ON MACHINES
Felix Guattari
Andrew Benjamin ed., Complexity, JPVA, No 6, 1995, p. 8-12.
The theme of the machine has concerned me
for a long time, but perhaps less as a conceptual than
an affective object. I have always been fascinated by the machine, and even remember,
as a student at the Sorbonne, giving a paper on Friedmann's
Le Travail en miettes, and the startled look
on the face of my professor as I railed against Friedmann.
At that time I was scathingly opposed to the mechanicist
visions of the machine, and thought instead that we could look forward to a
kind of safety in the machine. Since then, I have tried to nurture this machinic object, although I admit it is not something I control,
rather it is a kind of core to which I am repeatedly led back. The last time I
returned to it was triggered by Pierre Levy's book, Les Techniques de /'intelligence,
in which I discovered a revival of the theme, but from within the author's
own context of computer technology. Indeed, I would insist on the right to a
form of thought which proceeds by affective axes and by affects, rather than a
thought process which claims to give a scientific, axiomatic description. I
would also like to emphasise that this is a question
of a totally open set of themes (thematique), and
I prefer if it could remain so when thrown open to discussion in order to see
the responses that this type of thinking might provoke.
We are currently at an unavoidable
crossroads, where the machine is treated as anathema, and where there prevails
the idea that technology is leading us to a situation of inhumanity and of
rupture with any kind of ethical project. Moreover, contemporary history
actually reinforces this view of the machine as catastrophic, causing
ecological damage and so on. We might therefore be tempted to look backwards as
a reaction to the machinic age, so as to begin again
from who knows what kind of primitive territoriality.
Pierre Levy uses an expression which I
find very useful: 'trying to break down the ontological iron curtain between
being and things'. It seems to me that one way of breaking down that iron
curtain - a preoccupation of all philosophy up until Heidegger - is perhaps
through the machinic interface, or machine conceived
as interface, which Pierre Levy calls a 'hypertext'. Indeed, in order to
overcome this fascination with technology and the deathly dimension it
sometimes takes, we have to re-apprehend and reconceptualise
the machine in a different way, to begin from the being of the machine as that
which is at the crossroads, as much as being in its inertia, and
its character of nothingness, as the subject, subjective individuation or
collective subjectivity. This theme can be seen in the history of literature
and cinema, and in myth, where it takes the form of a machine inhabited by a
soul and possessing diabolical powers. I am not advocating that we go back to
an animistic way of thinking, but nevertheless, I would propose that we attempt
to consider that in the machine, and at the machinic
interface, there exists something that would not quite be of the order of the
soul, human or animal, anima, but of the order of a proto-subjectivity.
This means that there is a function of consistency in the machine, both a
relationship to itself and a relationship to alterity.
It is along these two axes that I shall endeavour to
proceed.
Let us begin at the most simple, and already more or less established idea: that the
technical object cannot be limited to its materiality. In techne,
there are ontogenetic elements, elements of the plan, of construction,
social relationships which support these technologies, a stock of knowledge,
economic relations and a whole series of interfaces onto which the technical
object attaches itself. From this, we can establish a link between a modern
type of technological machine and the tools or the actual pieces of the
machine, and think of these as elements connected to one another. Ever since Leibnitz, the concept of an articulated machine has been
available, which one would qualify today as fractal, with other machines which
are themselves made up of infinite machinic elements. Thus the machine's environment forms part of machinic agencements.1 The
liminal element of the entry into the machinic zone undergoes a kind of smoothing process, of
the uniformisation of a material, like steel which is
treated, deterritorialised and made uniform in order
to be moulded into machinic
shapes.
The essence of the machine is linked to
procedures which deterritorialise its elements,
functions and relations of alterity. Hence it will be
necessary to speak of the ontogeny of the technical machine as that which
makes it open itself to the exterior.
Alongside the ontogenetic element is
another dimension which is phylogenetic.
Technological machines are caught in a 'phylum' which is preceded by some
machines and succeeded by others.2 These proceed by generations -
like generations of motor cars -with each generation opening the virtuality of other machines to come; and particular
elements within these machines also initiate a meeting point with all the machinic descendants of the future.
The two categories of ontogenesis and phylogenesis applied to the technological object allow us
to make a link with other machinic systems which are
not themselves technological. In the history of
philosophy the problem of the machine has generally been regarded as secondary
to a more general system -that of techne and
technique (la technique). I would propose a reversal of this point of
view, to the extent that the problem of technique would now only be a
subsidiary part of a much wider machine problematic. Since the 'machine' is
opened out towards its machinic environment and
maintains all sorts of relationships with social constituents and individual
subjectivities, the concept of technological machine should therefore be
broadened to that of machinic agencements. This category encompasses everything that
develops as a machine in its different registers and ontological supports. And
here, rather than having an opposition between being and themachine.or being and the subject, this new notion
of the machine now involves being differentiating itself qualitatively
and emerging onto an ontological plurality, which is the very extension of the
creativity of machinic vectors. Ratherthan
having a being asa common trait which would
inhabit the whole of machinic, social, human and
cosmic beings, we have, instead, a machine that develops universes of
reference - ontological heterogeneous universes, which are marked by
historic turning points, a factor of irreversibility and singularity.
Alongside the proto-machinic
tool and technological machines there are also concepts of social machines.
For example, the city is a mega-machine; it functions like a machine.
Linguistic theoreticians such as Chomsky have introduced the concept of the abstract
machine inhabiting linguistic or syntagmatic
machines. Many biologists today refer to 'machines' in relation to the living
cell, to bodily organs, to individuation and even to the social body; here,
too, the concept of the machine is becoming established. In the domain of
idealities -another universe of reference altogether - we are witnessing the
broadening of the concept of the machine - that of the musical machine for
example, an idea now being developed by a number of contemporary musicians.
Logic machine, cosmic machine; some theoreticians are even referring to the
earth's ecosystem as a living being, or a machine in my own broad sense of the
term. And looking back twenty years or so we might also evoke the desiring
machines which take up the theory of psychoanalytical part-objects-the objet a as desiring
machine - but in the form of elements which are not reducible to objects
adjacent to the human body. It is, rather, a question of objects of desire,
machines of desire, objects-subjects of desire and vectors of partial subjectification, which open up far beyond the body and
familial relations, on to social and cosmic ensembles and all types of
universes of reference.
In the field of biology, the concept of
the machine has re-
cently been developed by such theoreticians as Umberto Maturana
and Francisco Varella. Here the machine is defined by
the ensemble of interrelations and its components, independently of the
components themselves. They provide a definition which is close to that of the
abstract machine and which describes the machine as autopoietic,
self-productive and continually reproducing its component parts, rather like a
system without input nor output. Varella
has actually developed this theory quite extensively. He opposes autopoiesis, which he essentially attributes
to living biological beings, to an allopoiesis
in which the machine will search for its components outside of itself.
Within this concept of allopoiesis, Varella arranges social systems, technical machines and,
finally, all machinic systems which are not living
systems. This concept of autopoiesis to me seems both
interesting and fruitful. However, I think that we should go beyond Varella position and establish a relation between allo- and autopoietic machines.
Since allopoietic machines are always to be found
adjacent to autopoietic ones, we should therefore
attempt to take into account the agencements
which make them live together.
Another idea, borrowed from Levy, is that machinic systems are interfaces which are all articulated
to one another - in what he calls 'hypertexts' - and which gradually extend
throughout the whole of the 'mecanosphere'. I should
like to join Varella and Levy's views in order to
consider the machine both in its autopoietic
character and in all its allopoietic developments, of
interfaces, which grant it a kind of exterior politics and relations of alterity.
The machine has something more than
structure. It is 'more' than structure in that it does not limit itself to a
game of interactions which develop in space and time between its component
parts; rather, it possesses a core of consistency, insistence and ontological
affirmation, which is prior to the unfolding into energetico-spatio-temporal
coordinates. This machinic core, which in some
respects can be qualified as proto-subjective and proto-biological, possesses
characteristics Varella has not completely taken into
account. These are, on the one hand, elements of onto- or of phylogenesis, but also, on the other hand, elements of
finitude. The machine is a bearer of finitude, of something of the order of
birth and death, and from this arises the fascination that it can exert as an
exploded, destroyed or imploded machine; a bearer of death around it but also
of death to itself.
The source (foyer) of autopoietic insistence and of the development of a
heterogeneous alterity (which develops registers of alterity) is difficult to describe or define since it is
not an existing thing which then affirms itself as it unfolds its energetico-spatio-temporal coordinates. How, then, do we
broach such an object if not through myth or narrative - that is, through
non-scientific means? I think that this machinic core
is always linked in some way to systems of meta-modelisation
which call for a development of theory. This theme is something I would rather
not develop here as it will be taken up in a subsequent work together with
Gilles Deleuze. This core of autopoietic and interstratic3
affirmation, of opening outwards, involves an idea of complexity that is
thought out in completely 'extra-ordinary' coordinates. The complexity of the machinic object realises itself
and becomes embodied in the different machinic
systems referred to earlier. At the same time, it is always haunted by the
chaos that will separate it, dividing its elements into an altogether
different kind of decomposition. It is as if this autopoietic
being, this machinic proto-subjectivity, were
simultaneously in the register of complexity and in that of chaos. I think that
chaos should be considered not only as being 'chaotic' but also as being able,
in its compositions of elements and entities, to develop new formulas of
extreme complexity. Let us take an aleatoric system
such as a game in a casino. In roulette the impression you have with each go of
the game is that of a chaotic system formed of aleatoric
compositions. But if you play for long periods of time you will notice series,
the statistical calculations of which allow you to locate complex compositions.
In such a case this aleatoric system is dependent on
certain mathematical descriptions; the same applies to chaos. Chaos is the
bearer of dimensions of the greatest hyper-complexity. We all know the myth according
to which, by picking letters at random, we can find the formula of Mallarme's poetic works. Although finding this would of
course take a very long time, it can be said that Mallarme's
work potentially inhabits this chaotic universe of multiple combinations of
letters.
How can we make these two dimensions of
complexity and chaos inhabit the same site? Simply by bearing
in mind that the entities inhabiting chaos are animated by an infinite speed.
Thus they can compose the most diverse complexities but can de-complexify themselves just as quickly. The idea of infinite
speed ' also leads us to a notion of chaos which could be the bearer of
complexity. Proto-subjectivity can filter into these chaotic centres and at the same time be adjacent to a chaotic dissociation
with its own death and infinitely complex compositions. This is what I term a
'grasping chaotic' - a momentary grasp of complexity that is inhabited by all
kinds of potentialities.4 Furthermore, I would term
'hyper-complexity' that complexity which is taken over rather than truly
dominated and which exists in a relationship of insistence and repetition.
In the structural theory of the signifier,
the different components of a system can all be treated in terms of the
economy of the signifier. We can always find a system of quantity of information
or a binary system which inhabits different, heterogeneous systems. In the
model I propose there can be no translation between the different levels of
complexity, since each one is the bearer of its own ontoiogical
substratum.
Let us take as an example the definition
of fantasy in Freud's theory of the drive. This consists of a discursive
element, which is the representational, fantastical and narrative element, as
well as a non-discursive element - the affect. It is, moreover, difficult to
grasp how Freud managed to deal with this contradiction given that it was at
the heart of his definition of the drive. The structuralists
have themselves practically disposed of the drive's affective dimension, and
only deal with its discursive elements; so the drive is treated here in terms
of the economy of the signifier.
In the conception of the machine that I am
evoking, I am not dissociating discursivity from this
non-discursive foyer, which is that of its autopoietic
affirmation. The split in the category of the signifier is perfectly clear in
the economy of the image, of the imaginary or biological chains - domains to
which the signifier remains foreign. It is thus that the economy of the
signifier in Lacan's workalways
develops in a linear and spatial dimension. We all know the expression 'A
signifier is that which represents the subject for another signifier'. The
subject is therefore 'in a relationship'. A given signifying locus, S1, exists
in a relationship with another given signifying locus, S2, and the subject
drifts in a sort of chasm between the two signifiers S1-S2. Linearity inhabits
all notions of subjectivity, and the spatial characteristic is to be found in
all of Lacan's work of the mirror stage, but also in
his analysis of the ego which he developed in his later work. However, I
consider that limiting ourselves to this coordinate is precisely to lose the
element of the machinic centre, of subjective autopoiesis and self-affirmation. Whether located at the
level of the complete individual or partial subjectivity, or even at the level
of social subjectivity, this element undergoes a pathic
relationship by means of the affect. What is it,
then, that makes us state phenomenologically that
something is living? It is precisely this relationship of affect. This is not a
description, nor a kind of propositional analysis resulting from a sense of hypotheses
and deductions - ie, it is a living being, therefore
it is a machine; rather, an immediate, pathic and
non-discursive apprehension occurs of the machine's ontoiogical
autocomposition relationship.
Natural codings
develop in spatial categories which are different from those of the signifying
register. They are familiar with n-spatial dimensions - as occurs for example
in crystallography. Coding cannot operate in an autonomy
of its own; biological codings instead develop in
complex spatial systems. The double-helix system of DNA does this from four
basic radical chemicals and in three dimensions. In pre-signi-fying or symbolic semiologies,
the lines of expression run parallel. For example, we have lines of
expression in cinema - the line of sound, the visual line, the line of colour - and there is no question of syntax or a key which
would make the relationship between these lines homogeneous. There only exists
a parallel relationship between them all. The same applies to all
pre-signifying or symbolic semiologies. For example,
in the rituals of archaic societies we can find forms of expression which are
provided either by language or a form of myth or ritual, or by spatial
arrangements such as geomancy or dance, or by markings on the body. These_semiological lines have some kind of relationship
existing between them as they possess a machinic
unity which is that of the social machine of ritual, but they are not completely
articulated to one another; they are, rather, arranged in parallel.
With signifying semiologies,
however, there prevails a linearity which controls all lines of expression.
This relationship of linearity occurs in computing. A signifying line can work
in order to take account of a verbal text, as much as an image or spatial relation.Thereisa'binarisation',which
isaconversion in binary form of the totality of
discursive systems. Yet, on the other hand, the different universes of
ontological and autopoietic machinic
reference are totally neglected.
There undoubtedly exists an over-linearity
(sur-linearite) of semiotic chains by
a-signifying elements which no longer articulate productive chains of
signification with chains of a-signifying signs. For instance there is a pure
composition of a-signifying machines in scientific or musical fields. Another
type of economy thus appears in relationships governing the expressive components
to which we can attribute over-linearity.
Through these hastily sketched examples,
we can see that the relationship to space which these various systems of semiological and semiotic codings
possess is not at all homogeneous. These days we may think that computers know
how to realise these different components of coding
and expression and give a generalised translation of
them; but it is in fact nothing like this. The different coding systems are
always inhabited by foyers of affirmation and an autopoietic
positionality of the system of expression. Because of
this, it always comes second to the non-discursive foyer of the
ontological nucleus.
We should now discuss the ontological
heterogeneity represented by universes of reference which are incarnated in
different systems of discursivity, and which to some
extent are also dependent on them. How can we have access to these? We find
ourselves in a paradoxical situation, for we are thrown intojdiscursive
systems, relationships of time, space and energetic exchange, and at the same
time we have to deal with foyers of existential affirmation which are
not themselves discursive. What is also paradoxical
is that we should be able to present these foyers existentially through
discursive material, rather than representation.
In the field of poetry, rhythm and
elements of regularity, at the level of expression as well as in the content
itself, will develop a poetic universe. These are the keys to the existence of
an ontological crossroads between poetry and music. In the
psychoanalytical field, objects, repetitive and thus discursive systems are the
existential supports of centres of subjective
affirmation. In obsessional neurosis, for example, we
come across an endlessly repetitive washing of hands which does not refer to
any signification of the type: 'what does it mean to wash one's hands? And what about germs?' Everything is co-present. The
individual recomposes him/herself in this way, carrying out this ritual. He/she
reaffirms him/herself in a component of partial subjectivity;
to-feel-that-one-is-in-the-washing-of-one's-hands. But obsessional
neurosis is perhaps not the most simple example. Some
types of behaviour have the same function, for
example biting one's nails, or singing a tune in one's head when scared, or
repeating a sentence (as if there were someone there to hear) - all of these
represent a means of a 'grasp' of non-discursive relationships. This is what I
would term an existential function.
This also appears in semiotic systems and
linguists have described this function to a certain extent. I have in mind such
theoreticians as Austin, Ducrot and Benveniste who have emphasised
the ^shifters' -those elements of language which exist not to provide a
meaning, but to mark the subject of the enunciation in the utterance. Lacan himself had also made use of this performative
function. In a way, it is through this type of operator that he constructed his
theory of full speech and the symbolic relationship.
We are confronted with an untenable
paradox which we are nevertheless obliged to support - indeed,
the whole world is in the same situation. Every society has to take this
gamble, particularly scientific and animist societies. It is from the elements
of discursivity that we must pose universes of
reference, qualitative structures and ontological textures. We therefore have to
produce and develop incorporeal universes which, although they may be
dated or marked with the name of their inventor, are in fact universal. These
universes could evoke Platonic ideas, yet they are inscribed in history; they
are cuts, mutations, which are marked by a factor of irreversibility and
singularity.
Pierre Levy distinguishes between machines
which come under the oral or written mode, and computing machines. In the
universe of the word-processing machine - which completely changes one's
relationship to expression - he notes the interfaces which compose and singularise this new universe of reference: writing, the
alphabet, printing, computing, the laser printer, Linotype, database, image
bank, telecommunications... Thus we have a new machine. Today, children who are
learning language from a word-processor are no longer within the same types of
universes of reference as before, neither from a cognitive point of view (of
how there may be another organisation of memory, or
rather memories...), nor in the order of affective dimensions and social or
ethical relationships.
What does this kind of machinic
delirium provide us with? Let us take an institutional object, for example an
establishment for psychotic patients. We could completely reify
inter-subjective relationships by saying that the psychotic patient is in
search of care from individuals who have a specialised
knowledge, who can dispense medicine, and provide interpretations and behavioural indications to treat the psychosis. This is,
however, a conception of subjectivity in which each person is shut inside a monad
and is then forced to construct means of 'communication'. This is the universe
of 'communicational reference'. This viewpoint must be reversed in order for it
not to be possible to begin from entities which are closed off in relation to
one another, as this implies modes of 'communication' and of 'transfer'.
Instead, the transfer has to come first; it must already be there. There will
(or not) be a machine of subjectification according
to whether there is a crossing of different thresholds of ontological and
subjective insistence. At that moment in the autopoietic
relation, there exists an immediate and pathic knowledge
of the situation - 'something is happening'. When a love machine or fear
machine is activated this is not due to the effect of discursive, cognitive or
deductive sentences. Rather, it occurs immediately. And this machine will
progressively develop different means of expression.
The clinic at La Borde
is an establishment conceived (in principle) as a machine of subjectification!which itself is
composed of n-sub-wholes of subjectification..
From the moment the patient arrives at the clinic, these relationships of subjectification have to function between patient and
doctor. Further relationships will then be set up not only with patients and
their counsellors, but with animals and machines as
well. These must all be capable of producing or being vectors of care and of
existential strength for the psychotics, who are going through a phase of
ontological imbalance. Can one be content with the passive statement:
'Everything is going well, we are not alone
in a face-to-face situation with the patient, there are other interrelations';
or can one work instead on the lines of machinic virtuality, the lines of machinic
alterity borne from different sub-wholes? If we
consider for instance that the kitchen is an autopoietic
foyer of subjectification, it becomes
important to be aware of its space, and its architectural dimensions, to be
able to engender further exchange within this space so that it does not become
a little citadel shut in on itself. Today, ready-made meals are delivered by
van to hospital kitchens; therefore there is no machine of subjectification.
A machine-kitchen, however, would not only involve a certain type of space, but
also a certain type of training and exchange for the people who work in it.
Cooks would be able to come and go in other service areas so that they could
understand the positions of alterity that exist in
other areas of work. This is, therefore, a complex machine, a system of
interfaces. And the same can be said for the other services in the hospital.
Learning to drive, for example, is a crucial moment for the psychotic, who may
be totally incapable of having a conversation but is capable of driving a car. What
takes place is therefore a subjective composition according to the hold of
consistency of these different ensembles. While some of them may lose their
consistency, other forms of consistency will appear. It is here that the general
loss of consistency one finds on entering into relationships of seriality of an ethological nature, which provoke the kinds
of conditions of inter-human savagery that exist in traditional hospitals, is
now able to be posed as a problem.
Th#\autopoiitic and 'hypertextual' position of the machine
thus possesses a pragmatic potential, which allows for a creative standpoint
of machinic composition, occurring in the face of the
ontological iron curtain which separates the subject_on_
the one side from things on the other.
Translated by
Vivian Constantinopoulos .
!.
Notes
Editorial Note Jhis
paper is originally published in French in
Chimeres, No 19, Spring
1993. We would like to thank the editors of Chimeres
for permission to publish 'A propos des machines' in the Journal of Philosophy
and the Visual Arts. The paper was originally given as a lecture in
November 1990 at a conference entitled 'Cinema et Litterature: Le temps des machines', organised
by the Centre de recherche et d'action
culturelle de
1 Translator's note: Agencements
is a term often translated in English as 'assemblages' or 'arrangements'.
Henceforth the term will remain in the original French.
2 Translator's note: See also Gilies Deieuze and Felix Guattari's definition of the machinic
phylum in pp406-10 of 'Treatise on Nomadology-The
War Machine' in A Thousand Plateaus, tr Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987):—
3 Translator's note: See also Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's
'”1O.OOObc: The Geology of Morals
(Who Does the Earth Think It Is?)' in A Thousand Plateaus, op cit, and Deieuze and Guattari's discussion
of 'stratigraphic time' in What is Philosophy, tr Graham Burcheii and Hugh
Tomlinson (London and New York: Verso, 1994).
4 Translator's note: 'grasping chaotic' is
the term originally used in French.