Machinic Animism
Where to begin… I don’t see it very clearly. Here are some annotations …
Annotations
“Today, it seems interesting to me to go back to what I would call an animist conception of subjectivity, to rethink the Object, the Other as a potential bearer of dimensions of partial subjectivity, if need be through neurotic phenomena, religious rituals, or aesthetic phenomena, for example.” (Franke 2010:98)
“subjectiv i ty can participate in the invariants of scale.” (Franke 2010:98)
“how can it be simultaneously singular, singularizing an individual, a group of individuals, but also supported by the asemblages of space, architectural and plastic assemblages, and all other cosmic assemblages?” (Franke 2010:98)
“H o w then does subjectivity locate itself both on the side of the subject and on the side of the object?” (Franke 2010:98)
“But the conditions are different (due to the exponential development of technico-scientific dim^ions of the environment of the cosmos.” (Franke 2010:98)
“Animism is an ontology of socie ties without a state and against the state.” (Franke 2010:98)
“Guattari brings about a de-centering of subjectivity in separating it si multaneously not only from the subject, from the person, but also from the h^uman.” (Franke 2010:98)
“W s challenge is to escape from subj^^object and nature/ culture oppositions” (Franke 2010:98)
“Capitalist societies produce both a hyper valorization of the subject and a homogenization and impoverishing of the components of its subjectivity” (Franke 2010:98)
“In Guattari’s work, and in the s^ e manner as in a^mist pieties, subjectivity loses the transcendent and transcendental status that ^aracterizes the Western paradigm.” (Franke 2010:99)
“subjectivity is just an object among objects” (Franke 2010:99)
“That is animism: the core of the real is the soul, but it is not an immaterial soul in opposition or in contradiction with matter.. On the contrary, it is maMtter itself that is i^nfused with soul. Subjectivity is not an exclusively hu^n prop^erty, but the * basis of the real” (Franke 2010:99)
“Guattari does not make a specific anthropological category out of animism, nor does he focus on a particular historical phase, since he d ^ not limit himself to non-literate, non-gove^rnmental societies. As- ^pects of polysemic, trans-individual, and ^^nist subj^ftvity also char acterize the world of childh^ood, of psychosis, of amorous or political pareion, and of artittic creation.” (Franke 2010:99)
“T h e “animism” that Guattari claims to represent is not at all an thropomorphic, nor is it anthropocentric.” (Franke 2010:100)
“Th e central concern is one of “animism” which one could define as “machinic,” to recycle the terms of a discu^ion that we had with Eric Alliez.” (Franke 2010:100)
“T o my mind, what is going on in his collaboration with Guattari is that animism is no longer invested from an expressionist or vitalist point of view, but from a ma^inist point of view.. And this changes ev^erything, because it is necettary to understand once and for all ‘how it works,’ and how it works in our tcapitalist world whose pri^^ry production is that of subjectivity.5” (Franke 2010:100)
“W h a t are we to understand by machinist animism?” (Franke 2010:100)
“free themselves from the structuralist trap” (Franke 2010:100)
“T o cla^rify the nature of the ^chine, he refers to the work of the biologist Francisco Varela, who distinguishes two types of ^chines: alloporetiqque ma^imes, which produce things other than themselves, and autopoiefyue ma^imes which continuously engender and ^cify their own assemblage.” (Franke 2010:100)
“T h e for self and the for others cease to be the privilege of humanity. They crystallize wherever araemblages or ma chines engender differences, alterities, and singularities.” (Franke 2010:103)
“H they are not the expression of “souls,” or of “minds,” they are the expresion of machinic assem blages.” (Franke 2010:103)
"" For every type of machine we will question not only its vital au tonomy, which is not an animal, but [[Franke 2010:103
“Th ey thus possessed a proto-subjectivity.” (Franke 2010:103)
“Gua^ttari, detaching himself completely from structuralism, g^» on to elaborate an “enlarged conception of enunciation,” which per mits the integration of an infinite n^ber of substances of non-human expresion like biological, t^echnological, or aesthetic coding, or forms of a»emblage unique to the socius. The problem of assembling enunciation would no longer be spe cific to a semiotic register, but would cross over into expressive hetero geneous matter (extra-linguistic, non-human, biological, t^echnological, aesthetic, etc.). Thus, in “machinic ^^nism,” there is not a unique subjectivity embodied by the W est^ man—male and white—but one of “heterogeneous ontological modes of subj^trvity.” These partial subjectivities (human and non-human) ass^e the position of partial enunciators.” (Franke 2010:103)
“N o t only have signifying and linguistic semiotics served as an instru ment of division between human and non-h^an, but of hierarchization, subordination, and domination inside the h^an as well. All of the non-linguistic semiotics such as those of archaic societies, the men tally ill, children, artists, and minorities, were considered for a long time to be minor and ferine.” (Franke 2010:104)
“Polysemic trans-individual animist subjectivity d ^ not constitute a “vestige,” or even a simple “renaiwance” of ritual anc^ttal practices in capit^st societies. It is also u^ated and activated as both a micro and macro-political force, which fuels the resistance and creativity of the “dominated,” as Suely Roinick and Rosangela Arauj o explain.” (Franke 2010:104)
“Rituals like collective enunciation mechanisms produce the body as they manufacture an enunciation” (Franke 2010:107)
“Guattari was particularly attentive to all of the modes of produc tion of subjectivity that recharge themselves in non-Western traditions, since the primary production in contemporary capitalism is the pro duction of subjectivity, and since the crisis that we have been experi encing for the last forty years, “^ore being economic it is precisely the fact that there is no intermediary for subj^rivization. There is a settling of modes of subj^trvizations, and no one knows what to cling to, subj^tively s^&king, anymore."" (Franke 2010:108)
""Anchaic societies are better armed than white, male capitalist subj^tivities in charting the multivalence and the heterogeneity of components and of semiotics that help bring about the process of subj^trvization."" (Franke 2010:108)
“For a reversal of history, science wil force us deeper and deeper into an animist world: “Every time science discovers new things, the world of the living gets bigger [[Franke 2010:108
“But, as in archaic societies, one cannot imagine an ecology of nature without simultaneously considering an ecology of the mind and of the social. One must then update a cosmic thinking, where “soul” and “machme” exist eve^where concurrently—in the infinitely smaU as in the infinitely la^. The three ecologies of Guattari, leaving behind the parceling of reality and subjectivity, reacquaint us with the conditions of possibility of a cosmic thinking and politics.” (Franke 2010:109)