The man who is free to obey the law is not free
The man who is free to do as he is told is not free
The man who is free to live according to the norms of a sociality created to ensure the thriving of slaves is not free
The man who knows that this is the case is a conflicted beast
And he is dangerous.
“Make your loves into war-machines, and create your wars as love-machines.” Eugene Holland, Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, 138 (translation modified).
SLAVE TO NOTHING – Terror, “Defiant,” KOTF
“How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught behind. But ’tis enough.” Herman Melville, Moby Dick, pg. 167.
“What we’re interested in is how something works, functions – finding the machine. But the signifier’s still stuck in the question “What does it mean?” Indeed it’s this very question in a blocked form. But for us, the unconscious doesn’t mean anything, nor does language. Functionalism does rule, however, in the world of micro-multiplicities, micro-machines, desiring machines, molecular formations. On this level there isn’t this or that kind of machine, a linguistic machine, say, but linguistic elements along with other elements in all the machines. The unconscious is a micro-unconscious, it’s molecular, and schizo analysis is micro-analysis. The only question is how anything works, with its intensities, flows, processes, partial objects – none of which mean anything.” Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, 21-22.
“To abandon our enslavement to truth – to have the force and courage to live with this world here and now! Happiness is the capacity or power to live one’s life actively – affirming the particularity or specificity of one’s moment in time. We live reactively, by contrast, if we try to find some true world above and beyond the world that appears to us. Nietzsche’s concepts strive to create multiple and diverse effects; a new mode or style of thinking.” Claire Colebrook, Gilles Deleuze, 19.
“The pit bull with the studded choke chain still barks at the wolves and coyotes in the hills, just like Margery’s Labrador retriever. From the perspective of the wolf or coyote, the pit bull barking ferociously from the safety of his master’s fence or measure of chain is more pathetic than the Labrador that just runs and hides: at least the Lab knows that it is prey. But in demonstrating menace or retreating in shame, the Lab and the pit bull still have far more in common than either does with the wild canine. Science might say that they’re the all the same species but this ignores the violence of the forces used to separate the dog from what it could potentially become. Organs, so to speak, cannot function without first being organized. As a result of such organization, dogs only develop to the mental state of a 10 to 30 day old wolf puppy. This means that mentally dogs never become autonomous, which allows them to be held accountable for their obedience, or lack there of.” Dave Stimpson
“Thrown into a noisy and rabble-like age, with whom he does not wish to eat from the same bowl, he could easily perish from hunger and thirst or, if he were to ‘dig in’ at last – of sudden nausea. – Perhaps all of us at one time have sat at tables where we did not belong; and precisely the most spiritual among us, those hardest to feed, know the dangerous dyspepsia that stems from a sudden insight and disappointment about our food and our table mates – the nausea of dessert. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil 282
“Understanding and reason have a long history: they are instances which still make us obey when we no longer want to obey anyone. When we stop obeying God, the State, or our parents, reason appears and persuades us to continue being docile because it says to us: it is you who is giving the orders. Reason represents our slavery, and our subjection to it creates a real enslavement: I am superior because I am a rational being!” Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 92 (translation modified).
Derelict Space 