Base: Vitanza, E5352, Deleuze & Guattari and Rhetorical Theory
Keywords: Listening
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 16:52:20 GMT
From: sarroyo@exchange.uta.edu

"It should not be thought that a haecceity consists simply of a décor or backdrop that situates subjects, or of appendages that hold things and people to the ground. It is the entire assemblage in its individuated aggregate that is a haecceity: it is this assemblage that is defined by a longitude and a latitude, by speeds and affects, independently of forms and subjects, which belong to another plane. It is the wolf itself, and the horse, and the child, that cease to be subjects to become events, in assemblages that are inseparable from an hour, a season, an atmosphere, an air, a life" (ATP 262).

Freud does not listen. The Wolf-Man (a hysteric despite his man-ness) has so much to say; yet Freud does not listen. Instead, "he glances at his dog and answers, 'it's daddy.'" (ATP 38), and then declares the Wolf-Man cured. So, the Wolf-Man becomes another star for psychoanalysis. But it is precisely this "cure," the persuasion to the Wolf-Man that he has uttered the "most individual of all statements" that makes the Wolf-Man feel so fatigued and keeps him "suffocated by all he had to say." D & G warn that at the very moment, the moment when the "subject" believes he or she has uttered an individual statement, "he or she is deprived of all basis for enunciation" (38). Freud wants the Wolf-Man to believe that since he has "expressed" himself, his inner desires, the tracing of his unconscious, his experience can then be reduced to a set of predetermined structures (one possibility) to finally cure him. But, as D & G tell us, "there are no individual statements, there never are. Every statement is a product of a machinic assemblage, in other words, of collective agents of enunciation (take 'collective agents' to mean not peoples or societies but multiplicities)" (37). Freud listened only to reinscribe what the Wolf-Man was saying into his theory (Oedipus).

Becomings and intensities of the "multiplied and depersonalized" individual make up the machanic assemblage that produces statements from the Wolf-Man; this does not simply privilege the social over the so-called individual. Becomings and intensities perpetually fold the social and individual, never to be pulled apart as separate entities. So, what could Freud have done instead of silencing the Wolf-Man? I will return to this shortly; first, let's look at how two major figures of two competing theories of epistemology and discourse in Rhetoric and composition might have handled it: Donald Murray and James Berlin. Although social epistemic discourse has reigned since the 80's, resonances of expressivist discourse (especially issues of ownership) still linger and are making their way back into recent discussions around the field. Thus, even though exciting, alternative ways of seeing have been worked out alongside social-epistemic and expressivist discourse, these two still remain the most prominent epistemologies of the day.

Donald Murray listens. As one of the forerunners of expressive writing, he made the writing conference famous. He nods, ooohhss, and aahhss while his students, one by one, tell them what they are writing about and why. He presumably gives all control over to them and becomes an "observer" to their "learning." This ear/eye connection, "The listening eye," as he puts it, also hands over all authority to students who then "talk their way" through their own writing and learning processes, telling him exactly what they attempted to do with each paper. Thus, their learning comes from within themselves, they figure out what they need and how to go about getting it done. The listening eye is the other end of the dialectic: apparently not Socrates' side. This process, flipping the privileged position of the binary from teacher/student to student/teacher, is very much like the "famous psychoanalytic neutrality" about which D & G speak. The teacher as (neutral) listener is one expressivist tenant of several others that have been endlessly critiqued and reworked over the past twenty years, so I will limit this discussion to how it pertains to the Wolf-Man.

While Murray's goal is to listen throughout the entire writing conference, he does offer some questions to get the ball rolling such as: "what surprised you in this draft?" or "where is this piece of writing taking you?" These questions do change from time to time, but they are generally made up of this type of language. Plus, the very atmosphere in which the conference takes place (office; institution) permeate the conference even when presumably neutral "starter" questions such as these are posed. After one or two conferences, Murray realizes that he no longer has to ask these questions, because his students ask them to themselves before they arrive. With this in mind, is Murray really listening? Is his listening any different from Freud's? Are students' machinic assemblages blocked from rotating in all directions? Who has the authority? How are flows stopped up?

Expression, for D & G, constitutes "not simply the face and language . . . but a semiotic collective machine that pre-exists them and constitutes regimes of signs" (ATP 63). Hence, when someone is said to be "expressing him/herself," he or she is "faced," fixed, and static by repeating signs from the dominant semiotic-collective machine. The past, which is played out by figuring out "why" and "how" a particular expression takes place, keeps people enslaved by and indebted to it. D & G write: "the form of subjectivity . . . would remain absolutely empty if faces did not form loci of resonance that select the sensed or mental reality and make it conform in advance to a dominant reality" (168). Each supposed expression of "inner thoughts" or the "inner self" is only a reproduction of dominant discourse, a face. Machinic assemblages are silenced. To express is to face and be faced. Writing conferences build faces.

James Berlin listens. But his listening was not made famous by the writing conference. To directly oppose Murray and the expressivists, Berlin makes the goals of his writing class clear in Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: "political agency, not individual autonomy, is the guiding principle" (82). Thus, Berlin listens as a facilitator, facilitating students' representations of reality and their hopeful revisions of those representations. His students, mostly through small groups, examine their political agency with him and other members of the class. His role as a listener, however, is determined in advance. He writes, "the effort is to make students aware of cultural codes, the competing discourses that influence their positioning as subjects of experience. Our larger purpose is to encourage students to negotiate and resist these codes" (116).

Berlin listens to intervene, to redirect, to point out, and to create a "new awareness" and hence, a new subjectivity. This intervention, he claims, is the only way students can become "genuinely competent" writers and readers: in other words, "genuinely competent" subjects of rationality. This sort of "rhetorical listening" between students and teachers is talked about a lot these days. How does it differ from Freud and Murray? Berlin does not give up all control over to the students at the beginning, but he does hope that students will gain control of their ideologies after learning how to read and resist cultural codes. He rejects any notion of the "authentic self," since we are all constructed by our environments. But how does he listen? And to whom does he listen? Like Freud, one structure is assumed to always work: the "emancipatorial" trinity of reflect-act-change. In other words, "see these codes, learn to read them in this maner, deconstruct them, then decide to change your behavior based on your new social awareness." The rational subject in control. Like Murray's students, Berlin's also must internalize "how" to read cultural codes, so that they can ultimately keep resisting codes outside of the university setting. Who's in control here? How are flows blocked?

Content. Alongside and contra to expression, D & G talk about content as "not simply the hand and tools but a technical social machine that pre-exists them and constitutes states of force or formations of power" (ATP 63). This can be seen as similar to ideology and praxis: what Berlin positions against expression. Content-hand controlled by states of force: ideology that's "put there" by the technical-social machine to be used as "tools." Deconstructing "content" is to remain enslaved by and indebted to the future as well as the past. The rational subject will change his or her past behavior after careful reflection. Along with the dream of "freedom" that college offers, the content of writing becomes the future emancipation from false assumptions.

However, D & G explain that in the system of the strata (layers or "acts of capture"), content (particles) and expression (signs) cannot be separated; "each stratum is a double articulation of content and expression, both of which are really distinct and in a state of reciprocal presupposition" (72). Content and expression reside together. Instead of privileging content over expression or expression over content, D & G describe machinic assemblages. Machinic assemblages "are simultaneously located at the intersection of the contents and expression on each stratum, and at the intersection of all the strata within the plane of consistency" (73). The assemblage takes place in-between two layers. Returning to the passage at the beginning of this discussion, we can see that it is through assemblages and haecceity (folding of past and future) that wolves or whatever cease to be subjects to become events. Events occur as a transformation of the present.

This is what would have helped the Wolf-Man; Freud could have listened to the machinic assemblages that were coming from the Wolf-Man instead of listening with a predetermined, totalizing structure on his face. Then, the goal of listening would not be to cure or answer, but, as Diane Davis has argued, "glimpsing what lies between . . .toward interstanding, toward the in-between of the 'seeing' and the 'not seeing'" ("Negotiating the Differend" 587). Since subjects have become events, events are precisely these assemblages that can be brought to light when asked the question "how does it work?" and "what lies between?" instead of "what do these mean?" and "what do they represent?" Listening with no predetermined structure (or triangle) requires subjectivity to dissolve, and "how does it work" to become the force of production.

Sarah Arroyo

1. Response to Sarah (dpearman@exchange.uta.edu)