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Intensities
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Intensities A while ago I got peripherally embroiled in a debate about<b> polyamory. </font></b>Well, not a debate really - an exchange, between a poly friend of mine and an 'ambassador' in one of South Africa's online swinger communities. Said swinger had an almost laughable inability to understand what<b> polyamory </font></b>meant: for the uninitiated,<b> polyamory </font></b>is the practice of having multiple love relationships (as opposed to monogamy, where you couple off with the One you love). I'm in a poly relationship - my wife (who has a blog on this site) has a boyfriend (now fiance), and she'd be fine with me having a lover, girlfriend, etc. if the right person came along. Anyway, back to your story. Said swinger originally criticised poly for "offering love as a party snack or entertainment", contrasting this with her love (her "most secret beauty of me") that "belongs to the man who occupies my heart, mind, body and soul" and goes on "the intensity of my love does not allow me to offer this gift to another being, not now, not ever." Fast forward a week or two, and the poly peril rears its head again - this time, in the form of a complaint at a South African BDSM site that adverts for poly events (lunches, and the like) "open the door to all swinger communities, and anything even vaguely linked to promiscuity and sex". In this case the poster seemed very insistent on protecting BDSM as a lifestyle and "psychological orientation" from BDSM as (merely?) a "sexual kink"... much debate following. But back to the subject line of this post: intensities. I'm trying to untangle something about the strange tension between elements of the "alternative (sexual) lifestyle" communities (in South Africa at least), and also something about myself. In both discussions I mentioned, promiscuity appeared as a threat - whether it was sexual promiscuity, or a kind of "promiscuous love". And in both cases, there was some kind of deeply personal space ("psychological orientation" and "most secret beauty of me") which seemed to be under threat from this promiscuity. One could see this in almost Heideggerian terms - the poetics of secret beauty versus the undifferentiated mass of promiscuity. So... That which is special is seen as that which is rare, is individual.... under threat from triviality of the mass or the many, the banality of promiscuity (of sex!) when contrasted to the "secret beauty" of love or the BDSM lifestyle. Ok, hold that thought, because I'd like to suggest a different take on this. I'm currently reading an essay by the French philosopher Giles Deleuze that meditates on Baruch Spinoza's concept of "affect". Yeah, wheels within wheels. In short, this is basically Deleuze discussing emotion, using Spinoza's concepts as a lens. Anyway, there are three key point: 1) As we travel through life we experience 'good encounters' (joy) and 'bad encounters' (sadness), in so far as that which we encounter connects with the parts that make up ourselves, or conversely, clashes with our particular 'mixture'. Deleuze uses as an example of the ultimate 'bad encounter' cyanide - that which is 'me' encounters cyanide, and my relation is dismantled. I die. Or he speaks of walking down the road - I encounter Anna, and this provokes in me feelings of rage, hurt or inadequacy - a bad encounter. Walking further, I encounter Blacks, and this provokes in me feelings of hope, friendship - a good encounter. The examination of 'good encounters', 'bad encounters' and the way they increase or diminish our energy for action is the key point of Deleuze's essay. 2) If we move to the next level, we do not simply perceive a varying intensity of good encounters / bad encounters, but we go further, we examine their causes. And through examining these causes, we identify common elements - a 'good encounter' between me and you may cause me to reflect on something that exists in both of us, increasing my knowledge about myself at the same time as I gain knowledge about you. Conversely, a bad encounter is a form of dissonance. No 'common element' is discovered, and as Deleuze says, through sadness we learn nothing. Sadness is, for Deleuze, the emotion of kings and priests, and philosophy is most useful as the examine of life, of its possibilities and potentials. The meditation on death (ala. Kierkegaard, for instance) is an utterly useless pursuit. 3) Our power of being affected is not infinite. It has a limit - or rather our different elements each have their power of being affected, and their limits to this power. Spinoza gives the example of being tickled - this is in a 'local joy', producing a kind of pleasure in part of us, but when it overwhelms our power of being affected, it ceases to be joyful. Anything - sexual, emotional, physical, intellectual, etc etc - that exceeds a body's power of being affected is a 'bad encounter'. Of, this limit is not an absolute - many things are beyond a baby's power of being affected - the loudness of a wild concert might provoke in me joy, but in my baby this is too much, she cries, it is ugly for her. The power of being affected is a characteristic of its make-up, and changes as that make-up changes. So to return... the private poetry that the correspondents I cited seek to protect strikes me as an attempt to limit 'bad encounters', but it is a limit imposed in the form of, and the ideology, of the private. At the center stands the individual, which preserves its sanctity (and its sanity) through a closing-off, a definition of what is private (and pleasurable, special, etc) versus what is public (and intrusive, banal, dangerous). What offends me about this is the particular form that this 'closing off' takes - through the policing of discursive boundaries (*this* is good BDSM/swinging, *that* is bad promiscuity) the question of intensities and encounters is displaced - and to top it all, a certain (perverse - ha ha) joy is taken in the submission to said boundaries. In essence, I feel that what is being established is an "alternative morality". For sure, maybe not the one that is preached on the pulpit on Sunday, but still a morality, a code of rights and duties. And then - no wonder there is such tension in the air, because morality cannot exist without seeking to be hegemonic, seeking to be Morality. Not just principles, but Laws. Looking at things this way, it is also not at all surprising that much effort is spent on definitions - what is promiscuity, what is swinging, what is polyamory, what is BDSM. Bah! One of the best things Deleuze ever said is: "don't ask what a body is, ask what it can do"! Baruch Spinoza's master-work is called the "Ethics" precisely because it is a consideration, not of duty, but of capability. What can we *do*? Wherein lies our power of action? As Deleuze explains: "ethics is a problem of power, never a problem of duty. In this sense Spinoza is profoundly immoral. Regarding the moral problem, good and evil, he has a happy nature because he doesn't even comprehend what this means. What he comprehends are good encounters, bad encounters, increases and diminutions of power." Getting back to earth - my response to the swinger who denounces poly as reducing love to a "party snack" is that yes, I understand this discomfort - there is even a term in poly circles for lining up a fresh sweetie every week (its called NRE (New Relationship Energy) addiction). But new love, multiple love, even (responsible) promiscuity (of an emotional or physical kind) is not wrong - what it often is, however, is uncomfortable. Having set up life in a certain way, a 'click', 'chemistry' with a new person may well exceed your power of being affected. It may be too much, threatening to dissolve your particular self. But as Deleuze says '[t]he most beautiful thing is to live on the edges, at the limit of her/his own power of being affected'. Similarly for the offended BDSMer - and here it is not at all surprising that sex is the troublesome element, for in sex we find such intense encounters. And at the same time, our society's sex-negative outlooks means for many of us, our power of being affected is easily exceeded by sexual encounters. I'm sure I am not the only person around here who has been provoked to tears by their own sexuality. And one last thing - as Foucault pointed out, the powerful intensity of sexual desire is a site for power to operate on our bodies, a place managed through continual attraction/repulsion. It is not surprising so many of us enjoy power/sex games - sexualisation (the socialisation of a sexuality) places a little policeman/woman deeply in our psyches. Nonetheless, we still have to provide our own handcuffs.  And on the other hand, there is an element in our society that encourages encountering our limits through play, through the consumption of sensations. See for instance, adventure sports, Fear Factor, and the growing popularity of 'kinky' items for couples. As with pretty much everything else in our society, the encounter with our limits of being affected is dissolved in money and dished up as simple consumption... something Heidegger was concerned about when he talked about the mass, its undifferentiated energy that so threatens (for him) poetry.Still - the BDSM guy (girl?)'s attempt to fortify the Church of BDSM is laughable (as are all the other Churches, of God, or Swinging or Poly ). Listen up - the big world is outside your secret garden.I only hope to, in life, experience good encounters, explore intensities to the limit, enhance - and not denounce - my power of being affected. Well, I guess that serves as an intro - welcome to my blog everyone! P.S. the self-definition of certain South Africa 'alternative lifestyle' communities is pretty hysterical, given that I know so many lives that - in their often drunken, messed up, incoherent way - defy both 'normality' and every 'alternative lifestyle' I know. |
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9/7/2007 5:50 am |
Well hello and welcome  Somehow, I feel I know you already, thanks to young Free.Anything - sexual, emotional, physical, intellectual, etc etc - that exceeds a body's power of being affected is a 'bad encounter'. I had never come across this concept before, but it makes perfect sense - tickling being a prime example. And I do think it is very true that people seek to justify their own chosen lifestyle as the Right Way to do things. Me? I'm just up for experimentation these days. Haven't yet found anything to exceed my body's power of being affected. Blogito ergo sum.
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hi..............welcome to blogville. a robust post........i'll be back for more You cannot conceive the many without the one.
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Deleuze & Guattari talk of the process of "sedimentation" - well to backtrack, they talk about the flows of desire, about "machines of the self" (e.g. the baby's mouth - mother's nipple) but not static ones - for D&G (heh, not Dolce & Gabanna) flows are schizoid, constantly breaking and forming new connections. Such a schizoid process would lead however to something beautiful, but never complete - D&G use the analogy of a table build by a schizophrenic mental patient that was worked and re-worked so many times that ultimately it lost all function and resemblance to a table. The process of function in a coherent way then requires a kind of repression, the arrangement of elements across a surface - this "sedimentation". Else, yes, it is too much. In fact, that is exactly the cry that goes up from us - this is all too much, please let everything just STOP! I don't know if you know what I'm talking about - but for me I think of anxiety, when you feel like you have a thousand bees buzzing in your head. So yes, then... it all becomes too much. As you say, we establish boundaries to know who we are. And let's take this a bit further - a baby does not know who they are - their sense of joy & sadness is pretty immediate. I remember noticing the transition that happened when our eldest daughter moved from this baby state to a toddler state - when they became aware that their behaviours (crying, shouting, etc) were tools, a separation stepped in between them and their actions. They become aware of the conditional - "I will get a cookie but only if I do this" - and yes, they become manipulative - not initially self-consciously so, though. They become part of a world that is conditional, judgmental, with rewards and punishments. And then, for me (and I'm sure lots of other people), some kinds of pleasure are forced to sneak in via the "back door", operating in the terrain of all that is repressed and "uncivilised". But that's a whole other story.
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Well hello and welcome Somehow, I feel I know you already, thanks to young Free.Anything - sexual, emotional, physical, intellectual, etc etc - that exceeds a body's power of being affected is a 'bad encounter'. I had never come across this concept before, but it makes perfect sense - tickling being a prime example. And I do think it is very true that people seek to justify their own chosen lifestyle as the Right Way to do things. Me? I'm just up for experimentation these days. Haven't yet found anything to exceed my body's power of being affected.
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Thanks buddhamike. From the name, am I to presume that you are interested in buddhism? i'm a hardboiled athiest in religious persuasion, but i find some buddhist philosophy, such as the notion of non-attachment, quite interesting. We had a little discussion about how some of these ideas relate to relationships on the za-poly (South African polyamory) mailing list a few months back.
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9/11/2007 2:29 am |
Marvelous! So when are you moving to Cape Town? And I've only just realised what her first comment was about, having seen Polly's response. We in the UK mean 'hysterical' to mean funny as well. It's only those po-faced yanks that wouldn't understand, and they hardly matter, do they?  (Apparently my sarcastic humour might not work for everyone, so I need to flag it as such...) Blogito ergo sum.
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sorry for having to quote all of this... silly Adult Dating zone! Zee sounds fine, thanks! and oh, i didn't mean that bad encounters leave one indifferent - they might indeed be highly negative. deleuze uses the analogy of the "mixing" of cyanide with a body... he talks about affects as a continual series of changing intensities, good and bad. and of course both at the same time, because it is not an "I" that is being affected, but rather a series of mixtures between component parts of different "wholes".... i strongly disagree with you on the notion of nature's patterns having a purpose... what is the purpose of a fractal anyway? or a fibonacci sequence (besides counting multiplying rabbits ) and if there is a purpose, what describes its own logic, from what is it constituted? what are its "laws of motion"? i find that when one asks these questions in a chain (drifting off into infinity) one just gets stuck... better to ask "how does it work", to look at causes, rather than at meanings.
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