OK, I admit it; I was (am still) frustrated by Thursday's class. The dense, specialist jargon used by Guattari (and his translators) in The Three Ecologies has gotten me down. I want to understand his ecosophy; but I am lost in the convolutions of his language. Of course, all experts can be guilty of this tendency. Ever listen to a scientist ramble on with graphs and statistics?
As a student in this class, it behoves me to seek clarity. No sense in continuing to whine about Guattari’s use of language. So in the spirit of discovery, I went Internet exploring. Here are some links I found:
- the online journal rhizomes Issue 15, Winter 2007;
- a book review in the journal Speculations;
- another review on a blog entitled Rebarbazon;
- a blog on The Three Ecologies;
- an article, “C(ha)osmosan”;
- an online article “Anti-Globalization and Guattari’s The Three Ecologies”;
- a summary of The Three Ecologies; and
- an online version of the book, An [Un]Likely Alliance: Thinking Environment[s] with Deleuze|Guattari.
The last link is for the reading and publishing site, Scribd. On page 176 there is a chapter entitled “Guattari's Triplex Discourses of Ecology” by Erick Heroux. The author’s aim is “to provide a critique of Guattari's explicit turn toward ecology vis-à-vis the theoretical biology of Bateson, Maturana, Varela and of "complexity science" in general, and thence his enlargement of ecology, an ecology of the postindustrial mass-mediated globe by way of a political economy and psychology, resulting in something quite different for theory” (178).
Guess what I’m reading this weekend!
Great approach Barb!
ReplyDeleteThis, from the Speculations review, seems to link directly to some of the issues in Three Ecologies we focused on: "To the extent that a convergence appears on the horizon of Deleuze/Guattari and Ecology, it is around that ‘resonant machinery of matter’: the world, filtered through a Deleuzo-Guattarian sieve, is the lively and uncontainable one of desiring-production, a world of becomings, connections, and organic-machinic-socio-psychic assemblages."
ReplyDeleteAnd the Introduction (by Bernd Herzogenrath) to An (Un) Likely Alliance is a good, approachable link between Guattari and some other ecocritical work we have been reading.
ReplyDeleteAlright, blog time! Let me chime in late in the game to say that I have a lovehate relationship with Jargon myself, and your downer, Barb. I found the three ecologies almost not complex enough, strangely. My experience of Thousand Plateaus was akin to learning a new, integrated language that felt so free of some of the dead-ends of our overused and abused english tool set, but Guattari on his own seems to be attempting a degree of "accessability", however he cloaks moments of his own uncertaintly with obfuscational phrases that seem pale clippings from the work he co-authored with Deleuze.
ReplyDeleteBad typo, please excuse me! My comment sounds like I'm getting down on your downer, Barb. I meant to write that "I feel your downer". Ahem. Thanks for these links. Anti-Oedipus is a challenging book by Guattari/Deleuze. They attack the phallocentricim at the core of Freudian philosophy.
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