Great stuff, For once, the message doesn't take a back seat to the medium. It seems that Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage is a great example of this Deleuzean belief. That is, McLuhan's one text is actually a network of texts, so in a way, the text doesn't trace back to even him as author, as the trascendental signified, as (for Barthes) the Author. The text is one text while at the same time being all the texts that are in his text. Hence, the one and the multiple are not opposed. This connects to Deleuze's notion of the rhizome. I believe the beginning words of Deleuze's A Thousand Plateaus is "Since each of us are multiple, there was already quite a crowd." What are your reactions to this Dr. Coffeen?
Yes yes yes! A thing — a text — is always and already a multiplicity. If for Derrida, this network is a text's undoing, for Deleuze and Guattari, this is the very condition of a text's formation. And _The Medium is the Massage_ performs this elegantly.
Ideas are sensuous and affective; things are affective and noetic. Thinking is a physical activity. These essays are thinking with words, images, tequila, delirium, ecstatic states, death, and more. I taught at UC Berkeley for many years; and a few at the SF Art Institute. I wrote that there book. Thanks for reading.
Support your local philosopher, anything you want or can. Thanks.
About this project
Can a philosopher make his living as a philosopher, independent of academia? Does this new publishing platform promise a certain democracy of knowledge? Does it make possible the independence, and liveliness, of thought? You tell me.
These "lectures" are thoughts in process. The first few are from a class I taught at UC Berkeley. The rest are delivered into a mic, alone in my room, to an imagined ideal audience.
What interests me throughout is the event of thinking, the turns and folds in thought that make this life interesting.
2 comments:
Great stuff,
For once, the message doesn't take a back seat to the medium.
It seems that Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage is a great example of this Deleuzean belief. That is, McLuhan's one text is actually a network of texts, so in a way, the text doesn't trace back to even him as author, as the trascendental signified, as (for Barthes) the Author. The text is one text while at the same time being all the texts that are in his text. Hence, the one and the multiple are not opposed. This connects to Deleuze's notion of the rhizome. I believe the beginning words of Deleuze's A Thousand Plateaus is "Since each of us are multiple, there was already quite a crowd." What are your reactions to this Dr. Coffeen?
Yes yes yes! A thing — a text — is always and already a multiplicity. If for Derrida, this network is a text's undoing, for Deleuze and Guattari, this is the very condition of a text's formation. And _The Medium is the Massage_ performs this elegantly.
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