tuluum's Diaryland Diary

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A Gauche

Deleuze on 'The Left'....

"being on the left is a problem of becomings, of never ceasing to become minoritarian. That is, the left is never of the majority, and for a very simple reason: the majority is something that assumes that it's not the huge quantity that votes for something, but it assumes a standard <�talon>; in the West, the standard that every majority assumes is: 1) man, 2) adult 3) manly/virile , 4) city dweller... Ezra Pound, Joyce say things> like that, it's a standard. So, the majority by its nature will go for whomever or whatever aggregate at a particular moment will succeed with this standard, that is, the supposed image of the urban, virile, adult male such that a majority, Deleuze insists, is never anyone, it's an empty standard. Simply, a maximum of persons recognize themselves in this empty standard.

So, he continues, women will make their mark either by intervening in this majority, or in the minorities according to groupings in which they are placed according to this standard. Deleuze clarifies this: being a woman is not a given by nature, women have their own becomings-woman; and so, if women have a becoming-woman, men have a becoming-woman as well. Deleuze reminds Parnet of talking earlier about becomings-animal, about children having their own becomings, not being children naturally. Parnet wonders that men cannot become men, and that's tough! Deleuze says, no, that's a majoritarian standard, virile, adult, male... they can become women, and then they enter into minoritarian practices. The Left, Deleuze concludes, is the aggregate of processes of minoritarian becomings. So, says Deleuze, quite literally, the majority is no one, the minority is everyone, and that's what being on the left is: knowing that the minority is everyone and that it's there that phenomena of becomings occur. That's why however great they think are, they still have doubts about the outcome of elections."

http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/CStivale/D-G/ABC2.html

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CLIX MORE LOVE MY WAY!

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3:02 p.m. - Monday, Dec. 22, 2003

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