Collaboratory in Critical Security Methods
The International Collaboratory on Critical Methods in Security Studies is an ESRC funded project (RES-810-21-0072)
Discussion of Agamben 'What is an apparatus?' and Deleuze 'What is a Dispositif?'
Agamben, Giorgio. (2009) "What Is an Apparatus?" And Other Essays,
translated by David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella. Stanford University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. (1992) What Is a Dispositif? In Michel Foucault
Philosopher, edited by Timothy J. Armstrong, pp. 159-68. Hemel
Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
This forum is for the discussion of the above named article, to be completed in tandem with discussions of Martin Coward's work in a separate forum thread. The cluster participants have set an informal goal for completing responses by 16.09.10.
I will look to post my first comments soon but if anyone is welcome to start the discussion.
Owen
Andrew Neal says
By coincidence the genealogies cluster are currently engaged in a discussion of Agamben's 'What is an apparatus?'. See our forum section for details.
29 July 2010, 13:16
Owen Thomas says
Hello all.
I don't know about anyone else but I'm feeling distinctly 'rusty' after our summer interval. At our last discussion some consistent themes were beginning to emerge. I think we were talking a lot about how, on the basis of the previous debates, to move beyond the question of materiality's ontological position outside of discourse and find some methodological principles - a 'new grammar' perhaps - by which to say something about critical security. Focussing on acts and practices with attention paid to agency and subjectivity seemed to be a point of growing consensus regarding a way in which to make this methodological move, and expand the possibilities of including material things in our work without falling back into the black hole of philosophy of social science debates concerning the subjectivity or objectivity of the material world.
Anyway, I suppose I wanted to write all that to remind myself where we are - please correct me if you think we're going somewhere else. I also wonder whether sometime soon we should revisit our original cluster question set last February and see if we want to change anything or notice a shift in our focus.
So Agamben. I remember back in February when we first starting this cluster a conversation with Phillipe along the lines that the relationship between discourses and materialities was one of the things that Foucault seemed to be attempting with the dispostif - it will be interesting in this forum to see how helpful Agamben's and Deleuze's reflections are.
Early on Agamben provides a three point summary regarding his interpretation of the Foucauldian dispositif or 'apparatus':
1. It is a 'heterogeneous set that includes virtually anything linguistic and nonlinguistic ... the apparatus itself is the network that is established between these elements'
2. It always has a 'concrete strategic function'
3. It 'appears at the intersection of power relations and relations of knowledge'
Bearing in mind my initial comments, what is appealing about the notion of the dispostif is that it moves beyond the either/or question of discourse and materiality and instead suggests that what is important is the subject produced by the apparatuses' strategic function - the way in which the heterogeneous set of things and knowledge produce a power relation in which the subject performs.
Now in terms of Agamben's reflections I think there are two points I want to make here. Firstly, the most important section for me in this chapter appears at page 13 in which Agamben states:
'I invite you therefore to abandon the context of Foucauldian philology in which we have moved up to now in order to situate apparatuses in a new context'
'I wish to propose to you nothing less that a general and mass partitioning of beings in two large groups or classes: on the one hand, living beings (or substances), and on the other, apparatuses in which living beings are incessantly captured'
I have two concerns with this: (1) I'm unconvinced that there is any methodological ground to gained by presupposing a being that is somehow pre-apparatus or that can be separated - conceptually or analytically - from the power relations of the apparatus. In fact, I think this move is more confusing. I think Agamben needs this move in order to build his strategy to adopt in 'our hand-to-hand combat with apparatuses,' but isn't his little book an apparatus in itself? How can he separate his strategy from that of the strategic function of the apparatus?
(2) this concept of capture then sets the stage for a rather pessimistic account of subjectification and de-subjectification. Here I feel that Foucault's idea of the productive potential of individuals is somewhat lost - this in part a consequence of Agamben's more general metaphysics of power and potentiality but I also think that a consequence of his general partitioning is the negation of the individuals' productive potential in the apparatus.
My second point concerns Agamben's short discussion of the telefonino, and I notice it is something that has appear in the genealogy cluster's discussion too. What appeals to me about the concept of the dispostif is that it allows the possibility to track and trace how a strategic function is produced by a given apparatus across time - and this function may have some 'dangerous' qualities granted by its insipid or hidden nature. Highlighting such a quality seems to be the value of a methodological approach based on the dispositif . A methodological approach thus needs to say something about how to select a dispostif and how it is produced across historical specifies.I remeber saying something very similar about Barad's adoption of the apparatus. Perhaps this is an area of the apparatus on which it's methodological relevance hinges.
Agamben's discussion of the telefonino is akin more to a grand social theory than a genealogical approach which acknowledges the historical development and individual element composition that produces the telefonino. To put this another way, if we were investigate Martin's site of the built-environment using the dispositif I would expect us to consider how the heterogeneous set is composed and how it is composed across time to produce the concept of the built-environment that produces the intelligibility of identity and place. Indeed it seemed somewhat ironic to me that Agamben's investigation of the etymology of the 'dispositif' seemed closer to a methodological approach than his discussion of the telefonino.
Now I might be being unfair to Agamben here, his ontological conception of politics is very different to Foucault and his location of power and sovereignty in many ways removes the possibility of a genealogical approach. However I am glad to have re-read this piece, I think it provokes a consideration of what I want out of a methodological approach using the dispositif.
I'll leave it there for now and perhaps post some thought's of Deleuze's reflection in a separate post.
Look forward to your responses.
Owen
15 September 2010, 10:59
Eva Herschinger says
First of all, thanks for choosing this piece since it aptly pulls
together some essential points on the apparatus in only a couple of ages!
Having read Owen’s comment on Agamben, I very much share his point on
the loss of the productive potential of individuals in Agamben. To me,
the process of subjectivation is not solely a product of an apparatus.
Looking into processes of identification, i.e. when an individual attempts to identify with a signifier in a discourse or even with a
subject position, I have missed this potential in Agamben. With regard
to the individual, It appears that for Agamben things are rather dim,
not only because the pessimistic tone of his piece really does not
stimulate any building of a counter-apparatus. But also because I would claim that the individual has more productive potential since the apparatus is not the sole source of subjectivation/de-subjectivation as individuals could deny identifying with a signifier, a position in a discourse.
In addition, processes of identification keep a discourse – and thus,
those encompassed by an apparatus – on the move. This would be my
central concern: while the apparatus changes or adapts to the Open, I
did not really understood how exactly this change comes about. To refer to, for instance, processes of identification or denial of
identification could work as a source of change.
I was a little unsatisfied with Agamben’s definition of the apparatus
(p. 14). Isn’t their also an ‘enabling’ function to the apparatus? While it makes a number of things, thoughts, etc impossible, doesn’t it also make others possible?
Thinking in methodological terms, I found the conceptualization of an
apparatus limiting for an empirical analysis. A grumpy critic could
argue that in some ways his definition precludes an analysis open for
positive results, i.e. of an apparatus that enables people to do certain (good) things. Could an apparatus not be a ‘good’ thing – of course, it could be ‘good’ only from a certain perspective (for instance, democracy for the majority…) – but still?!
However, I am not entirely sure whether I am not crudely misreading
Agamben….
16 September 2010, 16:24
Martin Coward says
In my shameless haste to comment on my own work I forgot to say: thanks to Nadine and Claudia for the invite to sit in on this forum. I've read all the previous exchanges and there are some fascinating thematic conversations developing. It’s great to be able to take part.
With regard to Agamben, I have to say I agree very much with Eva. Indeed, I fear I am the grumpy critic she imagines! Overall I thought the tracing of the idea of the dispositif to Hegel was a valuable insight into the sometimes hidden inspirations of Foucault’s work. It is important to see that he does not rupture the lineages of continental philosophy in the way that he is sometimes portrayed as doing. And the idea of hand-to-hand combat with the apparatus, or – more provocatively – the profanation of the apparatus are interesting political tools. But really, are they any more than a form of ideology critique – namely seeing the world in such a way that which is unquestioned/unseen comes to be seen as constructed and, hence, questionable?
Otherwise, I actually found much to be disappointed with in Agamben’s essay. In particular the passage on the mobile phone. I am sure this is meant as a sort of philosophical version the BBC series Grumpy Old Men, but it reminds me of Heidegger’s nostalgia for the Black Forest. I don’t think that one has to be a technophile, but one should not romanticise (or view nostalgically) a supposedly lost authenticity. There is also no explanation as to what kind of apparatus the mobile phone is part of.
Deleuze’s piece, on the other hand is really provocative and stimulating. I had forgotten how good a reader of Foucault he is and how clear he can be. Since we are interested in methodology, I thought there were two important observations. Firstly, it is important to note the comments about the interplay of interviews and text (diagnostic and analytic). I think that we regularly forget that the philosophical/political text (by which I mean book/article) is always incomplete. We criticise something an author wrote without recognising that this was simply a snapshot, not their final word on the matter. We should think about whether in the world of enhanced (digital) texts, it is possible to bring this insight to bear upon the form of our disseminated arguments.
Secondly, I think the important methodological point is in Deleuze’s comments on Foucault’s ‘repudiation of universals’. On Page 163 he refers to the fact that this means ‘modes of existence have to be assessed according to immanent criteria’ [my emphasis]. I think this might help vis a vis other discussions in this forum about the discourse-thing relation. For Deleuze, this relation would not make sense universally, but would be a product of criteria immanent to a certain dispositif. It would also guide us methodologically: indicating that we need to identify certain dispositifs to investigate – as you did with the ash cloud – rather than trying to make general determinations as to the political significance of ‘thingness’.
16 September 2010, 19:48
Nadine Voelkner says
I’ve just been reading this thread. Interesting! And apologies for my slight delay in responding. I agree that Agamben’s account of the ways Foucault may have been/was influenced in his thinking about the dispositif are fascinating. Beyond that, I am sceptical. Drawing also on Deleuze, I’m going to suggest points of relationality, (distributive) agency, emergent properties and politics in ensembles.
Agamben touches on the relationality of elements in dispositives which he argues is strategic. As I note in my response to Martin’s article, I think we can give a more nuanced account of relationality. There are different forms of relationality. Not only can they be affective as Martin reminds us, if we also follow Deleuze’s account of Foucault’s dispositif, relationality is characterized by a multiplicity of crossing lines of visibility, enunciation, of force (which relates to power), of subjectification, lines that break, proliferate, rupture and so on. What makes theses lines strategic? This is a question of clarification more than argument at this point. What does Agamben/do we mean by “a concrete strategic function”?
Agamben suggests a politics in relation to apparatuses. He calls for profanation. Put differently, the call for continued resistance to what he considers the over-subjectivation of individuals caught up in apparatuses. I agree, more generally, that “the individual can be the place of a multiplicity of processes of subjectivation”; that there is an ‘infinite splitting and dissemination of subjectivities’ (as I imply in my response to Martin’s piece). Agamben’s point about resistance reminds me of a recent moment when I was presenting my work on the constitution of biopolitical subjects in the Migrant Health Assemblage (a paper I sent round the cluster a few months ago). I was asked how one resists such an assemblage in which such subjects are constituted. While I think this is an important question and one that we will no doubt be continuously asked in relation to our cluster’s work - it relates to the possibilities of the political opened up/closed by ensembles - I agree with Martin that Agamben’s call seems a thinly veiled ideological critique. It seems like grand theorizing as Owen suggests. A different question may be, what kind of political possibilities (resistance if you like) does a distributive form of agency allow, i.e. an agency that only becomes possible in the relationality between different (living/non-living) elements including our ‘selves’ within an apparatus? I’ll leave this open for now.
This brings me to Deleuze and the point I wanted to emphasize about the emergence of ensembles and their emergent properties (as I brought up in my response to Martin’s piece). I think this is really important. And to carry on with the problem of subjectification... Deleuze reminds us that “a line of subjectification is a process, a production of subjectivity in a social apparatus: it has to be made, inasmuch as the apparatus allows it to come into being or makes it possible” (p.161). The process of becoming subjects of security, for example, is suffused with breakages, interruptions, ruptures. After all, apparatuses are composed of different lines: lines of visibility, enunciation, of force, of subjectification, “lines of splitting, breakage, fracture, all of which criss-cross and mingle together, some lines reproducing or giving rise to others, by means of variations or even changes in the way they are grouped” (p.162). Put differently, elements (living/non-living) are continuously rearranged. Subjectivities, ensembles/apparatuses are always in the process of becoming and unbecoming. It is in this sense that I suggested we consider an ontology of becoming that is deeply material (as we’ve already worked out in terms of the interplay between different living/non-living materials).
Anyway, there’s so much more to say about Deleuze’s contribution to the philosophy of materialism. Especially as he is an inspiration to several including J. Bennett and, very interestingly also, Latour (who, as you will already have gathered, has influenced a number of conversations on materialism and agency...)
Incidentally, one of these days, we may want to work out the differences/if any between apparatus/dispositif/assemblage/ensembles. At the moment, I see us using these terms interchangeably.
18 September 2010, 09:23
Nadine Voelkner says
Hi again,
I just remembered Andrew/Owen mentioning that the genealogy cluster was due to discuss Agamben so I had a peek at their recent thread. Really interesting. I wanted to especially repeat/highlight/emphasize Sven Opitz's words in relation to the etymology of the 'dispositif'. It substantially adds to Agamben's account and raises some interesting points about the place of materiality in Foucault and other's use of the dispositif. Let's discuss the points raised by Sven!
Sven tells us that the term dispositif was used by several authors in the 1960s/70s.
1. Jean-Louis Baudry used the term to highlight the materiality of the cinema apparatus: "the way spectators are positioned in front of a mirror-like screen, processes of identification fostered by this technological architecture, the impact of the central perspective implied in the machinery of projection, the illusion of space it produces etc". Although it may have been an accident in translation that the dispositif is referred to as apparatus in English, Sven suggests that apparatus alludes to Althusser’s ideological state apparatuses.
2. Jean-Francois Lyotard's piece on painting as libido-dispositif (translation from German) says of dispositif that it is "a circuit diagram, a diagram of connections, which regulates and canalizes chromatic energy, its supply and its removal.” As Sven says, "In treating photography as a historical dispositif in the same way as styles of abstract painting or forms of print, Lyotard often uses formulations such as. 'This is a specific dispositiv, it operates, it functions.' Thereby, he points to the operative dynamics of processes."
Bringing in Deleuze and agencement, Sven goes on: "I have the feeling that Agamben – although not referring to them openly – is somehow close to them. And maybe this can help us to rethink the dispositif in Foucault in a constructive way. At first sight, Foucault talks of the dispositif of sexuality, which is more or less a discursive formation orchestrated around the quasi-object of sexuality. To oversimplify a bit: the dispositif of sexuality is described (in the first Volume of the History of Sexuality) as a macro-sociological entity. Conversely, dispositifs in the sense of Baudry and Lyotard seem to be far more “local”. They seem to be materialized forms of thought and practice. They resemble what Deleuze and Guattari call “agencement” or “assemblage”. I think Agamben relates in a very peculiar way to this tradition. His dispositif bears traits of technology as “Gestell” in the Heideggarian sense (p. 12). It is something prosthetic. At the same time, by referring back to Hegel, he brings back in the notion of desire (see also p.17), more or less absent in Foucault.
If we now look at these two versions of the dispositif, however, one could come to the conclusion that they are not necessarily exclusive. What could it mean, if we brought them into a dialogue?
First: With Foucault, we can conceive of dispositifs as material actualizations of discursive regimes of intelligibility. Dispositifs are material forms that institute strategic relations of force and epistemic relations of knowledge. More than that: They let them become operative. They are material infrastructures for power/knowledge. They stabilize relations of force and relations of knowledge over time.
Second: Agamben (alongside Baudry, the early Lyotard, …) can help us to go beyond the said and unsaid. Dispositifs relate regimes of the “sayable” to pictorial regimes of the visible, to affective regimes, to architectural regimes etc. The strategic moment of problematization, therefore, is without any doubt an organizing principle, very important for the “articulation” of each dispositif. But at the same time, the dispositif is something that arranges the discursive and the non-discursive, or better: the significant and the non-significant. It arranges the circulations of concepts with the circulation of precepts. Besides a linguistically articulated truth, it organizes the circulation of sympathies, fears, nervousness or indifference. It connects, for example, architectural forms with lines of visibility, streams of affect with techniques of registration. (Maybe we should pass this discussion to the materialities-cluster?)". ... Yes please!
Nadine
20 September 2010, 15:14
Sven Opitz says
Hi Nadine - and hi materialities cluster!
Many thanks for including my thoughts on the dispositif into your exciting discussion. Since I am primarily interested in temporality AND materiality, this is a great coincidence. And there will be further opportunities for cross-cluster cooperations: I just included a text by Particia Clough into the library which is on affect and control!
However, I would like to reiterate another thought from my reading of the dispositif. Since we all don't feel too comfortable with Agamben's hyper-pessimism, we should ask ourselves: What went “wrong” in Agamben's argument, wat went wrong conceptually? My hypothesis: the problem lies in his antagonistic conceptualization of the relation between living beings and technology/apparatuses.
At first sight, it seems interesting to conceive of the subject as a kind of war effect, emerging in the struggle between living beings and the apparatuses. Especially the concept of “capture” (p. 13) allows Agamben to say more about resistance (or even emancipation!) than Foucault. The reference to fleeing forces of life to be captured by dispositifs produces a two-fold idea of resistance: resistance means (a) to escape from the apparatus and (b) to halt or de-activate the apparatus. But - as nearly all of you have noted - there is a price to pay: His negative ontology of life brings back a repressive account of power, including the idea of alienation as being divided from itself (16).
But what is the conceptual alternative? I would say, one has to think technology as anti-prosthetic. Technology is not something external to living beings, but something interwoven. It doesn’t necessarily isolate and alienate individuals, but provide the common in a field of power relations.
Okay, this would be my main point. I hope we can continue our discussion. Maybe we can combine the topics of temporality and materiality by thinking about process ontologies ;-) Just an idea.
29 September 2010, 08:33
Claudia Aradau says
It's been great reading your comments. I've actually re-read them a couple of times - there are a lot of important points I've taken from them
- Owen's point about exposing/exploring the strategic function of the dispositif in time and critique of the apparatus as 'capturing' subjects
-Eva's argument about the loss of the productive potential of individuals and change in/of the apparatus
-Martin's comments about the 'repudiation of universals' in Deleuze and implications for the relation between subject and object, discourse and thing
-Nadine's suggestions on resistance and the relation between apparatus/dispositif/assemblage etc.
Like you, I am skeptical about Agamben's text, both on theoretical and methodological grounds. I initially thought a genealogy of the concept of dispositif would be a really exciting thing to do (this is also linked with the history of ideas to which Sven's message alludes). Btw, there is a text online that sets the concept of 'dispositif' in the context of French debates - http://www.let.uu.nl/~Frank.Kessler/personal/notes%20on%20dispositif.PDF
I'm not sure I've got the gist of the debates, particularly around media.
I am much more taken with Paul Veyne's comment that Foucault had recourse to the concept of 'dispositif' in opposition to the structuralist concept of structure. In one of the lectures at College de France, he also sets the 'logic of strategy', which as we have seen is characteristic of the dispositif - in opposition to dialectics.
Agamben's reading of dispositif in relation to positivity, via Hyppolite and Hegel, started very promisingly. However, after that, I have found the genealogy utterly unconvincing. Methodologically, I wonder whether it is simply a form of conceptual nominalism. First, he gives a theological meaning to the dispositif by likening the oikonimia to the Latin dispositio. This theological meaning allows him then to turn dispositif into a sort of Zeitgeist- first we had dispositif which created subjectivity, now the dispositif is desubjectifying (ahistorical and decontextualised stuff yet again). Then he reworks the dispositif through the Heideggerian concept of Gestell. I have found the discussion of Gestell as difficult. I just cannot see how a piece that speaks about the 'essence of technology' can work in the genealogy of the dispositif. Gestell, Heidegger says, is the name for the essence of modern technology. Agamben likens Gestell with the theological meaning - but for Heidegger this is closer to Hersellen and Darstellen, as he says (thus interestingly Hegel).
I wonder whether to an extent Agamben collapses the dispositif onto a sort of technological apparatus, which he then likens to a rapacious and malevolent technology of capture (highly problematic view of technology).
Deleuze's text is in that sense a faithful reinterpretation of Foucault, which opens a different understanding of the dispositif. Given our debates about methodology, Deleuze's text left me wondering how to locate the dispositif. With a Foucauldian interpretation, I used to start from a problematization of governance: e.g. how do we govern that which we don't and cannot know, the unexpected catastrophe? starting from a problematization one can follow the modes of knowledge, forms of power and subjectivities fostered in these relations. One can also then analyse enunciations and visibilities, subjectivations and object-ivations.
There's a lot more to say about resistance, analysing different dispositifs, how objects can be analysed if one uses this type of analysis, emergent properties vs effects... I look forward to our conversation tomorrow.
27 September 2010, 20:45