Anonymity and Resistance in Deleuze and Galloway

I’ll focus primarily on Galloway’s descriptions of the term of network (from the Media Terms text, which followed his earlier Protocol book) and Deleuze’s “Postscript” article.

Deleuze’s work seems pretty straightforward here: building off of Foucault, and extending his ideas through the delineation of a new era, moving from the enclosed era of sovereign societies to the control society that seems, to invoke a Deleuze-ian term, rhizomatic, ignoring the boundaries of Foucault-ian “disciplines.” A society that continuously exerts it control across social institutions. The history Deleuze suggests here (transitioning into a control society after WWII) seems like it could be fodder for discussion. Courtney grappled with the old/new issue last week, and it seems like there might be some space to talk about how eras/histories are constructed in theses readings.

Deleuze seems less techno-deterministic (6) than prior writers we’ve encountered, though I’m not sure I want to pursue that thread from prior seminars. Rather, I’m drawn to Deleuze’s discussion at the end of his writing. Unions, Deleuze argues, have lost their potency; he points to the murkiness of resistance in light of “the ineptitude of the unions” (6). After watching the Zach Blas video, I’m struck by the potential of anonymity as a form of resistance. We might discuss this issue further in seminar, including, or not, the phenomenon of Anonymous as a kind of vigilante resistance movement, or how other kinds of anonymity in general can lend itself to forms of resistance. It might be interesting to resurface Aden’s discussion of surveillance in relation to the readings this week.

Last week, Diana was grappling with how Chun invoked the concept of noise. In relation to resistance, I think “noise” as a term could be conceptually generative, so perhaps we could link those terms together.

I’m drawn to Galloway’s dissatisfaction with the open source movement (291-292). Galloway sees the open source movement, popularly imagined, as shallow or lacking. Galloway suggests a more robust approach through an “open runtime” movement, one that grapples with the paradox of the networked other as “always obscured” while also expecting to experience “the essence of the other, even in it’s obscurity” as the “ultimate goal of any networked relation” (292).

I’d like, in seminar, to perhaps unpack this passage a bit, to examine the concepts of open source and the paradox Galloway points to, as well as perhaps wonder at what an “open runtime” movement might look like.