Musings

In the spirit of broadening D/G's theories to the realm of computers and cybernetics, I wonder if I might propose a couple of interpretations:

I've been noticing some connections between a disembodied theory of information and the notion of a body without organs. In "Anti-Oedipus," D/G write of capital as a sort of BwO, an abstraction or residue of a production process that retroactively asserts its primordiality. In this way, information becomes disembodied from the production of knowledge and re-produces man as a series of genetic codes, fax-able, reduced to information. As Davis was mentioning a couple weeks ago in class with regard to intensities and the BwO, the feedback loop appears to fly off of its production complex and become self-sustaining, reducing everything to varying degrees of intensity. This is essentially a state of entropy, of pure, unadulterated information (white noise).

Thus, Hayles' attempt to reterritorialize, to re-embody information. Thus Fanon's paralyzing fear of the trapped and dissected body. Thus, Burroughs' and D/G's and Langlois' attempt to even the playing field by establishing a-signifying semiotics. This, I think, is the plane of consistency, of the virus which is never just material, never just expressive. Fanon will not necessarily be overdetermined by, say, genetics, because for D/G and Langlois, genetic code is an a-semiotic encoding. There is a materiality that "can be captured by different interests that can impose genetic interpretation,(88-90)" meaning that a language of control and power can emerge from any quarter at any time; DNA is a latent virus, activated by the media of external milieus (screens, recordings). Perhaps what Fanon fears, to put it sloppily in Burroughsian terms, is that the virus is the pure signifier, overdetermined like the signifier of Freud's dream (if I remember correctly), overdetermined by the discursive/signifying powers that be--whereas the virus, the sign-particle, really possesses a kind of metaphysical freedom, a laughter or jouissance in the face of the notion of "subject" or signification in general.

Briefly, I've also been thinking about the word-processor as a BwO. The "interface," a site of cultural inscription, appears to "miraculate" the words and meanings which appear on screen. That is, the long process of production, the series of codes and operations that interrupt or branch off from each other, is concealed while the words appearing seem to appear as if by magic. Over time, the interface, like capital, begins to appear totally natural and foundational--we forget that the typing is an illusion, a clever re-production of more original processes of production.

Just some scattered thoughts. Goodnight.