Re: [ox-en] J Bywater - Deluze a holy fool?
- From: John Bywater <john.bywater appropriatesoftwarefoundation.org>
- Date: 02 Mar 2004 13:10:10 +0000
Dear Johan,
I'm sorry not to reply before, but my attention has been completely
consumed by completing a free software development contract. (We made it
though, and they say they want more!)
I've had a rest now, so feel sane enough to read all those words, and
write you back. I just hope you didn't think I'd decided not to reply.
I wonder what your respons is to the 'Holy Fools' article by Richard Barbrook?
My first response, when reading it, was to realise that Richard doesn't
like Deleuze and Guattari. But he seems to dislike more the (somehow)
cultish followers.
It may seem an obvious fact, but how does one actually know this?
Not from the title, which may have been a bluff, a compliment in
diguise. But it turns out to be a quote he uses in the text. It seems
a little depressive not to want to make up your own title, but
anyway, isn't the figure of the fool quite distinct from the figure of
the simpleton, the buffoon, the idiot, or the jack-ass?
My favorite fool is Feste in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. And Oscar
Wilde warned that if you tell somebody the truth, be sure to tell them a
joke, otherwise they'll kill you.
If I happened upon a bunch of genuine fools, should they not be holding
their own council, I'd be inclined to listen to what they had to say for
themselves, and maybe pose a question or two, to see what they happened
to say.
As for the 'Holy' part, to me that seems like sheer spite.
As does this passage:
'The techno-nomads cannot comprehend the subversive impact of these
everyday activities of Net users. As members of the avant-garde, they’re
looking for the intensity of ethical-aesthetic ‘delirium’ within the
flows of vitalist matter. For them, there can be nothing particularly
special about the mundane activities of Net users who aren’t producing
fashionable theory-art. Yet, at this particular historical moment,
market competition is disappearing for entirely pragmatic reasons. While
commodified information is closed and fixed, digital gifts are open and
changeable. Instead of fixed divisions between producers and consumers,
users are simultaneously creators on the Net. Obsessed with immanence of
semiotic flows, the Deleuzoguattarians cannot appreciate the deep irony
of this contingent moment in human history.'
It is also seems quite a stupid thing to say, given that Deleuze and
Guattari recorded in Anti-Oedipus that their view is that consumption
with recording directly determines production, and as such followed the
same line as Richard, which was started by Foucault.
But you can tell he really doesn't like them because he calls them utopians