Close Reading of AO... begins now

[sodapopinski51]

Since nobody returned by post about going in a linear fashion through AO, or in a mish-mash non-linear fashion haphazardly, I decided I'll kick things off in a linear fashion. It will make things easier... if that's possible with a book like Anti-Oedipus

Comments

[seasontoseason]

ok, then we need to have a try at some sort of preliminary definition of "machine"

[sodapopinski51]

Technical thinking, involved in making and producing.
The connection between making a thing, the maker who creates it, and the end product, the thing that was made. Or another way of thinking is that its a poesis, or an active production or creation of the self. Auto-poesis, automatically creating the self. Mechanized production. Machine is the force that moves itself. In capitalism the machine is the virtuoso of production.
This is rudimentary at best, but its a start.

[sodapopinski51]

in addition, the idea of a machine is often viewed as being artificial, or unnatural. This is probably because it is typically assumed that a human must transform raw materials to create a machine, that a certain amount of labor goes into the creation of machines. I think D&G are challenging this dichotomy for a moment. Thinking of the natural world as being a machine. That there might be no clear distinction between what is artificial, mechanical, and what is natural. That its all machines and there is not a clear division between what is artificial and what is natural.

[seasontoseason]

that is interesting. I hadn't thought of it as a challenge to that dichotomy but it makes sense.

I could have a problem with it, if that is D&G's point, but I'll reserve judgement for a while. my little twinge is that a distinction between "natural" and "artificial" (though with less moralistic terms, i cant think of righ tnow) needs to be made somewhere, somehow. If they are challenging that dichotomy, i'll want to be sure that they are also finding a new way to account for certain "true" (or, i should say, necessary) distinctions gathered into that old way.

[sodapopinski51]

I may be reading D&G through the lens of Donna Haraway, which might be completely incorrect.