Talk:Socius

From Capitalism and Schizophrenia

I will go through the socius concept more next week. It was rather difficult to give good examples. --Lineofflight 21:18, 7 October 2007 (CEST)

Have nothing to say. Just trying the "discussion" function. --Dnlnstrm 21:05, 7 October 2007 (CEST)

I'm just too much of a numbscull to grasp the general idea of wikiing... I'm also quite insecure when it comes to how well I actually understand Deleuze & Guattari (aren't we all?). Therefore I post my understanding/interpretation of the socius, and the references given by Christopher, on this discussion page. Is it understandable and/or usable? Here goes:

A socius is a record of production, that channels flows of desire in order for a particular mode of production to be socially reproduced. (A0 34-36) Since no production can be sustained over time without desire associated with its product (demand), no mode of production can prevail without channelling flows of desire appropriately, and thereby be socially reproduced. A mode of production is always a social reproduction.

According to Deleuze and Guattari capital itself becomes a surface where production is recorded – as the accumulation of capital over time is a recorded effect of production. But the socius of the capitalist mode of production turns this recording into the appearance that capital is the cause of surplus production, and not the effect of labour. (AO 10-11) Capital as a quasi-cause channels flows of desire so that the capitalist mode of production is socially reproduced.

Prior to the prevalence of the capitalist machine, the body of the tyrant and the body of the world acted as socius for the despotic machine and the territorial machine respectively, channelling flows of desire in such a manner that the associated mode of production was socially reproduced. (AO 10, 34-36)

--Marcus 10:59, 9 October 2007 (CEST)

Marcus: I believe all discussions are useful, and yours in particular. The whole idea of a wiki is to allow initial insecurity and then co-operatively work towars security and hopefully learn something new--Christopher Kullenberg 14:57, 9 October 2007 (CEST)

One thing I am thinking about is why "socius" is so abstract in AE... why not simply use the ordinary definition like "friendship" or "relations between people (and things)"?--Christopher Kullenberg 17:06, 9 October 2007 (CEST)

Well, Christopher, first of all I think that socius is supposed to be understood, not generelly as any association between people and things, but specifically as the association between flows of desire and modes of production. I'm not in front of AO right now, but I found this quote on the net: http://freespace.virgin.net/drama.land/projects/schizoanalysis/socius.html . D&G here seems to establish a distinction between socius and milieu. This is, I believe, very important.

Look at the quote: "We see no reason in fact for accepting the postulate that underlies exchangist notions of society; society is not first of all a milieu for exchange ...but rather a socius of inscription".

We must bare in mind that D&G were marxists. I would argue that the concept of socius is a way of explaining how the mode of production can form the entire base of society, and how we can talk about society "as a whole" - and as "capitalistic", for that matter. (The concept of socius would obviously be refused or ignored by an interpreter of Deleuze such as Manuel DeLanda... Has he ever mentioned it?) --Marcus Nilsson 18:56, 9 October 2007 (CEST)

Moreover, would any of you out there agree on my attempt of a one-line definition of socius, the first sentence in plain text above: "A socius is a record of production, that channels flows of desire in order for a particular mode of production to be socially reproduced"? It makes sense to me... :-) --Marcus Nilsson 19:05, 9 October 2007 (CEST)

It makes perfect sense, so I inserted your quote into the article. Still we need to elaborate the concept even more. Has anyone read about it in ATP?--Christopher Kullenberg 07:43, 10 October 2007 (CEST)

I'm in the predicament that I have no copy of AO available, so I'm forced to rely upon my own rather dim notes from a skim-through this summer, and scattered quotes from AO that I sniff out on the internet. Would someone kindly check these references (I'm not sure what edition they're supposed to be from, so the pages might not match...) They are however definitions of the sociuses of Capital and Earth, and it is notable how well they rethorically correspond to each other, even though they are found a hundred pages apart!

Machines and agents cling so closely to capital that their very functioning appears to be miraculated by it. Everything seems to be objectively produced by capital as a quasi-cause. As Marx observes, /in the beginning/ capitalists are necessarily conscious of the opposition between capital and labor, and of the use of capital as a means of extorting surplus labor. But a perverted, bewitched world quickly comes into being, as capital increasingly plays the role of a recording surface that falls back on all of production. (Furnishing or realizing surplus value is what establishes recording rights.) . . . Capital thus becomes a very mystic being since all of labor’s social productive forces appear to be due to capital, rather than labor as such, and seem to issue from the womb of capital itself. (AO 11)

The earth is the primitive, savage unity of desire and production. For the earth is not merely the multiple and divided object of labour, it is also the unique, indivisible entity, the full body that falls back on the forces of production and appropriates them for its own as the natural or divine precondition. While the ground can be the productive element and the result of appropriation, the Earth is the great unengendered stasis, the element superior to production that conditions the common appropriation and utilization of the ground. It is the surface on which the whole process of production is inscribed, on which the forces and means of labour are recorded, and the agents and the products distributed. It appears here as the quasi cause of production and the object of desire (it is on the earth that desire becomes bound to its own repression). (AO 141)

I bet that someone can locate a similar discussion of the socius of the Despote in AO - it could be helpful to read these three on top of each other, while struggling for a definition...

--Marcus Nilsson 15:23, 12 October 2007 (CEST)