Massumi, Introduction

Massumi, Brian. 2002 Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke University Press. (Selections)

This is an atempt to follow Massumi by making detailed notes, just the introduction here. It seems now that he is not so so arrogant, (or maybe yes, but at least the intro is no so bad and he is making an effort to communicate with mortals other than his 6 friends who made the same studying he did). Anyhow I do like the text and it is very helpful, both his critique to the notion of positioning, the construction of the subject and the girds which I used a lot, for my work so far. sometimes he seems to be talking directly with Grossberg even he doesn't mention him. He talks about dimensions, especially body and movement that seem relevant but I can't think so clearly through other authors, here as in nomad which I am reading in parallel, movement is not only structured mobilities across a grid in with subjects become more or less empowered. Following Lefebvre simplistic reading here mobility o not only a social production of a grid, but is what comes before that. I guess I am geting to my initial question on wether I am studying mobility because the toba move, and that is just a consequence of something else (poverty, violence, etc etc) or is it that toba movements are interesting as a form of non so structured mobilities and non so "invested" movements of affects in a "temporary home" - place. So Grossberg is important for me still but considering this too i guess.
So cirtiques to this introduction (and goes fo rthe rest of the book) is that the "examples" Massumi analyses seem to be falling into very individual - neurological processes. So even I agree neurofisiology puts some philosofical questions back into consideration (specially if we are interested in a material analysis), Massumi seems to be ably to think only in "his" experience of self perception of his body moving in buildings and the physiological movements before thought. i wonder how can we make an analysis of movement- body affect in a way that can bring more the collectivity than the exploration of inner individual phenomenon. He does not seem to be interested in analysing political social problems, even he does not say he will, he could consider more interpersonal and contradictory events, and put into play his idea that categorizations emerge form process of becoming. I would be very interested in for example an analysis of the emergence of race as a marker as defining a "field" of potentialities the intensities that race unfolds in the body of the "colonized", just to mentio.n

Introduction
The two central attributes of the body are movement and feeling as interconnected matters. Feeling and movement as interconnected matters imply constant qualitative differences, as any displacement will generate a new sensation. Sensations fold into one another generating qualitative shifts and unolding into action sometimes. All this having unpredictable outcomes. He states his whole purpose is to understande the implications of body (sensation-movement)-change.

He is proposing this against the notion of everyday as a site of reproduction, culture as a mediation between matter and systemic change, revolt is what matters. But then this proposed mediation, and the absence of revolt take us to the everyday as a site of resistance and subversion, reading against ideology. Here the body is central but is a discursive Body (cfr Butler): going away form the naivity of phenomenology it presents a subject without a subject, constructed by external mechanisms. To explain the local cultural differences within a social structure, the concept of positionality is developed, and coding as a positioning on a grid (Ok here is where I am with Grossberg). Then the body is defined by overlapping codified terms (female, black, straight, etc) and is thus mapped into a cultural geography, that texturizes the homgeneizing implications of thinking in terms of “ideology”. He critiques whether if the coding itself isn’t in constant change, how can the body get out of the definitional framework, that structures is subjectivity and the field of possibilities (Foucault, Grossberg). “The idea of possitionality begins by substracting movement out f the picture. This catches the body in a cultural freeze – frame…. When positioning of any kind come determining first, movement come problematic second….a body occupying a position in the grid can succed in making a move to occupy another position. But this doesn’t change the fact that what defines the body is not the movement itself, only its beginning and end points. Movement is subordinated to the positions it connects. The very notion of movement as qualitative transformation is lacking. There is displacement but not transformation. The gaps between positions on the grid, falls into a theoretical nobodies land” (3,4). If there is qualitative movement there is sensing as much as there is signification. In this materialist approaches matter can only be mediated He aims has been: “to put back matter unmediately into cultural materialism”.

Movement “When a body is in motion it does not coincide with itself. It coincides with its transtion: its own variation. In motion a boy is in an immediate, unfolding relation to its own transition: its own variation. The range of variation it can be implicated in not present in any given movement, much less in any position it passes through. In motion a body is in a immediate, unfolding relation to its own nonpresent potential to vary.” (4) This is at the same time real and abstract. This is abstract but unmediated and doesn’t preexist, means: “never present in position only ever in passing” (5). There are then non ideological mechanisms of power. The body is always indeterminate. To think the body in movement means to accept that there is something incorporeal about it, this is concrete and real, but in a different way: it is real, material but incorporeal. So this is part of a same problem, the bodies capacity to vary is implicated in the body as variable (as different as a positioned subject). The problem of theory then is that ·is not abstract enough to grasp the real incorporeality of the concrete.” The paradox of Zeno can be understood as the arrow is never in one point of the infinite points separating departure from destiny, but the arrow is in passage through all infinite points. The arrow – body is only positioned when it stops. When we think of space as extensive (measurable, composed of points) we are stoping it, we are only thinking of one dimension of it. A thing is only stable when it isn’t “doing” anything, when it is stoped. All things are then only in state of becoming, even nature.
Following Bergson, then postion comes only after movement, it is an effect of it, derivated. If position is emergent form movement, this displaces the binary between metaphore (figurative) and metonime (linear). Then the concept of field is useful to think fo continuity and heterogeneity. Is not enough for process concepts to be ontological but they have to be ontogenetic. The social implications are that processual indeterminancy come before the andy social contruction. But then grids become part of the process from which they arose. But following Simondon, there is no presocial field that culture then shapes, but rather it is priroly social, “pure” sociality without boundaries.
Possibility is back fold of potential’s unfolding. Possibilities “delineate a region of nominally defining variation –regulated variation-. Potential is the immanence of a thing to is still indetermined variation, under way. Once the grid and the position have emerged form the process they refide the process by re-conditioning, they define norms and parameters o history. The path is only in retrospection, if a movement recurs it can be captured. “Retroduction” is the capture of a dynamic unity, is a feedback, and a production of a process of new quality. Space is a retroduction [is he talking of abstract- geometric space?]. Habit is an interesting point as it is both regulated and learned as it is inscribed automatised in the body. Gender, race, orientation are logical categories that feed back ino and transform the reality they describe. He proposes a productionism as a method to give account of the emergence, to invent as adding to reality as a method. Concepts of the indeterminancy of becoming have an important role to play, paradoxes are good tools.
Sensation is always doubling, a feeling of feeling. Is and echo that needs distance for multiplying itself but never becomes discontinuous. Is a complex self continuity. He uses intensity to describe this, a qualitative self transfomation of distance into an immediacy of self relation. Intensity is experience , is the in-betweenes of distance to self relation, is the incorporeal dimension of the body. In this moment the materiality of the body becomes an event, this is not a subject yet is a self- relating. Then sensation, perception and memory are part of a same circle, [he will bring to this the half – second between the body sensing sth and the brain receiving the notice of it, thus perception as a memory]. Sensation of sensation has not a form but has a direction, a tendency. Thus to describe the body is to think its relations of movement and rest, its capacity to affect and be affected (Spinoza).
Affect is what comes after sensation, perception and memory. A relation between movement and rest is transition, can weave together movement, tendency and intensity.
He proposes as a method a radical empirism, what connects experiences has to be a experienced relations, has to connect a infra-empirical of the non conscious perception and the supraempirical given by the multiplicity of potential variations. He proposes the use of “exemplary” method, one in which a case stands for all of its type but as a singularity is included in them. An example as a singularity that stands for all. [this sounds a lot like Durkheim, indepth case study stands for understanding others more than inductive addition]. Every detail is relevant.

A More relaxed Massumi