Lines of Flight 6
Deterritorializing and Reterritorializing
Inner Reflection
In the 1960s, inner reflection led to experimentation and vice versa. For a time, a virtuous circle was created in which new ideas, creations and actions aided a counterculture movement that was inherently Deleuzian; an expression of difference-in-itself and the eternal return.
Creators and protestors of the 1960s carved new paths away from the transcendence of cultural and political conformity, and embraced the immanence of experience.
Becoming was not goal-oriented, there was no utopian vision that all could agree on. What mattered most was to live an existence based in spontaneity.
Abstraction
At times this could take on a level of abstraction: The Beatles, “Within You Without You.”
We are all one: but that is not the end of the story: we participate in the oneness of pure difference and the diversity of the many.
For many younger people in the 1960s, this became a proposition far too abstract. Words as placeholders for abstraction can easily be emptied of any meaning. What it meant to jump on the bandwagon in the name of peace, love and understanding could easily become vague.
To live immanence is to cast away transcendence, and there is a precariousness about this; by definition, a lack of foundation.
Identity Seeking
We are all one in a process of pure difference. If we fail to keep that in mind, we risk falling into the trap of fad and fashion, daring to be different and ending up all being the same.
Here, as counterculture movements evolve into their final stages, there is no creativity; just covering up in ideals like peace and love, and a gradual loss of momentum until the forces of conformity reterritorialize and re-establish conformist culture.
By the end of the 1960s counterculture movement, the establishment had resurfaced and was first to point out that not much had changed. The Vietnam War continued, outspoken liberal minded leaders had been assassinated, drug culture had cemented into blatant excess and destruction, and true experimentation had devolved into banal fantasy and identity-seeking.
Somewhere along the line, creativity and free spirit were overtaken by group politics and solidarity; an opposition easily toppled by the powerful reactionary forces of domination in society.
The 1960s counterculture movement began with lines of flight based in pure creativity, but ultimately was reabsorbed into mainstream culture, that at best was a monologue of us vs them.
Staying with Experience
At times, when openings to social change present themselves, counterculture movements express and mobilize forces that help create and mobilize that cycle of change. They are often led by individuals riding an arc away from the majoritarian, who often provide the inspiration to others to take their own leap.
Counterculture is one means of activating on your own line of flight, but is not an end in itself.
Staying alive in experience, acting authentically and experimenting both alone and in society, rejecting the need not belong, and exercising one’s own critical freedom, are dispositions that allow us to remain open.
Social activism and protest can be such an arc, but it is key to be continually guided by the force of pure difference, by change as process, and by fulfillment as participation in the creativity of life.
Pure Process
A new sense of staying with the creative did emerge after the 1960s. Robert Pirsig elaborated on it in his Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.
Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself….To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountains which sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow. (Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)
Becoming is not goal oriented; it is at all moments pure process. Desire is abundance, creativity, and not lack.
We create ourselves, but we continue to evolve; and we exercise the critical freedom to change our priorities. Meaning is hindsight, reflecting and labelling; creativity is in the authentic act, and the authentic act is inherently a leap of faith.
Group Narratives
Counterculture provides a setting for acts of pure creativity. But once we attempt to identify with something static, meaning or value, we find there is no longer anything there, the bus has moved on down the road.
Fulfillment is found by continually participating in a process of change, by letting go of yesterday and embracing today; fracturing that which has become static and re-engaging with the remarkable.
To become imperceptible, we once again must return to the forces of pure difference that flow through and over us, connecting us with one another.
We cannot find meaning in a group narrative or a static narrative, for there is no meaning to be found, with roots, a trunk, branches and leaves.
Meaning is created over a lifetime, but only as an after-effect and only as a roaming rhizome.
We must at all times resist the impulse to articulate a rules-based meaning in relation to our endeavors: I am this and I am not that. We can only do that if we stay with experience, and affirm the return of pure difference.
Each creative act in life contributes to life as a collection of creative acts, but life always remains unfinished, for the act itself is primary. Life as a work of art is an ongoing life lived in pure immanence.
I hope you enjoyed this article. Thanks for reading!
Tomas
Please join my email list here or email me at tomas@tomasbyrne.com.
Excerpt from my forthcoming book, Becoming: A Life of Pure Difference (Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of the New) Copyright © 2023 by Tomas Byrne. Learn more here.
