Franco ''Bifo'' Berardi - The Soul at Work From Alienation to Autonomy

The Poisoned Soul 1 159grand Rationalism'-'an innocent way of setting OUt inthinking from infinity,' which finds its most petfectiment in Spinozism."26And also:"God's absolute essence is the absolutely infinite pOwetexisting and acting; but we only assert this primary poweridentical to the essence of God/conditionally upon/anof formally or really distinct attributes. The power ofand acting is thus absolute formal essence."And there is more:"God understands and expresses himself objectively.""Yet all this talking about the infinite power of God tells usabout human expressive power, which is not infinite, orpsychological and physical energy that the human organismits disposal, which is not infinite either.presupposes instead that in any exchange there is a loss: this"o(luces entropy, a loss of otder and a dispersion of energy.hudrilllatd sees simulation as the infinite teplication of a virus thatdesiring enetgy to the point of exhaustion. A sort of semiinflationexplodes in the circuits of Out collective sensibility,."rc,dueing effects of mutation that run a pathological coutse: toosigns, too fast, and too chaotic. The sensible body is subjectedan acceleration that destroys every possibility of consciousde(:odific:ation and sensible perception.This is the objection that Baudrillard addtesses to the Anti-Oedipus.But isn't this what Deleuze and Guattari are ultimately saying inlast work? In their book on old age, written while they werethemselves, they ask what philosophy is about, and theythat philosophy is friendship, and (to use Buddhist language)the Great Compassion: it is the capacity to walk togetheralong the abyss of meaning gaping under out feet. In that last bookthe two schizo philosophers talk abour old age and schizo pain, andthe tOO qUick quickening of signs and ideas running away withoutever getting caught.The limited character of libidinal energy brings us back totheme of depression as collective phenomenon. The semioticeration and the proliferation of simulacra within the media.tizlexperience of society produce an effect of exhaustion in thetive libidinal energy, opening the way to a panic-depressivehis text on libidinal parasites, Pasquinelli raises the problemthetmodynamics of desire, formulating two different hYiPothei;e,One, inspired by the first law of thermodynamics, is the ideawithin libidinal exchange there is no loss, but a constant qu;mtiitylenergy. The other is based On the second law of th,,,rrlOdyn:unid"We require just a little order to protect us from chaos.Nothing is more distressing than a thought that escapes itself,than ideas that fly off, that disappear hardly formed, alreadyeroded by forgetfulness.""After Forget Foucault and the other texts of the mid 1970s, whereBaudrillard critiqued the theories of desire and Foucault's genealogyof power, were published, nobody responded to his objections,which seemed provocative or maybe dissuasive. Yet Baudrillard's