Schizophrenia and Plato
Jacques Ranciere outlines Plato's critique of democracy in a book written in 1995 entitled, On the Shores of Politics. Plato's critique of democracy resembles D&G's analysis in the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia... Plato's critique of democracy also resembles Marx's vision of communism (as I understand it from The German Ideology.... bear with me)
The Greeks understood freedom as constructed out of a basic division between Public and Private life. In public citizens are called to perform their duties as citizens to maintain an orderly and functional Republic. In private, you are free to act as you please. Of course you neighbors, as good citizens, are employed to keep an eye on you to prevent total chaos from overtaking the Republic. In a perfect Republic we will all police each other, effectively laboring under the illusions of being free. Ideally, the Greeks wanted to be good little Libertarians.
Plato hated this version of democracy. In book 8 of the Republic he denounces this kind of demos that connects a particular practices of political community with a style of life characterized by being sporadic. Democratic man has an incapacity to prioritize, to choose between the necessary and the superfluous. Plato considers everything, even democracy, on the basis of desire, changes or fashion. On one day, Plato tells us, democratic man will intoxicate himself with the sound of his flute, then he will fast, on the next day he will exercise, the next day he will lie around, one day he will engage with politics, the next in philosophy, for a time he will pursue the art of war, then forsake war for business (sounds like a typical Undergraduate in their first few years of college unwilling to select a major!) Plato hates this spreading of desire because it is an inefficient lack of prioritizing what a person should do with their spare time.
Ranciere is astute in pointing out that the Democratic Man that Plato hates in Book 8 of the Republic, bears a striking resemblance to "the schizophrenic individual of consumer society, readily identified with the ruination and degeneration of democracy... i.e. the postmodern individual"... But this sporadic anti-specialized subject of Democratic Man bears a striking resemblance to Marx's communist.
In the German Ideology he tells us his vision of communism as being a situation where a person will Hunt in the morning, compose poetry in the afternoon, go hunting in the evening, so on and so forth. Communism is already happening as a product of the post-modern condition in its early stages. Spread desire is a symptom of capitalist consumerism (having 20 varieties of toothpaste to choose from at the supermarket). Actually existing communism is occurring in post-modern capitalism in the form of this lack of prioritizing actions. What is lacking is a disciplinary power apparatus that can actually reveal to the people that Communism is occurring now. Right under our noses! While we don't have to equate communism with commodities, but the spreading of desire (a motif in all post-modern novels, from Don Delillo to Thomas Pynchon, etc) is the montage of images, and this is exactly the thematic outlay of the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia... moving with ease from semiotics to psychiatry. Being a linguist on one page, and a literary critic on the next!
The Greeks understood freedom as constructed out of a basic division between Public and Private life. In public citizens are called to perform their duties as citizens to maintain an orderly and functional Republic. In private, you are free to act as you please. Of course you neighbors, as good citizens, are employed to keep an eye on you to prevent total chaos from overtaking the Republic. In a perfect Republic we will all police each other, effectively laboring under the illusions of being free. Ideally, the Greeks wanted to be good little Libertarians.
Plato hated this version of democracy. In book 8 of the Republic he denounces this kind of demos that connects a particular practices of political community with a style of life characterized by being sporadic. Democratic man has an incapacity to prioritize, to choose between the necessary and the superfluous. Plato considers everything, even democracy, on the basis of desire, changes or fashion. On one day, Plato tells us, democratic man will intoxicate himself with the sound of his flute, then he will fast, on the next day he will exercise, the next day he will lie around, one day he will engage with politics, the next in philosophy, for a time he will pursue the art of war, then forsake war for business (sounds like a typical Undergraduate in their first few years of college unwilling to select a major!) Plato hates this spreading of desire because it is an inefficient lack of prioritizing what a person should do with their spare time.
Ranciere is astute in pointing out that the Democratic Man that Plato hates in Book 8 of the Republic, bears a striking resemblance to "the schizophrenic individual of consumer society, readily identified with the ruination and degeneration of democracy... i.e. the postmodern individual"... But this sporadic anti-specialized subject of Democratic Man bears a striking resemblance to Marx's communist.
In the German Ideology he tells us his vision of communism as being a situation where a person will Hunt in the morning, compose poetry in the afternoon, go hunting in the evening, so on and so forth. Communism is already happening as a product of the post-modern condition in its early stages. Spread desire is a symptom of capitalist consumerism (having 20 varieties of toothpaste to choose from at the supermarket). Actually existing communism is occurring in post-modern capitalism in the form of this lack of prioritizing actions. What is lacking is a disciplinary power apparatus that can actually reveal to the people that Communism is occurring now. Right under our noses! While we don't have to equate communism with commodities, but the spreading of desire (a motif in all post-modern novels, from Don Delillo to Thomas Pynchon, etc) is the montage of images, and this is exactly the thematic outlay of the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia... moving with ease from semiotics to psychiatry. Being a linguist on one page, and a literary critic on the next!