Category: Deleuze (and Guattari, sometimes)
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By Gordon Hull I made myself wait until I was settled into the summer to read Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan’s Code: From Information Theory to French Theory. It was absolutely worth the wait. Code offers a look into the role of cybernetic theory in the development of postwar French theory, especially structuralism and what Geoghegan calls…
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By Gordon Hull I want here to tie together the preceding several posts (one, two, three, four, five) and finish the case for a Deleuzian undercurrent (perhaps better to say, Deleuzian and Althusserian undercurrents) to Foucault’s 1969 “What is an Author” seminar. Recall the specific point of interest: in a somewhat odd moment near the…
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Last time, I began the to make the case that there is evidence of an engagement with Deleuze in Foucault’s “What is an Author.” Specifically, I made the case that there is an implict Platonism behind the concept of authorship as Foucault articulates it. This time, I will look at the way that Barthes overturns…
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By Gordon Hull Toward the end of “What is an Author,” Foucault distinguishes between the “founder” and “initiator [instaurateur]” of a discourse. Galileo is the paradigmatic example of the former, and Marx of the latter. This is a puzzling distinction, to say the least. Let’s begin with the terminology: Although “founder [fondateur]” is common enough,…
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By Gordon Hull As I noted last time, the Supreme Court has decided to take up a case about copyright in state codes. Specifically, Georgia contracts with Lexis to produce an annotated version of its code, which is the state then blesses with the title “Official Georgia Code Annotated” and claims copyright in. The question…
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By Gordon Hull A couple of weeks ago, I noted my newly discovered appreciation for Philip Agre’s “Surveillance and Capture” and outlined why I think his development of capture (and retreat from surveillance) is particularly applicable to the privacy concerns surrounding big data. Here, I’d like to suggest that Agre’s distinction is also helpful in…
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I've just uploaded a (relatively minor) revision of my SPEP paper from this fall in Salt Lake City to SSRN. The paper is ""Confessing Preferences: What Foucault’s Government of the Living can tell us about Neoliberalism and Big Data," and the abstract is: Foucault’s 1979-80 Collège de France lectures, On the Government of the Living,…
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Big Data theorists have, for a while, been warily eyeing the growth of the “Internet of Things” (IoT), which is when “smart” technology is integrated into ordinary household devices like refrigerators and toasters. New fridges all have warning lights that remind you to change the water filter; IoT fridges will order the new filter for…
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When it comes to learning, Deleuze argues that “it is so difficult to say how someone learns.” (DR 23). More dramatically, Deleuze adds, there “is something amorous – but also something fatal – about all education.” (DR 23). In learning to drive a stick shift car, for example, it is not sufficient simply to be…
New APPS 