Between Contraction and Interpolation

Posted by admin on August 23rd, 2007 filed in I and I, theory

I have been trying to find a starting point for what may or may not become a three year project. On a recent visit to Wakefield I sat in the garden with my Dad and tried to explain where I was coming from, a point from which to start, I tried to outline the field as I understood it. I’m starting with the experience and the impact of environmental sound upon an individual, what I’ve been looking for is a direction, a critical trajectory to get things started. The field, as I see it, is full of noise and the subject emerges somewhere within it. This is a comfortable place to start as one is free to interpolate, to identify any number of signals. From this initial decision or assumption I get some sense of ground upon which to begin working. The task at hand has become the identification of trajectories, or ‘divergent series’, leading out of the noise yet always arching back in.

Investigation probably isn’t the correct word, this is probably going to be more of a ‘thinking through’, or ‘thinking out’ of the imprint or impact of sound upon the behavior of subjects and their immanent constitution. I am interested in what I am currently thinking of as a fold (but have not yet read The Fold), the point at which what Deleuze calls ‘passive synthesis’ (sensation) becomes active syntheses (thought, making possible the interpolation of the field). I imagine this to be folding back or a doubling-over-itself of a process, once doubled the process loses momentum allowing a place or position to congeal and active synthesis to begin. If, by means of organic synthesis (biological functions), a privileged zone or organ emerges through the contemplation of excitations (the example given by Deleuze is an eye emerging through the contemplation and binding of light), allowing the further contraction of matters of excitation in the form of passive synthesis, it is the moment at which the latter stage moves into active synthesis that this project finds its initial grounding.

[This is based on notes taken while reading chapter two of Difference and Repetition. It shows the process of folding mentioned above, with the various syntheses marked out along the way. I suppose that it could also be a diagram showing stage one of how to make a paper penis. Please point out any klangers/slip ups in my reading. The various stages of the subject, contemplative, larval, empirical, transcendental, were added after going through John Protevi's notes on chapter two in an attempt to map it all out next to my own attempts to understand this chapter.]

The focus on sound places this line of inquiry beyond the bounds of organic synthesis as a privileged zone is clearly well established. It is the extent to which passive synthesis may distort active synthesis that I am initially drawn to. I am thinking here, in relation to constituted subjectivities, of sound as movement and as a catalyst for movement, a distorter as well as a distortion in itself. The distortions I’m looking for should take place at the level of the transcendental ego after having made an imprint at the empirical level or that of passive synthesis. These distortions, forcing movement, call for a heightened flexibility in the subject, bending the subject around them.

In a field which is constituted by the noise which fills it there are (at least) two distinct ways in that signal may emerge or be drawn out: through the contraction or the interpolation of noise. The former is a characteristic of passive synthesis and bares the force necessary to initiate movement and distortions. The latter is the mark of active synthesis, making sense of the problem of noise. My initial concern here (and I believe this to be a good starting point for this project) is with the bleed from the empirical to the transcendental ego, the imprint of the affective force of the initial signal, constituted as such through contraction, upon interpolations carried out through active synthesis.