Welcome to lecture two on the philosophy of accelerationism. This lecture will cover a few more concepts which are needed to sort of build up the entire overarching philosophy of the process of accelerationism. So in this section I'm going to be dealing with the outside, the concept of the outside which Nick Land often goes on about and is often spoken about in terms of accelerationism And I'm going to be talking about the body without organs, which is a Deleuze and Guattari concept. And I'm also going to be theorizing on zero. So I begin in regards to the outside with an overview of what Deleuze and Guattari mean when they talk about the body without organs.
And this is sort of one of their most infamous concepts, ideas, which people sort of struggle to get a grasp on. um it's often known as the the bwo in writing and that's that's in the notes that's how i will abbreviate it um but the the concept of the body without organs as i've stated is formulated created by de leuze and gutari and it sort of begins it sort of can be seen as a beginning of their theoretical construction of what they understand as the production in itself. So when we think back to the first lecture, we have this Kantian split of the inside and the
outside with man retaining himself on the inside. Now, on the outside, this is where Deleuze and Qatari find and understand production in itself to be. So when we think in Kantian terms, we are representing things, everything that we synthesize is a representation, but of course that presumes that there is this real thing there first, and that's known as the thing in itself. okay so when Deleuze and Qatari talk about production in itself it's this that they are sort of alluding to which is the production before it's immanentized or subsumed into the realm of phenomena so it's the productive process itself okay um and the body without organs
is sort of this strange void but non-void okay it's where all the virtuality is held we spoke about the actual and the virtual the split between the actual the virtual last time very briefly the actual components or attributes of something are its phenomenological components its phenomena it's its material components that we we interact with on the inside and the virtual components are the ones which sort of are on the outside and they are the cross-referenced communicative networked attributes which run between things um transferable attributes is how i like to think of them and the the body without organs is interesting because of its
residency on the outside it's not really in relation to the pure past of the inside when we think of the syntheses of Deleuze, but it's actually a transcendental function of production and communication. So production in itself is part of the beginning of the accelerationist process. So the body without organs, according to Felix Guattari in his anti-Oedipus papers, is a blind, ineluctable recourse to machinism machinism and according to de leuze and quattari in anti-edivis it's a smooth slippery opaque taut surface as a barrier in order to resist linked connected and
interrupted flows it sets up a counter flow of amorphous undifferentiated fluid so the importance of the body without organs with regards to accelerationism is not its status as this void of virtuality okay so there's you know de l'horson quittari they mention this undifferentiation now this is important when we begin to think about its connection to virtual things and virtual items and virtual objects and what the body without organs is doing to these things and and in the theorizations of de l'horson quittari each and every object and subject and human and everything has its body without organs and what the body without organs is for say a person is the collection of its virtual traits so my body without organs is the collection my collection
of virtual traits which are sort of transferable between things now with regards to accelerationism we are primarily talking about what Deleuze and Quattari understand and they name the general body without organs or the plane of imminence and this isn't a specific body without organs which is on a single thing this is the general body without organs and this holds all virtualities okay and Deleuze and Guattari actually call this a recording surface okay this is an anteedipus and you know when we think of it as a recording surface what we're thinking of it as is something which holds all the virtualities and when new virtualities appear through the process of schizophrenia it records them and it's just a record of everything that that can be in virtual
possibility and in relation to the transcendental so the kantian aspects of things the body of their organs is a plane of generality the body of their organs is this general undifferentiated record of what's happening on the inside on the outside okay so once again we have this communication between the inside and the outside it's a fluid plane of recording it records desires it records history it records cosmic biological forces aesthetics flows and connections and in the in its most general sense then the body without organs is entitled the plane of consistency okay it's a functionally machinic plane of recording which holds all atomic connections
as undifferentiated fluid and and it's very key to remember that it it holds everything okay but but this often makes it seem like it's sort of the grand representation and it's key to point out that the body without organs is not the socius the socius or society would have its own body without organs and the institutions within society would also have its own body without organs so we can sort of see how the body without organs works is on on a certain level there would be a body without organs for a hospital say but in a societal level there would be another body without organs which would have completely different and unique connections going on at that level of production and communication and it's from the body without organs wherein the actual which were prior
virtuals remember of society and of socios and of representation emanates okay this is where they come from and the blue of the organs is where possible futures are held and this is so key for accelerationism because as i've stated accelerationism is a theory of time and really when i state it's a theory of time it's a theory of the future and what the future is going to be like and how it's going to be like and what the process is which is creating the future okay so when we think of virtualities which come in into time into history these are the potential futures so the body without organs the thing which is holding all of these is of course one of the most important components of the process of accelerationism the clear point of division here
is between the smoothness of the body without organs and the striated nature of the socius. The former, the body without organs, this holds virtuality as a free-flowing, smooth mass of atomic connections, which still hold their potentiality. So each virtuality has its own virtual nature still held, and they're free to move and free to be as they are within the body without organs. however the the latter the socius this is this is best thought of as a as a terrain of capture okay it captures that potentiality in actualization becoming actual and striates it into a structure okay so when things come into the inside as i've stated before they they become phenomena and
material and they're captured and this is a division which is very very key to the functional properties of the body without organs. The way in which I shall utilize the body without organs is in its most general sense, as I've said, with the exception of its differing functionality in connection with capitalism, which comes later, but is astounding, is extremely intriguing, and is just absolutely fantastic. But at its most versatile level, as it's at its most versatile the body without organs is the virtual dimension slash plane of reality with regard to production as output okay so it's on the outside and it's from this virtual
plane of undifferentiation that production and production in itself begins its process the general plane of consistency the other name for the body without the general body without organs where you know all the connections all the flows and all the fluxes of assimilative and computational utilization this is where they're held as virtualities as virtualities as potential for the future of the future i mean it's it's pertinent to remember that virtualities in themselves aren't necessarily potential for the future virtualities just can come back and they often do um and there's more often than not they come they come back in in some sort of um uh cyclic form um but there is potential there from virtualities this is where all potential
is held and the production or any production or possibility of production of the new begins from the the general body without organs this is where it begins um in de leuze-quitarian philosophy or critique to a certain extent. The body without organs then is the primary plane of production for the production in itself of the outside. These external transcendental productive forces which are behind all production. The body without organs is the first port of call regarding creation of the future. And that which is within the body without organs as the virtuals is already within the processes of the outside you know the the body without organs is of the outside so it's
already there and as such the actualization of virtuals via the synthesized reality of the incise man synthesizing is secondary to these workings of the body without organs and thus secondary to the production in itself the outside the production in itself is primary production in itself. The forces of the outside are before the synthesizations of man on the inside. And such a conclusion once again alters our perception of time with regard to the inside. As Nick Land states in Fang Numenah, we are doing things before they make sense. Now this seems like an extremely simplistic quote, especially when coming from the likes of Nick Land. But once
again to the production of the inside as seen from the inside as actions for an unexplainable nothingness okay so this production which is happening on the inside and when it's seen from the inside we are doing things before they make sense because it's done for what end there's something else pulling the strings here and it just doesn't make sense from seeing that way to do things before they make sense is to be possessed by the outside in the form of this sort of auto-constructive virtuality as I spoke about before you're already in the belly of the machine you're this empty domino ready to be possessed by the forces of the outside so you're doing things and they don't particularly make sense because the forces which are enacting you
to do these things are not of your metaphysical reality. The neurotic, paranoid, passive delirium of the desiring machine is to construct that which it both doesn't understand until after the fact, due to the first and second syntheses, where we just have a passive relation to the past and the future nor understand why they're constructing it because our relationship with the anticipation of the future and the retention of the past is entirely passive so in what sense can we say why these things begun why we're enacted in them why we're interested in them if we're already within a process which has begun before we were born and was already running delloz and quattari
like to state there's no such thing as a beginning we're always in the middle if you're already in the middle of something what can one say of why they are doing something if the origin is alien to you then your reasoning for doing something is already ignorant because the origin is alien you have no clue as to why something begun therefore the ends are alien and it just doesn't make sense to to do it from the inside it's it's a possession and the body where the organs are situated on the outside within this realm of production in itself locks into the positive feedback loop of production and which is both before and after any singular desiring machine's
existence you know we're in the middle of it we're in the middle and positive feedback is is positive or positive orientation is something that nick land goes on about a lot in relation to accelerationism and positive feedback what it is is a process which bolsters itself it builds itself to a greater extent and the desiring machines actions are secondary to the primacy of the auto construction they are within they're sort of caught in this belly of them of a machine and this metaphorical here, this metaphorical machine is building itself and it's just possessing what it can to do that. And the body without organs therefore is simply this plane of selection
from the primacy, the primary outside with regard to possible potential futures. And because of this positive feedback loop, which is connected to capitalism, which we'll get to later, the futures begin to have a direction a teleology an end result that they want to get to which is entirely to do with positive orientation for now i'm going to sort of detach from the body without organs in its temporal relations its relations to time and focus on some other attributes of it just for a little while longer deliz and qatari in anti-edipus state it is a result of the relationship between the desiring machines and the body without organs and occurs when the latter, the body without organs, can no longer tolerate these machines, these dying machines.
And when in communication with capitalism, the desiring machine's desires become overcoded. That is, they become materialized. Their machinations become too hot, too structured for the body without organs, and it repels them. So what's happening here is the body without organs the general body without organs as i've stated is undifferentiated it doesn't like locked in things when things ping off and and and are taken from the body without organs into the inside that is when they become locked in and striated and the body without organs repel striation because it is a smooth space and overcoded desires are materialized phenomenal desires on the inside and when the undifferentiated overcodes into a clear differentiation okay that is when these
forms of the outside these are repelled by the body without organs and actualized into the socia's so you have this virtuality which is in this process of differentiating itself from the undifferentiated mass of potentiality in the body without organs when it differentiates itself it's it becomes what de leuze and qataris say is overcoded it becomes a striated actualized reality and it's actualized into the socius and this is sort of the process the philosophical process of something becoming phenomenally real what we'd consider in common sense logic real and it's machined processed into a stratified locket and it's then crazed by edible structures familial
structures societal structures institutional structures and in this manner even de l'hose and quattari state this oedipus is actually quite useful in bursts okay it caresses the new into a constructive form of production and productive continuation yet more often than not oedipus suffocates things because it oedipus loves control oedipus is control and oedipus loves to love striated things because they're easier to control than undifferentiation and in this way Oedipus more often than not does suffocate things it holds them down you know conservative movements oppressive movements familial trends and traditions these are seen by Deleuze and by the theorizations in Antioedipus as Oedipus itself this outside sort of force this force of
control holding things as a means to control people and eight of us then is only really useful in terms of this productive process of accelerationism and potential so much as schizophrenia exists without the potentiality for exit which is embedded within the nature of the the schizo it's inherent to the schizophrenic mode of being the inside would become quite insane because you wouldn't have anyone pushing limits you would have virtualities becoming striated as let's say traditions or familial etiquette or something along these lines or as an institution and these would simply remain because you don't have anyone pushing the limits of these virtuals to then
fragment them back and then have them come back in so you need this process this schizophrenic process to break open stagnation and de leuze and qatar state when the desiring machines attempt to break into the body without organs and the body without organs repels them since it experienced this as an all-over persecution apparatus the desiring machines once again we as desiring machines make an error from the inside attempting from within our syntheses the syntheses of man to affect the outside it's in this manner that a temporal distinction is made the body without organs is atemporal the virtuality it holds unlike that of the pure past which is
indexed by our syntheses on the inside the body without organs is atemporal because it's undifferentiated in time virtualities are atemporal they don't adhere to the linear time which is represented to us in the Kantian critique as such the body without organs is not only a selection of virtual attributes in relation to material actualization but it's actually a function of temporal selection it can select times and events and temporal ongoings and temporalities as productive potentialities and it's it's from this beginning that capitalism begins to sort of look like a time machine a atemporal critical time machine okay and
at this point i am going to move from the general body without organs to the body without organs of capitalism as i stated before everything has its own body without organs and capitalism is not an exception it's so much not an exception because the body without organs of capitalism the way in which it holds its virtualities what it's virtual its relationship to virtualities looks like is so distinct and so unique that it begins to actually work with virtuality and the body without organs of capitalism states Guattari in his anti-Oedipus papers attempts to internalize the plane of consistency's unlimited limit so when we look at this general body without organs the plane of consistency yes I know it's frustrating unfortunately Deleuze and Guattari give it about three different
names but they all market the same thing it has this unlimited limit because it's undifferentiated it's a it's it's a mass of just undifferentiation and potential and it doesn't adhere to limits because limits would then cause striation and differentiation. If you hit a limit, something has become differentiated from something else and therefore wouldn't be part of that. So it has this unlimited limit of just constant potential. However, the dynamics of capitalism inherently alter cosmic relations regarding this stagnation, which could happen. Capitalism inherently does not and cannot for it to remain what it is allow completeness okay it assimilates all into its auto construction okay there's no end to capitalism there's no point where it stops and says that is
complete it may momentarily say this thing works and we might people begin to outline and say this is what capitalism does this is what capitalism does but only because it's been working for say 20 or 30 years that is not what capitalism is it's simply using that for the time being if you have to step back from this and understand that it's trying to assimilate non-limitation into its very being. The body without organs of capitalism repels the overcoding of the desiring machine back into the socius as a modified version of itself. What does that mean? The desiring machine is possessed by this alien power of production which is a capitalist
mode of production capitalism repels overcoded design machines back into the socius as something whose entire modus operandi entire purpose of being is to produce for it and you can argue you can say well what about those who don't produce for capitalism who aren't part of the capitalist system who aren't part of the production of capitalism well a couple of things happens they either get suffocated by capitalism in which case what they're trying to do is cut out capitalism finds ways to end it because it isn't targeted at the positive orientation of capitalism or they simply get ignored like someone who goes off into the woods they're not involved in the
capitalist mode of production but they're also not hindering it and they're also not partaking in any part of it so they're either sort of suffocated to death or just entirely alienated and capitalism's mode of governance is to fluidly govern in any way very important absolutely any way which allows it to continue governing capitalism doesn't care for which representations it uses okay nor which ideological representations of the inside it allows because when we think of things which come into the inside as ideologies as movements these are all striated they've been done they have limits okay and capitalism doesn't care about the inside if say for instance a lays
fair market system works for the time being capitalism will use that if neo-feudalism works for the time being capitalism will use that it simply doesn't care about what's striated on the inside as long as it's bolstering the process on the outside and when it isn't guess what happens it gets destroyed and it gets taken back into the outside and this is the process of deterritorialization re-territorialization we will get to this and it just computes this okay so what's going on in the inside capitalism as this begins to select from the general body of that organs it begins to take these virtualities see what works see what doesn't in terms of positive orientation in terms of simply growing itself and it computes the results back into the
outside targeted at productive output a computation from the outside in which it perpetually selects the greatest productivity of production for capitalism in this sense capitalism avoids representation it is pure techno-economic fluidity and it bastardizes the function of the body without organs into this cosmic production thresher function, a function which is entirely targeted at greater production, targeted at the sole purpose of continual production of itself for itself. From here we can view the socius as a full body, their organs, and by this Deleuze and Quattari
mean a surface where all production is recorded, whereupon the entire process appears to emanate from this recording surface okay so it's the full body without organs is like this striated lump which is done okay that's finished we can we can sort of box it off which is theoretically incorrect to do but from from our perception from the inside it seems this way to metaphorically envision the socius as the layer on top over the top of the body without organs that which appears as this meta agent of production okay so when we think of the socius it seems like what's going on within the socius is actually the thing which is creating the socius de l'hose and qatar would state this is false the the what's happening within the socius are symptoms of the processes on the outside okay the reality is one of communication
the virtuality of the body without organs roams back and forth between the socius the inside and production in itself, the outside, but its primacy is the production in itself. That's always prior. The transcendental dynamics of capitalism are at work here in this communication between the inside and the outside. Overcoded virtualities are repelled from the body without organs, possessing the machines, the desiring machines, humans, as an alien power. Machines inherit this and become it and this forms a new mode of production. As such, Deleuze and Quattari state in Antiochus, machines and agents cling so closely to capital that their very functioning appears to
be miraculated by it. Everything seems objectively to be produced by capital as quasi-cause. Deleuze and Quattari are writing so elusively here that I genuinely wonder if they're revealing all of their revelations i personally think that they should have gone a bit further and said that machines and agents cling so closely to capital that they state that their very functioning appears to be miraculated by it i would go so far to say that in the accelerationist process machines and agents are absolutely no different to capital they are of that virtuality just as much as anything else and the capitalism will use their body without organs their virtualities just as much as it will use anything else so they're not these these external agents they are part of it and even though they allude they state to a perverted bewitched world where capital
increasingly plays the role of the recording surface that falls back on all the production they are short-sighted in this application especially where accelerationism is with regards to accelerations especially when thinking transcendentally and accelerationism is a transcendental philosophy of time there's just no question of that let's take the body without organs again in its most general sense as this this plane of consistency of intensities fluxes flows and emotions supposedly these virtualities are then appropriated by the desiring machines via their collective possession by the process of production itself the alien force the outside this possession
allow from from the outside from the production itself from uh the the from capitalism possessing allows for the actualization and recording of the virtual to be inscribed into the socius via the machinations of the desiring machines it's sort of a loop but it's a loop that begins with the outside the insidious nature of capitalism here is surprisingly overlooked by de l'eux and guattari for in my opinion and and with regards to accelerationist philosophy capital is throughout the process and so this aforementioned process wherein the virtual is drawn from the body without organs and actualized via the machinations of the design machine this
is altered so let's take it again the body without organs is taken as this plane of all virtualities potential these virtualities are appropriated by the flow and process of capital itself as a means towards capitalist expansion capitalism hijacks the functionality of the general body without organs these flows are usually appropriate representative to money which in itself is appropriated by a connective form of desire which is performatively actualized by desire machines that's sort of how we can see how things going on the inside the the the removal of the marxian division between the alien power of man which i've mentioned in the last lecture towards a deleuze quatarian mode of production as imminent as one and production production becomes as man production quite
literally is man as a desiring machine he is not separate in any third party external sense and transcendentally this alters the function of capitalist dynamics from a process which controls man's actions to a process which is man's actions it is his very being and this is really where accelerationism comes in because once we we we understand this is happening well then we can move and we can say well hang on we are this process so we now need to understand what this process is not only then are we possessed by the alien force of capitalism itself infecting us from the outside in the post-marxian deleuze quattarian sense but also we are mechanically directed and
controlled via appropriate appropriated virtualities time and money as means for productive direction so the reappropriations of virtualities coming into the inside are quite literally part of us and and and of our reality as much as anything else the virtual is the original lure for man and no longer to work for capital alongside the actual as would be the case with transcendence but to work as capital imminently possessed by the virtual in the arrival of the virtual from the body without organs we return to desire because all desire is is virtual as we as i stated in the last lecture with regards to the second synthesis our desires are targeted not at the
present actual but of this this virtual conception we have of this thing we desire the virtual does become actual so the desires that we machinize that we want to bring about are from the outside and as such not only are we mere assemblages a clutter of loosely held together representation but the originary aspect of each identity is the outside itself it's the virtual in all of us desire as virtual of the outside not only in you but as you we become our desires we become these virtualities as much as we become anything else and caught within this auto-construction of virtual elements which non-linearly from the outside have culminated in the creation of you as and within capitalism all at once we can't find an originary position
we are this loosely held together clump of elements and virtualities drawn from the outside now it's interesting to ask why capitalism why is this the system which does this and it's quite it because the body without organs repels all oedipalization feudalism monarchism conservatism communism metaphorically we could understand these as lying on the couch of the psychoanalyst they need to be told what where to stay what to do how to reappropriate how to be for them to remain within their event their names are striated feudalism has a certain system monarchism has a certain system conservatives have this certain system and so do communists and they have their
temporal event and in doing so the body without organs repels them because they are straight they're stagnant capitalism just sets fire to this it doesn't care right it it's a non-system and it's the only non-system which can control utilize and produce with and from the blind intellectual recourse to machinism that is known as the body without organs and it's a system which is always already and implicitly ready to allow all the paradoxes and contradictions of this undifferentiation to flow through it capitalism is this system which in its very apparatus is a thresher of the virtual targeting it solely and consistently at self-propelled production and it's found a way to not allow that production to become a striation because it doesn't mark it mark itself off it
doesn't box itself off at any point so it can actually use undifferentiated virtualities and it can use the general body without organs for its own becoming and de l'horses-gottari put this really hauntingly they say do you believe in god of course but only as the master of the disjunctive syllogism or as its a priori principle from which all secondary realities are derived by a process of division by this they mean the energies of the body without organs are divine in functional attachment to the primary process of production which is the outside it serves as this divine primary wellspring of creation which when you interlink it with a system such as
capitalism which in its inherent fluidity avoids the repulsion of the body without organs the whole thing becomes an auto-constructive system the lives and world of the inside are not only secondary processes but the door to the primary is locked behind them the key to which can be found within and by schizophrenic process capitalism is the great primary helmsman of the body without holdings it is in this manner that it could only be capitalism, which is the working system of accelerationism. There is no acceleration without capitalism. Nick Land has even stated that accelerationism should really be called capitalismism, but it's a clunky name, so we'll stick with accelerationism. The processes of accelerationism
are inherently connected to these methods of communication between the inside and the outside, and the way in which these methods and functions can be consistently directed towards the future. capitalism's means of perpetual continuation this communication between the inside and the outside is articulated and made possible by a process by or the process twin process of deterritorialization and re-territorialization these are delirious delirious quattarian concepts again and they are once again quite infamous like most delirious and quattarian concepts because they sound very very complex and they seem very very complex and at times they are but i'll try and make them relatively accessible here at its most general level deterritorialization is a process wherein
something is virtually unshackled from its supposed natural classical or original set of relations which have striated it on the inside okay so something is de-territorialized from its set of striated relations to the inside re-territorialization is sort of the quasi inverse of this process wherein the previous virtual which has been decontextualized or de-territorialized is re-appropriated within a new framework um i tend to use the example of the the 80s okay so we think of the the generation of the 80s unshackled from its temporal relations of the time 1980s 1989 and re-appropriated into over dramatization of of the virtual 80s
within contemporary society so we see this this idea which came about in in the times we understand as 1980 and 1989 which are straight inside times and there's a virtual that was born within them which we understand as the 80s which is a virtual let's say attribute or concept this virtual is then taken in this sort of singular sense and can be reapplied this functionality of deterritorialization this transforms history transforms narrative and it transforms linearity into simply a conjunction of interlinked deterritorializations and re-territorializations not a line but an indexing like the second synthesis an index of virtualities to be serialized via the syntheses of the design machines which are on the inside the process
of production and in turn the production of history therefore comes before history as we synthesize it these de-territorializations and these events are within the middle of a process they are always in a middle there is no beginnings so the processes in which these are indexed come before the indexing themselves but a further extrapolation of time in connection to the organs and capitalism is now needed to understand how these temporal dynamics are at work the dual complementary process of deterritorialization and re-territorialization or known by de l'esham guattari is the twin pincer method is wherein time of capitalism and capital and time within capitalism or capitalism as critique can be found where it's located capitalism as critique
continues the critical conception of time as a primary a priori necessity of cosmic change once again we take Kant's propositions of time stated in the critique of pure reason as a given i think it would be silly not to but i will just state that time is not movement movement is only the representation of time in time also time does not exist in space everything in space in space can only exist in time or as anna greenspan states in her thesis capitalism's transcendental time machine she states in other words the one thing that is not interior to time is the transcendental form of time itself thus in discovering the
abstract realm of the transcendental can unmasks an unanticipated imminent exteriority an outside that does not to transcend the world but is no less alien for that what does that mean in relation to this process of deterritorialization and re-territorialization the virtualities of the general body without organs are grabbed by the process of deterritorialization one of the pincers and it's also taken as well by the other pins these are taken and this process of twin pincing is throughout time throughout pure time not man's time not the linear time which we are represented with we are represented with via our syntheses but this is pure time of the outside
not transcendental transcendentally speaking states and events of time hold no privilege over one another the past the present and the future as per the first syntheses become mere empirical articulations from the point of view of the desiring machines this linear mode of time is a transcendental error is countered this linear mode of time is countered by delos and cotari via the connection between the process of tutorialization and retail utilization and the body of the other organs time in this sense in its relation to capitalism becomes a synthesis of temporal events in relation to production there's no longer an era of temporal progression
only a mode of temporal indexing conjunction and reappropriation it's a process of temporally neologistic indexing that's the terms cyber gothic neoreaction post-modernism all the origins are dissolved by the fluid dynamics of capitalism via this process this twin pincer process of deterritorialization and re-territorialization and what happens to linear time is when these processes something is deterritorialized and re-territorialized this is what's happening and this is what's becoming the next index thing on the inside so the outside is always coming in and being indexed but this linearity isn't a linearity as we see it the the the gloss the veil over the
top of it is what we see via the way it's represented to us but the virtualities that are going on behind it is what interests us and these are targeted via capitalism and by a by capitalism at positive orientation the virtuals of and the virtuality of the body without organs as a plane in their actualization when they're de-territorialized and then re-territorialized which is the process of becoming actualized these become temporal events intense events masks of time and they're sort of complete in themselves as a singular thing but they are and grasping with effect their neighboring events like i said there's an indexing and these events
begin to grasp and connect with the the next events in the series this process when computed via the fluidity of capitalism and targeted towards production in time as controlled aim time the atemporality with regards to the inside and purity of time is aimed by capitalism used by time does not continue anymore it's only produced as a series and an index as has been made clear the virtual and the actual are real they are both real their functions as real come to the fore in their relation to the body without organs they they make themselves real the process the function of capitalist selection de-territorializes a virtuality and re-territorializes it back into
the socius into the inside this inside is also wherein the synthesis of temporality temporality which concludes in the idea that linear time is true time takes place via man so humans are demoted to this inside and the process of deterritorialization and re-territorialization is a continuation of control regarding their synthesis because what's coming in via this twin pincer method is what they're then going to synthesize and they're secondary to it what is continually synthesized is that which is re-territorialized in front of them okay before them in a way the difference regarding transcendental philosophy between Kant and Deleuze therefore is a matter of reduction Kant halted at the proposition that is man who synthesizes
time in its tire and Deleuze and Guattari continue critique by reducing man's process of synthesis into the inside of the transcendental as a process within something larger larger even than kantian critique it is this proposition which allows all the processes and mechanisms and passivities of this essay to culminate into something more the process of its relations now this is a you know i've overviewed a couple more blocks here a deeper look at the virtual and a deeper look at the body of the organs but this is other dynamic which is really really key to accelerationism so as i understand it and as as nick land understands it and in terms of just understanding the process and philosophy of accelerationism i won't delve into my
new theorizations on zero accelerationism here um but i am going to delve in to zero now this is is just so important and this arrives in in the ccriu work in the work of sadie plant and the work of Nick Land in The Thirst for Annihilation. And it does appear in Deleuze and Guattari, usually under the guise of a zero vector. But they mention zero a lot. And this isn't really looked at in my research that often in philosophy. So let me just expand on this. There is this other or another dynamic happening at the same time. As all of this, a further function or stack of functions are top functions. it's we are assembling this this this assemblage of function in relation to the limits of capitalism
regarding the how of capitalism you know how is this process this is transcendental you know what are the conditions of no ability and if we're talking about capitalism as critique we're talking about the conditions in which capitalism is able to do what it does such limits which are strange forms of non-limit can only exist and function in combination with zero, which is a complementary function which is transcendentally alongside the machinic unconscious, which I get to a bit later. Without zero, the accelerative process is nothing, okay? Without zero, there is only the horrifying zero of nothing. In the notes you'll notice I've capitalized zero, and there's
a decapitalized zero zero with the capital is this conceptualization this theorization zero lowercase is the one of nothing how we commonly understand nothingness as such the capitalized zero conception of zero as opposed to normal zero common sense zero takes on an inherently different meaning with respect to zero or there's you know the original zero is zero as negation well as nothing zero with the capital z has nothing to do with a sartrean existential negative or banal psychoanalytical lack it's not nothing it's not emptiness it's not empty space or empty time it's not anthropomorphically comforting in the way that nothingness is it's transcendentally cybernetically computational it's a theoretical
theoretical function born from de leuze and qatarie's utilization of degree zero in relation to these sort of quasi evolutionary mechanics of the outside you know the way that things are developed from the outside zero is this just outstanding cosmic machinic optimism of positive feedback as opposed to the humanist pessimism of the conclusoratory zero is nothing okay now it would be easy to confuse zero with the fits and starts which delirious and quitaria states that's how capitalism works on page one of antidepress actually that capitalism fits and starts you know so something fits it starts it starts rumbling and it goes back down and there's zero um um it'd be easy to confuse it with them in themselves as opposed to it being the function
of the fits and the starts so amy island stated on twitter when we were talking about this a long time ago that zero is the motor of paradox it is this momentary temporal mechanism wherein the machinic breakdown on the inside is deterritorialized drawn back into the body of their organs zero here acts as a plane okay so once again this is ease of language there isn't planes there isn't these like levels that we can go up some stairs and we're on the next level so just think of it is it's separate in a certain sense but this is all imminent but think of it as a separate function but it doesn't have borders in that sense but it does it acts as this plane a plane of entropic and negentropic communication now entropy and negentropy are these thermodynamic
terms and entropy is the way in which within a closed system everything will eventually decay and negentropy is the reverse that there is a negative entropy an increase of order as previously stated beginnings just don't exist in de leuze quitarian theorizations only middles and as such to begin at zero continuously is to make clear the restarts of mid points between events so one of the few times de leuze quitaria mentioned zero um this is an anti-pedic anti-edipus they state the proportions of attraction and repulsion on the body without organs produce starting from zero a series of states in the celibate machine now they have a decapitalized zero but this zero is taken and formed into something bigger in this manner zero is a plane of of swerves okay zero is
in lucretian atomism this divergence the clinarmon or the clinamon now what this is is if you imagine very very brief overview of lucretian atomism if you imagine there is just a perpendicular parallel lines of atoms and they're all going the same direction in absolute order one of these atoms just veers off swerves off and that's the clinam and it's just this spontaneous completely cosmically random event of differentiation and this this is zero but but it's not zero in itself zero is the place from which this begins in a way it's attraction and repulsion it's declination declining from from the plane of swerves as a stagnation back into the plane of zero right
so it's a declination of difference repelled from the plane of zero it's very complicated but i will be i will articulate it for zero is this infinitely connective plane of energy from which all systems multiplicities and events arise the distinct difference here between zero and the body of their organs is that the former zero has an implicit relation to the in-between of capitalism and entropy it is the motor which allows the perpetual contradictions and paradoxes of capitalism to make sense it's the disconnect it's the disconnect which allows a see a simultaneously a disconnect and a connect and a restart you can have you can learn from a hypocrisy and adhere to a hypocrisy and continue
again capitalism you know according to de la zappa is nothing but hypocrisy and it's it's this motor which allows these just perpetual contradictions and paradoxes of capitalism to make any sense because these wouldn't make sense in any system which doesn't inherently have in its functions restarts it allows for the functionally sound separation of events into a continuum of contradictory projections the indexing can be as contradictory as you like because in them is this virtual function of zero which is allowing the restart the body without organs is but a void of atemporal virtuality as we know both zero and the body without organs understand physics and are of physics in a virtual sense but zero understands how to utilize it as a
means of transcendental communication that is to say that zero has this understanding of physics on the inside which is the limitations of physics on the inside which capitalism does have to adhere to because that's what it's got to work with in terms of what's real and zero understands these in a transcendental sense is it's able to communicate them okay so zero's relation to classical entropic forces is as a theoretical replacement within modernity it's a communicational link between entropy or decay of the inside because the inside decays and its inherent productive process on the outside now what's productive about decay well there's something capitalism can learn from decay if something's decaying it's not working okay now in this manner
zero is the transcendental it's connected to the outside machinic replacement of degradation decay and destruction in favor of quantifiable productive output zero understands degradation decay and destruction as what it is in relation to production it's it's not production it's not producing and it understands this and communicates it in a way to say to capitalism this isn't producing this is not a quantifiable productive output we need to do something here the utilization and pure assimilation by capitalism through man as an alien force of machinic standardization
is capitalism's mechanistic backbone, its structure. And what I mean by machinic standardization is everything's sort of quantifiable. Now, there's a lot of research on this in the fact that when number, digital or numeric culture infiltrated our society, we moved from a quality standard to a quantifiable standard. That is more everything's metric, everything's sort of min-maxed. And there is, you know, Nick Land states that the immanentization of zero in culture, capitalism, Protestantism, Kabbalah, all market the same moment in time. And these are all sort of virtuals going behind the scenes.
You know, I'm happy to talk about these in the seminars or if anyone wants to email me about this idea. But this isn't part of the course, this lecture here. But the machinic standardization as this machinic backbone is the structure of capitalism, because of course, from profit and loss dynamics, capitalism can very clearly understand whether or not it's growing, whether or not it isn't. And zero is a computational mode of productive evolution, which allows for the dynamic of profit and loss to infiltrate the transcendental as this alien force on behalf of capitalism so you have possessed beings possessed by capitalism possessed by this
outside force they compute certain things and these virtualities of profit and loss are going back into the outside and are understood by capitalism zero is capitalism's utilization of the entropic or non-entropic or negantropic outcomes of the inside as a selection device with regards to production. Zero is the thing, is the function which understands, is this working? Is it productive? Is it decaying? Is it entropic? If it's productive, zero computes that back to capitalism. Capitalism will probably try and bolster it or retain it. If it isn't, guess what? It's going to get suffocated. Entropy for zero as affirmation of unproductive stagnation.
A zero perceives this, it begins and restarts its motor as a reaction of negentropy. It begins its function. We can't have this. We can't have this because it's not in keeping with the positive orientation of capitalism. the in-between of the body without organs of capitalism the communication function between the virtual of productive potential and the system which can actualize that that potential it's the thing which says are these virtuals working in relation to the capitalist system zero's function is to continually select reselect divide fragment or just use these potentials for capitalism so nick land states the death of capital is less a prophecy than a machine part
capitalism is always dying it kills off the parts of it it doesn't need need and just just gets rid of them and zero is the process which allows it to understand what to kill zero doesn't have the capability to select a more productive form of energy it does however begin the entropic process of dissension into its plane something's not working it goes right we'll bring this down and zero is the point where it meets and zero is the point of learning in this sense towards a re-actualization of energy for further reappropriation by capitalism so when you look at de-territorialization and re-territorialization these processes in themselves aren't always honing in on positive orientation they can re-territorialize things which just aren't that useful towards positive orientation for capitalism's growth zero however due this is why it's called
zero because greater than zero is production and less than zero or heading back towards zero in a negative effect is entropy zero is the process at the end that understands something has got to it therefore it shouldn't be used again in a very basic sense and zero then can be seen clearest in any notion of post-capitalism all that is post is not post but has been drawn into the dynamics of perpetual continuation made possible by zero there is just no such thing as death of capitalism there isn't there's just machinic transcendental evolution as mentioned earlier the schizophrenic or schizophrenic as a process seeks out the very limits of capitalism or limit of capitalism or limit of anything really in this way the schizophrenic's line of flight is made at
degrees zero it is a descent into the unknown to head towards the known is to head towards that which has already been structured synthesized for it's already known it's already understood so the new is always found within the unknown which is exactly what the schizophrenic's heading towards when it pushes limits the reverse entropic function of zero are articulated as degree zero which we can understand as negentropy negative entropy is a schizophrenic reappropriation of energy the two sides of zero one acting internally and the other on the outside work as an energy thrusher targeted targeted once again at the productive output of capital or zero is a transcendental function of production used by capitalism to communicate between the primary
production on the outside and the productive apparatus on the inside which is the schizophrenic the schizophrenic pushes the limits of capitalism towards greater productive potential zero on the outside is the computational function which understands if things are profiting or losing and it will recompute this to capitalism on the outside and capitalism will continue or not continue to use something because it understands it as production. But why zero or zero as a numeral? Land states in Fang Numenah zero has no definitional usage. The zero glyph does not mark a quantity but an empty magnitude shift abstract scaling function the absolute horror
of zero is this unquantifiable break of reality it's not nothingness as an absence of space as if to say there's nothing in that room a nothingness with no relation no lack no substance it zero is is pure nothing it's nothing but in this sense it has a strange transcendental function the absolute limit of the smoothscape hyper nomadism pushed to obliteration zero is as close to one as one can get to the anti of anti-Oedipus for what is more corrosive to the Oedipal Triangle to Papa Mummy than a function aimed at perpetual structural reappropriation what is more corrosive to Oedipus than the thing which constantly wants to reappropriate and
recontextualize Oedipus. Zero is this maddening catharsis of exit possibility. The limits of capitalism without zero remain non-transcendental, limits which are now to be explained. Deleuze and Gautier state the tendencies only limit is internal and it is continually going beyond it. But by displacing this limit, that is by reconstituting it, by rediscovering it as an internal limit to be surpassed, again, by means of a displacement. Thus continuity of the capitalist process engenders itself in this break of a break that is always displaced, in this unity of the schiz and the flow. This is in Antioedipus. Capitalism's tendency then is that of a positive feedback loop. It is reconstituted and rediscovered by a multitude of layered processes.
Deterritalisation, re-territalisation, zero and schizophrenia. Such a dynamic is the means of continuation of critique as capitalism, or capitalism as critique. Deleuze and Qatari's statement that the limit is internal is not in regard to the mechanisms of capitalism, but is made in relation to the internally synthesized limits of phenomena. The exterior limits of capitalism, the outside, are both primary production in itself and schizophrenia, which is the absolute decoding of flows according to Deleuze and Qatari. Much like the mutual relationship of the virtual and the actual, the inside and the outside cannot be without one another. The latter, however, is always one step ahead of the former. The outside's always ahead of the inside due to its inherently different mode of temporality. It doesn't have linear time,
it doesn't adhere to linear time like those on the inside does, so what can be said of the future and the past when you're not linear? In this manner, the push or the progression of the internal limit of capitalism is made possible by letting the outside in. The way that capitalism moves forward is letting the outside in which is where all potential for the future is the allowance of the outside is made possible by the process of schizophrenia doing what comes natural to it descending to the periphery and in combination with zero the schizo is allowed to jump the frontier and push into a new event and actualize a new negentropy the schizophrenic descends to the unknown as i've stated if you know something it's already striated it's already boxed off there's no new in the known schizophrenic descends to the unknown the periphery the limit the furthest
limit of capitalism or the limit of the socialist or the limit of anything and during this process defines a new limit one which is already on the other other side of thanks to zero you can't define a new limit from a push of a limit unless you you have this already limit and this is the this is the beauty of the schiz of schizophrenia and schizophrenic it pushes things so far that the limit is already pushed and it gets there and it's already done it has to move on the madness of the schizo is exercised removed and the schiz itself re-edipalized into assimilation with the new found limits and the new comes in once the schizofrenic pushes the limits and this is then taken as as the new desire or productive system if oedipus has an enemy schizophrenia is it schizophrenia is not the schizophrenia of the asylum but a process it's this fluidity a continual process of
identity and structural repulsion as de leuze and quattari state the schizophrenic scrambles all codes and is the transmitter of the decoded flows of desire the importance of the schizo is that he or it or the process of schizophrenia seeks out not just limits but exits the schizo knows how to leave a fundamentally problematic position the schizophrenic process traverses the body of their organs and helps the reinstallation, reappropriation of desire production within the new found boundary. This implication of exit is confusingly concluzatory for Dillard and Guattari, but this is only if one has yet to remove the last remnants of rational humanism from their thought.
Leotard states, there is nothing to transgress in a limit, since if there is a frontier, both sides must have already been posited as such the or a schizophrenic is an error to be schizo in relation to the actions of a subject is a transcendental error the subject has already been caught up in the syntheses of the inside the schizophrenic process may sweep man up with it but a man is already too edipolized to become schizo unless he allows himself to be taken over by the process in which case what can be said of his subjectivity and his subject very little because he's no longer what he is schizophrenia is largely an external force of the outside let in it possesses man but is not let in by him it exists only as a continuation of the machinic
unconscious to auto-induce schizophrenia then is not to an auto-induce complex illusions pertaining to heighten states within the inside okay the real dynamic that allows schizophrenic exit is posed within the statement of de luis and qatarie where they state schizophrenia creeps out of every box eventually the box we take as linear modes of time and eventually as difference the schizo as a process of the outside let inside is the difference within the syntheses of man it's the difference of the inside. On the inside, change is doomed to the limitations of its own construct. On the outside, such a limit is nonexistent. It's the inside, you can't change the inside from the inside because you're already working with what's been phenomenally striated. As such, allowing
schizophrenia entry into the inside from the outside is to welcome this paradoxical means which allows us to overcome boundaries and limits and hurdles. Now, capitalism's motto can be taken as nothing ever died of contradictions. And this is only made possible via the critical theorizations of time and temporality within transcendental philosophy, with strict importance regarding the exclusion of both temporal linearity and cosmically solipsistic attention to the limited perception of man. So we need to move away from this linear-centered existence of man. Here we return to Deleuze's Synthesis of Time. The importance herein for Deleuze's Philosophy of Time is what it transforms man, or more rapidly, man's position into. Subjectivity is fundamentally
altered in relation to passivity. This human subject is removed from the possibility of agency within the first and second syntheses, and likewise taken from the Kantian setting of critique of man as primary synthesizer of processes to man as process, man in process. That's what Deleuze changes Kant's temporality into. Deleuzean temporality reduces Kant's critique to shift humanity to the object side. Deleuze states time is subjective, but it is essentially the subjectivity of a passive subject. And a subjectivity which is disallowed the entire of the box it knows of is practically useless. To say one has a subjective perception is to live as a transcendently institutionalized being. James Willian sort of articulates this position well, the first synthesis
implies overlapping urations or stretches that cannot be reduced to a single line or a dominant narrative, and yet subjective understanding of man can attend to the most banal causal connections at an alarming rate. The time in the inside may be of a folded past and future into the present, but that doesn't stop the self of Oedipus from finding a linearity to suffocate upon. These contradictions happen, appear and are enacted on the outside, and come in as actualisation, becoming rooted to the fluidity of capitalism. Contradictions dissolve into the clock. Man's linearity dissolves everything because that's how he perceives it, so it must make sense. Man, as passive desiring machine, cannot attest to a contradiction, for from his point of view, all is going correctly forward. A puppet makes no mistakes in itself.
mentioned prior was the temporal distinction between the first and second syntheses to extrapolate this on on this however we see a difference in the conception of the past where in the first synthesis the form of the past is folded into the passing present as retention whereas the past of the second synthesis is a pure past once again the notion that it is a determining past is prevalent here for the pure past is virtual it is a connective mode of retained temporality. The pure past is numenal, it is a condition for passing of actual passing presence. This is what Williams states. In relation to the transcendental then, this temporal realm of the pure past is a behind of a deterministic quality. In a mode of reciprocal determination, this numenal plane of the pure past completes the actual, utilising the connective capability of
the pure past. The virtualities of the pure past infect the present transcendentally. It is an infection and infiltration from the outside. This infection is fundamentally processed via the process of re-territorialization, de-territorialization, and zero. And as such, it is immediately immunitized into the dynamics of capitalism. Everything is just always taken back into it. The mode or synthesis in which this happens is via the third of Deleuze's, the three syntheses of time which as is classically philosophically close as one could get to an articulation of the temporal aspects of the accelerative process of the accelerative process it's already been seen via extrapolation of the first two synthesis that the subject within Deleuzean
philosophy is not lost but demoted it's passive and it's just demoted the third synthesis is a theorization of fracturing in relation to the subject but this is a fracturing of the Deleuzean subject, of the subject as process within process. To articulate the third synthesis, I must return to the first. At its most stripped back, the first synthesis is an understanding of the subjects placed within the Deleuzean continuation of critique, that the subject and the inside are unable to control their relation and the effects put upon them by the syntheses of the outside. When we move to the third synthesis, we place this first synthesis onto the circle of the eternal return. Deleuze states, the caissera, along with the before and after, that it orders once and for all, constitutes the fracture of the eye. And so on the circle of the eternal return, there is a cut,
a fracture. Up until that point, the cut, the first synthesis was passive in the creation of a subject. The subject was stuck in a momentary or event caged happening, which just subsumed the the anticipation of the future and the retention of the past into a present and it was just passive in in the creation of itself and it was a desiring machine whom within that previously allowed section of first synthesis it begins to form itself but it's locked the locked the the kaiser happens which is a cut with its inherent implication of a before and an after it slices the eye of this you know the ego the eye of the subject and creates this event in this way the third synthesis begins but the beginning is always a middle so it's like a new middle
it begins this transcendental ordering of time the kaisura is the drama of time for with cutting and creation of a new event there begins multiple new relations between the event the before and the after so james williams states there is a necessary assembly of time implied by any possible cut in time this assembly depends upon an image standing in as a symbol of the times assembled what does that mean the times assembled have been synthesized in relation to subjects in the mode of the first and second synthesis passive subjective conceptions of time created by a primary transcendental temporal assembly that is to say the the prior assemblage of time that we find in the first and
second syntheses are just passive we know this in difference in repetition however de l'erste states non-localizable links action at a distance systems of replay of resonances and echoes objective chance signals and signs roles transcending spatial situations and temporal successions one of many of these synthetic times de l'erste states are assembled upon an image standing as a symbol of the times assembled a symbol event or event assembly or synthesis is created from this cut on the circle of time. A novel or new action is dependent on this cut. This is where the new is. For without a cut, a fracture or a break, it remains only a possibility. There is no event, no assemblage, no time image without the new. The future is not continuation,
it's fragmentation. But what of this future? Well, Deleuze states the new, as produced in a present act and conditioned by the third synthesis of time as cut, assembly order and series is itself dependent on the repetition as the internal return of difference. What the hell does that mean? The circle, that is the eternal return, spins as an assemblage of time, a passive assemblage of time. It makes its return, its spin, it's cut in the third synthesis, fractured, and the previous cycle, circle, is knocked out of joint. So the circle is decentred. If you think of one point and a circle centred on it and circling around it, when the cut happens, the circle is knocked off this centred point and it begins to spiral in a different direction. It's cut and it's fractured and it's knocked out of joint. The circle is de-centred but the cycle continues. This time
de-centred and spinning from a new temporal locale means the cut acts as this bringer of difference. The time is now different and new. The future is this new cycle so the cut brings the new and within the cut is the potential of zero. So when the cut happens that is a moment in which the the vectoring and the target of productive productive potentiality for capitalism is retargeting itself towards something that's more productive the eternal return never has never had this originary position it is an eternal spiral or descented circle mutating its temporal self by way of fragmentation into a new different temporal circulation thus far i will continue on this route but i don't want to bog you down and i'd like you to
go over the notes of this lecture because these this extra synthesis is very complicated before i connect it to what capitalism does to it and its connections with the body without organs so you know thus far it's been an exercise of extrapolating the key components and parts and functions and in the next lecture i'll begin to draw from the all these elements that we've learned about so far bring them together and to actually begin to construct how the process of acceleration is and works and what it is and what the process is which since the introduction has not really mentioned by name but has definitely been present you know it's it's there already we just need to assemble it now um any prior definition of accelerationism without extrapolating on these respective complexities workings and functions their interactions would be kind of useless because
you'd have to build it as you go i'd rather put the parts first and then assemble them we needed to understand this loop before we can understand the process so now from now on the next lecture is this matter of assembly but thanks very much for listening to this one and i will see you in the next lecture