I'm done watching this

Isn't it true that the ongoing cinematization of existence occurs in spite of our desire to actually see what is produced? Our joy, our stimulation, lies almost entirely in the (anticipation and moment of the) absolute captivation which video inaugurates. We capture images, and are captured by capturing images; eventually, we only recognize ourselves and others through such images.

"Reality" television has a similar structure of addiction. It is more important to record something than to have something to record. We can push this further: the total flow of television doesn't just erase pre-existing images and replace them with its own; it captivates through a procedure of subjectivization. The television watches us: as the audience becomes the image, (once properly alienated from themselves,) they thereby gain an "objective" understanding of themselves, but only at the cost of forgoing self-ownership. From this null perspective, we only have generic, faceless subjects, undead subjects who live entirely through images, imaginary subjects recording what is seen with the 'objectivity' of the camera lens.

Now perhaps the camera is rightly called "objective" if only that it is the objectification of the Other perspective as such, but in fact, it is more accurate to say the camera subjectivates, annuls objectivity in a secret way, that is, by dominating the imagination, by causing the subject to believe himself imaginary. The camera holds everything in its grasp, and thus cannot exist without suffocating existence, depriving viewers access to fresh air or alternate perspectives, and perhaps to press this metaphor a little too hard, these images squeezes the air of original words out from our lungs, replaces interpretation with advertising. Toxic air and clean become indiscernible as lies from truth.

If enlightenment amounts to a sensitivity to truth above material concerns, television forces the "truth" of consumerism to its vulgar limit: what materializes before our eyes is not the product, but a fantasy in which the desire of the product reigns, i.e., the desire of the commercial is to instill desire within us. How? At first glance, by hypnotism (both sublime and subliminal,) or, more simply, by an apparent hallucination which would evoke "positive" (profitable) associations... but upon further reflection, we percieve that the apparently immaterial fantasy of enjoyment (the proper operative field of the commercial product) has actually been concretized in the marketed-image.

The surrealistic consumer-utopia of commerciality is the same non-reality in which an empty Oneness has taken the place of the many, where addiction has replaced truth and where submission has taken the place of struggle. In the marketed-image, which is a reflection of our voluntary unconsciousness, we have found the "truth" of our speculative non-lives-- that the truth was long ago replaced by a simulation. Captivated by the time of the spectacle, there is no longer actual reality, only a flux of repeated images. This is strictly worse than Magritte: the problem is not that this image isn't (say) a Coke, it's that (so to speak) it is a Coke, that is, it's nothing, the pure semblance of property which is already its theft (lack). When the mass media, particularly television, become totalizing instruments of the state irrationality, they are no longer harmless diversions, but the medium of an aggressive assertion of dominance. The development of society is documented by the media, but we must realize this is not about image, or influence, but about something much simpler--this is about power.

The media is not just the "internal" representation of social reality (from the standpoint of a particular culture, perspective, etc.); rather, the media externalizes our desires as discoveries, modulates our separation from the real. Ultimately, we are ex-centered; the spectacle of images mediates our relationship to reality, this mediation is what separates us while connecting us. Television is an enlightenment which only further enslaves. That is not to say: "quit watching TV!" or even "quit watching stupid TV!" Rather the point is to realize the hypnosis which has almost taken hold. This is to say: we must slacken the ropes which bind us.

Which is not to be free; such an unbinding this only re-binds us tighter to the machine which would drain us of autonomous life and sun light. The point is we are free to choose; the problem is not in television, or the spectacle as such, it is in us, in allowing ourselves to become spectators. The question is ultimately what kind of society do we want: is it one of docile specators to an imaginary "reality" of television (and consumerism, etc.), or would we rather an emancipation from all forms of slavery and bondage? Shouldn't we seek to unlock the infinite latent possibilities of the present "reality" rather than get captured by shadows, absences and obscene pleasures?

Political consciousness is not to be incapable of that (percieved) lack which would bind us to our socio-economic position, but to affirm a fidelity to fidelity -- responding to subjectively-investigating interpretations, and not to advertising. As opposed to the binding of addiction and nationalism, political thought binds only in the service of un-binding totalitarianism, and un-binds only in the process of binding subjects to truth, human beings to liberty, and so forth...

Television admits of a single, fatal flaw: the nirvana of satiated consumeristic desire which it evokes so insistently is a complete fake, founded on the very lack it denies: this is Nietzsche's subtle distinction between "wanting nothing" as in (a) not wanting anything, or (b) actively wanting nothing. The nihilism implicit in television's dumbed-down reality (as though the actual situation doesn't really matter at some level) is the critical confession of an empty prophecy, a soothsayer whose lies are always the same, that is, whatever it is you don't have, that's what you need. In opposition, we don't need to turn off our televisions; we need to reject the very notion of a "well-ordered" reality, we need to challenge television to be more daring. The problem is not the media but its misuse.

Logic of Sense: Series 25

Of course, with Series 25, one could, along with Badiou, single out the title as the concept that needs to be unpacked, especially since univocity has a particularly Deleuzian ring to it. But the term—and Deleuze starts using it around p. 150 in the text—that most interests me in this series is counter-actualization.

On the one hand, we can remember the play of the virtual/actual couple that Badiou finds so fun to dismantle. On the other, the most important thing is to signify how this term works in this particularly situated part of the text. So, giving Deleuze the benefit of the doubt, we should keep in mind that Deleuze doesn’t use the word virtual anywhere in this passage. Neither does he use the word compossible in this passage, but since he has introduced this term with reference to Leibniz, I think it’s important to stress a point that Deleuze makes at the beginning of the series: there is no such thing as incompatibility between events because such a term can only be used when referring to worlds, individuals, or persons (177). Since the disjunctive synthesis is the basis for the affirmation of the divergent, worlds that actualize events can become incompatible because of the divergent singularities that populate their series; strictly speaking though, “it seems that all events, even contraries, are compatible” (177).

So, simply put, Deleuze’s question is: how is the individual able to “transcend his form and his syntactical link with a world” in order to “attain the universal communication of events” (178). But this is not so simple. Here Deleuze seems to mean the following: if, as quoted above, all events are compatible, then how is any language of the event possible? Before following Deleuze’s argument more closely, we should bring Leibniz back to the center of discussion. Deleuze draws on and explicates Leibniz’s theory of monads through The Logic of Sense, and so it would not be inappropriate here to talk about his theory of monads: all monads “perceive” the world from a distinct perspective and also link up with other monads, causing permutations in the vicinity as they link up--Deleuze continues this discussion in Difference and Repetition in order to explain the ways in which the monads express a differential relation between themselves (47). So, in themselves, monads contain a grain of truth about the world which they inhabit. Each monad must be considered in itself, a part which has a reciprocal relationship with other parts, like a link in a signifying chain, and thus a world is constructed from this double action.

Yet, as Deleuze points out, with the event we cannot refer to a grammar of worlds. Syntactically, the event seems both to insist on its extra-being and also entail a pre-individuality that lacks any true communicability. That’s unless we can bring about counter-actualization. In the sense that I understand it, counter-actualization comes about when an individual considers herself as an event and that event as “another individual grafted onto her” (178). This double affirmation extends to treating other individuals as events and their events as individuals—it is this affirmation that brings events “to the power of the eternal return” (178). The power of the eternal return is what allows for an affirmation of the disjunctive synthesis; in other words, the divergence of two series (individuals with respect to the distance of other individuals/events) is not only affirmative but it necessarily alters the other series by resonating in it and vice versa. It is the conjunction of Leibnizian monads and counter-actualization that allows for Deleuze to talk of a unique Event. It is this unique Event that the univocity of Being is: “if Being is the unique event in which all events communicate with one another, univocity refers both to what occurs and to what is said” (180).