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BODY WITHOUT ORGANS Sody ",,' Lîhout ORGANS This Regulation of Group System Dynamics 28 November 1947, Antonin Artaud

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BODY WITHOUT ORGANS Sody ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE THEORY SERIES Conflicting Humanities, edited by Rosi Braidotti and Paul Gilroy General Ecology, edited by Erich Hörl with James Burton POST HUMAN GLOSSARY Edited by Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC ;2 0 / 8 LONDON • NEW YORK • OXFORD • NEW DELI-II • SYDNEY 74 75 BODY WITHOUT ORGANS soDY ",,' lîHOUT ORGANS This regulation of group system dynamics 28 November 1947, Antonin Artaud . s against the stratifying regimes of without organs a posthuman concept ateg1e . can be seen as construction of a virtual declared war on the organs, introducin str ·ally accepted body, startmg with a (Pisters 2014). e soct . repertoire, modelled as the production of the idea of a body without organg th ~ doses of caution: the anorectic More specifically, based on these an attractor layout, and affectively experi• that would be free from the capturin s call orhe masochist body, the addicted transversal extensions, the body without enced as the background affect or mood of confinements of automatic reactions an~ bo:Y, ~e paranoid body - they are all organs can also be productive in the the group. A second-order body politic can habitual patterns. In their co-autho bo '.' ·thout organs that demonstrate context of the technosphere. In her book red dies WI also be studied psychologically, as it regu• philosophy books Anti-Oedipus (19 ) b 0 ch resisting strategies are not How We Became Posthuman, Hayles 72 that SU lates inter-somatic affective cognition, the and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), Gilles ·thout danger and can turn out to be discusses how the model of the human emotional and meaningful interchanges Deleuze and Félix Guattari propo WI dl But there are no preset rules, except since the Enlightenment has been subjec• (1) among its members, and (2) between Artaud's body without organs as a co nee se dea Y· chful and wise, ac kn ow 1 e d gm· g at ted to alienation by cybernetic machines to be wa t their collective affective cognition and that to cri. ti. que western E n 11· g h tenment formP t e time our fragility and need for and artificial intelligence. Hayles brings of other bodies politic, at either personal, of autonomous subjectivity. While Deleu s the sam and the creation o f new possi"b il - together both scientific theories and free d o m group or civic compositional scales. In and Guattari never explicitly relate fictional narratives ofliterature that equally t: ities for life. other words, groups have characteristic body without organs to the posthumane 1he body without organs 1s the sub- construct ideas about the posthuman in ways - a limited virtual repertoire - of the concept may be relevant to understand ot-yet-organized level of affect- the computer age. She discovers two person al , n . making sense of what happens, on the basis why N. Katherine Hayles in How We ities that allows new perceptions, tendencies. On the one hand, there is an ive qu al of which decisions take place as actualiza• Became Posthuman can conclude that 'we ections and new affects. Because apocalyptic narrative that indicates the fear newc Onn tions or selections from that repertoire. have always been posthuman' (Hayles it dives below the categories and codes, the of the loss of humanity, loss of control and These decisions can be seen as channelling 1999: 291). body without organs can make cross• the dissolution of the human self. These are toward an end state, modelled as the For Deleuze and Guattari the body cutting connections between the human the stories where technology is conceived approach to an attractor in the group's state without organs is an evolving concept. In and the non-human: materially on the as separate from the human body: 'Only space, and experienced as a spontaneous Anti-Oedipus it is introduced in relation to level of the combination of human and if one thinks of the subject as an autonom• agreement in which the collective subject the body of 'the schizo' that resists the animal DNA, or on the affective level of ous self, independent of the environment, makes up its mind: 'all of a sudden it habitual organization of the body. Hence the proximity in movement (speed and is one likely to experience the panic dawned on all of us that this is what we had the reference to Artaud, who in all his slowness) in processes of becoming• performed by Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics to do: In terms of its temporal scales, a delirious and artistic expression points out animal (e.g. prowling as in a becoming• and Bernard Wolfe's Limbo (Hayles 1999: short-term event for a second-order body that underneath the traditionally coded cat). So a second way of understanding the 290). On the other hand, Hayles emphas• politic is an encounter of first-order bodies body with an assigned place and role in body without organs goes beyond the izes ( scientific and imaginary) stories that politic. In the mid-term, we see repeated society, underneath the organs, there is a concept of the human body altogether, propose a contrasting vision of the human patterns of such encounters or subjectifica• chaotic, messy world full of intensive when transversal relations between species in relation to the contemporary techno• tion practices, and in the long term, we see potentiality. Men, women, children; all emerge. Thirdly, even further, the non• world: 'When the human is seen as part of the becoming-custom of such practices, have their place in a social hierarchy. organic itself can be considered a body a distributed system. it is not a question their deep social embedding. Physical labour, bearing children, sitting without organs. The earth is a body without of leaving the body behind but rather of up straight in class; all have an orderly organs, full of vibrant matter (Bennett extending embodied awareness in highly See also Alienation; Body Without place for their organs. The (schizoid) 2010). Most fundamentally, metal is a body specific, local and material ways that would Organs; Geopolitics; Posthuman Rights; body without organs defies the social code without organs. Metal elements can be be impossible without electronic pros• Posthuman Disability and DisHuman and deliberately 'scrambles all the codes' found in all human, animal and inorganic thesis' (290-1). Studies; Trans-corporeality. (Deleuze and Guattari 1972: 15). In A matter. In its primordial and transformat• Hayles' conception of the posthuman is John Protevi Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari ive quality, metal is even the prime explicitly related to the articulation of the invite us to 'make a body without organs', conductor of all matter, indicating an human with intelligent machines. However, to experiment ( artistically, socially and immanent power of corporeality in all by disentangling certain assumptions philosophically) and find new ways of matter (Deleuze and Guattari 1980: 411). about the human conceived as an inde• BODY WITHOUT ORGANS relating to the body: 'Why not walk on These in-human and inhuman extensions pendent entity, she opens up possibilities your head, sing with your sinuses, see of the body, beneath the organs and for the posthuman to survive in close In 'To Have Done with the Judgement through your skin, breath with your belly?' beyond human corporeality and into the circuits with other life forms, human, of God', a radio play broadcast on (1980: 151) They elaborate the liberating geology of the earth, make the body otherwise embodied and inorganic, that 76 we depend on. The body without organs to all other entities on the earth, the b suggests that we did not have to wait for without organs proposes indeed thatdy prosthetic machines, extensions of men by have always been posthuman. we technology, to understand that the 'scram• See also Alienation; AI (Artifi . bling of the codes' is first and for all Intelligence); Earth; In-Human the· ~al. connected to a desire and fundamental Human; Contemporary, the; Othe;Wi 1 need to deliver our automatic reactions Embodied Others. se and habitual self-contained forms of subjectivity. In acknowledging our deep and ever-changing transversal connections Patricia Pisters CAMP 'Jhe not some r distinct unperati ship be jnhum world or accordin (OED) ( first defi fight, ba of battle precise! critique, end,co The defining and tr compani field-pre parties" the twe quarters modatio to doc camp at LUJ bringing scientific knowledge about t~e tes feelings, attach• registered as sensation by bodies that pass experiment involved th ernon, brain to a larger and more popular audi• en- ed to rn value, politics, profes- from one state to another. 689,003 Facebook use -·•<1 ence. Neuroscientific knowledge left the rs, and 011etarY . ill tions. Explorations As Jodi Dean (2010, 2015) argues, the some three million post · g tit a . lab and has travelled into the world and . d s cons· . f[eeti.11 the fuel for action uses of social media are driven by a search m ill10n wor s, without th d .a-eet as into the domain of aesthetics, a field with riced au h w online platforms, for affective intensity that orients and informed consent (Kram e Users' . gout o 11 strong humanist roots. 'Neuroaesthetics' apPi.11 . matter as we as provokes the interest and curiosity of users Hancock 2014). Toe rese erh, G · d devices ' is not uncontested but should neverthe• . arc te all affect _ the purposes they as they move across platforms, click on the algonthms selecting th clllJ. less be connected to the posthuman. A . ' econ ·eb theY d the outcomes that links, share and comment, searching for a neuronal approach of aesthetics enfolds a m users news feeds and man.
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