spatium: intensive: "map of comparative densities and intensities, and all the variations on that map" [i.e., it is a phase space, or pool of potentials]
            1. indefinite article: a stomach: "pure determination of intensity, intensive difference"
            2. NOT a fragmented body, organs w/o body (OwB)
            3. definition of BwO: "distribution of intensive principles of organs, w/ their positive indefinite articles, w/in a collective or multiplicity, inside an assemblage, and according to machinic connections operating on a BwO" 165

XIII. BwO as desire 165
    A. that which one desires and by which one desires [desire as ecstatic union, machinic connection of flows/breaks, breaking w/ organization, signifiance, subjectification]
    B. even fascism is desire
    C. problem of pure matter, not ideology
        1. test of desire: can you select the full bodies rather than cancerous or empty?
        2. plane of consistency must select only the full bodies

XIV. identity of the plane of consistency: totality of all full BwOs 165-6
    A. merely logical identity?
    B or identical/analogous effects from generically different BwOs
        1. need abstract machine of constructing BwO
        2. and assemblages capable of plugging into desire and assuring connections
    C. w/o such connections, BwOs of plane of consistency will be separated, and cancerous and empty bodies will triumph on the "other plane"