Approaching Minoritarian Ethics from Deleuze’s Theory of Assemblage: A Proposed Framework

International Journal of Philosophy Study (IJPS), Volume 3, 2015 www.seipub.org/ijps doi: 10.14355/ijps.2015.03.001

Approaching Minoritarian Ethics from Deleuze’s Theory of Assemblage: A Proposed Framework Jae Eon Yu*, Department of Business Administration, Keimyung University 1095 Dalgubeol‐daero, Daegu, South Korea *

9070yu@hanmail.net

Abstract This paper aims to propose and evaluate Deleuze’s perspective on social change in relation to understand ‘humanities’ and ethics (what we refer to as ‘minoritarian ethics’) that characterize a critical discourse on the nature of modern civilized society.

We develop a proposed framework for understanding “control society” in order to bring about changes in “control society” using Deleuze’s theory of assemblage and propose Deleuze’s theory of assemblage to map the process of social transformation in terms of the metaphor of rhizome and Deleuze’s notion of events as a new type of open system. We see social change and organizational transformation through the unfolding process of problematization that allows researchers to be ‘critical thinkers’ within ‘critical systems practices’. To be critical thinkers, what is important for the process of problematization that aims to find out possible new assemblages through the appreciation of minoritarian ethics. We argue that our proposed framework is useful towards understanding the continuity of the ‘vitalism’ of new social systems, which are evolved from what Foucault terms as the “critical ontology of ourselves”.

Keywords Social Change; Minoritarian Ethics; Deleuze’s Theory of an Assemblage; Problematization

Introduction The paper is based on a post‐structural, theoretically based account of a vitalist holism. We explore a vitalist holism from a systems science’s perspective and post‐structuralist’s works, particularly Foucault and Deleuze’s works. On the one hand, our systems research is valid where the ‘critical systemic practice’ becomes an issue within Foucault’s critical project which is distinct from the transcendental search for formal structures of how social systems are evolved during the process of specific historical events, which he calls ‘practical systems’ (Tsouvalis, 1995: 223). On the other hand, our research is based on Deleuze’s thoughts about the nature of social change in terms of his theory of assemblage, which investigates the unfolding process of how social systems generate new assemblages through the process of differentiation. Deleuze’s understanding of the process of differentiation is to appreciate how open, nonlinear and rhizomatic networks or ‘meshworks’ operate and evolve within social systems (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; DeLanda, 2006; Colebrook, 2010). According to Deleuze (1995), vitalism is a thought that seeks to invent “possibilities of existence” through the creation of novel concepts. Based upon Deleuze’s thought of vitalism, we explore the meaning of Deleuze’s theory of assemblage and how we can raise critical ethical questions that seek out new values or ‘becoming’ for new life that allows us to “free life from what imprisons it” (Deleuze, 1995: 143). This is our proposal as we investigate the recent phenomena of social and organizational complexities from process‐based methodology or assemblage‐based explanation in the social science (Latour, 2005: DeLanda, 2006). We understand social complexity from post‐structuralists’ perspective and recent works in realist social ontology (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; DeLanda, 2006). To do so, we first evaluate and appreciate Foucault’s research methods of understanding historical research. Following Foucault’s interpretation of the nature of modern society, we develop Deleuze’s theory of an assemblage as it operates within social fields from social ontological perspectives. Next, we discuss Deleuzian ethics (what we refer to as “minoritarian ethics”) in order to make sense of the assemblage theory in social practice. Finally, we conclude with the usefulness of the assemblage theory for understand social change in the mode of a vitalist holism in which a new thought for

1

www.seipub.org/ijps International Journal of Philosophy Study (IJPS), Volume 3, 2015

understanding social complexity is developed from the relations of people and material world, and discourse within social contexts.

Appreciating Foucault’s Research Methods of Understanding Historical Research In order to make Deleuze’s theory of an assemblage more accessible to readers who are not familiar with his work, we introduce Foucault’s works on research methods so the ideas of Gilles Deleuze can be facilitated in the Foucauldian sense. Foucault’s early research methods, what he called archeology and genealogy, are mainly concerned with how power is exercised in relation to knowledge. Foucault thinks of history as an ongoing struggle between different forces and forms of power. His historical research is concerned with how subjects, actions and meanings are shaped by discursive and non‐discursive forces. Foucault (1977) understands historical forces with his interest in power/knowledge relations. It is interesting to note that, for Foucault, discourse is not the same as ideology. The term ‘discourse’ refers to the way in which communication, information, ideas and other sequences of signs are exchanges and signified (Schirato et al., 2012: 33‐34). Instead of using the term ‘ideology’ which is often associated with what Marxists call “false consciousness”, Foucault is interested in discursive formation, a term that is used instead of science, ideology or theory (Foucault, 1972: 31‐41), understood as a set of shared imperatives, correspondences, rules and relations that govern the appearance of statements (énoncés) (Schirato et al., 2012: 35).

Foucault’s later research methods are concerned with what he called ethics or “the problematizations of subjectivity” (Pasquino, 1986: 102). Foucault’s project of ethics aim to rebuild the forms of self‐reflection of human behavior, by controlling oneself and how self‐control is integrated into the practices of controlling others (Foucault, 1988a: 258). In this sense, Foucault’s later research interest shifted from the relation of power and knowledge to ethics.

According to Schirato, Danaher and Webb (2012: 181), Foucault suggests that Western society is civilized through the Enlightenment project. During the process of civilization, critique and ethics function as the politics of “humanity in the minority condition makes use of a critical sensibility to lift this minority condition” (Foucault, 2007: 48). Foucault understands critique as a form of ethical behavior, and the term “ethics” refers to the “standards by which a community or particular group decides to control its behavior in order to make sense of what is legitimate” (Flew, 1983: 112). Foucault argues that the processes of civilization continually play through a constant flow between the order or power and “resistance”, which is integral to power relations, and the domains outside of power domination. Foucault also argues that forms of knowledge, categories, and discourse are not natural, but are part of the effects of power (Schirato et al., 2012: 49). For Foucault, throughout the processes of civilization, the question is not “what is the self or self‐reflected individual agent?” but “how it that the self is (re)created and emancipated from the man of the human sciences that supported to advance the process of civilization?” In this sense, Foucault defines and explores a fresh domain of research into what he calls ‘governmentality’ (Foucault, 1988b). According to Foucault (1977), from the sixteenth century on, there has been an increase in the institutionalization of different aspects of government in Western society, and of the productive power associated with sustaining the reason of state and of the security of the emerging nation‐state of Europe. This phenomenon is what Foucault views as modern governmentality. A good example of modern governmentality is the role of political economy that functions as a control mechanism for governing the population in Western societies.

Foucault’s work on governmentality adds to our understanding that power is diffused from a closed space of disciplinary institutions (e.g., prison, army and school) to a more open space of general society. This new type of power becomes a significant factor in producing what Deleuze (1992a) calls “control societies”, which operate through continuous control and instant communication. Within such control societies, one governs oneself and “becomes detached both from power as relation between forces, and from knowledge as a stratified form or the ‘code’ of virtue” (Deleuze, 1988: 100). By telling the truth about their sexuality, individuals became the object of knowledge both to themselves and to others. Foucault (1988b) terms the conjoined effects to these two ‘technologies’ or “techniques of the self” and “governmentality”. On the other hand, games of truth are the discursive conditions that determine the self and others of the subject’s relation to both the wider socio‐cultural field (Schirato et al., 2012: 185). Foucault (1997; 2007) identifies the Enlightenment project as the ‘civilizing process’ whereby what he calls ‘critical attitude’ develops from the creation, dissemination and deployment of historically specific ideas, imperatives and (ethical) dispositions that come to contribute or constitute a particular grid of

2

International Journal of Philosophy Study (IJPS), Volume 3, 2015 www.seipub.org/ijps

intelligibility. In this way, Foucault sees that discourses (or ideologies) and ethics that characterize a specific discursive regime constitute the subject who questions and makes a ‘problem’, and so, to question norms and ethics is to bring challenges to the truth and sustainability of the self (Schirato et al., 2012: 187). In short, Foucault’s pursuit of ethics presupposes both action and knowledge, which require not only thought, but also an examination, of reflexivity and testing of the self in relation to the wider context of the socio‐cultural contexts.

Understanding Deleuze’s Notion of Assemblage Over the time that philosophy of social science has progressed, social research has made a great effort to think about the nature of social research in organizational and social contexts. Gilles Deleuze was what Foucault (1970: 367) described as “a lightning storm was produced which will bear the name of Deleuze”, and what Foucault says, “perhaps one day this century will be known as Deleuzian” (Foucault, 1970: 343). Deleuze was a philosopher who posed the question of what is thinking or what is to think, questioning the conventional way of knowing and thinking, the ‘images’ which constitutes our thought (Boundas, 1993: 1‐23).

Looking at the nature of society from a new image of thought, Deleuze proposed a theory of an assemblage that can apply to a wide variety of wholes constructed from heterogeneous parts or entities (DeLanda, 2006). These entities range from molecules to biological organisms, interpersonal networks, institutional organizations, cities, and social justice movements, all of which are “assemblages of several networked communities”, and even biological organisms are treated as assemblages (DeLanda, 2006: 5‐11). Deleuze and Guattari (1987) have developed a theory of an assemblage that is applied to social entities, but the very fact that “it cuts across the nature‐culture divide is evidence of its realist credentials” (DeLanda, 2006: 3).

Understanding the modern society as Deleuze’s notion of an assemblage, we should notice that individuals are controlled by the society in the way in which Foucault (1981: 94) discussed, power conceived as a strategy or network of relations that exercised through institutions. Foucault stresses how power can be productive and positive force that is constantly sustained and changed by social and discursive practices. In discursive practice, knowledge and discourse are material practices in which power relations produce reality or material practices, and power can be transformed into a source of condition that influences the current state of the discursive formation in local and contingent contexts. In this sense, power is mobile and contingent, and it is not a property possessed by an individual or a group. Put differently, power is created and maintained with an objective form of knowledge that is contingent on a set of material practices. Power can be conceptualized as a commodity which circulates and functions in the form of a network or a strategy. Foucault understands that power is always both productive and disruptive in the sense that power relations produce a series of transformations, movements and responses that are sometimes radical and dramatic. The French and Russian Revolutions are good examples of the productive and disruptive features of power (Schirato et al., 2012: 50‐63).

Interestingly, Deleuze’s theory of an assemblage is based on the “image of thought” that aimed at creating a life that takes place within a “metaphysical surface” or “plane of immanence” (Deleuze, 2005). In the terms of Foucault, it is like the virtual existence of the fields of statements (énoncés) (Foucault, 1972: 44‐55). Upon the fields of statements, the life of the individual gives way to an impersonal and singular life that transforms into a pure event as the virtual existence of an individual order which controls the space of discourse. Then, there is a possibility of the duality of things and propositions, of bodies and languages through the existence of a ‘plane of immanence’ (Deleuze, 1990: 125). During the process of making or becoming an assemblage in social fields through nonlinear causality, casual relations must be characterized as productive; that is, a relation in which one event (the cause) makes or produces another event (the effect) within a metaphysical surface (DeLanda, 2006: 20). In short, a series of events takes place to make an assemblage within social fields (Deleuze, 1990).

Seeing the Process of Becoming Assemblage As An Open System In systems sciences and sociology, an organismic model of an open system achieved great prominence in the late nineteenth century. The basic assumption in the organismic metaphor is what we may call relation of interiority, which means “the component parts are constituted by the very relations they have to other parts in the whole”

3

www.seipub.org/ijps International Journal of Philosophy Study (IJPS), Volume 3, 2015

(DeLanda, 2006: 9). In this approach of the organismic metaphor, an open system is developed toward the state of heterogeneity and complexity, and as with all other functioning systems, there are constant exchanges and transformations of energy and information within the system of action. In contrast, the new thinking in the social science based on the metaphor of rhizome is developed (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). According to Yu (2013), new considerations in social process theory conceives of the system as an open ended process. In this new approach to Deleuze’s theory of an assemblage, a rhizomatic kind of an open system is possible in which human or organic life is invited to open itself up to the open system of the ‘outside’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 6; Pearson, 1999: 114).

Using the rhizomatic metaphor of an open system, it is the notion of multiplicity which informs Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of rhizome. This allows us to appreciate a new image of thought, as the assemblage is an open system, from which some elements deterritorialize, and into which some elements reterritorialize within the social field. When an element connects itself with an assemblage, it “territorializes” in that assemblage. When it disconnects, it “deterritorializes” the social field when it connects itself with another assemblage. Using the notion of assemblages, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) focus their attention on strategies for initiating social change, and hence on process of deterritorialization (and reterritorialization) that make possible the invention of something new which is ‘utopian project’ that may be described as “cosmopolitics” (Archibugi, 2003).

Understand How Assemblages Operate within Social Fields For Deleuze and Guattari (1987), the concepts of map and mapping are integral to their thought that is highlighted by the rhizome, which is mobile and nonhierarchical, and an “assemblage” is a rhizomatic thought which would make connections between different systems of knowledge‐formation (Kaufman and Heller, 1998: 5). To understand Deleuze theory of assemblage, it would be better to consider the Borgesian cartographer who draws a map as it contains both the real‐life scale of the actual and the possibility of the virtual. Such a cartographer is not constituted by human agents or individual subjects. Rather, it refers to a depersonalized cartography of the body (or a body without organs) to the concept of “haecceity” as it means the discovery of a singular entity which can be brought into existence during the process of becoming or differentiation in relation to the movement and rest between molecular particles, and capacities to affect and be affected (Kaufman and Heller, 1998: 3; Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 260‐261). Through becoming‐haecceity, Deleuze (1990) was able to extend his metaphysics so that it enters into relations with nature, history of ‘creative evolution’, with the pure form of inorganic life where an ‘event’ takes place, and the intensities which come to pass upon it (Pearson, 1999). For Deleuze and Guattari (1983), everything is a machine and everywhere there is production in which the ‘machine’, a fragmented aggregate whose part do not constitute a unified whole, operates in the world. A machine is like the living being so that ‘desiring‐machine’ operates with desire that is constantly coupled with continuous flows and partial objects that are, by nature, fragmentary and fragmented (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983: 5‐6). The concept of ‘machine’ or

4

International Journal of Philosophy Study (IJPS), Volume 3, 2015 www.seipub.org/ijps

machinic assemblage is a way of approaching reality from a new perspective on the world (Marks, 1998: 98‐99). A machine or machinic assemblage is controlled by the enunciative assemblage that connects a language to the semantic and pragmatic contents of a set of statements that develops from the social interactions between machine and the ‘abstract machine’ which refers to the ‘diagramsʹ (Deleuze, 1988: 34). According to Yu and Lee (2008), events generate from the dynamic process of an interaction between the machinic and enunciative assemblages as events are effects that correspond to the “states of affairs” and actions are determined by the machinic assemblage (Figure 1).

Assemblages are not linked to some intrinsic relation to one’s own perception, but to the processes of the discovery of the actual mechanisms operating at a given spatial scale; defining or appreciating the diagram or abstract machine of an assemblage must be virtual and mechanism‐independent, capable of being realized in a variety of actual mechanisms within the territories (DeLanda, 2006: 31). Territories here may be understood as surfaces (or social fields) of the combinations of machinic and enunciative assemblages turn into particular assemblages that bear upon them singularities or events. In a more general context, a machinic or corporeal assemblage refers to the real entities of a social meshwork (e.g. the group of people, buildings, machinery, and other material resources) (DeLanda, 2006). However, the enunciative assemblage refers to the ‘statements’ (énoncés), which constitute an (in)visible dimension of a set of statements (e.g. the languages of people, the rules of a corporation, the law system of a nation and so on) within the social fields. In Foucauldian terms, the corporeal part of an assemblage is the ‘non‐discursive practices’ while the enunciative part of an assemblage is the ‘discursive practices’ (Foucault, 1972).

As Foucault (1972) indicated the complicated relations between the non‐discursive and discursive practices, Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 142) showed how the ‘diagram’ or ‘abstract machine’ of assemblages is formed and transformed in order to construct a new type of reality. Dealing with this reality that comes from the social entities that are products of historical processes, thus, we need apparently to have a new sort of metaphysical concept of the assemblage (DeLanda, 2006). Methodologically, the assemblage exists as a trans‐human concept coming from viroid life, in which ‘we’ create in a virtual world. ‘We’ should include natural and trans‐cultural contexts. On the other hand, the assemblage is ‘real’ and independently exists from the human consciousness (DeLanda, 2006: 3).

The assemblage has life which consists of formless and dynamic flux, natural, and event streams. In a theory of assemblage, there is an unthought, prior to thought, nature or chaos prior to consciousness, which along a nomadic and ‘rhizomatic’ path of becomings and encounters, adds new and strange relations as it proceeds. The account of studying the nature of assemblage shows that assemblage reproduces and changes its patterns and the flux of ‘natural drift’ through space and time. In the presence of the assemblage, the ‘active matters’ ‘communicate’ with one another in which nonhuman time exists within the mechanism of evolution that produces chaotic or unpredictable behaviours.

The mechanic locomotion of assemblages seems to have the mechanism of life which contains the duality of the actuality and virtuality that enable to produce an events or a series of events within the whole social field. On the one hand, analysis in the machinic assemblage is concerned with the discovery of the actual mechanism of the machinic assemblage in reality, operating a given spatial scale. On the other hand, the diagram of an assemblage is virtual and mechanism‐independent, capable of being realized in a variety of actual mechanisms. (DeLanda, 2006: 31).

Having understood the assemblages that operate within social fields, it is interesting to acknowledge that Deleuze says that becoming‐imperceptible or becoming‐other proceeds via assemblages, an assemblage being “a co‐ functioning, it is sympathy, symbiosis” (Deleuze and Parnet, 1977: 52). In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari address the collective and social dimensions of ethical and political natures are given priority over the personal. In distinguishing “molecular” and the “molar”, the micropolitical and macropolitical, Deleuze and Guattari are speaking about qualitatively different processes that take place at all levels of social interaction. A molecular politics, what Deleuze and Guattari’s thought about the political dimension of “becoming‐ imperceptible”, which Clark (2008) names a “politics of sympathy”, is “utopian” (Patton, 2010), in which essential components of this utopianism are the normative principles of justice, equality and freedom.

5

www.seipub.org/ijps International Journal of Philosophy Study (IJPS), Volume 3, 2015

Making Sense of the Assemblage Theory: Proposing the Minoritarian Ethics How can we apply Deleuze’s theory of an assemblage and a molecular politics into real world? What is required is a new kind of ethics or Deleuzian ethics that are informed by ‘minoritarian ethics’ and firmly rooted in social reality. Yu and Lee (2008) proposed that the ‘minoritarian ethics’ are a new kind of ethics for “minorities”, refering to the socially disadvantaged or marginalised group in society (see further details of the minoritarian ethics in Yu and Lee, 2008: 254). Deleuze’s notion of becoming‐imperceptible and Foucault (1984a)’s notion of problematization apply to minoritarian ethics in a process of the transformation of ‘problems’ in social fields. Foucault attempts to interpret the contemporary society as a disciplinary society where power is exerted through networks of control.

For instance, the modern (capitalist) society follow the disciplinary control and panoptic rules in which the panopticon automatizes and functions as the mechanism of power and control of bodies, groups and knowledge through spatial ordering under the regime of the capitalist discipline. Following Foucault’s definition of disciplinary regimes that it is historical; and after disciplinary societies, Deleuze (1992a: 230‐231) describes the society we are living in today as the “control societies” that entered the scene of a postcivil society. The movement from the natural to the civil and postcivil was the historical and theoretical movement of human civilization. When Foucault argues that power comes from everywhere and relations of power are immanent to the process of economic productions, knowledge relationships and sexual relations, the lines of power extend throughout social space in the channels created by the institutions of civil society. Foucault insisted that institutions are not as the source of power relations, but an assemblage of strategies of power. What underlies the various institutions is the ‘diagram’, that is the anonymous or abstract strategic machine, the unformed mechanism of power relations.

Foucault’s famous example to understand the diagram of disciplinary society is his analysis of the panopticon.

Foucault saw this disciplinary diagrammatics (panopticon) functioned in terms of positions and identities. In the society of control, the diagram of control is oriented towards mobility and anonymity. Dealing with power and panoptic rule, Foucault (1984b: 46‐47) offers some ideas on how we can appreciate humanism based on the “critical ontology ourselves” that regards as value judgments on “what we are doing, thinking and saying”. In order to create a platform of change, Foucault explains that the “critical ontology of ourselves” must be carried out through the genealogical analysis of particular historical contexts defined within three axes of truth, power and ethics. In Foucault (1984c: 351)’s own terms, Three domains of genealogy are possible. First, a historical ontology of ourselves in relation to truth through which we can constitute ourselves as subjects of knowledge; second, a historical ontology of ourselves in relation to a field of power through which we constitute ourselves as subjects acting on others; third, a historical ontology in relation to ethics through which we constitute ourselves as moral agents.

Within the new control societies, the diagram functions on the basis of the flexible and temporary performance of contingent identities, thus, its assemblage or the (mobile) institutions are elaborated through the production of the machinic assemblage in the territories. Social and political changes that resulted in the accumulation of power with the development of the mechanism of power have had to open their gates for continuous education, and communication in which new forms of control operate on the assemblages of social beings, the bare conditions of action, and penetrate into the entire of process of life. Changes seek legitimacy from public opinion and ethical right (Vähämäki and Virtanen, 2006: 215‐218). Dealing with control, which is power that permeates society and makes its relations with knowledge and economic process, which always in some form spreading like a virus, the composition of a new assemblage has to be designed and supported by the ‘minoritarian ethics’ or ethics for marginalized group (Yu and Lee, 2008). Minoritarian ethics are concerned with the “minorities” or marginalized group who will create new social relations where active minorities enter into a nomadic space with a collective action which leads to transforming virtual events into actual events within the territories (Deleuze, 1969: 18‐19). We propose that the minoritarian ethics function as a mode of resistance that questions and challenges the morality and a mode of existence rooted in the present system or the actual assemblage that is intrinsically linked to its power of acting.

What, then, is the relationship between Deleuze’s theory of assemblage and the minoritarian ethics? In other words, how we can apply the minoritarian ethics into a process of creation of new assemblages (or ‘problems’) in

6

International Journal of Philosophy Study (IJPS), Volume 3, 2015 www.seipub.org/ijps

social fields? In our proposed approach, there are five distinctive phases that unveils process of ‘problematizations’ (Figure 2).

The initial analysis at the first phase is concerned with finding out ‘solutions’ or developing an appreciation of the situation in which ‘solutions’ are to be made. In next phase of the proposed methodology, the purpose of the second phase is to ensure that once the ‘solutions’ have been made in terms of concerned situations and contexts, ‘problems’ are identified which are derived from the ‘virtual’ assemblages that coexist with and is immanent within an actual dimensions of individuated assemblages in given social fields. The ‘problems’ are conceived as only the causes of new possibilities or ‘clues’ of discovering a wider context which contains all ‘solutions’ that were originally generated from local contexts. In phases two and three of the methodology, actors or participants question the ‘solutions’ or actual assemblages that operate within social fields, and identify ‘problems’ or virtual assemblages that give possibilities of generating virtual events that can be appreciated according to the normative principles of minoritarian ethics. In the final phase of the methodology, then, new ‘solutions’ can be generated from a transformative process that takes place within a domain of practices, acts and thoughts with a plurality of ‘problems’ and ethical questions posed to produce the diverse possibilities in a specific context.

Through this transformative processes of problematization, when one enters into the process of making the assemblage of haecceities, a new thought proceeds as the ethical question that occurs in a form of the ‘ethological ethics’, which refers to the ethics of events, rather than moral and ethical perspectives of ‘man’ taking place in the actual process of decision‐making within the organization (Pearson, 1999). Deleuze’s concerns about ethics of liberating ‘desire’, and ‘liberation’ that means ‘something new’, are perceived as the mode of ‘creative involution’ in terms of ‘becoming‐haecceity’ that takes place within the plane of immanence (Pearson, 1999: 3). In order to create or appreciate new assemblages in social fields, a non‐hierarchical ethical form of reasoning is needed to function as the ‘judgement systems’ in the terms of De Zeeuw (2010), which evolves from a collective that can be made through the process of problematization. Hence, the minoritarian ethics reflects the position of ‘the others’ or ‘minorities’ through the process of problematization in which participants should search for “all chances and possibilities” and create critical discourse which will produce a multiplicity of alternatives through openness to the ethical questions and the determination of a ‘problem’. Above all, the minoritarian ethics is concerned with a question of the political project of assemblage theory, through the application of critical action research and learning in practice (Yu and Lee, 2008).

7

www.seipub.org/ijps International Journal of Philosophy Study (IJPS), Volume 3, 2015

Conclusions An inquiry into the systems approach of Deleuze’s theory of an assemblage theory provides further insight into the “critical ontology of ourselves” as it treads on a set of ontological, epistemological and ethical toes in systems thinking tradition. Exploring social beings in terms of assemblages and becoming‐minoritarians as we proposed, how do we move forward in a systems science? Our contention is that Deleuze’s theory of the assemblage and minoritarian ethics help us to understand a vitalist holism and the meaning of life to explore the ‘politics of nature’ or ‘cosmopolitics’. It can be grasped by the normative principles of justice, equality and freedom that make the continuous process of “creative involution” and innovation to proceed within social fields. To do so, our proposed methodology based on Deleuze’s theory of assemblage and the minoritarian ethics should be carried out through the process of problematization. It might create new and possible assemblages in social field as nonhuman ‘communication’ goes on within chaotic and unpredictable conditions. Hence, the minoritarian ethics focus upon the making the sense of the collective action through the appreciation of Deleuze’s notion of an event, which creates condition for “critical ontology of ourselves” that generates critical discourse on what we are and a collective action for making a process of the recreation of ourselves (Foucault, 1984b, c). There are ways of knowing and acting should be adaptive, responsive and open to social fields that is not only represented objectively but felt through the ‘sense’. Further what is retained of vitalist action, even while there is longer a vital force distinct from matter, is a vitalist ethics, what we call the minoritarian ethics. The minoritarian ethics is established on the basis of the emergent relations of new assemblages that regard as “causes” or “motive forces” of the social transformation that makes a vitalist whole as the living and open systems within social fields.

REFERENCES

[1]

Archibugi, D. (ed.). Debating Cosmopolitics (New Left Review Debates), Verso Books, 2003

[2]

Boundas, C. V. The Deleuze Reader, (eds.) New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

[3]

Beer, S. The Heart of Enterprise, Chichester: Wiley, 1979.

[4]

Beer, S. Brain of the firm, 2nd ed., Chichester: Wiley, 1981.

[5]

Bertalanffy, L. von., General Systems Theory, New York: Braziller, 1968.

[6]

Boundas, C. V. (eds.) The Deleuze Reader, New York: Columbia University press, 1993.

[7]

Colebrook, C. Deleuze and the Meaning of Life, London: Continuum, 2010.

[8]

Clark, T. “Becoming Everyone: The Politics of Sympathy in Deleuze and Rorty, Radical Philosophy, 147 (2008): 33‐44.

[9]

De Zeeuw, G. Research to support social interventions, Journal of Social Intervention: Theory and Practice, 19(2) (2010): 4‐ 24.

[10] DeLanda, M. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity, Continuum, London: Continuum, 2006.

[11] Deleuze, G. ‘Entretien avec Jeanette Colombel’, La Quinzaine Littéraire, 68 (1969).

[12] Deleuze, G. Foucault, London: Athlone Press, 1988.

[13] Deleuze, G. Cinema 2: The Time‐Image, (trans, Tomlinson, H. and Galeta, R.) London: Athlone, 1989.

[14] Deleuze, G. The Logic of Sense. (trans. Lester, M. with Stivale, C.), London: Athlone Press, 1990.

[15] Deleuze, G. Pourparlers, 1972‐1990, Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1992a.

[16] Deleuze, G. Cinema 1: The Movement‐Image, (trans, Tomlinson, H. and Galeta, R.) London: Athlone. 1992b.

[17] Deleuze, G. Difference and Repetition. (trans. Patton P.), London: Athlone Press, 1994.

[18] Deleuze, G. Negotiations: 1972‐1990, (trans. Joughin, M), Columbia University Press, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995 [19] Deleuze, G. Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life, New York: Zone Books, 2005.

[20] Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. Anti‐Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizopherenia, London: Athlone, 1983.

[21] Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. (trans. Massumi, B.), London: Athlone, 1987.

8

International Journal of Philosophy Study (IJPS), Volume 3, 2015 www.seipub.org/ijps

[22] Deleuze, G., and Parnet, C. Dialogues, Paris: Flammarion, 1977 [23] Flew, T. Ethics and Public Policy, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice‐Hall, 1983.

[24] Flood, R. L. Liberating Systems Theory, New York: Plenum, 1990.

[25] Foucault, M. Theatrum Philosophicum, in Michel Foucault: essential works of Foucault 1954‐1984, Vol. 2. Faubion, J. D. (eds.) (1994) London: Penguin, 1970.

[26] Foucault, M. The Archaeology of Knowledge, London: Routledge, 1972.

[27] Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Allen Lane, Penguin Books. Foucault, M. (1981). The History of Sexuality – Vol. 1, An Introduction, London: Penguin Books, 1977.

[28] Foucault, M. Questions of Method, Ideology and Consciousness, No. 8 (1981), pp. 3‐14.

[29] Foucault, M. Polemics, politics and problematizations, An interview with Michel in Rabinow, P. (eds.) (1997), Michel Foucault: Ethics, essential works of Foucault 1954‐1984, Volume 1, 111‐119, London: Penguin Books, 1984a.

[30] Foucault, M. What is Enlightenment? in Rabinow, P. (eds.), Foucault Reader, 32‐50. New York: Pantehon, 1984b.

[31] Foucault, M. On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress, in Rabinow, P. (eds.), Foucault Reader, 340‐ 372. New York: Pantehon, 1984c.

[32] Foucault, M. The Concern for Truth, in Kritzman, L. (Ed.), (1988), q.v., pp. 255‐267, (interview with Francois Ewald originally published in Magazine Littéraire, (No. 207, May 1984), pp. 18‐23, 1988a.

[33] Foucault, M. Technologies of the Self, In Martin, L. et al., (eds.) (1988), q.v., pp. 6‐49. 1988b.

[34] Foucault, Michel Foucault: Ethics, essential works of Foucault 1954‐1984, Volume 1, 111‐119, in Rabinow, P. (eds.), London: Penguin Books, 1997.

[35] Foucault, M. The Politics of Truth, trans. L Hochroch and C Porter., Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2007.

[36] Jackson, M. C. Systems Methodology for the Management Sciences, New York: Plenum, 1991.

[37] Kaufman, e. and Heller, K. J. (eds.) Deleuze and Guattari: New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy and Culture, University Minnesota Press, London: Minneapolis, 1998.

[38] Latour, B. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy (trans. Catherine Porter). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004.

[39] Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An Introduction to Actor‐Network‐Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

[40] Lazzarato, M. The concepts of Life and the Living in the Societies of Control, in Fuglsang, M. and Sørensen, M. (eds.)

Deleuze and the Social, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.

[41] Marks, J. (1998). Gilles Deleuze: Vitalism and Multiplicity, London: Pluto Press, 2001.

[42] Midgely, G. Systemic Intervention: Philosophy, Methodology, and Practice, New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2000.

[43] Mingers, J. Self‐Producing Systems: Implication and Application of Autupoiesis, New York: Plenum, 1995.

[44] Pasquino, P. The Will to Knowledge, Economy and Society, 15(1) (1986): 97‐109.

[45] Patton, P. Deleuzian Concepts: Philosophy, Colonization, Politics, Standford, CA.: Standford Univertsity Press, 2010.

[46] Pearson, K. A. Germinal Life: The difference and repetition of Deleuze, London and New York: Routledge, 1999.

[47] Schirato, T., Danaher, G. and Webb, J., Understanding Foucault: A critical introduction, 2nd edition, Los Angeles: Sage, 2012.

[48] Sellars, J. Deleuze’s Cosmopolitanism, Radical Philosophy, 142 (2007): 32‐37.

[49] Tsouvalis, C. Agonistic Thinking in Problem‐Solving: The Case of Soft System Methodology, Ph.D.Dissertation, University of Lancaster, 1995 [50] Ulrich, W. Critical Heuristics of Social Planning, Chichester: Wiley, 1983.

[51] Ulrich, W. Critical Heuristics of Social Systems Design, European Journal of Operational Research, 31 (1987): 276‐283.

9

www.seipub.org/ijps International Journal of Philosophy Study (IJPS), Volume 3, 2015

[52] Vähämäki, J. and Virtanen, A. Deleuze, Change, History, in Fuglsang, M. and Sørensen, M. (eds.) Deleuze and the Social, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.

[53] Wellman, B. ‘The community question: the intimate networks of East Yorkers’, American Journal of Sociology, vol 84, pp.

1201‐31, 1979.

[54] Yu, J. E. The Use of Deleuze’s Theory of Assemblage for Process‐Oriented Methodology, Historical Social Research, 38(2) (2013): 197‐217.

[55] Yu, J. E. and Lee, J. W Creating rhizomatic networks and ethics for the marginalised group, Systemic Practice and Action Research, 21(4) (2008): 253‐266.

Jae E. Yu is a citizen of Republic of Korea and currently residing in Korea. He born at Seoul dated on March 31, 1962. He earned his DPhil degree on Systems Approaches to Management from Business School, University of Lincoln, U.K. in 2001.

He is currently a full‐time ASSISTANT PROFESSOR at College of Business Administration in Keimyung University, Daegu, South Korea. He was specialist Professor at Business School, Korea University, Seoul, Korea from 2009 and 2011. He is currently a practicing advisor in the local government institute and organizations at South Korea (e.g. Smile Microcredit Bank, Korean Microfinance Institution at Seoul, and Daegu Resource Development Center). His publications include books such as Systemic Understanding of Sustainable Social Enterprises (Seoul, Korea: Han‐Keong Sa, 2014), An Invitation to the Management of Difference (Seoul, Korea: SERI, 2004), The Emergence of Community based Capitalism: the Case of Korean Village Enterprises (Chapter in Capitalism and the Social Relationship: An Organizational Perspective, (London: Palgrave/ Macmillan, Kazeroony, H. and Stachowicz‐Stanusch, A. (eds) 2013), Articles such as The Use of Deleuze’s Theroy of Assemblage for Process‐Oriented Methodology (Historical Social Research, Vol, 38, No. 2, 2013; Creating Rhizomatic Networks and Ethics for the Marginalized Group (Systemic Practices and Action Research, Vol. 21: 253‐266). His current research includes action learning and critical approaches to understanding community practice, business education, community‐based capitalism, community social enterprises, microfinance, social responsibility of profit and non‐profits organizations.

Dr. Jae Eon Yu. Full‐time member of Academy of Management, International Society for Systems Sciences (ISSS). Director of Korean System Dynamics Society.

National Award for Education in Community Business and Microfinance in 2010.

10