Draft Intro chapter - Second Media Age and cognitive mapping

Mark Poster’s ‘Second Media Age’

The above example (coming soon as blog entry) is used as a narrative to suggest the Caribbean has entered into what Mark Poster, in 1995, has termed the Second Media Age. This second media age, while not a new concept, is something Caribbean Studies has so far paid little attention towards. In order to address this situation the dissertation intends to provide the reader with a cognitive map of how the Caribbean is being produced in the second media age. In this section I want to concentrate on describing and defending Mark Poster’s concept.
In general, the second media age differentiates itself from the first media age through being more interactive. This is due to the first media age being based on a broadcast model, creating the circumstances of film, radio, and television having a small number of producers sending information to a large amount of consumers.[1] This meant a film, for example, could reach a significant amount of the world’s population. These people would then be consumers of what Guy Debord referred to as the spectacle. In academic terms, the broadcast model of the first media age generated a debate between those arguing for the democratic possibilities (McLuhan, Benjamin, & Enzensberger), and those arguing the immanent dangers to liberty and freedom (Adorno, Habermas, & Jameson).[2] While these debates composed interesting insights for media and cultural theory, the development of new media technology has, to a certain extent, shifted the foundations of the debate as ‘new media may be seen as creating a major force that is uncontainable by’ theories of the first media age.[3] The limitations of the first media age theory then require exposure through beginning with the critics of the broadcast model – Duhamel, Adorno, and Habermas.
For Duhamel the invention of mass cinema held no benefits for consumers: ‘a pastime for helots, a diversion for the uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries…, a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence.’[4] As part of the broadcast mode, cinema, from Duhamel’s perspective, created nothing more than a spectacle for the viewer consume. His opinion echoes a high humanist critique, which installs a boundary between art, which he enjoys, and everything else (film, radio, and television) to valueless entities.[5] This view is shared by Adorno, and to a lesser extent Habermas. For Adorno, as Poster points out, the broadcast model unsettled a perceived autonomy of the subject. The reactions to television and radio are not those of the ‘liberal’ subject, but are instead the hegemonic view of the masses. In simple terms, the first media age was nothing more than a cultural industry, producing homogeneous people unable to think for themselves, ‘For Adorno and Horkeimer the broadcast model of the first media age was the practical equivalent to fascism.’[6] The result, for Adorno and Duhamel, is they ascribe to a view of equating the first media age as the production of homogeneous masses. They therefore subscribe to the view that art should be classified as separate from the first media age as only art can preserve heteronomy.
Like Adorno and Duhamel, Habermas’ The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere concludes with a similar position. His main fear is the disappearance of the public sphere as the first media age emerges into society. The problem is the retreat of what he calls the lifeworld, which provides the opportunity for communicative action and deliberative democracy. However, in his latter work, Habermas is able to argue there is an emancipatory potential for the media through bringing information to a larger audience. Yet, this still allows for a yes/no response on the part of the individual, and is certainly far away from his proposed ‘ideal speech situation’.[7]
The critics of the first media age are then concerned with a centralist media structure, where producers have the power to disseminate information/propaganda to a large amount of consumers. Their view of the first media age is not too different from Marx and Engel’s claim that ‘the ideas of the ruling class are every epoch the ruling ideas.’[8] In this scenario the ruling class would be the producers in the first media age, who the creators of ideology, (re)producing values and structures to homogenise the masses, which ultimately pacifies (class) antagonisms. The result is the ‘freedom’ of the viewing subject comes under threat from the first media age.
While not being naïve, there were also defenders of the first media age, who were able to argue for ‘emancipatory’ potentials and possibilities. Marshall McLuhan, for instance, considered the first media age as part of the larger epoch of the electronic age. In his (in)famous maxim, ‘the medium is the message’, McLuhan adopts an approach to media technology that focuses not on the content but rather on the medium. The main argument is ‘media technologies carry distinct temporal and spatial specificities to which correspond definite frameworks of perception.’[9] The implication of McLuhan’s ‘theory’ is electronic mediums/media will reshape perceptions of the world. The electronic age is therefore one of integration through the implosion of previously established boundaries/fragmentation created through past mediums (e.g. print). One of the advantages of McLuhan’s argument against the centralist media structure, identified by Adorno, Duhamel, and Habermas, is opposing the simplistic structure they propose. For McLuhan these critics are unaware of the significance of the electronic age. Rather than experiencing the homogenisation of the masses, McLuhan argue the electronic age would see a re-tribalisation of people through electronic mediums, which presents a more decentralised understanding of media technological. However, as should become clearer when I define the second media age, McLuhan’s position is easier to defend in the contemporary world through the emergence of digital technology and the Internet.
Another cautious defender of the first media age, and quite different from McLuhan, was Walter Benjamin. In contrast to Duhamel and Adorno he ‘manages to avoid disdain for the cultural products disseminated by electronic media.’[10] The autonomy of the subject is therefore not completely lost as the cultural industry removes possibilities for communicative action. This is because the first media age, for Benjemin, has an egalitarian property, which provides the opportunity to bring art into the everyday life of people. The consumer of art, through film, radio, and television, is also a critical consumer through having the ability to question, contemplate, and challenge what they see and hear. His interpretation of the media then provides the idea that there is a play of forces present, which means he neither dismisses nor celebrates the arrival of the first media age. The result is Benjamin’s response to the broadcast model is certainly not a one way dissemination of the producers to the consumers as argued by Adorno and Duhamel.
For Poster these debates have become ineffective as media technology has developed and the broadcast model is no longer the only media model. The second media age, which is defined through multiple producers, distruburtors, and consumers means ‘an entirely new configuration of communication relations in which boundaries between these terms collapse.’[11] The issue then becomes one of trying to come to grips with the model of the second media age, which means considering: cyberspace, the Internet, virtual reality, and digital technology. Instead of considering the problem of the relation between the spectacle (film, television, and radio) and the consumer, the main problem becomes one of conceptualising the issue of interactivity. To illustrate this point David Holmes distinctions of the first media age and the second media age can help out:

Table 1.1 The Historical distinction between the First and Second Media Age:[12]

First Media Age (broadcast) Second Media Age (Interactivity)
Centred (few speak to many) Decentred (many speak to many)
One-way communication Two-way communication
Predisposed to state control Evades State control
An instrument of regimes of stratification Democratizing: facilitaties universal
and inequality citizenship
Participants are fragmented and constituted Participants are seen to retain their
as a mass individuality
Influences consciousness Influences individual experiences of
space and time

Despite oversimplifying the differences between the first and second media age Holmes’ table is able to capture the differentiating aspects of the two periods. Through identifying the interactivity of the second media age Holmes, and Poster, understand ‘the imminent appearance of bidirectional, decentralized media, such as the Internet.’[13] Whereas the first media age created an interface of the spectacle to consume, the second media age technologies have a more ‘democratic’ interface, which means the producer and consumer division implodes into one another. Even Benjamin’s sympathic understanding of the first media age is only plausible from comprehending media through a broadcast model. His thesis of The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction relies on considering the reception of the consumer, and not how the consumer could be part of the productive process, which is a key element in the second media age.
The answer to considering the interface and interactivity of the second media age, for Poster, is to develop theories (and ontologies) that rethink the relation between media technologies and humans, which ‘allows their mutual imbrication to be investigated.’[14] The works of Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Donna Haraway are those most likely to advance the possibility of comprehending the social landscape of the second media age.[15] This is why I have elected to construct a Deleuzian ontology, which will introduce the reader to the machinic thought of philosopher Gilles Deleuze (and psychoanalysis Felix Guattari) through the concepts of: becoming; machines; and assemblages. The advantage of this machinic thought is the ability to provide a posthumanist ontology[16] that can consider the new assemblages of the second media age ‘that erase the humanist subject and bypass the human/non-human opposition.’ [17]
The concept of the second media age is not one without its problems and requires a defence of choosing this concept to ground the dissertation. The first main problem comes with the question of periodisation, something Poster has also considered. The use of periodisation could suggest a clear division between the first and second media age, which implies the first media age is over and/or surbordinated to the second media age. Used in this fashion the period of the second media age serves as totalising concept. In conjunction with Mark Poster I intend to avoid any such totalising periodisation through implying the Caribbean has entered into a new age:

Yet the insertion of a period may suggest not a passage from one state of being to another but a complexification, a folding of one structure upon another, a multiplying or multiplexing of different principles in the same social space. Periods or epochs do not succeed but implicate one another, do not replace supplement one another, and are not consecutive but simultaneous[18]

The second media age is not to be thought of a new distinct evolutionary stage of human development, but rather the emergence of new media technologies the form assemblages to coexist and produce the Caribbean. Adopting such an approach allows for recognition that the emergence of something new does not imply the disappearance of that which went before. The period of the second media age then has to coexist and is not a privileged reference point for explaining all things producing the Caribbean.
The concept of the second is also used in the spirit/technique of what Levi-Strass terms as bricologe. As Derrida writes, ‘the bricoleur, says Levi-Strauss, is someone who uses “the means at hands,” that is, the instruments he finds at his disposition around him, those which are already there.’[19] The implication is a new discourse is not created, but rather transformed and altered through borrowing and extending another person’s concepts. The metaphysics of the presence (i.e. contemporary discourses) can then offer methodological tools as an analytical gesture for the researcher and the reader. The intention is therefore to borrow from another in order to create a unique use for the instruments around him. The advantage of bricolage is the dissertation does not claim to be engineered out of nothing, but rather borrowed, repeated, and altered from other discourses available.
The main reason for choosing the concept of the second media age is I believe it to be an empirical concept. While the concept is formed/disseminated through language it aims to represent the shifting dynamics of experiences of media. The concept is then an example of what David Hume would term as a Copy Principle, which is when an idea (the second media age) is derived from an impression or impressions.[20] The idea then relates to the outside world, and intends to consider how ‘we’ are experiencing the world differently. Poster then attempts to contemplate the world from an affirmative perspective through creating a concept that relates to a change (becoming) in the world. This type of empiricism is defined through not trying to find the ‘universal or eternal, but to find the conditions under which something new is produced (creativeness).’[21] The basic assumption of the second media age is therefore the state of things have transformed from what they were. The coherence of the second media age then must come from experiences elsewhere that reinforce, challenge, and alter the concept. The empirical sections of the dissertation should be thought of providing this (in)coherence to Poster’s concept, which brings it into contact with actual experiences of the second media age producing the Caribbean.


The Second Media and ‘The Need for Maps’

If it is accepted that the Caribbean (and the world) is in the second media age, which is not a totalising period, but rather one that has emerged into life, then the question arises: how to study the second media age? For his book Poster considers three perspectives: ethical-political; enlightenment; and cartography. The ethical-political dimension aims to consider the opportunity for transformation through ‘the ability of humans to change their circumstances.’[22] Research of this type would then aim to examine the second media age to establish the progression of political and ethical circumstances. The enlightenment notion tries to overcome the ‘confusion about the nature of domination and the character of alternatives’[23] through providing knowledge about the second media age. While cartography is the attempt to provide an ‘analysis of the conditions, or as Frederic Jameson says, a “cognitive mapping,” rather than insisting on the revolutionary character of agency.’[24] Despite the three study perspectives of the second media age having interconnects, this dissertation will largely concentrate on providing the reader with a cognitive map of how the Caribbean is produced in the second media age. This is with the hope of not connecting the analysis to any political project or ideology.
In his influential essay, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Frederic Jameson concludes with a section entitled ‘The Need for Maps.’ Discussing Kevin Lynch’s ‘The Image of the City’ Jameson suggests an alienated city is a place people are unable to map in their mind. The city is a mystery for the people. They cannot map either their location or the urban totality (e.g. the infrastructure). To overcome these circumstances a process of disalienation is embarked upon. This process becomes the practice of exploring and mapping the city. The benefits are the mapping allows the people to become (more) aware of their surroundings as they discover places then never knew existed. These places then become part of their mind as a cognitive map is created. As a city is never ‘finished’ then the process of creating a cognitive map is never complete, and is a continual process requires taking into account the becoming of the city.
It is my belief that Caribbean studies provides various cognitive maps that allow the becoming(s) of the Caribbean to be mapped. However, at present, Caribbean studies is alienated from the second media age is the same way that people are alienated from Jameson/Lynch’s city.[25] There appears a general unawareness of specific conditions, which involve second media age technology, that are relevant for the Caribbean. The dissertation is then part (and only part) of the process of disalienating Caribbean studies from this period. It is a map for the reader to create, or at least add to, their cognitive map of how the Caribbean is produced in the second media age. To achieve this map, which connects with the empirical natures of Poster’s concept, empirical data is analysis as a form of cartography.
However, the practice of cartography should always recognise the dangers and prejudices in mapping. The colonial experience of the Caribbean is evidence of this characteristic. In Consuming the Caribbean Sheller provides multiple examples of the colonists mapping the region, ranging from the cartography of botanical species and racial/ethnic categories. As form of Orientalism the white Europeans were also able to claim ‘superiority’ through mapping racial classification as form of social Darwinism that ‘seemed to accentuate the “scientific” validity of the divisions of races into advanced and backward.’[26] The mapping of ‘information’ was then a crucial art of establishing and maintaining power relations in colonial times for Western hegemony. In addition cartography is also a form of making things invisible as will as making things visible. The cartographer is unable to map all the details of a given field into their map. For example if a cartographer concentrates on proving population statistics of a given area then there may not be ‘room’ to add the geological information of the area (e.g. mineral composition). The map then selectively brings information to the forefront while other detail is absent. The consequence is there no inherently ‘correct’ map of a landscape, as this depends on the prejudicing certain empirical date over other data. I will return to this problem when I discuss the empirical data of this dissertation, which I intend to argue are legitimate prejudices for mapping the production of the Caribbean in the second media age.
In respect to these problems of cartography it may seem more appropriate to avoid mapping. A legitimate view could declare: has not the Caribbean suffered enough from cartography! While I am sympathetic to this view I also believe cartography is beneficial and almost something necessary. The aim of this cartography is to neither to condemn or celebrate the second media age, but rather analyse the conditions producing the Caribbean. This ‘type’ of cartography is similar to Michel Foucault’s in Discipline and Punish, which was able to map particularly disciplinary procedures used to produce docile bodies. The reader then ‘receives’ a cognitive map of these disciplinary procedures and can use the map as a tool to consider and research other aspects of society. The map also does not need acceptance on the part of the reader, who can challenge the empirical data, the method of cartography (style), the political implications, ethical considerations, and the absences (what is missing?). Producing a map is therefore not an objective exercise, but rather a critical exploration and experimentation on both the part of the author and reader.
[1] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995) p3
[2] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age p1
[3] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age p18
[4] From Scenes de la vie future (1930), as quoted by Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969) p239
[5] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age p5
[6] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age p6
[7] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age 12-13
[8] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology edited by C.J. Arthur (London: Lawerence Wishart, 1970) p64
[9] David Holmes, Communication Theory: Media, Technology, and Society (London: Sage, 2005) p39
[10] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age p14
[11] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age p1
[12] David Holmes, Communication Theory: Media, Technology, and Society p10
[13] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age p19
[14] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age p19
[15] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age p19
[16] Posthumanist ontology simple means that humans are not the privileged centred for existence, which therefore avoids subject-oriented theoretical/ontological perspectives. The result is humans do not disappear, but they are no longer in the privileged place they took from god when Nietzsche declared ‘god is dead’
[17] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age p19
[18] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age p21
[19] Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference (London: Routledge, 2006) p360
[20] In David Hume’s lexicon impressions corresponds to both feeling and experience. This means that an idea has to be an idea of something. See Harold Noonan, Hume (Oxford: OneWorld, 2007)
[21] Gilles Deleuze, Dialogues II (London: Continuum, 2002) vi
[22] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age p22
[23] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age p22
[24] Mark Poster, The Second Media Age p22
[25] As the literature review shall demonstrate this view has a certain hyperbolic claim. To a certain extent, the creating of a cognitive map in the second media age has already started. However, this map is so far from being sufficient.
[26] Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Concepts of the Orient (London: Penguin, 1995) p206

draft section of PhD- machinic hetrogeneous of the caribbean

I am in the painful process of composing draft chapters for my PhD, and thought I'd post some of the sections on my blog. This one is the construction of my Deleuzian ontology for the Caribbean, which uses Deleuze's concepts of becoming, machines, and assemblages. In sum the dissertation is arguing the Caribbean has entered into the second media age (Poster, 1995), and a cognitive map (Frederic Jameson) of how the Caribbean is being produced in the second media age is required for Caribbean Studies, which can be achieved through deleuze's empiricism and machinic ontology first laid out in Anti-Oedipus.

As always all comments are welcome. The following is introducing the chapter and starting to discuss Deleuze's concept of becoming. As this is a rough section please forgive the grammar.



The Machinic Heterogeneous of the Caribbean: Deleuzian Ontology

‘a philosopher is not only someone who invents notions, he also perhaps invents ways of perceiving’
Gilles Deleuze

‘It is when you decide what exists that you tie your thought to being’
Alain Badiou

‘I am not a man I am a machine’
Maximo Park


Introduction:
To understand how the period of the second media age[1] is producing the Caribbean, and in order to provide a cognitive map, a Deleuzian ontology is appropriate for the dissertation’s purpose. The following section is dedicated to constructing the Deleuzian ontology, created from the three Deleuzian concepts: becoming; Deleuzoguattarian machines; and Assemblages. In simple terms these concepts are used to construct an ontology that argues the Caribbean is in the process of becoming, which is composed of Deleuzoguattarian machines that form assemblages. The second media age therefore represents a new becoming of the Caribbean, as machines of the second media age are part of the assemblages that produce the Caribbean. To qualify this statement each of the Deleuzian concepts that form the ontology require a clear description. These concepts are described separately, which should help the reader understand their complexity and their practicality for contemplating the Caribbean in the second media age. Where possible I shall provide empirical examples that reinforce the ideas of the concepts in an attempt to avoid this section being overly abstract. The ontology of the dissertation can best be described as a machinic ontology connected to the concept of becoming.
The structure of this section follows the following outline. Firstly, there is a brief discussion/defence of electing to choose a Deleuzian ontology, which asserts that Deleuze’s philosophy is a practical philosophy, and one that is capable of understanding the significance of technology in producing the Caribbean without assuming a social or technological deterministic position. Secondly, the concept of becoming of is described, which argues the Caribbean ought to be conceived as a movement, which is a productive flux. Becoming is then opposed to other (philosophical) concepts of movement, which argues becoming is more appropriate for understanding how the Caribbean is produced. Thirdly, the three main characteristics of Deleuzoguattarian machines are introduced: production of production; production of code; and the production of consumption. As the name of these features suggest, Deleuzoguattarian machines argue for a productivist ontology, but one that crucially understands production differently from the economic theories that focus on the mode of production. Fourthly, Deleuze’s concept of the assemblage is explained to complete the three concepts of the dissertation’s ontology. Assemblages are required as a concept because Deleuzoguattarian machines are not discrete entities, and instead the emphasis is on how machines connect with one another to form assemblages. The concept of assemblages, following Manuel DeLanda, can then provide a theory of society, ranging from: single persons; networks; organisations; governments; cities; and nations.[2] One of the main reasons and attractions for using the concept of assemblage, which is explained below, is that is avoids essentialism and totalities, as machines can enter, be removed, or be de/re-coded in assemblages. Fifthly, I briefly relate the dissertation’s ontology to Antonio Benitez-Rojo’s Deleuzian ontology in The Repeating Island.



Why Deleuze? :
Arguably, there are more reasons for avoiding Deleuze, than there are trying to construct a Deleuzian ontology, aiming to understand how the Caribbean is produced in the second media age. Such reasons, for example, could be composed of the following: the idiosyncrasy of his style is too heterodox for practical research; his philosophy is non-relevant for the Caribbean; his philosophy is nothing beyond vitalism; his philosophy is a mathematical one; and he is a philosopher of de-materialism and spirituality.[3] While each of these critiques, or readings, of Deleuze’s philosophy are not without merit, they suffer from either concentrating too narrowly on certain aspects, or miss the practicality of Deleuze’s philosophy. Even though this Deleuzian ontology is only constructed around three Deleuzian concepts, it avoids a narrow reading of Deleuze, and (should) indicate the practicality of his thought, which becomes relevant for the Caribbean.[4] As this section of the dissertation makes clear below, Deleuze’s philosophy is curious and fixated with the new and novel, which is a relevant issue for producing a cognitive map of the Caribbean in the second media age, as this is a new and novel period for the Caribbean. Importantly, there is also the ability of Deleuze’s philosophy to contemplate the role and significance of technology in society.
There are two false positions that should be avoided when considering and analysing technology in social sciences: social determinism and technological determinism. Social determinism, in simple terms, would argue the role of technology is unimportant, and explains things from the social perspective. This views technology as inert and without agency, and would stress the social formation of a society or an event has nothing to do with technology. One only need think of Columbus’ voyages of ‘discovery’ to realise this position is untenable, as the technological development of the Portuguese navy allowed them the possibility of crossing the Atlantic ocean. In many respects, events or social formations are made possible from the technological developments of a society or culture, which opens up the possibilities of new experiences. In constructing a machinic ontology, the philosophy of Deleuze is able to account for this property of life, and understands the significance of new machines becoming part of the social.
However, while realising technological development creates new experiences for life, this does not mean the role of technology should be understood from a technological deterministic position. This perspective, in simple terms, would remove agency from the social and argue technology is the agent that requires analysis to understand social. The social is therefore only produced as a result of the technologies, and what occurs is a reverse humanism, where the objects (the technology) are given complete primacy over the subject (the human).[5] Deleuze collapses the distinction of machines being separate from humans, which is explain below, and creates an ontology that gives the primacy of production neither to human, technical, or natural machines, but can only be understood in terms of how these machines form assemblages with one another.

Deleuzian Movement: The Becoming of the Caribbean

For Deleuze movement is a crucial component of his philosophy. This movement is a specific type of movement and is termed as becoming. For Deleuze, following Bergson, there is no pre-existing identities (beings), but rather a productive life flux, drawing on the materials and energies of the world. This means things (Deleuzoguattarian Machines) are historical constituted and there are no timeless essences to ground beliefs (e.g. God, Human nature, Platonic ideals) as these are all in the process of becoming. Becoming, as a movement, also has no fixed end or predetermined goal (telos), nor any logical order for becoming as becoming progresses ‘not from a logical order, but following alogical consistencies or compatibilities’ as ‘no one, not even God, can say in advance whether two borderlines with string together or form a fibre, whether a given multiplicity will or will not cross over into another given multiplicity.’[6] Becoming, as a concept, relies on the opportunity or chance for things to occur, which means movement is not predetermined. The future, which the present moves into, is therefore conceived as an open whole in terms of providing infinite potentialities. While this may appear an abstract, or vague, a relatively simple example can demonstrate becoming in process, and how it becomes a practical and actual phenomenon.
Imagine an apple falls from a tree to a ground composed of soil. At that point the apple has a duration, or identity, as an apple. This would focus on the present materiality of the apple, taking into account its substance and form. However, in terms of becoming, the apple is in a flux, and Deleuze terms this ‘pure becoming’[7], where the apple has had an infinite amount of identities previously, and will be an infinite amount of identities in the future. For example, the previous amount of identities of the apple comes from the forces that produced the apple: the sun; the rain; the fertiliser in the soil; the farmer producing an orchid field; and so forth. Importantly is it recognised there is a multiplicity of forces that have assembled to produce the apple. In terms of the future of identity of the apple this is open to the infinite/open whole, and, for example, could become energy for a human which can lead to producing other things. Yet, as Deleuze states about becoming; ‘what is real is the becoming itself, the block of becoming, not supposedly fixed terms through which that becoming passes.’[8] This is an important aspect of becoming, and Deleuzian philosophy, which does not attach itself to transcendent notions or fixed terminology, but rather the actual blocs of becoming and their productive features. The metamorphosis of life, and the Caribbean, is therefore crucial for the concept of becoming, as the concept encourages thought to focus on the experiences and blocs of becoming occurring. The concept of becoming also demonstrates a Dionysian affirmation of life, where creation and destruction are on the same plane[9] as transformation and alteration cause destruction through their creation.
The example therefore demonstrates that becoming is not an object focused approach (e.g. identity), but rather a focus of coexistence and alliance. This illustrates that things are not separate or in a vacuum, and form consistencies and compatibilities with other things – the apple forms a compatibility with the ecosystem. However, these consistencies are not essential, but historically produced features that can alter or change. Deleuze’s provides the famous example of a wasp’s compatibility with an orchid, where the wasp becomes part of the orchid’s reproductive apparatus.[10]
The choice of providing the empirical example of the apple to describe the movement/process of becoming was also elected to demonstrate that becoming is not an anthropogenic centred movement. In contrast becoming can occur as a human mind-independent property of life. Deleuze, in Anti-Oedipus, takes the position to the extreme, arguing that consciousness of man is a historical product of becoming, and may have not of occurred if the contingencies of history were different. This point is also stressed in his book on Nietzsche.[11] The significance is becoming, as a productive force, is not a human centred concept, but a decentred concept, focusing on various bloc of becoming. The reason why this decentred concept of becoming is relevant for understanding how the second media age produces the Caribbean becomes most evident in the Google chapter. This is because search algorithms are now created as part of the second media age, which are used to move through, search, and databank the Internet. These forces of becoming, analysed later, are important as the search algorithms are part of the blocs of becoming that produce the Caribbean through the Google organisation.




[1] The concept of the second media age is from Mark Poster, The Second Media Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995)
[2] See Manuel DeLanda, A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity (London: Continuum, 2006)
[3] Hallward – dematerial/spiritual, Badiou-vitalism, DeLanda – maths (ISVP)
[4] The reason why I believe this ontology avoids a narrow reading of Deleuze is that the three concepts of the ontology are crucial for understanding any Deleuzian ontology which considers all of his main published books. This is contrary to Manuel DeLanda and Alain Badiou, where the former argues Difference and Repetition is Deleuze’s main book for his ontology, and where the latter critiques Deleuze from mainly reading his earlier pre-Guattarian books.
[5] This reverse humanism is seen in the work of Jean Baudrillard. However, we should read this as a science fiction, which is intending to warn people of the dangers of society becoming ever more reliant on technology through the risks of a new master/slave dialectic emerging where humans become the slaves of the technology machines, as seen in the popular trilogy of the Matrix.
[6] Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (London: Contiuum, 2004) p276
[7] Gilles Deleuze, A Logic of Sense (London: Continuum, 2004) p3
[8] Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus p262
[9] For Deleuze’s clear Nietzscheanism see Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy (London: Continuum, 2004) Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (London: Continuum, 2004) & Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus
[10] Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus p11
[11] ‘Nietzsche knew the hour had come…to remind consciousness of its necessary modesty is to take it for what it is: a symptom; nothing but a symptom of a deeper transformation and the activities of entirely non-spiritual forces’ from Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy p39