Gilles Deleuze and Feliz Guattari – CMC 300
(A)Minor/Major Literature- using the rhetoric of a major/dominant to make a
critical statement. Creating products within the symbolic. Literature is always
within the dominant. When you use a major or minor language to attack the
dominant power structure within the dominant power structure. Like south park is
on comedy central, which is within the dominant Viacom and yet it is still
oppositional.
(B)Major/Minor Language- Discourse is built of language, the symbolic, but
language it constantly changing. Example, nouns turn into verbs like “facebooking”
or “googling.” The creation of minor language is what is cool so the minor language
has to morph as the major language takes elements of minor language as their own.
(1)Territorialization- The idea of creating control using an entirely differently
cultural background, like how the largest English speaking population is in India.
The dominant taking control of something else (a different Dominant). Creating
territory, both physically and culturally.
(2)deterrirotialization- appropriation, subordinant culture takes a signifier of the
dominant (or an even more subordinate idea that the dominant still understands)
and makes its their own in order to question the dominant (like punks wearing doc
martins or gay people calling each other “fag”). It is taking back a piece of territory.
(3)reterrirotialization- reappropriation. The dominant takes back something that
was just taken from them, and it changes and has new meaning. Take the signifiers
of rebellion, opposition itself, and creates a product.
Assemblage- multiple things coming together; desires (all things in hegemony),
experiences, institutions. When we’re older, its not that you’re a different person
when you were a kid, you’ve just added more stuff. We don’t really change, we just
add things on. Maybe you hide something that’s originally there, but its not gone.
Oppositional and hegemonic voices. An Assemblage of discourse (and that is within
the body without organs.) We are a shell, but we are born into instant discourse. It’s
not just about fragmentation but the union of that fragmentation. Schizophrenia is a
productive way of looking at the world.
Body without Organs- is a reference to Freud. You can never really understand
anyone else because we are all schizophrenics. It’s an empty shell of a body without
anything real in it (IE no organs). We are a body, but we cant make any assumptions
about our cultural backdrop like you could with scientific organs.
Rhizomes in trees- How does a tree grow? From a seed and then grows upward
(patriarical). That means that if you cut a tree off at the stem, it does. We create this
tree of knowledge, if we cut it down, everything falls apart. How to understand
knowledge. What if we think of knowledge as a rhizome instead of a tree says D&G.
(Rhizomes grow by sharing root structures. Every cell contains the DNA for every
other cell.) Nothing is black white, but fragmented. Not a binary code. It’s
distributed knowledge. Rethink knowledge. “History is written in the eyes of the
victor.” Knowledge is almost entirely based in the ideas of the dominant.
Plateaus- it isn’t just that you have fields stacked on top of each other, but rather a
mountain with different high points, but its all one mountain. You choose what field
of discourse is most important at any given time, and they over lap. (like
masculinity, or class, or blackness, etc with the OJ Simpson example.) It’s how you
frame yourself. Different fields of discourse, overlapped and you pick the “self”
that’s most important in a given situation. Displacing one habitus with another
Allusive- Jameson (Baudrillard btw Allusive and Critical)
Critical- Lyotard
Onotological- H&N (D&G between Critical and Onotological)