Lecture 10 - Deleuze and Guattuvi

Lecture 10: Deleuze and Guattari, and Creativity

Oeleuze and Guattari are two thinkers who collaborated with one another.

You were listening to Richard Pinhas as you came in. He attended lectures by Deleuze and was inspired by him. Patterns of repetition and configuration are central to Deleuze and Guattari's thinking.

Deleuze was a philosopher and Guattari was psychiatrist working in France. They've been very influential in various fields including music and sociology.

The Paris strike in 1968 led to a reassessment of the activist in society. Deleuze and Guattari tried to rethink activism and change. 'A Thousand Plateaus' is worth looking at. This is available in the library.

Deleuze and Guattari identified a tree-like system of thought which was used by traditional thinkers. In this system one idea must lead on to another. They then came up with an alternative system of thought which they called rhizomatic

Deleuze and Guattari's chapters don't build on each other and then come together at the end as you would expect. Deleuze and Guattari suggest that you read their books in the way that you would listen to a record - dipping in and out.

Ideas about rhizo thought are drawn from a natural form called the same thing. The rhizo method of thought offers a different perspective than the tree-like method.

Saussure demonstrated that the concepts we use in thought and speech gain their meaning from repeated pattern of usage.

The rhizo builds relationships between objects / people / places and produces unexpected connections, ft is inherency creative.

An artist who might be considered rhizomatic is Isa Gcnzken The work 'Hospital (Ground Zero)¹ has a sense of manual production and things being held together provisionally. This was one the proposals that the artist put forward for potential architectural forms to be built at ground zero.

Deleuze and Guattari discussed the notion of the assemblage. An example of an assemblage would be a home The home is made up of things which make us feel comfortable. Our sense of home* comes from outside the construct of the house.

When a person graduates from high school there is a supposition of power; one person bestows knowledge upon another.

In Bruce Nauman's 'Good Boy Bad Boy' two figures on two TV screens address the audience. The use of T and 'you¹ and 'we' and 'they' disorientates us and puts us in a role. The use of simple language forces us to recognise power and take responsibility.

How might you or an authority figure judge someone who is wearing a hoodie? People in hoodies gathering outside a shopping centre are judged by people who pass by. You might assume that they are waiting for someone, planning to buy alcohol perhaps planning a crime. These people come together, appropriate a space and change its function. They form an assemblage of bodies

Zaha Hadid is an architect who tries to create assemblages. The National Museum of XXI Century Arts s&ems to flow around the people who move through the space.

Deleuze and Guattari say that our sense of identity is under construction. The word T is empty and can only be appropriated by different individuals. Multiple ideologies circulate within societies at any given time, yet some are able to dominate because they represent class interests. There are relations of dominance between different people.

Consider a working day: you are expected to fulfil different roles. You might be a commuter, then a worker and then you might come home and act out the role of parent and partner. Each individual is buffeted around from context to context.

Schizoanalysis:

Guattari was involved in a radical clinic called La Borde The aim was not to cure the sick but to encourage the individual to take part in their own creation.

To Deleuze and Guattari, Freud is a tree-like thinker. They felt that psychoanalysis was limited. Schizoanalysis re-evaluates the role of the analyst. The patient and analyst relocate from the couch to the kitchen or the park. They both try out roles and try to redefine the person and their sense of who they are.

In terms of traditional psychology, schizophrenia is seen in entirely negative terms. It is a breakdown of the persons sense of self. Deleuze and Guattari see possibilities of change and rethinking of identity in the breakdown which occurs.

The term 'the body without organs' refers to a practical process. It is a radical reduction of bodily awareness. The term initially came from a surrealist play writer In this state there is a loss of linguistics and you're simply engaged with your sensate awareness. There is a loss of your sense of structure and your body should be experienced as a singular.

Deleuze and Guattari consider that nothing is inevitable - everything is subject to change. Think about how connotations of the words 'banker' have changed.

What we think of as real, solid objects are actually subject to change. Everything must be considered a construction. The construction is made up of smaller forms. The molar is what we think of an object as being and the molecular is the forces and components which make up that object.

James Williams is a good writer on Deleuze and Guattari*

Deleuze and Guattari talk about the actual and the virtual The actual refers to bodies and the virtual refers to what they imply and how they came into existence.

Francis Bacon kept images of cefebrifies /animals /diseases in his studio. In his paintings the actual is the sitter (the person before him) and the virtual is all of the emotions and other elements which make up the person before him.

We exist in relation to an ever changing and complicated world.