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stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

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not a ‘mere feeling.’ It is a feeling <strong>of</strong> life itself. ‘How are you?’ ‘How do you feel?’ these<br />

questions mean the exact same thing. Zourabichivili describes this ethics in terms <strong>of</strong> health.<br />

“What is health? We see that it is ambiguous by nature, an overflowing, excess, in other words,<br />

violence, but a creative violence, or more precisely, a violence concomitant with creation rather<br />

than destruction. Such violence shatters because it carries the subject into an a-subjective, that is,<br />

a singular and impersonal becoming-other, rather than shattering by a will-to-shatter or to<br />

impose a new, already envisaged, figure <strong>of</strong> subjectivity” (Zourabichvili 198). Deleuze develops<br />

such an ethics as health in his philosophy.<br />

For example, Deleuze and Guattari develop such an ethics in Capitalism and<br />

Schizophrenia. In other words, they explain the various ways in which a living body becomes by<br />

affirming its own difference. In this regard they talk about a body without organs. Why a body<br />

without organs? We tend to understand the functions <strong>of</strong> organs in terms <strong>of</strong> the organism. In other<br />

words, we subordinate the functions <strong>of</strong> organs to the organism. Is this not why they take the<br />

appendix out? Apparently it does not do anything for the organism. Deleuze and Guattari<br />

distinguish between two kinds <strong>of</strong> systems. On the one hand, there are systems that are organized<br />

top to bottom, that is, by means <strong>of</strong> one center or even by means <strong>of</strong> several centers. “Arborescent<br />

systems are hierarchical systems with centers <strong>of</strong> significance and subjectification, central<br />

automata like organized memories. In the corresponding models, an element only receives<br />

information from a higher unit, and only receives a subjective affection along preestablished<br />

paths” (TP 16). The question is <strong>of</strong> course where this higher unit itself gets its information. Where<br />

does the organism itself get its functions? On the other hand, there are systems that organize<br />

themselves, in other words, where no one unit is higher precisely because each only becomes a<br />

unit in relation to others. In other words, there are systems that develop themselves to the extent<br />

238

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