“…I have kept my subject within unjustifiable limits; I should have spoken of the ‘author-function’ in painting, music, technical fields and so fourth.”
-Michel Foucault
Deterritorialization Through Technology and the Emergence of the Multiplex
Ophir Kutiel, or Kutiman, is an Israeli musician and author of ThruYou*. Kutiman occupies what Foucault calls a “transdiscursive position” in authorship in that the initiation of his discipline lends itself to the proliferation of new authors. What I find particularly interesting about the work of Kutiman is the manner of its creation. The problem I would like to engage with is the process allowing for the emergence of such a work, that is, I would like to explore the “creative process” of production. The work under consideration emerges as a work consisting of many elements in a complex relationship, or, for the purpose of this essay, a multiplex. I argue that the emergence of a multiplex as a discursive practice is because of “desiring-production,” the utilization of power and technology as a mechanism of deterritorializin.
ThruYou is billed as: “…a mix of unrelated youtube/videoclips edited together to create ThruYou. In other words – what you see is what you hear.” In its most basic form ThruYou can be considered a compilation of music videos. However, upon a more critical examination it becomes clear that it is a work of complex arrangements of different discourses, or, a multiplex. The particular multiplex under consideration is the emergence of ThruYou a discursive practice initiated through Kutiman’s “transdiscursive position.”
I find it relevant to approach the manner by which the multiplex emerges as a discursive practice by beginning with Foucault’s, “What is an Author?” followed by, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” After defining Kutiman in the terms of his “transdiscursive position,” the concept of the multiplex as a discursive practice will be fleshed out. Upon carving a plane in which the authoring of a multiplex can be critically engaged, it becomes necessary for my thesis to elaborate on ideas such as “desiring –production” and deterritorializatio. Lastly, technology and deterritorialization of discourse and authorship will be explored for their importance in the “the art of not being governed quite so much.”
In “What is an Author?” Foucault attributes four characteristics to discourse that support the use of the “author-function.” “‘The ‘author-function’ is [1] tied to the legal and institutional systems that circumscribe, determine and articulate the realm of discourse; [2] it does not operate in a uniform manner in all discourse…[3] it is not defined by the spontaneous attribution of a text to its creator…[4] it does not refer…to an actual individual insofar as it simultaneously gives rise to a variety of egos…”
Looking at these characteristics individually provides a better understanding of Kutiman in relation to the “author-function.” First, The work of Kutiman is “tied to the legal and institutional systems that circumscribe, determine and articulate the realm of discourse.” Kutiman and his work are tied to the legal system in a more convoluted fashion than the typical appropriation to intellectual property laws; his work gives rise to numerous questions regarding legal appropriation. As the website says, his work is “…a mix of unrelated youtube/videoclips edited together.” Questions of intellectual property come into play when his work is broken down to the fundamental elements of its construction. Questions surrounding the ownership of the individual YouTube videos used to create ThruYou are bound to arise. However, unlike the legal battles surrounding the sampling techniques important to such genres as hip-hop, ThruYou appears to be sampling material that initially wasn’t intended for a profitable gain.*
The way in which the author-function doesn’t operate in a uniform manner in all discourse is only pertinent to our purposes when we question the importance of Kutiman to his work after its initiation as a discursive practice. In an essay such as this, the “author-function” becomes relevant when we launch into a discourse on the manner in which Kutiman is able to produce his work. However, upon the proliferation of discourses on the innovativeness of Kutiman’s work, and not on the Author himself, the author ultimately becomes inconsequential to the manner in which his work is appropriated.
Thirdly, a work isn’t spontaneously attributed to an author. Authorship and the emergence of discursive practices is the result of a “complex operation whose purpose is to construct that rational entity we call an author.” It’s in this vein that Kutiman, the productive powers of his unconscious and the compilation of various discourses are examined to expose the mechanisms utilized for the emergence of the multiplex.
Lastly, the emergence of a discursive practice allows for the proliferation of a variety of egos. This characteristic will be examined further in the following section on the subject of emergence. The rise of a variety of egos becomes important for our purposes in two ways. Primarily, the rise of egos, and subsequent proliferation of discourses, allow for our subject under consideration to compile these discourses in such a way as to initiate the multiplex. Secondly, and a topic we will examine more closely later, is the manner in which an inverse multiplexing facilitates the rise of a variety of egos and subsequent reterritorialization of deterritorialized works.
When Kutiman is said to occupy a “transdiscursive position,” what is actually being signified is the manner in which Kutiman exists outside Foucault’s narrow usage of the word author. An author is said to be occupying a “transdiscursive position” upon the emergence of “a theory…a tradition or a discipline within which new books and authors can proliferate.” What has been left unsaid until this point, is way in which emergence functions. In “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” Foucault designates Entstehung, or emergence, as the “…moment of arising,” and, “…principal and singular law of an apparition.” Foucault makes it clear that the analysis of emergence must delineate the interaction of states of forces in a struggle. For example, the emergence of a species can be seen in terms of its struggle against adverse circumstance. However, for the purpose of understanding emergence as the initiation of an authors work as a discursive practice, Foucault’s second usage of emergence is more appropriate. Foucault writes: “On the other hand, individual difference emerge in another state of the relationship of forces, when the species has become victorious and when it is no longer threatened from the outside.” It is in this sense of emergence the “author-function” gives rise to a variety of egos…”
What we are left with is what I’d like to call the Kutiman Model*. The purpose of Kutiman is simply to provide a point of reference for the remainder of the essay. What I hope to provide for the reader is a better understanding on how a piece of work such as a multiplex emerges to become completely deterritorialized from any forces.
“Desiring-production” is term coined my philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their collaborative work Anti-Oedipus. “Desiring-production” is part of a responsive-theory to the psychoanalytical Oedipal complex developed by Freud. In the simplest terms, “desiring-production” is the theory that the unconscious operates in a positive productive manner as opposed to functioning in terms of a lack. Unlike psychoanalysis and Freudian theory where the unconscious is a “stage” of sorts where the Oedipal triangle, that is, mommy—daddy—subject, continually traps/diverts/prevents positive production, “desiring-production” understands the unconscious as a purely productive machine.
Examining the way in which Nietzsche (among others) is seen by Foucault and Deleuze as the paradigm case for showing that the unconscious is a productive machine, should offer some insight into the model of production that I’m elaborating on in the Kutiman. This isn’t to say that Kutiman is a schizophrenic or that he has schizophrenic tendencies, rather, the juxtaposition should serve as a means by which one can chart the multiplex as a productive force of desiring production, therefore chart the flow of power.
Foucault writes that “he [Freud] did deliver the patient from the existence of the asylum with in which his ‘liberators’ had alienated him; but he did not deliver him from what was essential in this existence; he regrouped its powers, extending them to the maximum by uniting them in the doctor’s hands; he created the psychoanalytical situation where, by an inspired short-circuit, alienation becomes disalienating because, in the doctor, it becomes a subject.” This is important in that this is the force that Anti-Oedipus was written to combat. It was through the proliferation of Oedipal discourse that we have only the “lightning-flash” of unreason as opposed to a constant flow of “desiring-production.” Foucault writes of the way in which unreason manifests itself in figures such as Nietzsche allowing for the individual to resist “the moral imprisonment which we are in a habit of calling…the liberation of the insane…” Deleuze refers to Nietzsche in the same context during an interview: The interviewer asks Deleuze a question about mental illness and Nietzsche. Deleuze responds saying that Nietzsche has “broken through the wall of the signifier, the wall of the ‘Mommy-Daddy’ system…traveled far beyond that point, and speak[s] to us with a voice that is the voice of our future.”
I compare Nietzsche and Kutiman because I think they both speak to us with the “voice of our future.” The multiplex emerges much like the works of Nietzsche; that is, they emerge far beyond the point of any repressive structures. Just as Nietzsche broke through the repressive wall of the Oedipal complex, the multiplex breaks through all domestic and international intellectual property laws.
The flow of “desiring-production,” or in Foucaultian terms, power, can be seen in the technique used in ThruYou itself. Perhaps at a later date a complete genealogy of rhythm is something to consider and explore in further detail, but for now, if I’m granted a moment to speculate, I’d like to suggest a theory to the origin of music: I Imagine humans (or some derivative) in a time predating verbal communication. The gait of prey common to the diet is beat by hand on the cave floor, “thud-thud…thud-thud...” The grazing beast’s actions are conveyed in the tempo of the rhythm. The man’s other hand adds the stalking hunter’s gait: “thud-thud-tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk-thud-thud...” The fusion of these rhythms is in all likelihood the first multiplex. To summarize: there are two signals, the beast and the human hunter. As a means of communication the signals are combined into a common channel. The multiplex is initiated.
It isn’t my project to prove that the primordial orchestra occurred, but rather to expose the flow of its power. Conceiving of the multiplex in the most primitive of examples leaves us to review the basic elements needed to understand its existence and the manifestation of its power. There’s hunger, which we’ll call desire, as in, one has a desire to be fed. And desire, as we know from Anti-Oedipus, is productive. The work produced serves as a means of communicating with others. An understanding of these two elements leads us to a better explanation of the concept of “desiring-production” in the Kutiman. This sense of “desiring-production” is a more general appropriation of Nietzsche’s formulation of the Will To Power. And it’s in the combination of technology and the “desiring-production” that the dual-signaled multiplex of the primitive man became the multiple in the Kutiman.
To speculate once again: the multiplex emerged as a mechanism of survival for the primitive man. At a time when communication technology was limited to hands and cave floors, the multiplex served as a hunting tool; it was a means by which a hunt could be initiated, studied and trained for. Only through increases in technology did the multiplex become more complex, that is, increase the signals communicated in the shared channel. Multiple multiplexes proliferated, merged with one another and grew in strength as knowledge and cultural ontology were disclosed. Some recent examples of manifestations of these complex recombinations in the West can be seen in the utilizations of Afro-polyrhythmic multiplexes in Latin American music and Jazz. As stated earlier, the increase in technology lead directly to the increase in the complexity of the multiplexes. The increase in musical instruments widened the realm of discourse, however, it is only through the increase in communicative technologies that we begin to observe multiple medias increasing the girth of the multiplex’s channel. The introduction of equipment such as turntables no longer limited multiplexes to mere instruments and rhythmic patterns, rather, it created the conditions for the emergence of techniques such as sampling and looping. In my opinion, the manipulation of records on turntables and the use of the subsequent techniques, made hip-hop the most complex multiplex until the emergence of ThruYou.
To return to “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” it comes time to examine the struggle of forces that provided the conditions for the emergence of ThruYou. On the one hand we have the flow of desire, that is, power, and on the other hand we have the limit of knowledge. There is a third element that I’ve only lightly touched upon so far, that is the force of intellectual property laws surrounding authorship. But first, let us examine the relationship of power and knowledge.
The limits of knowledge constitute the current state in the development of technology. It is only through technology that the increasingly complex multiplex emerges. If we were to simply examine the proliferation of the multiplex in a specific knowledge realm, we would in fact be examining multiple multiplexes within a given horizon; that is, the horizontal proliferation of discourse. However, the emergence of a more complex multiplex is the result of desiring power struggling against the force imposed by the limits of technology.
Horizontal proliferation of discourse lends itself to territorialization. The use of territorialization in this sense is only loosely related to its use in the physical sense regarding laws imposed on property, land, etc. Intellectual property laws and territorialization go hand in hand because of the domestic or international laws placed on authors work. What is noteworthy about the multiplex compounded with increasing technology is the manner in which it continually strives to evade intellectual property laws, that is, the multiplex increases in complexity as a means of deterritorializing. In the case of the Kutiman one sees a break from intellectual property laws in two fashions. First, YouTube material is already in a position by which the laws surrounding ownership are ambiguous due to terms of service agreements, ease of the materials accesses and the difficulty by which these terms can be coherently negotiated in court*.
More importantly, the second break from domestic and intentional property laws is not so much related to the material being used but the terrain on which it facilitated. The internet has provided an area by which discourse can flow freely in an often unpoliced and unrestricted manner. Unlike the time when countless authors (particularly in hip-hop) were being sued because of intellectual property violations, the internet lends itself to flows of power whose primary opposing force is that of technology. Of course over time the proliferation of horizontal discourse will reach a point, much like hip-hop did, in which it will eventually be territorialized through a variety of mechanisms. ThuYou is currently in the position of being surrounded by horizontal discourse.
Up until this point I have refrained from addressing the topic of power and its relationship to discursive practices. Foucault provides us with a variety of characteristics of power that have a relationship to the Kutiman that shouldn’t be overlooked. The three that I plan to elaborate on are: One, power is …”the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their organization.” Second, “power produces knowledge,” and lastly “…power produces domains of objects and rituals of truth.”
If power is the multiplicity of force relations as Foucault writes, then what are the particular force relations in the Kutiman that demarcate it within the entirety of the episteme? How are these relationships organized within the specific sphere of the multiplex modeled in the Kutiman? As stated before, I think that the forces that play a role in our model are desiring-production, the limits of technology and the forces that wish to territorialize authors’ works. These forces are organized in such a way that three layers become evident. [1] There exists a fluctuating border drawn by the struggling forces of the realm of knowledge and the chaos that has yet to be carved into manageable discourse. [2] There exists the power of the authors’ works, which, for our purpose, is the multiplex and subsequent horizontal discourses that proliferate. Thirdly, [3] there’s the forces that wishes to control and place probations on the multiplex. These elements can be seen as layered in such a way that the multiple exists between those forces wishing to control it, and the limits of technology. The emergence of the multiplex occurs once the author is capable of using the power that exists when new truths are carved out of the chaos that exists beyond the knowledge realm. The emergence should be seen as an evasive technique performed by multiplexes when encountered with the elements of the territorializing forces of intellectual property laws. It is almost as if the multiplex emerges by slipping out the newly created backdoor founded upon the expansion of truth through the increase in knowledge and technology.
This leads us to the issue of the production of knowledge through power. I gave the example of the backdoor by which the multiplex emerges. This concept can be understood as the creative process by which the author operates. If we are to understand desiring-production as the more generalized appropriation of Nietzsche’s will to power and the ego striving toward the sun and the light, then it isn’t hard to see the creative process as knowledge created by utilizing the “apparatus” that Foucault calls the episteme, in combination with desiring production, or, the will to knowledge.
And finally, “…power produces domains of objects and rituals of truth.” And this is the destination where I wish this convoluted project to end. What we are ultimately left with in the Kutiman, is the emergence of the multiplex, that is, the emergence of ThruYou as the latest and most complex single channel of communication. Upon its emergence ThruYou exists as an object, an event and the only initiated discursive practice in its newly created domain. This new domain becomes the new horizon by which discourse proliferates and rituals of truth are attributed.
It is precisely through the proliferation of multiple discourse upon the emergence of a discursive practice that territorialization occurs. Inverse multiplexing, that is, the delineation and interpretation of the multiple signals from the shared channel, make way for the structural elements of the multiplex to be scrutinized in their relationship to the entire multiplex. To put this in other words, and to use the Kutiman, the emergence of ThruYou has already made way for the proliferation of discourse,* and it is through multiple discourses about ThruYou’s construction, regulation, innovation, etc. that prohibitions will begin to be appropriated to it as a means of reterritorialization.
In conclusion, the only question that remains is the, “so what? I suppose that if we are to imagine a mode of being by which we are most free, it would require us to be self-governing and operate only as mechanics to the unrestricted flows of power, energy and desire. If we are to exist as self-formative ethos, then the best way to accomplish such a task is to avoid the forces of territorialization by means of authorship and the creative process. To put this in a better way: Kutiman serves as a schematic for the “the art of not being governed quite so much.”