Deleuze: Becoming-machinic.
Keywords: Machinic, Intensities, Flows, Cybernetics, Ecology, Neurophilosophy, Mimesis, Mimicry, Phyllium.
“What we get here is not the relationship of a metaphor (the old boring topic of ‘machine replacing humans’) but that of metamorphosis, of the ‘becoming-machine’ of man” (Zizek, 2004, p. 16)
It is a misunderstanding to posit that every person reacts similarly to the same situation. However, one can accurately comment that there are generic[1] feelings whilst travelling the London Underground and that these generic feelings will emerge from a multiplicity of generic causes. There is a mass of variables that will affect these feelings; for example, the role that the tube plays in one’s life or the time of day that it is used. In this paper, I intend to unpack some of these generic causes and to position them as effects for producing a change in exterior behaviour that is experienced on the London Underground—a space unlike other spaces. I will firstly conclude that certain systems in London (employment, economy, time) create intensities that affect the flow of travellers and pressurise the experience, resulting in abnormal behaviour. Secondly, and more importantly, I will argue that a mimicking of the tube ensues which causes the commuter to develop machinic[2] characteristics that are only displayed within this space. This is not to say that the traveller acts like a machine or physically changes to that of a machine, but precisely a real becoming in the style of a tubeline.
It is important to de-territorialize the term machine and machinic; ato distance ourselves from the conventional use of the term.
“The term machine designates an ensemble of heterogeneous parts and processes whose connections work together to enable flows of matter, energy, and signs (and consequently desire); a machinic refers precisely to this working together of heterogeneous flows of parts and processes. These terms do not operate as metaphors, as in the phrase “ ‘the turning of the bureaucratic machine,’ ” but designate arrangements and processes, respectively. Machines, first of all, are assemblages that include both humans and tools, or in modern societies, technical machines.” (Johnston, 2008, p. 111)
A machine can be both organic and inorganic and relates to a process whereby a function is performed. In comparing Fig 1, which is a microscopic picture taken of a protein in a mouse’s fibroblast cell, to Fig 2, which is an aerial shot taken from space of London at night, the distinction between what could be termed organic and inorganicchanges. What is implied by the juxtaposition of these images is that almost everything is a machine that is affected by exterior forces and which direct smaller elements to designated areas.
To aid an exploration into how the Underground can be termed as a machine, we can imagine an artery (Fig 3). There are single blood cells moving through at intense speeds. These flows are dictated by intensities of the larger organ machines which push and pull the cells along the veins and arteries. During their journey the blood cells will squeeze and slide past one another with little consideration for one another because they are integrated into the body machine. As such they display machinic characteristics. This is in directly similar to the experience of the traveller on the Underground. At first this may be experienced as excitement, but through repetition the novelty will wane and external needs (job, family) will take precedent.
The London Underground is a machine that is pressured by external forces to direct flows (of people) to separate areas of the city. These forces work as systems that code the Underground experience to function specifically. An example of a system could be the ‘job system.’ By the homogenisation of working times, it codes the Underground as ‘rush hour’ at certain times of the day. This code, depending upon the person, will create generic feelings (annoyance, frustration, claustrophobia). By this we can see that the Underground is not a closed machine but part of a wider ecosystem. As the London ecosystem changes so then will the Underground. This can be seen with the rise in rail fares in the past year that increasingly compresses the tube. Due to past failures by the government combined with international economic problems, the price of tickets compared with the rise in wage is unequal; as such the traveller will be coded through reaction to behave differently.
The flows of social movement are highly theorised within cybernetics. It will be shown that this mapping of human movement which was effectuated for the Underground, has now become the map by which humans must follow, resulting in a power shift from humans to technology. Cybernetics creates formulas so that predictions can be generated prior to events in the social arena. For example, we now have many more trains at rush hour because it is predicted that high levels of service will be needed. However there has been an alteration of power within this system. Whereas the train line copied the intensities of the community, it now has become a self-legitimating system that dictates the movement of the people. This can be shown by line closures, train timetables, and transport police. These have become necessary alterations that appear in response to the needs of the Underground,rather than the needs of the individual user for. What began as a public service has become a self-legitimating perpetual machine with similarities to the economic market. It now has needs and wants that out rank those of the humans.
This is continued by the move to slowly push human control out and bring in technological systems. The Underground is now operating under a new regime that uses technology for control. The trains are told when to go and stop by technological systems, they are told when they need repairing, what days they do not need to work. It is the human whom is told by the machine to control these; as such, we have seen power taken from the hands of humans and replaced with the task of maintenance or guardianship. When we now enter the Underground network we are entering a highly technological machine that has little human control.
Humans are very fragile to their exterior environment. Arguments from neuroscience claim that we are entirely governed by forces that we are subjected to. This is useful in understanding why very specific behaviour is performed whilst in the space of the Underground. We are not choosing specifically to adopt these characteristics but are pressurised from overlapping systems of control. One of these behaviours to be explored is a becoming-machinic. Due to the high level of technology in the space, through repeated exposure to these conditions the traveller begins to mimic the environment.
“A becoming is not a correspondence between relations. But neither is it a resemblance, an imitation, or, at the limit, an identification…Above all, becoming does not occur in the imagination. Above all, becoming does not occur in the imagination even when the imagination reaches the highest cosmic or dynamical level, as in Jung or Bachelard… Becoming produces nothing other than itself. We fall into a false alternative if we say that you either imitate or you are. What is real is the becoming itself, the block of becoming, not the supposedly fixed terms through which that which becomes passes.” (Gilles Deleuze, 1987, p. 262)
An example of this becoming might be when one plays with a small child; the experience does not qualify a physical alteration, nor is it just copying the child. It becomes a nostalgic re-accounting of childhood, whereby we become childlike.
Here lies the crux of my argument; that the highly pressurised Underground exerts technology onto the traveller to such an extent that a change appears from a mime the Underground (demonstrated by tourists) towards mimicry of this space. Through this mimicry we witness a becoming-Underground. An example of this phenomenon can be seen when the same characteristics manifest even when the traveller is not in commuter mode. Showing, that even when the pressure of work is taken away, the same generic behaviours will be displayed.
Mi-me-sis: (noun)
1. Imitation, in particular
2. Representation or imitation of the real world in art and literature.
Mim-ic-ry: (noun)
1. The close external resemblance of an animal or plant (or part of one) to another.
Ray Brassier uses the Phyllium to demonstrate mimicry in nature,
“In mimicking their own food, leaf insects such as the phyllium frequently end up devouring each other. Their mimicry involves an uncanny teleplasty – a physical photography – which short-circuits any use-value the mimetic realism might have had by replicating the physical symptoms of corruption and decay. Mirroring the necrosis of its own food, the phyllium identifies itself as a dying semblance of its own living sustenance. The exorbitant accuracy of this insect teleplasty initiates an autophagy which becomes part of the organic coding of the physical photograph itself. Thus the symbiosis between the information of one organism – phyllium – and another - leaf – undergoes an involution which simultaneously engenders the collapse of their identity and the erasure of their difference in the paradoxical convergence of organic verisimilitude and living death” (Brassier, 2007, p. 43)
Through the metaphor of the phyllium Brassier will later show that this is a cause of schizophrenia, because the person loses a part of their own identity and becomes another. It is suggested that this happens frequently throughout mundane life, a constant mimetic adoption of external environments. Much like the parent who is repetitively subjected to the behaviour of children and becomes childish in their ways, the traveller will adopt the regulatory rigidity of the Underground.
This paper identifies the Underground system as a machine that is similar to those which we find in biological systems. It shows that what may be seen as a multitude of individuals using one appliance,it is rather an advanced ecosystem, working at a cross-section of forces from the city above. As this ecosystem changes so do the flows of matter; the ecosystem dominates the matter through control.
It has beenshown that the ecosystem is highly technological and has become self-legitimating to the extent that the technology is more powerful than the human control. The humans have become the guardians of it, but the decisions, directions and orders are created and imposed by an invisible network of systems.
The fragility of humans to their exterior forces has enforced that they become like this technological network. Among other pressures that compress this space, the human is forced to adopt the characteristics of this techno-ecosystem, which through repeated exposure moves the human’s behaviour from a mimesis to mimicry. I have termed this becoming-machinic or becoming-Underground. It is this becoming that causes the exterior behaviour and the generic feeling that is experienced in the Underground space.
Brassier, R. (2007). Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment to extinction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gilles Deleuze, F. G. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. London : Continuum.
Johnston, J. (2008). The allure of Machinic life: Cybernetics, Artifical Life, and the New AI. Massachusetts: MIT press.
Zizek, S. (2004). Organs without bodies. New York: Routledge.
[1] The use of generic is used in a specific manner. It argues that the areas that overlap between subjective feelings are the most accurate. By addressing the areas of similarity between people we are avoiding having to rely on statistical evidence, which will always be naive because of the group size. We also avoid complications relating to subjective experience as to the intensity of these feelings. For example, if there was an effect on the underground, heat, and three people were affected by this, a generic feeling would be ‘frustration’. What is implied is that it is not assuming that all three were very frustrated, it does not assume an intensity, but rather, on some level this frustration was experienced. See Francois Laruelle “The generic as predicate and constant: non-philosophy and materialism”
[2] By using the word machinic I refer to the change in a passenger as they adopt characteristics of the tube. Allowing themselves to become flows of matter that are highly regulated.