Baudrillard vs. Deleuze & Guattari

In this episode, I present some of the disagreements between Baudrillard and Deleuze/Guattari.
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[@whereisawesomeness]

That part about Baudrillard critiquing Deleuze for being too individualistic is quite ironic given how much Deleuze and Guattari critique the notion of a self

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Yes, but I think there's a distinction to be made between the type of self they criticize, and the type that they conjure up in its place. I think I do a fair job of recounting it in my episodes on ATP if you want to hear all my thoughts on it. (As an aside, I find myself more and more on the D&G side of these quabbles)

[@whereisawesomeness]

@@TheoryPhilosophy I’ve been listening to your ATP episodes, they inspired me to pick up the book again. I’m just commenting on the irony, I don’t come up with serious philosophical critiques on half a litre of whiskey (at least not the stuff I’ve been drinking tonight)

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

@@whereisawesomeness hahahahaha gotta try gin

[@prerna22munshi]

@@TheoryPhilosophy if I have gathered this comment well, isn't self about subjectivity. Doesn't subjectivity vanish on the plane of consistency for D&G? And that means the self too??

[@iwouldprefernotto4381]

Loved this, thank you. Will 100% check out your D&G videos.

[@pipersolanas3322]

Love your videos keep em coming

[@shakespearaamina9117]

Such a fascinating video 🙏 very informative and helpful ❤️🙏

[@jaycobyart]

You really got light bulbs flickering in some mental space for me talking about the codified venir of the simulactrum and later in your talk the lines of flight ... "to break free from the rigid boundaries of these molar agrogates these strata that limit people".. these visual landscapic crystallizations of the concepts really made me happy, intrigued and immediately motivated gears spinning in all the right places. To my own interests and explorations this whole video has been something very special and significant

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Happy to hear it 😊

[@jaycobyart]

@@TheoryPhilosophy i moved over to your podcast, i don't miss the adverts., so many questions and ideas are coming up, but some are from much older material of yours, if I can remember some of them ill post them to the specific talks they were spawned from. I appreciate what your doing especially breaking down the baudrillard material into understandable chunks., loading up a few thousand plataeu materials for tomorrow cant wait to dig in.

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

@@jaycobyart awesome! And ya sorry the ads are annoying. I've started to manually tone them down a bit haha

[@jaycobyart]

@@TheoryPhilosophy working to process the levels of the idea about when power is given a face the power is already null, and how when an idea is given form as a commemoration of its death. Like when an idea is crystallized into an image it no longer can function with the efficacy of an idea any longer. Wow man!! Im going to be considering the implications of this for a long time to come.. it reminds me of some ancient law of Judaism about not making an image of the God.. like the God (idea) can only function in its transformative sense when it is not given form., just one level or branch thats coming to mind right now, this is so so up my alley of thinking., ive got other thoughts I would love to share but I feel like if I verbalize them they won't operate as dynamic thoughts any longer. Some how they will calcify.. im not ready.

[@jaycobyart]

Here a question.. does the act of verbalized an idea or putting a face to a power make it null or do we only give a face to a power that is already null.. and I'm sure I'm thinking so abstrsct on this that the answer is probably "yes"

[@koosiljadance]

Thank you so much for sharing your work. It is extremely helpful. I enjoy it so very much. I read D&G’s work as best I could, and I didn’t feel emancipation as far as Desiring Machine and living in capitalism. Death was imminent, but at the same time, the vitality. They also suggested that I escape and be slippery against the despot, escaping from the grids of the structure. As for Deleuze, his analysis of creativity demystifies aspects of Art. Art is where I make a flight and is a battlefield, and when I ask for more, it tries to kill me. I think D&G made me see the coexistence of two extreme opposites--Desiring Machine.

[@ScientificGentlemen]

Love the ideas you present!

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Thank you! 😊

[@amritanshsharma1251]

Great video,pal.

[@sucotang3511]

Hey im stuck on some basic concepts do you have any videos speaking about it? More specifically the concept of reversibility

[@douglaspackard3515]

Great video, thank you very much. I'm reading Chapter 4 of Anti-Oedipus right now and got a lot out of your description of schizoanalysis.

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Glad it was helpful!

[@sucotang3511]

I have a question. Could we put the Deleuze ideia of simulacra, since you used the idea of the effect of the sin in the soul, as Sain Augustine put use the idea of disorder? I mean, if we apply this to the meaning behind the image, and its meaning become distorted or even devoided of any meaning, could it be an analogy with the augustinian sense of evil?

[@seditoable]

Its weird and just seems like saying the same thing differently, Baudrillard being more romanticist with his idea of seduction. But im kinda with Derrida here that there are underlying biases that drive seductions and D&G say a similar thing (though their writing has such an inhuman alien nature to it). But my take is along the lines of taking your own life as a freeflowing discovery with a focus on keeping it firmly in sight over any quibbles and rigor, so whatever gets you there. Not so simple but basically.

[@khwaac]

Baudrillard did write that a simulacrum is a copy that has lost all reference to the original.

[@tufnel87]

hey, i like your videos. would you ever consider doing a video on "annatta" (non-self) from the Buddha's standpoint?

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

I love the idea, but unfortunately I don't know anything about it and therefore don't feel at all comfortable talking about it letting alone doing a video for the world to see XD

[@tufnel87]

@@TheoryPhilosophy oh ok cool.

[@philosophydork7780]

What do you think about Epoch Philosophy's new video on Baudrillard in relation to Martin Luther King. I think they get Baudrillard totally backwards to such a point where I doubt they even read any Baudrillard ever. It really annoys me because I have wrote a lot about Baudrillard in Grad School so it is obvious to me when people are reading off Wikipedia. Curious what you think of it.

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

I've never heard of Epoch Philosophy but I'll check it out. There are quite a few channels that present Baudrillard that get him backwards and, like you, it makes me want to pour salt in my eyes

[@philosophydork7780]

​@@TheoryPhilosophy​So far the only good videos I saw were Cuck Philosophy's video, and this new channel that did a video on Call of Duty and the Gulf War essays. Then & Now is another good philosophy channel.

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

SO I watched it and thought it was fine! Sure if I were going to be nit picky, I would have some qualms but it was miles above some other youtubers claiming to know baudrillard's work

[@philosophydork7780]

@@TheoryPhilosophy I just think MLK is just a very bad example of hyperreality. MLK is probably more just a distortion of a profound reality (Second order simulacrum), which existed for a LONG time much before postmodernity. The image of MLK is not really the masking the ABSENSE of a a profound reality. What they were describing in regards to the revisionism of MLK is a distortion of reality, not masking the absence of a reality of MLK that never existed. They also took the shallow interpretation that Reality is what is opposed by the Simulacrum when for Baudrillard, the Simulacrum is not what opposes reality (it is reality), but rather it opposes illusion. When they used the famous quote "The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth-it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true." and attributed it to Baudrillard (when Baudrillard actually attributes it to Ecclesiastes), it indicated to me that they never actually read Simulacra and Simulation at all and were just reading off Wikipedia or something. I really just think that it is silly when youtubers brand themselves as "theory channels" when they literally just summarize Wikipedia.

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Ya I hear what you're saying and I agree. I think I just generally thought it was better than everything else I see on Baudrillard that I was particularly gracious haha

[@robertamagdalena8224]

Thanks!

[@keanuclark4833]

I'm really curious to figure out exactly what is meant by collective desire in the works of D&G. That seems to me to be the distinction that makes their overall project possibly less individualistic. If one takes the 'individual' as already multiple, then desire can indeed flow within what we refer to as a single person, but there seems to be some way desiring-production can flow between people. Truly revolutionary desire seems to be this state where there aren't blocks between people arresting their mutual flows. But I cannot for the life of me really wrap my head around what that means. What's your take on this?

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Ya insofar as D&G are describing humans and humans are singular (i.e. they have their own bodies) then they are always going to be speaking about individuated subjects in some way. So I agree that their effort is to introduce some degree of multiplicity into this otherwise individualistic body we inhabit. I honestly think that their project falls short in describing what these unities between people can look like. They focus on rather banal instances (baby and mother's nipple, for ex.) but I don't think they fully unpack the potency of a political interaction that explodes the very categories of individuality that burden our collective development. ANyways i guess maybe that's why it's difficult to wrap your (and my) head around this...??

[@keanuclark4833]

@@TheoryPhilosophy yes I agree entirely. Guattari says in one of his individual works (I don't remember the title now) that the shortcomings of all socialist states so far was their lack of accounting for desire and that the mechanisms of desire were not yet revolutionary. But nowhere yet have I seen a good explanation of how a group or society reaches properly revolutionary desire or what it even looks like in practice.

[@iwouldprefernotto4381]

@@TheoryPhilosophy "They focus on rather banal instances (baby and mother's nipple, for ex.) but I don't think they fully unpack the potency of a political interaction that explodes the very categories of individuality that burden our collective development." This is brilliantly put. Excited to listen to this ep.

[@EthanNoble]

@@TheoryPhilosophy Stirner talked about this long ago with the concept of Union of Egoists

[@ninanoble8252]

I've already talked about this. Why don't you insert the ads after you are done with a concept, or finished a sentence? I am distracted and forget what was a few words immediately before the ad.

[@name-zk7ro]

I feel like baudrillard isn't seeing the full picture he's only seeing the process (the means not the end) d and g even say that the boxy without organs is still an organ, a character produced by the simulation but that despite this it has libritary potential.

[@ethanpettit]

Spot on!

[@prerna22munshi]

How is deterritorialisation different from the lines of flight? Don't they both have the liberatory potential?

[@HS-bh9dz]

I think that deterritorialization happens through following the lines of flight. Nonetheless DnG are reluctant to praise every act of deteritorialisation mainly because it is followed by reterritorialization.

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Ya D&G spend hundreds of pages repeating themselves sometimes without explaining a key distinction like the one you ask here. As far as I understand it, they seem to always like lines of flight because lines of flight cross strata and land and then take off again. It is therefore anathema to consistent hierarchical structures. Deterritorialization, on the other hand, risks appropriation by hierarchical powers for their own benefit because it does not imply Deterritorialization in perpetuity. To your point, Hunab Ku, I don't think that that is the case. D&G don't mind reterritorialization because that implies (with the "re") a movement having taken place. What do you think????

[@prerna22munshi]

@@TheoryPhilosophy yes that explains well. Lines of flight perhaps open an entirely new vista which deterritorialisation appear to but may not in all cases. Thanks to you and Hunab Ku

[@HS-bh9dz]

@@TheoryPhilosophy Idk but I found this post by someone smarter than me twitter.com/_infinitography/status/1263879665166495748

[@HS-bh9dz]

@@TheoryPhilosophy now in form of a blogpost! infinitography.wordpress.com/2020/11/02/the-landscapes-of-deterritorialisation/

[@jackri7676]

good video

[@thehermitsguide1439]

Equating writing and the simulacrum for Deleuze is just dead wrong, and then extrapolating DGs notes on writing within the body of the despot and the overcoming of the voice(graphic system becomes contemporaneous with speech) turns into downright fallacious thinking/interpretation

[@DiamorphineDeath]

Baudrillard states in the beginning of simulacra and simulation that the simulacrum is a copy of something with an original. Not sure why you’re stating it as just being a copy of a copy in the beginning. With his example of the borgias map in the first chapter, as referencing territory which was not there to begin with.

[@DiamorphineDeath]

Gotta love autocorrect...a copy of something *without an original,* something not just twice removed, but something which in fact did not exist

[@blablabla63923]

DnG in AO posit a theory of desire which prefigures and surpasses human individuals in its flows, critiquing the neurotic notion of an origin (or liberation) of self in order to make room for a more molecular sense of intensities. It's a shame because a lot of people keep repeating a cliched version of this as DnG "celebrating individual liberation" - mostly due to Zizek's misread - but AO is hardly humanist.

[@exlauslegale8534]

But what/where is Baudrillard's potential for emancipation? Unless nihilism is emancipatory? It is hard to find the new weapons to fight Societies of Control by listening to Baudrillard. At least D&G are not naysayers...

[@contentinternational]

To paraphrase The Dude, "You're not wrong, Jean, you're just an asshole!"

[@RydSpyn]

That would be fatal strategies and/or secrecy. Some people, e.g. Nick Land and Mark Fisher, have developed his ideas into accelerationism, but that's probably not what he would think. This, they derive from his notion of fate, whereby things break down because of the very features which allow them to exist. For instance, the American idea of liberty sets the scene for events fashioned in its image, while surreptitiously working towards its very demise. Later on, e.g. in "The Intelligence of Evil" he advocates for the recovery of initiatory practices to recover a place for the secret.

[@genathing903]

Wouldn’t human beings’ ability to sin already make them a “copy without resemblance” of God. God doesn’t even have the potentiality to sin as all that He does is the good and no one judges him.

[@sucotang3511]

No, not at all. The potentiality to sin is an imperfection not a perfection in, since sin its something that lack. And still the resemblance of mankind with God are in the intelect and the will, even with the potency to sin they still have the ordered intelect/will/passion nature, since they do not sinned yet.

[@joshuashields1326]

Depends. If your theoretical conception of God requires that he be not only perfect, but perfectly good, then you must first establish a base for a morality of absolute good and bad or good and evil. Since there is no empirical proof of a monotheistic god that resembles us in appearance and mindset, such a lack of details must also be explained and accounted for. Personally, I would say that such a God is the real copy, the simulacrum meant to represent the range and intensity of humanity endlessly striving to be good.

[@clumsydad7158]

a match-up of some heavyweights,,, peace alL !

[@TehMuNjA]

badiou next

[@opencarrydrift6308]

In difference and repetition Deleuze says that his project is not a humanistic one

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

I wish I had the time to get into the intricacies of that text here but I wanted to avoid recording a 3 hour long video XD

[@JAMAICADOCK]

I think it's wrong to read too much into Baudrillard's critiques of Marx. His early works were still Marxian, they were just attempting to update Marx to a new means of production. I mean why did the sign, seduction, symbolic exchange become so prevalent?? Because of the advent of television for the most part, something that Marx couldn't have imagined, let alone predicted But modernizing Marxism, is all part and parcel of Marx's original concept. Viz Means of production create the consciousness of the society. New means of production will obviously bring new approaches, new theories. In his later works, it wasn't that Baudrillard became a critic of Marx, rather he just saw everything as superficial, hollow, hyper real. Which he also applied to the New Left and its vapid democratic humanism. That the New Left didn't care about revolution, only the ritual of revolt That the subversion and revolutionary threat of Marxism had been neutralized, but by the same token he applied a similar logic to ideology in general. As he said in the Spirit of Terrorism, 'we are beyond ideology now'. As he saw the 911 attacks, the forces of reality were fighting back against the simulacrum, albeit unconsciously, under the guise of Islam. As he might see the rise of Trump and the rise of Right populism in general, as really not about conservatism, but about the reality principle. Major assaults on hyper reality's global hegemony, with its superficial, glib, airbrushed arrogance. Not so much crashing capitalism, or even Liberalism, or even the West, just crashing the program.

[@khwaac]

I think Baudrillard's "The Mirror of Production", was a pretty devastating critique of Marxism, but I haven't read Capital yet or the Mirror of Production. I think I've read enough Baudrillard and secondary sources to comment though. Baudrillard critiqued Marx by saying that in conceptualizing use value he created a mirror of production that didn't undermine capitalism from the outside like seduction and Marcel Mauss' gift did. Baudrillard focused on consumption and the sign because after May 68 the working class didn't pose much of a threat to capitalism. The system integrated opposition through the media, commodification and recuperation. Post-fordism (splitting up big factories into smaller ones to reduce large, central areas of resistance and undermine unions), the rise of neo-liberalism and the capitulation of the revolutionary left (communist parties) with the state further reduced opposition (See Baudrillard's "The Divine Left"). Baudrillard probably would have found commenting (a sign) on a youtube video (a sign) about his work in a linear fashion (a sign) ironic.

[@JAMAICADOCK]

@@khwaac But he's coming from a Marxian position, he's still criticizing capitalism. Still desires its abolition via revolutionary means. He's just disputing the Labour theory of value, and the reductive nature of reducing workers to producers, rather than seeing them as abstract symbolic entities. Basically using Marx against Marx to expose the alienation within Marxism itself. A debate which Marx would have welcomed But as always, Baudrillard deconstructs but offers no alternative solutions; other than some vague allusions to primitive societies. But even if he was serious about some partial return to primitive society, that's still communism from a Marxist point of view, as Marx called primitive society - primitive communism. .

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

I have lots to say, but just as a point of clarification, trev, seduction and symbolic exchange are at risk of disappearing under our current forms of programmatic perfectability. They do not intensify under the system (this is an idea that Plastic Pills puts out there and it is so incredibly wrong that I wince whenever I see it haha). Also, Marx does not have a monopoly on the critique of capitalism. There were socialists before Marx and there were non Marxist dialectical materialists after him (Innis for ex.)

[@khwaac]

​@@TheoryPhilosophy aren't seduction and symbolic exchange always beyond integral reality though?

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Absolutely not. Traces of them can still be gleaned, however. "Seduction" and "Symbolic Exchange and Death" are the texts for this discussion

[@eliane9916]

You’re interpretation of Baudrillard’s critique of D&G sounds an awful lot like what Nick Land praised them for lol

[@michaeldavidszekely2392]

I think you're right to suggest that D&G align themselves with Marx in terms of the general emphasis on production. However, it seems to me that you don't quite finish your thought concerning how their respective conceptions of production *differ* more specifically. You start us on the path by framing Marxian production vis-a-vis "use-value" and "efficiency" and D&G's production by way of "desiring-production," but then...the latter is ultimately quite distinct from the former...quite distinct from a utilitarian (in terms of "use," or better, "usefulness") production. Meanwhile, perhaps worth mentioning is how D&G, as per one of the interviews in "Negotiations," admit to remaining Marxists...at least in the sense of embracing Marx's project of the critique of capital.

[@ik5083]

I don’t think your description of Marxism is quite accurate, though as it was an exercise in what Baudrillard might have said I would not claim on that basis you are ignorant of Marx. Marx wrote, in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844: ‘We have said above that man is regressing to the cave dwelling, etc.-but he is regressing to it in an estranged, malignant form. The savage in his cave-a natural element which freely offers itself for his use and protection-feels himself no more a stranger, or rather feels as much at home as a fish in water. But the cellar dwelling of the poor man is a hostile element, “a dwelling which remains an alien power and only gives itself up to him insofar as he gives up to it his own blood and sweat”-a dwelling which he cannot regard as his own hearth’ When man gains a modern dwelling over a cave he has gained nothing. In nature, he only stood in need of a cave. Neither technology nor a return to nature will in themselves help to realise human potential. In fact a return to the nature of old is impossible: “the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.” Marx, Theses on Feuerbach The social relations of man, the conditions in which he reproduces his existence have changed and therefore so has that existence. Whereas primitive man consisted of material taken from nature and stood in need of material from nature, modern man is raised in a different environment, his physical and psychological are different and so returning to a natural environment is impossible, he can only return to a specific non-natural environment as he is himself not a natural being. The ensemble of social relations is nothing different than the totality of man’s acting on one another and, through economic structures, on reality in general. Needs are meditated into different drives. This process has proceeded so far that man is obviously physically incapable of being liberated by a return to nature. His appendix is no longer even capable of digesting raw meat. Nor can technology have any liberating potential, he wasn’t conditioned to life in a world that never existed. His own physical and psychological characteristics (natural, to a large extent) are mediated by the environment, which ultimately always places him in conflict with both his social as well as with his natural environment. Communism, therefore, has no greater liberatory potential than early capitalism had. The problem with capitalism is the alienation of its institutions which leads to the creation of social relations that are inevitably in conflict with each other and nature. Communism, by definition, cannot have alienated institutions. Its liberatory potential lies not in technology, but like that of early capitalism, it lies in the unmediated nature of social relations. “The only connection which still links them with the productive forces and with their own existence - labour - has lost all semblance of self-activity and only sustains their life by stunting it. While in the earlier periods self-activity and the production of material life were separated, in that they devolved on different persons, and while, on account of the narrowness of the individuals themselves, the production of material life was considered as a subordinate mode of self-activity, they now diverge to such an extent that altogether material life appears as the end, and what produces this material life, labour (which is now the only possible but, as we see, negative form of self-activity), as the means.” Marx, The German Ideology. Part 1 Marx & Engels didn’t lay undue stress on the economic relations, as Baudrillard believed, they thought these were fundamental, preceding all other relations of a given system, not that they were a dominating factor over these other relations. Some quotes follow to prove this: “the eclectic nature of his mind found particularly striking expression in his attacks on dialectical materialism, which he regarded as a doctrine which sacrifices all other factors to the economic “factor” and reduces the role of the individual in history to nothing. It never occurred to the “esteemed sociologist” that the “factors” point of view is alien to dialectical materialism” Plekhanov. The Role of the Individual in History “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” Marx. Preface to the Critique of Political Economy “Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.” Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme. Section. I “Just as Darwin discovered the law of development or organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.” Engels, Frederick Engels’ Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx “According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase.” Engels, Engels to J. Bloch In Königsberg “This method of approach is not devoid of premises. It starts out from the real premises and does not abandon them for a moment. Its premises are men, not in any fantastic isolation and rigidity, but in their actual, empirically perceptible process of development under definite conditions. As soon as this active life-process is described, history ceases to be a collection of dead facts as it is with the empiricists (themselves still abstract), or an imagined activity of imagined subjects, as with the idealists.” Marx, The German Ideology. Ch. 1-A

[@radscorpion8]

i have never been more convinced that this type of philosophy is a big loss of time with no clear or useful result. I'd rather pick up a science book and learn something that's true and useful, and not hidden behind deliberately hard to parse and obscurantist language