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Delueze and Guattari or Some Unconscious Inconsistencies, May 1, 2007
D&G elevate desire to a transcendental level and bestow it a time- and context-free character. As such, they abandon the "rational man" assumption of the traditional view of human beings and adopt a "desiring unconscious" model to account for the behaviors of humans. To them, desire exists prior to creation, knowledge, culture, law etc. and thus it is the motor of human action and history. Yet although it has a transcendental essence, desire is not immune to power relations. To the contrary, D&G argue that power struggles take place exactly over desire, or its control. Thus, the primary aim of the philosophy of D&G becomes the liberation of desire from external pressures. Put simply, everybody should be entitled to realize his/her desire so long as it is not harmful to others. This idea of liberation of desire leads D&G to elaborate on the concept of immanence.
Immanence or Liberating the Desire
Wittgenstein believed that most of the problems that we think of as `philosophical' derive from confusions in thinking. He thus asserted that the first task of a philosopher was to clarify concepts. By contrast, Delueze believes that the task of philosopher is the creation of concepts. Consequently, Delueze developed "irrecuperable concepts" that escape previously existing systems of thought (p. 11). The concept of "immanence" is one of them.
The heart of the philosophy of Delueze and Guattari (D&G) can be seen as a challenge to the static and stable view of both human nature and social relations by the traditional (and dominant) social theories. As we have seen before (Thinking Space, 2000), Delueze offers a "methodology of continuity" whereby he argues that social life (and hence history) is composed of "becomings" (ands), not beings (iss). In line with that, D&G maintain there is no "subject", but only a multitude of contradictory elements; thus, identity is but a changing bundle of unstable, context-dependent traits, which are sometimes contradictory.
The idea of immanence (or immanent relations) is central to the above philosophy of D&G. By immanent relations D&G refer to the relations of which forms (not existence ) are independent of external forces and of which elements have a mutually dependent relationship. The essential component of such relations is that differing modes should mutually act upon each other and transform each other. When forces meet and interact, the relation that they construct affects their own nature and changes them in the process. As such, "becoming" becomes the prototype of an immanent relation [because immanent relations change the nature of all parties in that relationship, D&G also call this process "double deterritorialization" (p. 38)]
D&G's philosophy of immanence has important implications for social theory. First, the theorist is not some impartial observer surveying the plane of social relations, but is immanent within the plane (p. 44). This is similar to the classical problem of "participatory observation" in field research. D&G's point is that we all "participate" in our observations. Second, which is a derivative of the first, their philosophy of immanence leads D&G to adopt a skeptic view on the possibility of knowledge. Because the observer is immanent within the observation, knowledge will always be unstable and contingent. Moreover, the mutually dependent relationship challenges our conventional dichotomous treatment of the social phenomena as dependent and independent variables. Thus, D&G's view is likely to lead one to a chaotic epistemology, for immanence means "what", "when", "how", and "why" become indistinguishable (p. 69-70).
The driving motive behind D&G's going into such pain to elaborate on immanent relations was that D&G sought a relationship that is not mediated by transcendental presuppositions. They resisted historical and cultural determinism by constructing a plane of immanence in a third sense. In their philosophy of immanence the human subject is constituted on the plane of given as a "result", rather than a "presupposition". For D&G, the obstacle that prevents social relations from developing has always been the interest of some third party in the relation (p. 2). As a result, they desire to construct a social space where immanent relations can be produced. Such immanent relations, instead of acting out roles given to them by some transcendental third party, are capable of affecting, shaping, and changing any mediating factors. Thus, D&G's arguments on immanence and immanent relations can be taken as both an analysis of and an ideal for societal relations.
I Desire, You Desire, We Desire... Oops!
Good critiques as they are, to my reading, Delueze and Guattari's arguments on desire suffer from an ailment that is common to most postmodern thinkers: inconsistency. Primarily, the idea of desire as being a transcendental motive is irreconcilable with the idea of social relations as having an immanent character, because the way D&G define immanence, by necessity, implies that desire also will be created, shaped and changed throughout the process of "double deterritorialization". And as such, desire will be a social construct. Thus, it cannot exist prior to social interaction. In particular, I cannot conceive the argument that "desire exists prior to knowledge", because there is no way for one to desire what he/she does not know (D&G might argue that desire for `food' is an asocial, and hence transcendental, one. But I guess the concept of desire -especially the way D&G utilize it- means more than feeding oneself. As such, transcendental desires, if there is any, are exceptions; and rules are not constructed within the realm of exceptions). The desires for sex, security, power, status, money, etc. are all results of social interaction and based upon a "knowledge" which motivates a person to obtain them. Consciously or unconsciously, people desire what they have knowledge about.
Secondly, the argument (or ideal) regarding the liberation of desire is either too naïve or bluntly self-contradictory. D&G contend that every individual should be entitled to materialize his/her desires in a way that is at least benign to others. Yet in a world of limited possibilities and scarce resources, a clash of desires is inevitable. In that situation we have two options: 1) The naïve view: Individuals will willingly relinquish some of their desires for the sake of common good because of resource scarcity (but even in this `highly unlikely' case the desire will not be `liberated', but will only be `liberated from humanly restrictions'. The `restrictions of nature' are still at work, thereby making all individuals still `repressed'). 2) The self-contradictory option: Everybody will try to materialize his/her desires to the extent possible and will try to resolve the "clashing desires" problem "by any means". This will inevitably introduce the issue of power which will eventually situate some people over others and thus result in the repression of the desires of some people, namely the `losers'. Therefore, there seems to be no `realistic' way to liberate the desire for anybody, let alone for everybody. Nature makes us repressed, and human beings make us more so. Maybe REM was right: "Everybody hurts!"
The above critiques of D&G's philosophy of desire are not to mean that desire has no important place in terms of explaining human behavior. Rather, they were aimed towards dethroning desire from the privileged place that D&G unjustifiably, and rather inconsistently, elevated it to. Einstein is reported to say that he could explain everything if he was given a constant/stable point of departure. Most social theorist are unfortunately in search of such constant points and some of them claim to have found one (be it "reason", "labor", "power", or "desire"). Yet such concrete-stable-transcendental points have a tendency to prove to be more "fiction" than real. It is for this reason that most philosophies start with self-delusions.
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