scholarly journals ‘What is to be Done?’: Grammars of Organisation

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-184
Author(s):  
Susan Kelly

The question ‘what is to be done?’ is most often uttered at moments of great urgency and political crisis. It operates in a divide between theory and practice, when thinking should end, and action must proceed. This article considers how the grammar of this question produces relationships between subjects, action and the future, drawing a relationship between the constituent grammar of the question and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's notion of the collective assemblage of enunciation. For Deleuze and Guattari, the collective assemblage of enunciation denotes amongst other things an immanent relationship between language and action: a relationship in which politics and language are bound together in a relationship of forces. This approach aims to rethink the urgency and force that is associated with the question through examining and re-proposing the connection between the linguistic organisation of the question and the different forms of political organisation that the question might produce. In so doing, Deleuze and Guattari provide a conceptual and linguistic apparatus for rethinking the plane of political action and organisation.

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Bogard

Although the focus of their work was rarely explicitly sociological, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari developed concepts that have important and often profound implications for social theory and practice. Two of these, sense and segmentarity, provide us with entirely new ways to view sociological problems of meaning and structure. Deleuze conceives sense independently of both agency and signification. That is, sense is neither the manifestation of a communicating subject nor a structure of language—it is noncorporeal, impersonal, and prelinguistic, in his words, a “pure effect or event.” With Guattari, Deleuze notes that it is not a question of how subjects produce social structures, but how a “machinics of desire” produces subjects. In Deleuze and Guattari, desire is not defined as a want or a lack, but as a machinery of forces, flows, and breaks of energy. The functional stratification we witness in social life is only the molar effect of a more primary segmentation of desire that occurs at the molecular level, at the level of bodies. In Deleuze and Guattari, bodies are not just human bodies, but “anorganic” composites or mixtures, organic form itself being a mode of the body's subjectification. The problem of the subject, and thus of the constitution of society, is first a problem of how the sense of bodies is produced through the assembly of desiring-machines. The subject, we could say, is the actualization of desire on the incorporeal surface of bodies.


2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 493-511
Author(s):  
Judit Gáspár

Time is in constant motion: the present, the future and the past, although they are not concepts having a fixed meaning, they are present in everyday life both at the conscious and the unconscious levels. The author’s intention in this paper is to grasp the relationship of companies to time and to the future in the mature and nascent states of their life cycles. As discussed in this paper, this relationship may appear with little reflection in the form of assumptions in the eyes of strategy researchers and practitioners. At first the interrelatedness of theory and practice is discussed in order to focus on the role of scholars and practitioners in creating theory and putting it to practice or vice versa. This general introduction will lay the ground for the study of interpretations of the future and time from the perspective of strategy research and strategy practice, respectively.


2021 ◽  
pp. 185-203
Author(s):  
Nathan Brown

Chapter 8 reads Quentin Meillassoux’s revival of the problem of induction back into the work of his mentor, Alain Badiou. I argue that Badiou’s theory of the event and of truth procedures can be understood in terms of the aporetic relation of the past to the future theorized by Hume’s famous critique of the grounds of inductive judgment. While Hume overcomes his sceptical doubts through a pragmatic theory of habit (rather than a theory of rationally or empirically grounded knowledge of cause and effect), Badiou’s theory of the subject depends upon a capacity to act within the default of habit: in situations where the genesis of habits in the past is inadequate to the construction of the future in the present. Exemplifying this approach to political action through the political sequence of Occupy Oakland (2011–2012), the chapter develops an account of the political relay between theory and practice.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (12) ◽  
pp. 52-58
Author(s):  
E.P. Meleshkina ◽  
◽  
S.N. Kolomiets ◽  
A.S. Cheskidova ◽  
◽  
...  

Objectively and reliably determined indicators of rheological properties of the dough were identified using the alveograph device to create a system of classifications of wheat and flour from it for the intended purpose in the future. The analysis of the relationship of standardized quality indicators, as well as newly developed indicators for identifying them, differentiating the quality of wheat flour for the intended purpose, i.e. for finished products. To do this, we use mathematical statistics methods.


Author(s):  
Colin Gardner ◽  
Patricia MacCormack

In spite of becoming-animal being a key concept in Deleuze and Guattari, this is the first volume to address the ambiguous idea of the animal as human and nonhuman life infiltrating all of Deleuze’s work. Contemporary applications of animality in Deleuze in film, television, music, gaming and art are collected alongside critical issues of ethics, activism and ecology in consideration of the future of our understanding of life and the animal as both the kingdom of which the human is part and the first dividing line of identity within the anthropocene. The Introduction provides summaries of all 16 chapters, tying them to common threads in Deleuze and Guattari’s writings as well as establishing innovative trajectories for future readings of animality in Deleuze in a variety of fields.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


MedienJournal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 50-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Jagodzinski

This paper will first briefly map out the shift from disciplinary to control societies (what I call designer capitalism, the idea of control comes from Gilles Deleuze) in relation to surveillance and mediation of life through screen cultures. The paper then shifts to the issues of digitalization in relation to big data that have the danger of continuing to close off life as zoë, that is life that is creative rather than captured via attention technologies through marketing techniques and surveillance. The last part of this paper then develops the way artists are able to resist the big data archive by turning the data in on itself to offer viewers and participants a glimpse of the current state of manipulating desire and maintaining copy right in order to keep the future closed rather than being potentially open.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
F.B. Musaev ◽  
N.S. Priyatkin ◽  
M.V. Arkhipov ◽  
P.A. Shchukina ◽  
A.F. Bukharov ◽  
...  

Приведено описание разработанной авторами методики цифровой компьютерной морфометрии семян овощных культур на основе системы анализа изображений, состоящей из планшетного сканера и программного обеспечения для автоматических измерений. В основу метода положено представление о разнокачественности семян, обусловленной генетической неоднородностью самих семенных растений, используемых в промышленном семеноводстве. Физические свойства семян (их форма и линейные размеры) – основные параметры при определении их качества. Цифровые изображения семян получены при помощи планшетного сканера HP Sсanjet 200 на базе Агрофизического НИИ с использованием серийного программного обеспечения «Argus-BIO», производства ООО «АргусСофт» (г. Санкт-Петербург). Метод состоит из подбора контрастной подложки (фона) для сканирования семян с минимальными теневыми эффектами, калибровку программного обеспечения для привязки к истинным размерным величинам, подбор параметров измерений и автоматическое распознавание цифровых сканированных изображений семян. Представлены экспериментальные данные по морфометрии экологически разнокачественных семян фасоли овощной, матрикально разнокачественных семян укропа, пастернака и лука Кристофа. Семена укропа и пастернака, собранные из разных порядков ветвления семенного растения, значительно различались по величине линейных параметров. Наиболее показательный линейный параметр семян – площадь проекции. Предложенная авторами методика цифровой морфометрии, уже использована на практике и в перспективе может быть задействована в исследованиях экологической и матрикальной разнокачественности семян овощных культур. Так, она прошла апробацию на разнокачественных семенах пяти сортов фасоли овощной (Настена, Магура, Миробела, Морена, Бажена) полученных в пяти контрастных эколого-географических условиях среды (Москва, Белгород, Ставрополь, Омск, Горки) в 2011–2012 годах. В дальнейшем методика может быть использована для улучшения качества цифровых изображений семян, изучения разнокачественности семян в том числе и для совершенствования контроля за селекционным процессом. Кроме того, она применима для изучения взаимосвязи совокупности морфометрических характеристик семян и их посевных качеств.The description of the method of digital computer morphometry of vegetable seeds developed by the authors on the basis of the image analysis system consisting of a flatbed scanner and software for automatic measurements is given. The method is based on the idea of seed quality, due to the genetic heterogeneity of the seed plants used in industrial seed production. Physical properties of seeds (their shape and linear dimensions) are the main parameters in determining their quality. Digital image of the seed obtained using the flatbed scanner, HP Sсanjet 200 on the basis of the Agrophysical research Institute with serial software “Argus-BIO”, produced by LLC “Argussoft” (Saint-Petersburg). The method consists of selection of a contrast substrate (background) for scanning seeds with minimal shadow effects, calibration of software for binding to true size values, selection of measurement parameters and automatic recognition of digital scanned images of seeds. Experimental data on the morphometry of ecologically different-quality seeds of vegetable beans, matrix seeds of dill, Pasternak and Christoph onion are presented. Seeds of dill and parsnip, collected from different orders of branching of the seed plant, significantly differed in size of linear parameters. The most revealing linear parameter seed – area projection. The method of digital morphometry proposed by the authors has already been used in practice and in the future can be used in studies of ecological and matrix heterogeneity of vegetable seeds. So, it was tested on different quality seeds of five varieties of vegetable beans (Nastena, Magura, Mirobelа, Morena, Bazhenf) obtained in five contrasting environmental and geographical conditions (Moscow, Belgorod, Stavropol, Omsk, Gorki) in 2011-2012. In the future, the technique can be used to improve the quality of digital images of seeds, study of seed diversity, including to improve the control of the breeding process. In addition, it is applicable to study the relationship of the set of morphometric characteristics of seeds and their sowing qualities.


Author(s):  
Pasi Heikkurinen

This article investigates human–nature relations in the light of the recent call for degrowth, a radical reduction of matter–energy throughput in over-producing and over-consuming cultures. It outlines a culturally sensitive response to a (conceived) paradox where humans embedded in nature experience alienation and estrangement from it. The article finds that if nature has a core, then the experienced distance makes sense. To describe the core of nature, three temporal lenses are employed: the core of nature as ‘the past’, ‘the future’, and ‘the present’. It is proposed that while the degrowth movement should be inclusive of temporal perspectives, the lens of the present should be emphasised to balance out the prevailing romanticism and futurism in the theory and practice of degrowth.


Author(s):  
Frank Biess

German Angst analyzes the relationship of fear and democracy in postwar West Germany. While fear has historically been associated with authoritarian regimes, the book highlights the role of fear and anxiety in a democratizing society: these emotions undermined democracy and stabilized it at the same time. By taking seriously postwar Germans’ uncertainties about the future, the book challenges dominant linear and teleological narratives of postwar West German “success.” It highlights the prospective function of memories of war and defeat, of National Socialism and the Holocaust. Fears and anxieties derived from memories of a catastrophic past that postwar Germans projected into the future. Based on case studies from the 1940s to the present, the book provides a new interpretive synthesis of the Federal Republic. It tells the history of the Federal Republic as a series of recurring crises, in which specific fears and anxieties emerged, served a variety of political functions, and then again abated. Drawing on recent interdisciplinary insights of emotion studies, the book transcends the dichotomy of “reason” and “emotion.” Fear and anxiety were not exclusively irrational and dysfunctional but served important roles in postwar democracy. These emotions sensitized postwar Germans to the dangers of an authoritarian transformation, and they also served as the emotional engine of the environmental and peace movements. The book also provides an original analysis of the emotional basis of right-wing populism in Germany today, and it explores the possibilities of a democratic politics of emotion.


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