Deleuze and Guattari's Philosophy of Freedom by Dorothea Olkowski;Eftichis Pirovolakis;

Deleuze and Guattari's Philosophy of Freedom by Dorothea Olkowski;Eftichis Pirovolakis;

Author:Dorothea Olkowski;Eftichis Pirovolakis;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2019-01-17T16:00:00+00:00


Bergson thus provides Deleuze and Guattari a positive view of institutions as plural and open-ended means of satisfying Real needs, whatever their role in enforcing (or contesting) the reproduction of a mode of production may be. Bergson will, however, go on to critique a too-narrowly needs-based understanding of human institutions and society. For institutions focused on providing means of satisfying the needs of its members or the society of which they are a part necessarily exclude others from enjoyment of those means. They thereby function as parts of what Bergson calls a closed society, organized around us-vs.-them structures that prevent humanity in his view from achieving and sharing its full potential.

Deleuze offers two important modifications of Bergson’s position, one bearing on his definition of the problem, the other on his specification of a solution. Bergson’s proposed solution, it turns out, is even more narrowly subject-centered than Althusser’s definition of ideology: the “ant-hill” morality of social obedience characteristic of closed societies can be overcome only by following the exemplary morality of “exceptional men”—Bergson mentions “the saints of Christianity … the sages of Greece, the prophets of Israel, the Arahants of Buddhism, and others”—who differ not in degree but in kind from ordinary men.8 Now there is much to recommend this second morality, whose basis in imitation, contagion, and inspiration aligns it with nomad social relations and with the sociology of Gabriel Tarde favored by Deleuze and Guattari. In particular: “The generality of the one [ant-hill morality] consists in the universal acceptance of a law, that of the other in a common imitation of a model”9—and we know that Deleuze prefers institutions to laws because the former provide positive models of action for satisfying human tendencies or needs. Yet even locating Bergson’s superior morality in institutions themselves rather than exceptional individuals is ultimately unsatisfactory.

Deleuze and Guattari return to the problems with this solution in A Thousand Plateaus, where they recast the “exceptional individual” (taking Bergson’s very term as their point of departure) as “the Anomalous” who functions “neither [as] an individual nor a species” but rather as the vocal cords of a collective assemblage of enunciation—in much the same way as a dark precursor gathers and focuses an invisible field of differential electrical charges onto the point of discharge in a visible bolt of lightning that completely transforms the field.10 Crucially, the Anomalous serves not as a spokesperson for the institution as it is actually constituted, but rather as an impetus for change: rather than occupy the institution’s stable center, it roams its borderlines and bifurcation points, registering and amplifying becomings that can transform the institution from within by connecting up with what lies without. The Anomalous as a kind of nomad authority-figure thus incarnates the virtual openness of institutions even when they actually appear to be closed.

Bergson attributes the closure of society and its insitutions, as I have said, to structures that restrict enjoyment of the means of satisfaction provided by institutions to the members of a given closed society and thereby exclude others.



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