Welcome to the fourth lecture on the work of the CCIU. In this lecture I will analyse the CCIU's work on capitalism and its relation to the concept of the outside which I've expanded on in previous lectures. Now that we have this relatively thorough system or structure in relation to Kant and Deleuze we can begin to utilise this system to understand how and why certain things happen and also where they come from. There are four texts which deal with capitalism specifically and various excerpts from the CCIU writings which cryptically deal with it. With that said, there is always an undercurrent of capitalism running throughout the CCIU's writing and also throughout Nick Land's writing, and it's also dealt with by members of the CCIU later on, namely Mark Fisher in his text Capitalist Realism, Sadie Plant in Zeros and Ones,
Anna Greenspan on her work on Shanghai, and there's a lot going on with capitalism and there's reasons why. I mean, one element of biography that we could throw in here is that CCIU working in the early 90s are seeing the birth of cyberculture, which is sort of inherently linked to capitalism. So three of the texts I'm dealing with here are directly from Nick Land, namely Meltdown, which is his sort of infamous work, Machinic Desire and Circuitries. All of these can be found in Fang New Menor. And then there's another text by Nick Land and Sadie Plain called Cyber Positive. With regard to the CCIU, these texts were all written around the time of the CCIU when they were at Warwick, so I consider them canon of a sort. With that said, I will also still be using the primary CCIU writings text to expand on this section.
So first, let's go back to the body without organs and move from the general body without organs, the plane of imminence, to the body without organs of capitalism. So as you remember, each distinct thing, which is a rough terminology, has its own body without organs. Everything has its virtual side, its virtual dimension, its virtual realm. So the body without organs of each thing acts as its virtual side in opposition or in bolstering of the actual side of that thing. With capitalism, however, it does get quite strange, as you can imagine. In the Anti-Oedipus papers, Felix Guattari states, the body without organs of capitalism attempts to internalise the plane of consistency's unlimited limit. The dynamics of capitalism inherently alter cosmic relations regarding stagnation, stoppage,
and stability. So inherently, capitalism cannot and does not allow any form of completeness, because completeness and conclusion are stoppages. They stop, they halt, and this goes against everything capitalism wants. It's positive-oriented. So it assimilates everything back into its own auto-constructive system. Anything which stops and no longer continues to grow or profit or boost further expansion or work for capitalism is taken back into the general body without organs. So the body without organs of capitalism repels what we understand to be overcoding, the creation of distinctions, stabilities, clarities, stoppages. The body without organs of capitalism just cannot allow any form of overcoding and it repels the overcoding
of the desiring machine, man, back into the socius as a modified version of itself. So that is to say any form of coherent stability or completeness found within capitalism or with capitalism needs either to have internal dynamic of profitability and growth or capitalism will subsume it back into its body without organs for reuse. This is known once again as the process of de-territorialization and re-territorialization. So what capitalism is doing is creating a relationship between the general body without organs, the plane of imminence, the plane of potentiality, the absolute general plane of virtuality. It's creating a distinct relationship between that, the general body without organs, and its own body without organs. Unlike other body without organs of, say, a person or a rock or a book, the body without organs of capitalism
has its own distinct relationship with the general body without organs. It actually uses it for its own trajectory, its own teleology. Capitalism's means of perpetual continuation is articulated and made possible by this process of deterritorialization and re-territorialization. It's basically, it's made possible by the way in which it communicates with the general body without organs. At its most general level, deterritorialization is a process wherein something is virtually unshackled from its supposed organic natural actual so you have the virtual and the actual and the actual in its phenomenological reality has this presupposed natural classical or original set of relations the process of capitalist deterritorialization
unshackles it from that original set of relations and the process of re-terrorization as this sort of quasi-inverse of this process is wherein the previous virtual, which has been decontextualized, unshackled via deteralitization, is reappropriated within a new framework. So practically we may think of the concept or term of the 80s as in the 1980s. Now, unshackled from the temporal relations of the mechanical clock time, 1980 to 1989, and reappropriated into overt dramatization of the virtual 80s within contemporary society, we can begin to see how, in a practical manner, de-territorialization and re-territorialization re-appropriate itself, okay? So this concept of the 80s is de-territorialized from its original settings as found within the years 1980 to 1989,
and what we see is that it's re-territorialized now in, we can take an example, such as the TV show Stranger Things, which is dramatizing this concept of the 1980s, the original 1980s, to create further profit from it now. And this is capitalism de-territorializing something and re-territorializing something for the trajectory of its own growth and own projection. This functionality of decontextualization transforms history and narrative and linearity into a conjunction of interlinked deterritorializations and re-territorializations. So it's not a line anymore in terms of causality, but an index of virtualities to be serialized via the syntheses of the inside. So what capitalism is doing on the outside, that is what we then consider to be
the linearity of the inside. Desiree seems to have got it all wrong because this process of deterritorialization and re-territorialization on the outside, as I've previously stated, comes prior to anything happening on the inside. The inside is merely effect or symptom of what's going on the outside. So the linear time that we synthesize is simply an indexed series of virtualities which have been reappropriated by capital. The process of production, and in turn the production of history therefore, comes before history as we know it or we synthesize it. In his text circuitries, Nick Land writes, there is no dialectic between social and technical relations, but only a machinism that dissolves society into the machines whilst deterritorializing the machines
across the ruins of society, whose general theory is a generalized theory of flux. This is on page 295. So one of the difficulties here is that the process of deterritorialization and re-territorialization in relation to society and technology doesn't mean the definition of various planes. Each of these processes is interconnected at a virtual level. They have virtual natures or even body without organs of their own, which can infect, cross-contaminate, communicate, and network with the others, culminating in sort of an er-network of virtuality, which to a certain extent we can call capitalism. However, this is not capitalism's entirety. This sort of functionality of connections and communication of virtuality is a sort of like a motor for capitalism. It's what it uses to bolster its inherent teleology, its trajectory, the thing it wants to get to, which is positive
oriented growth for the sake of its own growth, production of production perpetually. Capitalism's mode of governance is to fluidly govern in any way which allows it to continue governing. It doesn't care which representations or actualities it uses, nor does it care which ideological representations of the inside it allows. It doesn't care about the inside at all. It only computes it as an output back into the outside as to modify its own body of their organ selection for a greater productive output. That is to say that all the inside is to capitalism, all the representation is to capitalism is a means to compute and work out what is the best thing to select for greater production for
itself. The inside for the CCRU and to a certain extent for Deleuze and Quattari is an after effect. It's entirely a symptom of the production which is to be found on the outside. It's a production of computation from the outside in which it perpetually selects the greatest productivity of production for capitalism. Capitalism avoids representation. It is pure techno-economic fluidity and it bastardizes the function of the general body without organs into a cosmic production thresher targeted at the sole purpose of continual production for itself from here we can see the socius as a full body it is organized striated or as deleuze and qataris stated it is the surface where all production is recorded whereupon the entire process appears to emanate
from this recording surface so here we're getting into the point where the inside creates effects and symptoms and structures which give us the illusion that the inside is in control So we can metaphorically see or envision the socius as the layer over the top of the full body without organs, the general body without organs. We can also see it as a layer of the top of the body without organs of capitalism. It's that which appears as the meta agent of production. It appears to us, society appears to us in all its representation as that which is in control. The reality, however, is one of communication. The virtuality of the body without organs of capitalism roams back and forth between the socius, the inside, and the production in itself of the outside. So what's happening here is the body without organs of capitalism, itself a mass of virtuality, is roaming between the
socius, the virtualities on the inside, figuring out what's productive there, and roaming back to the production in itself of the outside to compute back into the socius for further production. This is the transcendental dynamics of capitalism at work. Overcoded virtualities, the ones on the inside that have got stuck, that are no longer growing, that are no longer profiting. They're repelled by capitalism's body without organs and possess the machines as an alien power to form a new mode of production. That is the process there of deterritorialisation and re-territorialisation. And this process does not stop. It continues as long as there is potential stoppages. If anything stops, capitalism either suffocates it, alienates it, ostracises it, or reuses it in some form
for profit. Deleuze and Qutari make the agency of man as machine quite clear actually. They say 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 cause I cause. This is on page 22 of Antioedipus. Deleuze and Qutari writing so elusively here that one wonders if they're actually trying to reveal all the revelations that they found out. To me this is what the CCIU do or would do with this quote is actually say, well, no, it's not that machines and agents cling so closely to capital that they appear to be miraculated by it. It's actually that capital is already part of machines and agents via possession of that transcendental self that we spoke about in the earlier lectures. Even though, to Liz and Qatari, they actually allude to,
on the same page, a perverted, bewitched world where capital increasingly plays the role of the recording surface that falls back on all production. And I think they're actually quite short-sighted in this application, especially when we begin to think transcendentally. So if we think about this again, you know, we're taking this body without organs, the general body without organs, as the plane of consistency of intensities and fluxes, flows, pure emotions. Supposedly, these virtualities are then appropriated by the desiring machines via their collective possession by the process of production itself the alien force of the outside coming in and possessing our transcendental self the the self which is in connection to pure time via its immanentization into temporality in
general this possession so capitalist possessed man this possession allows for the actualization and recording of the virtual to be inscribed into the socius via the machinations of the desiring machines that is to say in in in very clear terms the processes and acts and actions of man due to the fact that man is possessed by capitalism quite literally in the form of virtuality and transcendental functions what man does at any point in all his actions they are instantly recorded by capitalism on the outside and then they are either allowed or they are de-territorialized and re-territorialized for greater profit. So man is simply working as
a node of production, an output mechanism for capitalism. Because capitalism is throughout this entire process and so the aforementioned process wherein the virtual is drawn from the body without organs and actualized by the machinations of man is altered because capitalism is just everywhere so we look at this again the body without organs is taken as the plane of all virtualities all potential these virtualities are appropriated by the flow and process of capital itself as a means towards capitalist expansion that is all the flow the virtual flows from the general body without organs are understood by capitalism's body without organs as a way to either boost or not boost in which case they'd be repelled its own growth. These flows are usually
appropriated or represented as money which in itself is appropriated by a connective form of desire which is performatively actualized by desiring machines. So then what we can begin to understand is the desires and the fads and the brands and the things that men as desiring machines head towards and grow capitalism understands these capitalism is using these for its own growth so when we remove this division between the alien power and man and actually subsume them together so the alien power is actually within man and isn't this external thing and we push it towards this Deleuze-Quartarian mode of production, where everything is imminent, and production as man,
as desiring machine, man is actually quite literally the production, this transcendentally alters the function of capitalist dynamics, from a process which controls man's actions, to a process wherein man actually is the actions, to a process which is man's very being. That is to say, via the connective and communicative function of virtuality, man is quite literally possessed by capitalism which is using him and not only then are we possessed by this alien force of capitalism itself infecting us from the outside in the delizabeth corteran sense but also we are mechanically directed and controlled via appropriated virtualities time and money as a means for further productive direction the virtual is the is the original lure for man 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 virtual. The virtual and then becomes actual, and so the desires we machinise are from the outside, and as such, not only are we mere assemblages, a clutter of loosely held together representations, but the originary, the original aspect of each identity actually is the outside itself, because the entirety of the actuals which
assemble us, which are us, they were all prior virtuals from the outside, which were initially controlled by capitalism. That is to say that each identity is simply an assemblage of components and virtual components targeted at the further expansion of capitalism. It is the virtual in all of us, desire as the virtual of the outside, which is not only in you, but is quite literally is you. And this you is caught within an auto-construction, something that is just perpetually utilizing the process of deterritorialization and re-territorialization of virtual elements and this is non-linearly from the outside and these are these are coming in from the outside
and have culminated in the creation of a you within capitalism and also as capitalism so it's not so much that you know welcome to the machine you're part of the machine as a separate cog that could exit the machine you you the eye quite literally is of the machine so why capitalism that's because the body without organs of capitalism inherently repels all striation edipolization and structure so when you think of other ideologies feudalism monarchism conservatism communism these all sort of need to be told where to stay what to do how to reappropriate because within their body without organs are distinct modes of being which they agree on and these are seen by capitalism as stoppages because there's conclusions that there's these clear teleologies
they need to remain within their event their symbol of time on the occurrence so the spiral stops with these forms of ideology capitalism sort of just sets fire to this whole idea the only system or non-system which can control utilize or produce with and from what quattari calls the blind inelectable recourse to machinism that is the general body without organs is a system which is always already and implicitly ready to allow for all paradoxes and contradictions because the body without organs is inherently undifferentiated and all its virtual flows are undifferentiated, then what you need to be able to use it is a
system which actually allows contradictions and can somehow allow contradictions to flow through it. A system which in its very apparatus is a thresher of the virtual targeting itself solely at self-propelled production. And this system is of course capitalism. And that's why it's one of The only systems, if not the only system, which could actually utilise the body without organs in this way is because it doesn't allow, it simply allows virtualities to come back and forth in any manner, targeted at one extremely fluid goal, which is production. So what does that mean in relation to the aforementioned process of deterritorialisation and re-territorialisation? the virtualities of the general body without organs are grabbed by this process of de-territorialization
and re-territorialization throughout time now not not through not throughout man's time these are throughout pure time transcendental time transcendently speaking states and events of time hold no privilege over one another the past the present of the future as per the first synthesis become mere empirical articulations from the desiring machine's point of view. They are representations. This linear mode of time, a transcendental error, is countered by Deleuze and Guattari via the connection between the process of de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation and the body without organs. You can see how linear time begins to deconstruct itself once we begin to understand that the process of a linearity within time is actually created by moments and events and states of time coming in via this process.
So time in this sense, in its relation to capitalism, becomes a synthesis of temporal events in relation to production. There is no longer an era of temporal progression, only a mode of temporal indexing, conjunction and reappropriation. A process of neologistic temporal indexing, So terms such as cyber-gothic or post-modernism, these terms, these origins aren't placed on a linear time. They are indexed. So things have happened and they are connected neologistically via the process of de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation in relation to production for capitalism. So the virtuals of the body without organs as a general plane in their actualisation via detritorialisation and re-territorialisation become temporal events, the ones we spoke about earlier where you can box it off and it becomes a symbol.
So intense events, masks of time, completing themselves and grasping with effect their neighbouring events. This process, when computed via the fluidity of capitalism and targeted towards production, is time as controlled. It's aimed time. So the atemporality with regards to the inside and purity of time is aimed by capitalism, used by it. Time does not continue anymore, it only produces, and it produces itself towards production. so when this is understood in relation to the work of the cciu we can begin to understand the dynamics of hyperstition man latches onto a fiction in his inner sense he latches onto an idea a concept the concept begins to be understood collectively and is thus understood by capitalism
as something with productive potentiality something which can help capitalism grow and as such capitalism via the utilization of the body without organs and the process of de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation plucks the needed virtuality or virtualities from history or from the general body without organs as a means to instigate a potentially productive future and the fiction then makes its way into reality. The energies of the body without organs are divine. They are in functional attachment to the primary process of production which is the outside it serves as the primary wellspring of creation which when interlinked with a system such as capitalism a transcendental system which in its inherent fluidity avoids the
repulsion of the blue willow organs it 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 and the key to which can be found via schizophrenic process. Capitalism is the great primary helmsman of the general body without organs. It is in this manner that it could only be capitalism which is the working system of what was later known as accelerationism but could only be this working system which has this communicative ability between the inside and outside. I'll see you in the next lecture where I will talk about this schizophrenic process and how it is that we can vector ourselves towards greater communication