A Conversation with Manuel Delanda and John Protevi

Deleuzian Interrogations: A Conversation with Manuel DeLanda and John Protevi

by Manuel DeLanda, John Protevi and Torkild Thanem

authored with the geographer Mark Bonta, Manuel DeLanda, a philosopher and published by Edinburgh University Press, Adjunct Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning (2004). and Preservation at Columbia University, is This conversation explores some of the a famous speaker and leading interrogator connections between Deleuzian into the philosophical thought of Deleuze philosophy, organization theory and work and Deleuze and Guattari. His work covers by DeLanda and Protevi, and it springs out a wide range of topics in the natural and of questions initially posed by Torkild social sciences, including issues of war, Thanem to DeLanda and Protevi as well as artificial intelligence and the internet, the questions posed by Protevi to DeLanda. evolution of life and self-organization, social Working through these connections is not ontology and economic organization (see completely free of tension. Deleuzian e.g. DeLanda, 1991, 1997, 1998, 2001, philosophy is a fairly recent arrivant in 2002b). DeLanda’s latest book, Intensive organization theory. Moreover, both Science and Virtual Philosophy (published DeLanda and Protevi are outsiders to by Continuum Books, 2002), critically organization theory, and they both – in their examines Deleuze’s ontology of the virtual own distinctive ways – critically rethink and in relation to ideas and examples from the reconstruct Deleuzian philosophy. natural sciences (e.g. dynamical systems theory, group theory and evolutionary biology). He is currently writing a book REALISM entitled Nonlinear Dynamics and Social Complexity. Thanem: Deleuze’s writings (and especially John Protevi, a philosopher and Associate his work with Guattari) remain marginalized Professor of French Studies at Louisiana within philosophy proper. What kinds of State University, is a prominent questions does Deleuzian thinking enable commentator on the philosophical works of philosophers to address? Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari. His DeLanda: Deleuze’s main contribution to most recent book is Political Physics: philosophy, it seems to me, is to have Deleuze, Derrida and the Body Politic rescued realism (as an ontological stance) (published by Athlone Press, 2001), but from the oblivion in which it has been for a Protevi has also done important work on century or more. In some philosophical Heidegger, Aristotle and Kant (see e.g. circles to say that the world exists Protevi, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2001a). Most independently of our minds is tantamount to recently, Protevi has directed his attention a capital crime. Non-realist philosophers to geography and social science in the (from positivists to phenomenologists) have book Deleuze and Geophilosophy (co- created a straw man to kick around: the

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naive realist, who thinks we have but clearly not a materialist. The only unmediated access to the external world problem with the term “materialism” is that and who holds a correspondence theory of not only matter but also energy and truth. So the key move here was to create a physical information are needed to account viable alternative form of realism to deprive for self-organizing phenomena and the non-realists of that easy way out. Similarly, processes which fabricate physical entities. when it comes to defend the autonomy of Also, some forms of materialism may imply non-human entities (atoms, molecules, reductionism (of the mind to matter, for cells, species) the crucial manoeuvre is to example) and that is not at all implied by account for their mind-independent identity the term “realism”. without bringing essences into the picture. Protevi: Good. I’d certainly agree that fitting To take the most obvious example, the real materialism into the contrast of realism and identity of a hydrogen atom is usually idealism is important. I’d also say that while treated by realists (like Bhaskar, for materialism is often contrasted with example) as founded in the possession of idealism, you could also say that the foil for an essence, having one proton in its Deleuze and Guattari’s materialism is nucleus, given that if we add another proton dualism, specifically a spiritualist dualism. it loses its identity and becomes helium. So their materialism is a monism (another Deleuze’s process ontology, however, way of putting this is to say they demand cannot afford to do that. The identity of any immanence rather than transcendence). real entity must be accounted for by a Spiritualist dualisms have, because of an process, the process that produced that impoverished concept of matter as chaotic entity, in this case, the “manufacturing” or passive, too hastily had recourse to a processes within stars where hydrogen and “hylomorphic” schema in which an other atoms are produced. When it comes organized transcendent agent is to social science the idea is the same: responsible for all production. The problem families, institutional organizations, cities, is how to account for the ordered and nation states are all real entities that are the creative nature of bodies and assemblages, product of specific historical processes and for if matter is chaotic, it can’t account for whatever degree of identity they have it order, but if it’s passive, it can’t account for must be accounted for via the processes creativity. Deleuze and Guattari’s which created them and those that maintain materialism avoids the forced choice of them. matter’s chaos or spirit’s transcendent Protevi: The question of realism is indeed ordering by calling attention to the an important one for philosophers to self-ordering potentials of matter itself, as debate. I wonder if Manuel would like to say outlined in the researches of complexity something about how he sees the relation theory (as Manuel point out above, you between realism and materialism, since have to expand the sense of “matter” to Deleuze and Guattari tend to use the latter include the energy and information of term to describe their work rather than “material systems”). Deleuze and Guattari realism? can thus account for order and creativity in DeLanda: Well, I cannot imagine a the world without the heavy ontological materialist philosophy which is not also price of a dualism or the unacceptable realist. On the other hand, someone who phenomenal price of the denial of creativity believes that god and the devil exist as illusory, as in “God’s eye view” independently of our minds is also a realist spiritualist transcendent determinism.

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SOCIAL SCIENCE in American philosophy departments, as detailed in John McCumber’s Time in the Thanem: During the past decade Deleuze’s Ditch.) As Manuel’s Intensive Science and philosophy has become increasingly Virtual Philosophy, which is largely noticed by non-philosophers across the addressed to analytic philosophers, shows, humanities and social sciences, a trend the time has come for us to redraw the map exemplified by this special issue of Tamara. of philosophy along realist vs. anti-realist As Deleuze commentators who may be lines instead of “continental vs. analytic”. seen to inhabit the margins of philosophy, Christopher Norris has been arguing for this how would you like to comment on the for some time now in fact. spread of Deleuzian philosophy outside DeLanda: Although I have never done any philosophy? serious study of the propagation of Protevi: I’m all for it! And I’m sure Deleuze Deleuzian thought, in my own experience and Guattari would be pleased too, given his ideas have had no influence whatsoever their insistence on the “toolbox” character outside literary criticism and cultural studies of their work together. Just on a personal departments. Since these two fields are level, working on Deleuze in a French dominated by non-realists (social Studies department has freed me up in constructivists, idealists, post-modern many ways, and I suspect my experience is semioticians and so on) it follows that they not uncommon in this regard. First of all, probably have no real understanding of I’m free of the moribund but still powerful Deleuze. For many years the only book of “analytic vs. continental” philosophy split at his these people read was Anti-Oedipus, a couple of levels. In the micropolitics of which happens to be his worst book. At any North American philosophy departments rate, even those who have read other someone working on Deleuze is seen as a works deal with him the same way they “continental” philosopher and so is lumped deal with other French philosophers: they together with phenomenologists and post- pick up the jargon (yesterday it was phenomenologists (Heideggerians, “deconstruction” while today they go for Levinasians, Derrideans, etc.) and “deterritorialization”) but there is no real expected to vote with them on hiring and engagement with his thought. It is an tenure decisions, curriculum construction, embarrassing situation for any real examination questions, and all the daily Deleuzian. politics that go on in academic Protevi: Yes, we’ll have to wait and see departments. Being free of all that, and whether Deleuze is just another in the line hence free to pursue the Deleuze and of fancy French imports to sweep through science connection, I find myself actually the humanities and social sciences. Has his having more in common with the “analytic” eclipsing of Derrida been because he philosophers in the Philosophy Department enables us to ask more interesting and of my school. (There is a deeply important questions (to use Deleuze and entrenched suspicion of science on the part Guattari jargon: to expand our affects and of many phenomenologists and post- so form more interesting and important phenomenologists, which is verbally “assemblages” or interdisciplinary teams)? expressed along the lines of the Or is it just a function of a new generation Heideggerian mantra “science doesn’t needing to show it’s more hip, has more think”, but which I suspect is also tied in outrageous jargon, than the old fuddy- with the trauma of the McCarthy era purges duddies of the previous generation? We

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can’t forget that Deleuze’s major single- one of parts to whole (not one of authored works, The Logic of Sense and membership in a general category). This Difference and Repetition, have only been link is machine-like: lower scale entities translated into English since 1990 and 1994 form the working parts of a larger scale respectively. So there’s something of the whole, a whole which emerges (and needs “hot new thing” aura still clinging to them. It to be continuously maintained) by the will be interesting to see, then, what the interactions between the parts. Thus, staying power of the Deleuze wave will be. interacting persons yield institutional Thanem: As your own work indicates, there organizations; interacting organizations is also movement from (reconstructions of) yield cities; interacting cities organize the Deleuzian philosophy to social science. space in which nation states emerge and Given your different engagements with so on. This changes the very way in which social science (particularly Manuel’s work the problem of agency and structure is on a flat ontology for the social sciences posed, since the term “structure” (DeLanda, 2002b) and John’s work on illegitimately conflates several scales and geography (Protevi & Bonta, 2004)), what deprives organizations and cities of causal kinds of questions may Deleuze’s thinking agency. enable social scientists to ask? Thanem: Given the Deleuzian emphasis on DeLanda: Here as elsewhere I cannot machine-like links between different comment on Deleuze himself – only my entities, would you like to say something own reconstruction of his work. Deleuze about what this may mean for the notion of (and even more so, Guattari) remained a causal agency too and indeed for our Marxist till the end, while my work is a understanding of entities such as deliberate attempt to liberate the left from organizations? In addition to the importance the straightjacket in which Marx’s thought you attribute to the processes by which has kept it for 150 years. (Needless to say, entities are enabled and maintained, the my book A Thousand Years was only the machinic surely brings a sense of opening salvo. My serious attack on Marx is heterogeneity, change and openness to still to come, but when it does it will be organizations and social relations that devastating, or so I hope). Keeping that in makes agency more akin to what you mind, I believe the main contribution of elsewhere – via Spinoza – have referred to Deleuze is his neo-realist ontology, and the as production. way in which it can be used to solve the DeLanda: The concept of “causal agency” eternal problem of the link between the we inherit from the tradition is deeply non- micro and the macro, of agency and realist and anthropocentric. This is Hume’s structure. In this ontology all that exists in concept of a cause as a constant the actual world is singular individual conjunction of events, a conjunction entities (individual atoms, cells, organisms, experienced as such by a human, of persons, organizations, cities and so on) course. We need to switch to a realist view whose main difference from each other is of causes not as conjunctions but as actual spatio-temporal scale. There are no connections in which one event produces totalities, such as “society as a whole”, but another event (e.g. a collision between two a nested set of singular (unique, historically billiard balls produces a change of state in contingent) beings nested within one the motion of the balls). This immediately another like a Russian Doll. Between one suggests a “machinic world”, one entity and the larger one the relationship is interconnected by relations of production. In

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addition, the current realist definition of they operate within a (mostly implicit, hence “emergent property” (due to Bhaskar) uncritically accepted) ontology of implies this new definition, since a whole is appearances. They have also taken (like seen as emergent (as opposed to a mere most other social scientists) the so-called aggregation of parts) if it has causal powers “linguistic turn”, which in my opinion was of its own. For Deleuze’s solution to the the worst possible turn. It follows that the micro-macro problem, as sketched above, term “construction” is not used in the sense the notion of several levels of emergence is in which Foucault, for example, talks of the crucial. construction of soldier bodies through drill Protevi: Yes, “emergence” is the biggest and discipline, but to the way our minds question in social science (methodological “construct” the world of appearances via individualism, structure/agency, Luhmann’s linguistic categories. There cannot be differentiation of social structures, and so anything more alien to a materialist like on). You could say that Deleuze and Deleuze than this brand of linguistic Guattari bring a political dimension to bear idealism. in their encounter with complexity theory so Thanem: Isn’t one problem also that both that they thematize the question of social constructivism à la Berger and emergence above the subject to the level of Luckmann and ethnomethodology à la social (tribal, gang, institutional, urban, Garfinkel tend to focus on the construction State) machines. (Actually, here Manuel’s and maintenance of the dominant social work is indispensable, as Deleuze and order, thus underestimating the forces of Guattari themselves tend to jump straight to resistance that make things change? the “socius”, which would mean the “State” DeLanda: Well, yes, that too. It seems as if level in analyzing “capitalism”.) But they sociologists, wanting to have nothing to do also show the importance of with micro-economics, must conceptualize complementing the move above the subject human action in terms of routines and with one moving “below” the subject to a traditional procedures instead of “rational” multiplicity of “agents” (a move known in choice. Now, I agree that when choice is cognitive science as the “society of mind” seen as atomized and optimizing thesis). Deleuze and Guattari enable us to (maximizing welfare or utility) it becomes connect the two moves, above and below quite hard to take seriously, but we can the subject. Here the question of always move to Herbert Simon’s “satisficing emergence as the constraint of lower level rationality” instead. I just do not see why components and the concomitant enabling this has to be an alternative: either routines of system level behaviour comes to the followed by an oversocialized agent or fore. choices made by an undersocialized one. Thanem: Manuel, considering your critique Why not both in different occasions? Say, of social constructivism and relativism choices about matching means to ends (DeLanda 1996), how are these questions when the intensity is high (a crisis situation at odds with these approaches, which have when one must solve a new problem, or a come to influence much social and situation where subversive solutions must organizational research in the past couple be invented) and traditional routines when of decades? the intensity is low (and one merely DeLanda: Well, Luckmann and Berger as reproduces the existing social order). well as Garfinkel explicitly base their Clearly, both situations coexist in social approaches on phenomenology, that is, reality all the time.

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Protevi: Yes, I really like the high vs. low gender and race constraints are being intensity situation schema. For me, the replaced by economic constraints), since place the lack of awareness of emergence then, to complete the system, you can buy above and below the subject creates the somatic training and/or move to places most mischief in philosophy is in cognitive where economic power mitigates race and science. Why do so many cognitive gender constraints, etc. scientists stop at the brain as the highest emergent level? Why not have this as an intermediate global level, caught up in turn NATURAL SCIENCE by higher level institutional and social “machinic assemblages”, so that we add Thanem: In their last joint work What Is other levels of constraints (and enablings)? Philosophy? Deleuze and Guattari (1994) Undoubtedly we need to account for the reject the traditional notion of philosophy as novelty and unpredictability of individual the “mother of all knowledge” yet argue for human subjects (the major concern of a close engagement with science that – as cognitive scientists who are still arguing you point out above – would be less than against a positivist conception of science as popular with scholars working from a the construction of universal and phenomenological perspective. This has exceptionless laws), but we also need to been an important aspect of Deleuze’s account for social predictability in molar earlier work (e.g. 1993, 1994), but it even populations. Human beings are rule- finds some resonance in A Thousand followers as well as free agents; in fact Plateaus. Similarly, you both have pursued many free agents break rules but in so an intimate engagement with science – doing form practices that can install new Manuel in Intensive Science and Virtual patterns in bodies, patterns that can Philosophy and John with respect to natural become rules for others. (The relation of geography in Deleuze and Geophilosophy. “rule” to “pattern” is what Bourdieu calls Would you care to comment on how you “habitus”, and what Deleuze and Guattari relate to Deleuze and Guattari’s (1994) call de-territorialization accompanied by methodological challenge? compensatory re-territorialization.) DeLanda: Deleuze accepts the objectivity So in moving us above and below the of science but not the legitimizing subject Deleuze and Guattari do not deny discourses of scientists. For example, he that there is a genuine subject, but they do would not accept the existence of general stress that it is only an intermediate global laws (or of general anything: generalities level of organization. We can thus talk exist only in our minds) but he would about degrees of freedom of human action. accept, I believe, the topological structure We are more free (1) the greater the of those laws (e.g. for Newton’s laws, a constraints the subject level can exercise phase space structured by a single over “autonomic” sub-systems: (e.g., yogic singularity or attractor which would explain experimentation with physiological the “least principles” on which those laws processes); (2) the more one’s “subject are based). That topological structure position” allows one to negotiate social complements his ontology of actual constraints embedded in institutions and individual singularities with virtual universal free-floating or “peer pressure” systems singularities. I believe that recent (e.g., gender and race constraints); and (3) developments in nonlinear science (which the more money one has (in some places has discovered just how complex phase spaces can get unlike those of classical

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physics) validate his approach. more empirical research on the minor Protevi: Perhaps I could ask Manuel to sciences (Organic Chemistry, Fluid expand on what he says at the end of Mechanics, Materials Science, etc.) before Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy reaching conclusions here. about the way the notion of “science” laid Thanem: Scientists keen to protect their out in What Is Philosophy? overlooks the own epistemic borders may respond to Royal vs. minor science distinction in A philosophical and other non-scientific Thousand Plateaus. engagements with science by accusing DeLanda: In their last book, they define them of stealing concepts from science, of science in terms of its use of mathematical not fully understanding the science behind functions and then define the latter using these concepts, or of reducing complex the characteristics of functions as used in concepts to superficial metaphors. How Classical Mechanics. (There’s no mention serious are these claims? of the operators of Quantum Physics, which DeLanda: Well, scientists have a non- use functions as inputs and outputs, nor of realist working philosophy (positivism) the different uses of functions in chemistry which allows them to say, “hey we are not or biology). This comes close to saying that giving a true picture of reality; all we do is to the essence of science is its classical create compact descriptions useful for physics core. Yet earlier in their work they prediction and control.” That’s fine with me. displayed an awareness of the existence of Newton had to say something like that many scientists who do not fit that mold. since his gravity as “action at a distance” Here we may contrast Newton and Hooke, was just not selling among Cartesian one the grand creator of laws attracted by scientists for lack of an explicit mechanism. simplicity (not to mention administrator of And it was fine he did that because the Royal Society), the other the builder of positivist apologetics (without the name, of instruments and manipulator of material course) were needed at the time to shield systems, attracted by complexity (and his theory from premature dismissal. But by always with lower prestige in the social espousing that form of non-realism world). Philosophers can learn a lot more scientists have effectively surrendered their from the latter type of scientist right to say what there is in reality. So they (embryologists, hydrodynamicists, are right to complain about geologists) rather than from those famous misappropriations of their work (or relatively physicists who aimed at taking laws and technically ignorant critiques, such as those creating an axiomatic, deductive system of Science Studies) but cannot stop realist based on them. Unfortunately, Deleuze philosophers from doing the hard took from Michel Serres a “definition” of ontological work scientists have neglected minor science which is OK but that does for so long. not cover all cases: instead of axioms and Thanem: Would you like to give some theorems “minor scientists” pose new examples of “technically ignorant critiques” problems; instead of simple solids and in Science Studies (which in general seem gases they look at complex liquids; instead to fall short of e.g. Canguilhem’s more of metric, Euclidean spaces they look at sophisticated conceptualist philosophy of projective, differential or topological spaces science)? and so on. Now, how applicable is this DeLanda: Let me qualify that remark. The definition to areas other than mathematical leaders of that field (Latour, Pickering, physics? Not very much. We need a lot Collins, Bloor) are certainly not technically

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ignorant. Most of their followers, however, Fashionable Nonsense largely consists in are. But even in the leaders’ work, the the presentation of extended quotation relatively competent and useful insights are juxtaposed with out-of-hand dismissals, not the ones for which they are famous. which simply assert that Deleuze and They are famous for exaggerated and Guattari’s discourse is “utterly illegitimate claims like “every laboratory fact meaningless”, etc. But even if they had is socially constructed”. One can, indeed, polemicized well, I don’t think the genre of benefit from the few gold nuggets that are polemic is very helpful, for at base, a hidden under such purple prose, but in my polemic tells you not to bother to read X. experience these good insights can be But to see if that is sound advice, you have recovered only by assuming the authors to then go ahead and read X! (In other are “closet” realists. words, the genre of polemic is beset by a Protevi: I suppose whenever you talk about fundamental “performative contradiction”. Deleuze and Guattari’s relation to science So go ahead and read Sokal and Bricmont you should mention the “Science Wars” of and see if you think I’m doing them justice the mid to late 1990s, even if you run the when I say they don’t do Deleuze and risk of disinterring a thankfully buried dead Guattari justice!) horse for more beating. Take Sokal and Bricmont’s Fashionable Nonsense for example. In general, Sokal and Bricmont’s DISCIPLINE warnings against the sort of chatter that declares a “revolution against Newton” are Thanem: Obviously, developments in the very well-founded. As Manuel shows in natural sciences have had a major impact several places, the history of the way linear on the social sciences too. Through figures models have been applied to all natural like Comte, Durkheim and the Harvard phenomena, including those we now use Pareto Circle the founding of the social nonlinear models to examine, is very sciences as separate from the natural intricate and is not at all capturable by the sciences and the construction of term “revolution”. (Not the least of those organization theory as a distinct academic intricacies is the way in which some natural discipline coincided with a fundamental and social areas of the world have actually reliance on natural science methodology been rendered more homogenized and and concepts. For example, Mayo’s (1933) normalized [by genetic modification and by metaphorical notion that work organizations disciplinary practices] and hence more are like biological organisms draws directly amenable to linear modelling.) In any event, on biomedical research on homeostasis by the fact that Sokal and Bricmont are correct his Harvard colleague Walter B. Cannon here is no reason though to accept their (1932). The social sciences have been less treatment of Deleuze and Guattari, and that as welcoming of ideas from philosophy and for two reasons: they don’t uphold the the humanities. Even between the social standards for a good polemic, and they sciences there is a strong academic polemicize at all! To produce a good division of labour, allocating different polemic you have to reconstruct the context disciplines to different problems and in which the attacked authors make their different levels of analysis. Mainstream claims, but this is precisely what Sokal and work that stays clear of disciplinary Bricmont fail to do. Their remarkable boundaries is still privileged by top chapter on Deleuze and Guattari in academic journals on both sides of the Atlantic. The contrast to philosophy seems

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immense. Although Deleuze and Guattari’s time and the uniqueness of events are of (1994) particular rethinking of philosophy’s the essence of historical phenomena. relationship to science may remain Furthermore, making the prediction of marginalized within philosophy proper, a human behaviour the goal of your social close engagement with science, art, science pushes you to develop disciplinary literature and the social seems to be a methods of intervention and control. crucial aspect of what it means to do Discipline tries to make social reality philosophy. Do you agree with this conform to rational choice models by description of philosophy and are there any normalizing humans, that is, turning them risks associated with such into “individuals” whose behaviours can be “unboundedness” – for example, that one classified relative to the norm of a may be ridiculed for not doing philosophy? population of other such individuals. Protevi: I think here we have to come to Classical and neo-classical economics grips with the legacy of positivism in the make assumptions of these goals of social sciences. Positivism based its disciplinary practice, which thereby enables “scientific method” on classical physics as a them to model economies as equilibrium model of scientific rigour and usually systems. The result is an elegant model attached a reductionist program, so that the whose inability to predict reality is often soft sciences should strive to attain the blamed on some recalcitrant feature of rigour of the hard sciences. In that way the reality: the model says markets should truths of society could be reduced to the behave in such and such a fashion; real truths of psychology, biology, chemistry and markets do not behave in this fashion; finally physics, as each step along the way therefore there must be some government had been “reduced”. In such a reduction, distortion of the real market preventing it we strive to analyse complex systems into from behaving in the way it should; components and then claim that adding therefore we must remove such distortion together the solutions to the equations that to “allow” – that is, to make – the system account for the behaviour of components behave the way the model says it should. will account for the behaviour of the system The key point is that neoliberal without remainder. Reductionism consists governments (in today’s world, under the in a denial of emergence then, so that all pressure of the IMF) try to bring such “wholes” are mere aggregates. We see this “rational economic” behaviour about by reductionism today in methodological actively producing the social situations the individualism in the social sciences, e.g., model assumes: normalization of behaviour rational choice theory. by making people behave in individual self- As David Harvey’s Explanation in interest (due to lack of social Geography (the work of social science interaction/social security). The problem methodology with which I’m most familiar) comes when people write about such is very good at pointing out, vast problems economics as if they were only a matter of are created for social sciences when they assumptions and models rather than prods adopt a positivist model. First of all, time is for concerted efforts to produce a social irrelevant in classical physics (the reality conforming to the model’s “reversibility of time’s arrow” thesis), and assumptions. (Chuck Dyke’s The there are in principle no unrepeatable Evolutionary Dynamics of Complex events (replication of results is an essential Systems contains an eloquent statement of part of physics), but the irreversibility of this position of the relation of discipline and

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rationality.) result of its admiration for natural science Now how does philosophy fit into this and its somewhat lesser fascination with picture? First, philosophy has often taken the humanities, organization theory the “meta” level as its domain. In this way it abounds in metaphors, often uncritically steps back from first-level scientific work and superficially introduced to foster “new” and tries to articulate the conceptual thinking about organizations. Deleuze and presuppositions of the sciences and their Guattari are important in this context, as connection with social practice (NB: this they problematize the ostensible difference need not – and should not – be an anti- between ordinary words and metaphors. realist “sociology of science” standpoint, as How can this attitude be explained, and Manuel will no doubt be keen to point out). what are your takes on metaphor and By doing so, philosophers can construct a analogy? vocabulary that can help scientists in Protevi: I think what they’re after is the different disciplines talk with each other (I following: metaphor has traditionally been think this is what the “philosophy of mind” defined as the transfer of the meaning of a tries to do with regard to cognitive science). sign from an old object (the “literal DeLanda: Though I agree that early meaning”) to a new object (the “figurative twentieth century social science had meaning”). The new object is then “seen in physics and biology as its model, I would a new light” or some such formulation of an argue that the latter part of the century epistemic gain on the part of an observing (starting with Cultural Anthropology) has subject. But Deleuze and Guattari are not been much more influenced by the interested in such linguistic effects, for two humanities, particularly Hermeneutics and reasons. First, as Manuel often points out, Lit Crit. Clearly, as much damage as the they are trying to demonstrate that the organism metaphor caused in sociology same “abstract machine” lies behind (favouring integration instead of conflict, different actual systems. I wonder if he and giving rise to ahistorical functionalisms) would like to expand on this point. that is nothing relative to the damage that DeLanda: Deleuze created his ontology linguistic idealism has caused. At any rate, partly as a response to Foucault’s analysis the boundaries between disciplines, formed of the “classical episteme”, which had four as much by principled distinctions as by major axes: similarity, identity, analogy and academic battles over turf, are mostly contradiction. Since all classical thought is meaningless. It follows that a philosopher bounded by those four categories (if we are cannot take those artificial limits into to believe Foucault) it follows that any account, and that it should push approach that wants to be non-classical multidisciplinary approaches to the limit. If must avoid them as foundational that makes it lose its own identity as a field, categories. But that does not mean they so much the worse for those silly cannot be included as derivative notions: if boundaries. identity is explained by a process (as I suggested above) it’s quite acceptable. So is similarity if it too is accounted for by METAPHOR contingencies of process (e.g. the similarity of members of a species due to selection Thanem: Indeed, and what you say about pressures). The same point applies to social science in the late twentieth century metaphors. Within linguistic idealism they seems to hold for certain European strands become foundational (Lacan, e.g., claims of organization theory too. But partly as a

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that all meaning is metaphorical) but introduction to the relation of cybernetics to detached from that ontology they are useful the history of cognitive science.) Thus to devices. They just cannot be expected to change the meaning of a sign would entail do the heavy theoretical work that needs to changing the “political physiology” of that be done, which necessitates deeper body: installing a new set of patterns and topological isomorphisms, e.g. the sharing thresholds so that new triggering relations among processes of the universal with signs are set up. This sort of body singularities I mentioned before. Take for work can take a long time and requires example the distinction between “markets” cautious corporeal experimentation in a and “hierarchies” as done in Organizational safe social context. From this perspective, Theory by people like Oliver Williamson. A the idea that a reading that shuffles signs Deleuzian treatment (a de-marxified one) about, that assigns new signs to old objects would treat these two as special cases of without any body work, would count as a decentralized networks and centralized political intervention, is silly academic self- structures. Or even more radically, as flattery. Even more delusional would be the specific actualizations of two more abstract idea that the spontaneous production of cases, rhizomes and strata, which also such counter-hegemonic readings by have biological and geological consumers of cultural products constitutes actualizations. What would make all the effective popular “resistance”. As Thomas actualizations comparable not Frank (whose bitter critique of cultural metaphorically would be that the processes studies in One Market Under God is which produce them share a deep necessary reading) would put it, why should topological isomorphism, the same virtual we make such a big deal about what is just singularities guiding the processes. a glorified snickering behind the boss’s Protevi: The second thing to say about back? The point is to construct new bodies Deleuze and Guattari and metaphor is that politic, and that requires work in political for them meaning is not the relation of signs physiology, not in counter-hegemonic to one another but the probability that an reading. environmental change can function as the trigger of a material process in a given body politic by pushing that body to one of its THE VIRTUAL thresholds of self-organization. (Such a triggering event is what they call the “order- Thanem: The Bergsonian concept of the word” in human language; or more virtual and the complex relationship generally a “sign”, as when a difference in between the virtual and the actual is a the food gradient of a medium will prompt central theme in Deleuze’s philosophical the change in structure of the slime-mould enterprise, which you both have dealt with amoeba, or when a temperature difference in your own works (see Protevi 2001; De will prompt the move from conduction to Landa 2002a). To readers unfamiliar with convection in a heated liquid. Such a view Deleuze, the virtual may at first seem to requires us to change our notion of take one away from a concrete, political “perception” as well; all this echoes work physiology. At the same time, a large done in the cybernetics period, as detailed number of organization theorists, by many contemporary authors; I can management researchers and other recommend Jean-Pierre Dupuy’s The contemporary writers in the social sciences Mechanization of the Mind for an and humanities conflate the virtual with issues of globalization, networks and recent

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developments in information technology notion of a “stretch of present time” (the (e.g. Hedberg et al., 1997; Czerniawska & time equivalent of a fixed length) is not Potter, 2001; Robins & Webster, 2002). meaningful either. Bergson’s ideas about Few – if any – of these seem to appreciate time and memory come close to being such the Deleuzian and Bergsonian concepts of a theory of non-metric time (or a proposal the virtual. How do Bergson’s and for such a theory) and they also greatly Deleuze’s concepts of the virtual differ from influenced Deleuze. this literature and what are your takes on it? Protevi: Let me ask Manuel if he would like Alternatively, what do you see as the main to clarify for us the way in which he says implications of the Deleuzian concept of the nudging a material system from equilibrium virtual on empirical problems and to non-equilibrium (what he calls the phenomena? “intensive”) will provide a “window on the DeLanda: While the word “virtual” is virtual”. typically associated with some kind of DeLanda: Imagine a physical system on its “virtual reality” (whether digital simulations, way to equilibrium, the state with the the internet, or some other computer maximum disorder. At that point in time the related phenomenon) for Deleuze the final state can literally be “seen” virtual is a “real virtuality”, a non-actual deterministically attracting the dynamics of dimension of the real world. Now, adding the system. The final state, not having been extra dimensions to the world is clearly reached yet, is not actual but virtual. But burdensome for the realist since defending thermodynamicists, until very recently, a mind-independent world is hard enough studied such systems only once the without adding extra stuff. But the burden is equilibrium had been actualized, that is, relieved once we realize that virtual when it had lost its virtual status. This singularities allow us to dispense with approach effectively concealed the virtual. “eternal laws” in physics and elsewhere. From the 1960’s on, people like Prigogine We add a dimension but eliminate another, began to study systems which are not hence it’s not inflationary. As far as the allowed to actualize that equilibrium (they relation to Bergson goes I can only add a are constrained to remain far from few notes. The key to rigorously thinking equilibrium), and that has revealed not only about the virtual is to conceive of it as a the existence of the “old” steady-state space with very different properties than attractor, but of several others (periodic, actual space. While the latter is “metric” (it chaotic). Given that even without human depends crucially on notions like “rigid intervention parts of the world are at length” or “fixed area”) the former shares equilibrium while others (e.g. the the properties of projective, differential and atmosphere-hydrosphere system) are far topological geometries. The work of from it, we can say that some areas of the Riemann on “differential manifolds” is key world reveal the morphogenetic potential of here, as these form the basis of phase matter (the potential which universal space and of the Deleuzian notion of singularities are supposed to explain) while “multiplicity”. Deleuze takes this from others hide it from view, in a kind of Bergson’s thoughts on Riemann. Similarly, “objective illusion”. if the virtual is not going to be an eternal Thanem: Following attacks by radical (often reservoir of “topological essences” (e.g. Marxist or poststructuralist) organization attractors) it will also need its own form of theory on mainstream (often Parsonian) non-metric temporality, one in which the systems theory in organizational research,

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“reformed” systems theorists (e.g. Brown & effort to come to grips with the science. Eisenhardt, 1997; Anderson, 1999) have for (The difficulty in becoming familiar with the the past couple of decades looked to the basic principles of complexity theory, it sciences of chaos and complexity (e.g. seems to me, is grossly exaggerated. I’m Prigogine) for new inspiration. But despite not saying it would be easy to gain the level proposed affinities between Deleuzian of mastery Manuel demonstrates in philosophy (esp. the concept of the virtual) Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, and (e.g. Prigogine’s work in) complexity for instance, but we are fortunate that many theory (you have both made this point), gifted scientists – I’m thinking here of Ilya they have not as of yet shown any interest Prigogine, Stuart Kauffman, Brian Goodwin, in Deleuze. Equally, during the past few Francisco Varela, Gerald Edelman, Antonio years the growing interest in Deleuze (and Damasio, and Joseph LeDoux in particular Guattari) among radical organization – balance their original front-line research theorists (perhaps with the exception of with book-length non-technical treatments. Chia, 1998) is rarely accompanied by [When I say “non-technical” I mean a attempts to engage with complexity theory conceptual rather than mathematical – perhaps because their aversion to treatment – or at least one which provides a computer simulation (however nonlinear) conceptual explanation of the mathematics seems to be stronger than ever? involved.]) Appreciating that you are outsiders to DeLanda: I think the main obstacle to organization theory, why do you think engaging with Deleuze directly is the style. mainstream and radical organization He writes as if he deliberately wanted to be theorists have adopted one and ignored the misunderstood, or at least that’s the way it other? Or, what does Deleuze provide that impacts someone who, like me, is trained Prigogine does not? mostly in Anglo-American analytical Protevi: I’m not sure why the connection philosophy. (I suppose if one is used to between Deleuze and Guattari and struggling with Continental authors one complexity theory, which Manuel and Brian may get a different impression.) He Massumi have been making since the early changes terminology in every book (so that 1990s, has not been followed up on in the virtual dimension becomes a “plane of organization theory (and unfortunately, not consistency” in one, a “body without too much in philosophy either). I suspect organs” in another, a “machinic phylum” in those with scientific backgrounds might be another and so on) and never ever gives put off by the sheer exuberance of Deleuze explicit definitions (or hides them well). I and Guattari’s writing (this has nothing at all suppose that was an attempt on his part of to do with a “postmodernist playfulness” or preventing a given terminology to solidify what have you, which aims at signifier too soon, to keep things fluid and effects), as well as by their Marxist heterogenous. Fine. But I cannot deal with orientation (more on that later). On the that and hardly expect complexity theorists other hand, for those with the typical to put up with it either. Hence the incentive “continental” philosophical background to write Intensive Science as a way to (phenomenology, post-phenomenology, or explain to complexity theorists the God help us “postmodernism”), the science advantages for their own field of a connection is probably anathema, either Deleuzian approach. By the way, I wonder because of anti-realist commitments or who you mean when you say “radical because they just don’t want to take the organization theorists”, given that what

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passes for radicality today (e.g. the neo- “phase space”. But here Deleuze is ahead institutionalist school in sociology) is so of them, with a more accurate breakdown deeply affected by linguistic idealism that it of the contents of that space (including the is really conservative, not radical. vector field and not only the solution Thanem: It would be great to see Intensive trajectories) thanks to the fact that this Science being picked up by social scientists tradition in mathematics is of French origin with a leaning towards complexity theory or (our current treatment of phase space Deleuzian philosophy. Also, I agree with derives from the work of Poincaré) and you on the inflation of “radicality”, but it Deleuze had direct access to these insights doesn’t generally seem that the radical back in the 1960’s (e.g. the work of Charles organization theory of people like Gibson Lautmann). But again, his style has led Burrell, Heather Höpfl and Martin Parker these important insights to get lost would be easily grouped with neo- elsewhere in the academy. institutionalism. Having said that, much of Protevi: Once you get past their style (and what is labelled radical organization theory yes, it is less daunting for someone like me pursues a linguistic idealism that (inspired who came up through the ranks reading by Derrida, Lyotard or Baudrillard) is akin to Heidegger and Derrida, but the ontological what one might find in literary theory and shift, from post-phenomenology to cultural studies. Intentionally or materialism, is wrenching!), there are unintentionally, these postmodernist indeed lots of reasons why the Deleuze and pursuits often reproduce a relativism with at complexity theory connection is so least conservative implications. In contrast, interesting. The key for me is the notion of the recent interest in Deleuze appears to the “consistency” or “assemblage” (a move radical organizational theorizing in flexible, open system, what Manuel calls a more materialist – and radical – directions, “meshwork”). Traditional systems theory, as and style seems less of an obstacle now well as its cousin cybernetics, was fixated than five years ago. (Indeed, some figures on the notion of homeostasis, which in complexity theory – particularly Maturana measured a system’s ability, via negative & Varela and Luhmann – are not exactly feedback loops, to return to a set point after known for stylistic clarity!) Could you environmental shocks. The key point here elaborate on the advantages a Deleuzian is “stability”: how much of a shock can the approach may have for complexity theory? system withstand and still return to DeLanda: It really boils down to getting the “normal”? An open system, on the other right ontology for the entities postulated hand, possesses “resilience”: the ability to within nonlinear dynamics and other fields. form new patterns and thresholds, either as What, for example, are “attractors”? Are the result of an environmental shock or as they eternal archetypes? And if so, how are the result of endogenous “evolutionary they different from Platonic essences? drift”, to use the term of Varela. What’s (Notice that this question is relevant only to great about Deleuze and Guattari is that a realist; since many of the scientists they give us a wide-ranging and nuanced involved in nonlinear fields are positivists ontology with which to think about the they do not really have to care about it). difference between such systems. And this Many analytical philosophers of science ontology seems to resonate with the latest (non-realists like Van Fraasen, and realists science. Stuart Kauffman’s latest work in like Ronald Giere) are today turning to an Investigations, in which he talks about the ontological analysis of the crucial notion of expansion of biospheres into “the adjacent

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possible” seems to me to fit right into the openness, it seems from your own work (I DeleuzoGuattarian notion of an open, guess Manuel’s in particular) that Deleuze expanding, creative, multiverse. and Guattari’s largely Marxist discussion of Thanem: Why is Deleuze and Guattari’s capitalist economic organization in Anti- “nuanced ontology” so important to Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus may be scientific research? In What Is Philosophy? critiqued for being relatively inattentive to they explicitly say scientists don’t need these themes. This is interesting, as issues philosophers in order to reflect on their of economic organization constitute the practice. very focus of the (particularly North- Protevi: Manuel should certainly feel free to American) anti-Marxist mainstream of expand on this point, but I’d say that the organization theory. Manuel, in your work working out of basic ontological concepts you have not just critiqued Deleuze and can provide a series of relays among Guattari for giving a highly selective reading scientists in different disciplines. (“Oh, so of Ferdinand Braudel’s monumental that’s the sort of singularity you guys find in economic history (see DeLanda, 1997). modelling your systems!”) This in turn can Inter alia, your understanding of the history help scientists form interdisciplinary teams of capitalism complements Braudel (1973, to investigate complex areas of the world, 1982, 1984) with two central figures in which, after all, aren’t really interested in organization theory: Simon’s (1945, 1969) our scientific division of labour! There’s an notion of bounded rationality and overlap of form and content here too. If the Williamson’s (1995) discussion of interesting problems of the world occur in transaction cost economics. What are assemblages, consistencies, meshworks, Simon’s and Williamson’s most important etc., then it seems reasonable we would contributions to the understanding of need interdisciplinary teams, which are capitalist economic organization, and how themselves consistencies or meshworks, to is this reconcilable with new left politics study them. At the end of Intensive Science (which you also seem to be arguing for)? and Virtual Philosophy, Manuel cites Ian (Has anything changed since A Thousand Hacking on the “intensive” epistemology of Years of Nonlinear History?) But like John, the lab assemblage. Here we would see a I’m also interested in what you find to be sociology of science that needn’t be an the most serious problem with Deleuze and anti-realist “social constructivism”. In fact Guattari’s analysis of capitalist economic you could say that Manuel’s phrase organization, so I therefore pass over to “intensive science” refers not only to a him first. science that studies the intensive or non- Protevi: Manuel, Intensive Science and equilibrium parts of the world, but also a Virtual Philosophy accepts Deleuze’s use of science that itself operates intensively, that axiomatics to analyze major or Royal is, in consistent, heterogeneity-preserving, Science. Yet you are critical of Deleuze and interdisciplinary, assemblages. Guattari’s use of axiomatics as a way to conceptualize capitalism (e.g. DeLanda, 1997, p. 331, n. 7), which you see as an ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION example of a top-down positing of a whole. I certainly would agree with you that far too Thanem: Whereas Deleuze’s thinking of the much Marxist work has been simplistic, virtual and Deleuze and Guattari’s work on historical determinist, reductive, totalizing, becoming makes an extraordinary effort to functionalist, top-down, etc., but I wonder if understand heterogeneity, creativity and

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you aren’t being too harsh with Deleuze does) we can still use some of Deleuze and and Guattari’s attempts to define a theory Guattari’s ideas since markets (as well as of capitalism that avoids each of these anti-markets) have always caused “lines of dangers? They certainly adopt a notion of flight” to pass among societies, particularly “machinic surplus value”, moving beyond a closed societies (it’s in the marketplace that simple labour theory of value (machines as we meet outsiders; that foreign objects and “congealed muscular energy”, as you put it ideas enter a city; that heterogeneity is in A Thousand Years (1997, 79)). Don’t injected, etc.). they also consistently deny any historical Protevi: I wonder if Deleuze and Guattari determinism of stages of development by ignore the Braudelian distinction because, emphasizing the contingency of capitalist like Marx, they think the important element formations, as well as conduct a sustained to be examined in capitalism is production polemic against reductive base- rather than exchange? superstructure models of society? Don’t DeLanda: Well, no, not really. I agree that their constant reminders that the line of the dichotomy “market/antimarket” does flight is primary prevent any totalizing give that impression, hence I probably accounts? won’t use it again. But the same distinction DeLanda: I agree that if I had to choose applies to production: it’s the difference among all the Marxist accounts of between economies of scale and economic history I would probably pick economies of agglomeration. That is, theirs. It does have all the advantages you between oligopolies using managed prices, mention. (Even Braudel quotes Deleuze routinized labour, hierarchical structure, and Guattari on the idea that “capitalism vertical integration etc. and networks of could have emerged anywhere” not just the small producers using market prices, skilled West.) Yet, I believe they would have labour, decentralized structure and benefited greatly from a better reading of functional complementarities. You must Braudel. They seemed to have read only remember the study that compares Silicon volume one of his history of capitalism and Valley and Route 128 as production not the other two volumes, which are really systems (mentioned in A Thousand Years) the most radical part. This is clear when in or what I have written about Emilia- A Thousand Plateaus in one page they Romagna. Braudel (and Jane Jacobs quote Braudel’s stress on the role of cities following in his steps) places a great and yet in the very next page they go on to emphasis on this distinction (though he define capitalism as a “market economy”, does not use the terms) and views it as an idea which Braudel attacks as applying across history for at least a historically false. So I wonder what would millennium (hence economies of have happened to their theory had they agglomeration would not be a late stage of understood the last point: that there is no capitalism as some Marxists have tried to such thing as “the market” in general and argue using the term “flexible no such thing as a “logic of exchange” in specialization” or the ridiculous one of general (doesn’t the idea of a capitalist “post-Fordism” but an alternative to axiomatic depend on the idea of a logic of economies of scale. exchange?). Once we separate oligopolies Protevi: So for you, it’s the type of from the market (they are strategic not productive organization that counts, not just primarily exchangist entities) and identify productivity as such. After all, production is capitalism with oligopolies (as Braudel the key ontological concept in Anti-Oedipus

(the whole world, nature and humans for a fair wage (particularly if unions exist) together, is composed of interlocking series is much greater and the permeability of the of connected machines that produce division between classes is greater too (if a materials that are fed into other machines). typical firm has less than a hundred DeLanda: This is correct. I myself add to employees and it is not capital intensive, it’s this when I attack the Humean notion of much easier for a motivated, creative causality (as perceived constant worker to start his/her own business). The conjunction) and define it as a real point is that all of this is obscured (if not connection in which one event produces made invisible) by the blanket concept of another event. And more generally, when I “capitalism”. stress that to get rid of essences one must As to theories of value: we need to go always give the intensive process of beyond the very notion of surplus value. production which yields any individual entity (It’s not enough to simply add the (atoms, organisms or commodities). “machinic” type to escape the labour Intensive thinking in general is about theory). Why just adding machines to production. “abstract labour” (read, routinized labour)? Protevi: From this productivist perspective Why not also fossil fuels, starting with coal? (which I think is amenable to a nonlinear And what of knowledge, skills and dynamics analysis of the material and organizational procedures? And then, the energy flows that keep the open production main defect of labour theory here is to systems far-from-equilibrium), the key issue include supply factors and not demand is the productive conjunction of capital and factors, but the latter also matter, and so labour (here machinic surplus value vitiates marginalist approaches to this side of the a pure labour theory of value), whether or equation must be added. (Over the not the products of that labour flow into objections of Marxists who would rather die markets or anti-markets. And the key to than include bourgeois marginalism in a coercing labour into exploitative production theory of value.) processes is to threaten the production of Protevi: For you, what explains Deleuze labour power with interruption of the flows and Guattari’s tenacious loyalty to what that sustain it. they must have thought was a suitably DeLanda: Well, but the same point applies modified form of Marxist analysis? Is their here: the conjunction of capital and labour calling what they do a form of Marxism can take place in different forms (scale, simply the result of their social position as agglomeration) and it is clear that only the part of the non-Communist French left? In economic power of the former allows the other words, a way of thumbing their noses kind of threat of withdrawal you are talking both at neo-liberals and at party loyalists? about: only if a firm is very capital intensive DeLanda: Well, frankly, I think Marxism is (large machines, large start-up costs Deleuze and Guattari’s little Oedipus, the functioning as barriers to entry) and if the small piece of territory they must keep to process is based on routinization (the less come back at night after a wild day of skills a worker brings the less bargaining deterritorializing. Who could blame them for power he/she will have when it comes to needing a resting place, a familiar place set wages) can this form of coercion work. I with all the reassurances of the Marxist am not saying that power relations are tradition (and its powerful iconography of absent from networks of small producers martyrs and revolutionaries)? The question but there the ability of workers to bargain is whether we need that same resting place

(clearly we need one, but should it be the (Chapters 26-33 of Volume I of Capital) and same? Shouldn’t each of us have a systematically in all of Capital. So to different one so that collectively we can resolve the tension we need someone to try eliminate them?). to demonstrate that Deleuze and Guattari’s I believe that the main task for today’s left is use of Marxist concepts: (1) respects their to create a new political economy (the own principles; and (2) is such that those resources are all there: Weber, Veblen and concepts are still recognizable as “Marxist”. the old institutionalists, Galbraith, Braudel, I don’t know if I or anyone else will ever be some of the new institutionalists, like able to provide such a demonstration. So in Douglass North; redefinitions of the market, the meantime, I think Manuel’s right that we like those of Hayek/Simon etc.) based as have to go with Deleuze and Guattari’s you acknowledged before, on a non- principles, and demand a “bottom-up” equilibrium view of the matter. But how can morphogenetic account before we accept we do this if we continue to believe that any entities into our social ontology. That Marxists got it right, that it is just a matter of means suspending our use of Marxist tinkering with the basic ideas? At any rate, categories and reformulating political concepts like “mode of production” do not fit economy. And I also accept Manuel’s a flat ontology of individuals as far as I can suggestion that the difference in productive tell. But then, this is the part of my organization between economies of scale reconstruction of Deleuze that I am the (centralized management and routinized, least sure he would accept: in Difference deskilled labour) vs. economies of and Repetition he cheerfully talks about the agglomeration (networks of skilled labour) “virtual multiplicity of society” (using Marx should be a fundamental category (along as his example, of course) a term I would with differences at the city and regional never use (since my ontology explicitly levels). rejects totalities like “society as a whole”). There is a turn of the screw here though, Thanem: John, what is your view on concerning not organizational differences, Deleuze and Guattari’s understanding of but ownership (that is, worker co-operatives capitalist economic organization? vs. absentee-owner firms). Let’s grant that Protevi: On the one hand, as Manuel has the ethical impulse behind Marx’s demonstrated, the principles of Deleuze denunciation of private property (not of and Guattari are that you can’t just posit course personal property, but ownership of abstract entities, but must show their the products of someone else’s labour in concrete coming-to-be via material exchange for a wage), needs to be processes, their “morphogenesis.” On the bracketed when it is put in terms of an a other hand, Deleuze and Guattari use priori demonstration that such alienated terms like “capitalism” which seem to be labour betrays the essence of human abstract entities that have not yet received nature qua Gattungswesen (“species a demonstration of their morphogenesis. being”, or co-operative production). Now it might be that this discrepancy is Nonetheless, I suspect Deleuze and simply a result of Marx being Deleuze and Guattari would have a pretty strong Guattari’s “own little Oedipus.” Or it might predilection for worker co-operatives over be that they think Marx himself has absentee-owner firms, although they would provided the morphogenetic account (or at also say we need to investigate the life- least the principles thereof), historically in affirming or life-denying aspects of the writings on “primitive accumulation” particular concrete assemblages, and ask

whether in fact this or that worker co- Thanem: Would you care to comment on operative (whether a centralized economy Hardt and Negri’s understanding of of scale operation or a networked economy contemporary capitalism in Empire? of agglomeration operation) produces Protevi: Empire is an interesting book that better and larger sets of affects than this or covers ground that needs to be covered by that absentee-owner firm. And I think anyone who wants to understand major Deleuze and Guattari would also have to trends in our current situation. Beyond the admit that it’s not at all clear that worker co- obvious international relations questions operatives will always be superior: it might about the relations of the USA and the UN be that the fear of bankruptcy might in global “policing” operations such as paralyse the initiative of some worker co- Afghanistan and Iraq, we have their political operatives, and so on. economy analyses. Now do Hardt and This is not an entirely satisfying way of Negri pose these questions in a properly posing the question however. To perform a bottom-up way? No, not really, although I good evaluation of the life-affirming or life- think they are perhaps not as far away from denying affects of worker co-operatives, we a bottom-up approach as it might appear. need to have lots of examples of them to For instance, despite many study, but they aren’t very prevalent. How pronouncements about our new do we account for their scarcity? In what “postmodern” era, I think they are less Deleuze and Guattari call “population committed to an “epochal” reading (where thinking” (what Manuel calls the everything has changed) than to one in investigation of an “institutional ecology”) which it is merely the “leading sector” you have to specify the variation-generating (today, informatics, affective labour, etc.) mechanisms and the selection pressures that has changed and in so doing sends that accounts for the distribution of traits in changes through the rest of the economy. a population, in this case, the ownership Although they don’t use these terms, the patterns in firms. In terms of variation, we “leading sector” form of analysis can be might surmise that the very availability of translated into one in which we examine the credit, based on predictions of return on change in selection pressures in the investment (based perhaps on past institutional ecology. performance of worker co-operatives, but They also have interesting things to say which might also be influenced by sheer about outsourcing and flexible labour fear of the unknown or simple class forces, about the “pink collar” ghetto in the prejudice on the part of bankers), service industry, about the growing constrains the variation of ownership forms importance of FIRE and global cities that and makes the generation of worker co- direct production networks. Again, although operatives difficult. The price of the credit, they use pretty traditional Marxist the interest a worker co-operative would terminology (though with Negri’s have to pay, would in turn form part of the characteristic insistence that is the selection pressures, as would lots of other struggles of the workers that prompt the factors (can worker co-operatives bargain shifts in capitalist organization) in with absentee-owner firms for materials, or describing these phenomena, not all of it is would they be subject to boycotts, price- beyond recuperation by a bottom-up fixing, etc.?). In other words, the accent has account. In particular, I think you can to be on the “political” in “political translate into bottom-up terms what they economy”! say about “formal” and “real” subsumption

(the increasing commodification of is true? Certainly, the workers at coal mines previously non-commodified social relations in England who unionized early on did not – the first process by colonialism, the believe that. They thought there was such a second by technological and social thing as a “fair wage” and they just needed methods: “surrogate motherhood” for to have the bargaining power needed to instance) by making it cross the “structural reach this fair outcome in negotiations. Or adjustment” policies of the IMF begun in the take the expression “the increasing mid-1980s (the lever here is national debts commodification of previously non- incurred in the immediate post-colonial commodified social relations”. What is that period). Here we might see the outlines of supposed to mean outside a Marxist an “consistent” global system that reaches analysis of the commodity form? An from workers’ bodies through firms to analysis which, at least in volume one of states, international organization (the G7), Capital, is completely a priori and and quasi-state actors (the IMF) and back moralistic. (I find the expression down again, demonstrating the sort of “commodification” worse than useless.) And interlevel causality – top-down constraint finally, yes Marx was aiming for a and bottom-up emergence – we look for in morphogenetic account of the entities he demonstrating systematicity. (We would posits. The question is: is the “negation of need the big caveat that this analysis the negation” (or morphogenesis through should not be in terms of a blanket notion of synthesis of opposites) a valid scheme? “capitalism”, but should take into account Does it not go directly against Deleuze’s the difference between economies of scale call for a positive treatment of difference in and economies of agglomeration, with the all morphogenesis (e.g. intensive former being the beneficiary of the IMF differences)? policies, even when they are dispersed in Protevi: Yes, it is hard to bracket all the networks of subcontracted sweatshops.) Marxist concepts with which I’ve thought for The key is the way structural adjustment so long! But while I’m willing to bracket policies push states to change their bio- concepts like “commodity”, I would like to power policies: cutting public assistance stick up for the primitive accumulation programs will increase the threat of chapters. Although they are conducted in malnutrition, disease, and/or “social terms of “capitalism” and thereby overlook deprivation” (shunning of homeless the scale vs. agglomeration distinction, they people). We might then ask what are the don’t use any Hegelian synthesis at all, but disciplinary effects of these policies in are concrete historical investigations of creating an atomized and normalized, enclosures, vagrancy and poor legislation, urbanized and de-skilled, work force in a colonialism, slavery, national debt, and so country? on. (Okay, I’ll admit it, the phrase “negation DeLanda: Though I agree with much in of negation” does appear in the peroration what you just said, every time you hit on a at the end of Chapter 32, but it’s just traditional Marxist cliche I shiver. Take for window dressing and could be excised example the phrase “ownership of the without any loss to the historical products of someone else’s labour in demonstration, which is in principle suited exchange for a wage”. Does not that very to the sort of intensive or differential thought imply that, as Marx would want it, treatment you rightfully point out as a “wage labour” is a form of surplus Deleuzian requirement. For instance, Robin extraction? But who ever demonstrated that Blackburn uses the ideas Marx develops in

the primitive accumulation chapters to show and Williamson’s perspectives – has a role that the critics of the “Williams thesis” about to play for philosophers concerned with the the role of slavery profits in the take-off social? And are there reasons to expect phase of English industrialization precisely that further engagement by philosophers ignore the catalytic [intensive, differential] will take place? effects of such profits making credit easier DeLanda: As far as I can tell, on the [1997, p. 532].) From that perspective, my question of Taylorism, the most important worry about marginalist accounts of the insight which goes beyond economics is demand for skills as determining fair wages due to people like Michel Foucault. The is that they might tempt some people to basic idea is that several of the key overlook the historical genesis of the de- elements of mass production are not of skilled and landless worker. Now this worry bourgeois origin but of military origin. It was doesn’t apply to you, Manuel, as I know you in French armouries in the mid eighteenth talk about the deterritorialization of workers century and later in American armouries in A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History and arsenals, that a system of industrial in your account of growing economies of management and discipline was created in scale in English agriculture. Nonetheless, I order to produce weapons with think it’s always important to emphasize interchangeable parts (see Roe Smith, that while the unionizing miners you 1985). The degree of uniformity needed to mention might have been trying to make create true spare parts needed to be the best of a bad situation (and yes, of imposed on artisans via routinization of the course, to understand their bargaining we labour process and constant monitoring have to replace the abstract rational agent from above. As Foucault says, discipline with a situated Simonian agent using increases the powers of the body in satisficing rationality), we also have to economic terms of utility but decreases account for how they got into that bad them in political terms of obedience. How situation in the first place. So I guess I’d are we to change this oppressive system if say that if any part of Capital is going to we are not even aware of its origins? survive the bottom-up reconstruction we’re (Remember that Lenin welcomed Taylorism demanding, it would be the primitive into the Soviet Union as a “good thing” from accumulation chapters. capitalism, which shows how uncritical Thanem: Deleuze and Guattari’s (1984, Marxists have always been in this respect. 1988) discussion of Marx, capitalism and We had to wait one hundred and ten years fascism includes some examination of for one of them, Harry Braverman, to bureaucratic organization. In A Thousand perform the first critique, and even this one Years of Nonlinear History, Manuel touches is marred by false problems such as “do upon issues of formal organization and white collar workers produce surplus control, taking issue among other things value?”) As long as we call this system with Drucker’s (1967) uncritical attitude to “Fordism”, are we not concealing its real Taylorism. In Empire Hardt and Negri sources? Marxists at this point like to (2000, pp. 152-153) discuss the mention Adam’s Smith’s pin factory as transformation of capitalism in terms of the example of a civilian use of discipline prior emergence of the postmodern organization, to rifle manufacturing, but for every corporate culture and diversity example they use I can find an earlier management. Is this an indication that military one, such as the Venetian arsenal organizational theorizing – beyond Simon’s which by the fifteenth century was already

the largest military-industrial complex of its Damasio (Descartes’ Error; The Feeling of time. What Happens) and Joseph LeDoux (The Protevi: Just a few additional points. As Emotional Brain; The Synaptic Self) with Manuel himself pointed out in his War book various analyzes of military corporeal (1991, p. 63), Virilio’s concept of “military technology, as in the work of David proletarianization” shows that it’s Grossman (On Killing) and William McNeill impossible to draw clean lines around the (Keeping Together in Time). I’ve put an use of force, coercion, duress, persuasion, essay on the Columbine High School etc. by military, police, and “social welfare” massacre that sets out what I think are the (either governmental, private, or “faith- principles of “political physiology” at based”) organizations to herd people into www.artsci.lsu.edu/fai/Faculty/Professors/P disciplinary institutions. The situation would rotevi. be even more complex considering the DeLanda: The issues raised above are not disciplinary situation in the Caribbean sugar really part of my current research. I am plantations Sidney Mintz examines in currently writing a book on social ontology Sweetness and Power, for there you would titled Nonlinear Dynamics and Social have to factor in the intricate assemblages Complexity where many of the issues we in the Atlantic slave trade, which combined have discussed here will be treated in State and private enterprise factors in depth. It should be finished by the end of varying proportions. We would also have to the year at which point I must pick up the investigate the way patriarchal systems fight I have been waging against Science have provided the means to “pre-discipline” Studies (Latour, Bloor, Pickering) and work girls in family settings well before they on a book about history and philosophy of become workers in sweatshops. science. Thanem: This sounds exciting, and I think both of you should expect to meet an THE FUTURE attentive audience in organization theory, given its recent concern with issues of Thanem: Are these concerns reflected in embodiment and (perhaps ironically) given your current research or will they be in your that its study of technology has involved future research? Indeed, what projects are considerable – if not particularly critical – you currently working on and what research engagement with Actor-Network Theory plans do you have for the foreseeable and Science Studies. future? And what forthcoming appearances and publications by Manuel DeLanda and John Protevi respectively should REFERENCES philosophers and non-philosophers watch out for? Anderson, P. (1999). Complexity theory Protevi: My next work, after the and organization science. Organization geophilosophy book, will be The Act of Science, 10, 216-231. Killing: An Essay in Political Physiology, a Braudel, F. (1973). Capitalism and material study of the warrior vs. soldier figures in life, 1400-1800. New York: Harper and Western culture, from Achilles vs. Row. Agamemnon through Patton vs. Braudel, F. (1982). The wheels of Eisenhower, Schwarzkopf vs. Powell, and commerce: Civilization and capitalism, so on. I’ll be trying to articulate the work in 15th-18th Century (Vol. 2). London: Collins. the neurophysiology of emotion by Antonio

Braudel, F. (1984). The perspective of the Dyke, C. (1988). The evolutionary world: Civilization and capitalism, 15th-18th dynamics of complex systems: A study in Century (Vol. 3). London: Collins. biosocial complexity. New York: Oxford Brown, S. & Eisenhardt, K. (1997). The art University Press. of continuous change: Linking complexity Frank, T. (2000). One market under God. theory and time-paced evolution in New York: Doubleday. relentlessly shifting organizations. Grossman, D. (1995). On killing. Boston: Administrative Science Quarterly, 42, 1-35. Little, Brown. Cannon, W. B. (1932). The wisdom of the Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. body. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chia, R. (1998). From complexity science Harvey, D. (1969). Explanation in to complex thinking: Organization as simple geography. London: Edward Arnold. location. Organization, 5, 341-369. Hedberg, B. et al. (1997). Virtual Czerniawska, F. & Potter, G. (2001). organizations and beyond: Discover Business in a virtual world: Exploiting imaginary systems. New York: Wiley. information for competitive advantage. LeDoux, J. E. (1996). The emotional brain: West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University The mysterious underpinnings of emotional Press. life. New York: Simon & Schuster. Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ error: LeDoux, J. E. (2002). The synaptic self: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. How our brains become who we are. New New York: Putnam. York: Viking. Damasio, A. R. (1999). The feeling of what Marx, K. (1976). The capital: A critique of happens: Body and emotion in the making political economy (Vol. 1). Harmondsworth: of consciousness. New York: Harcourt Penguin. Brace. Mayo, E. (1933). The human problems of Deleuze, G. (1993). The fold: Leibniz and an industrial civilization. New York: Viking the baroque. London: Athlone. Press. Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and McCumber, J. (2001). Time in the ditch: repetition. London: Athlone. American philosophy and the McCarthy Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1984). Anti- era. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Oedipus. London: Athlone. Press. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1988). A McNeill, W. H. (1995). Keeping together in thousand plateaus. London: Athlone. time: Dance and drill in human history. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1994). What is Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. philosophy? London: Verso. Mintz, S. W. (1985). Sweetness and power: Deleuze, G. & Parnet, C. (1987). The place of sugar in modern history. New Dialogues. London: Athlone. York: Viking. Drucker, P. (1967). Technology and society Robins, K. & Webster, F. (Eds) (2002). The in the twentieth century. In M. Kranzberg & virtual university? Knowledges, markets, C. W. Pursell (Eds), Technology in western and management. Oxford: Oxford civilization. New York: Oxford University University Press. Press. Roe Smith, M. (Ed.) (1985). Military Dupuy, J. P. (2000). The mechanization of enterprise and technological change: the mind. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Perspectives on the American experience. University Press. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Simon, H. (1945). Administrative behavior: SELECTED WORKS BY JOHN A study of decision-making processes in PROTEVI administrative organization. New York: Macmillan. Time and exteriority: Aristotle, Heidegger, Simon, H. (1969). The sciences of the Derrida (Lewisburg, PA, Bucknell University artificial. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Press, 1994). Williamson, O. E. (1995). Transaction cost The ‘sense’ of ‘sight’: Heidegger and economics and organization theory. In O. Merleau-Ponty on the meaning of bodily E. Williamson (Ed.), Organization theory: and existential sight. Research in From Chester Barnard to the present and Phenomenology, 1998, 28, 211-23. beyond. New York: Oxford University A problem of pure matter: Deleuze and Press. Guattari’s treatment of fascist nihilism in A Thousand Plateaus. In K. Ansell Pearson & D. Morgan (Eds), Nihilism now! ‘Monsters SELECTED WORKS BY MANUEL of energy’ (London, Macmillan, 2000). DELANDA The organism as judgment of God: Aristotle, Kant and Deleuze on nature (that War in the age of intelligent machines (New is, on biology, theology, and politics). In M. York, Zone, 1991). Bryden (Ed.), Deleuze and religion Kicking social-constructivist ass. Paper (London, Routledge, 2001a). presented at the Virtual Futures 96 Political physics: Deleuze, Derrida and the Conference (March), Warwick University. body politic (London, Athlone, 2001b). A thousand years of nonlinear history (New Between Derrida and Deleuze (London, York, Zone, 1997). Continuum, 2003) (Co-edited with P. Homes: Meshwork or hierarchy? Pli: The Patton). Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 1998, 7, Deleuze and geophilosophy: A guide and 15-25. glossary (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University The nonlinear development of cities. In A. Press, 2004) (Co-authored with M. Bonta). Marras (Ed.), Eco-tec: The architecture of the in-between (New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1999). Open source: A movement in search of a philosophy. Presentation at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, 2001. Intensive science and virtual philosophy (London, Continuum, 2002a). A new ontology for the social sciences. Presentation at ‘New Ontologies: Transdisciplinary Objects’ (March), University of Illinois, 2002b. (Essay). In Machining architecture (London, Thames & Hudson, 2003).