“Don’t make structures, set processes going.”
- John Cage
Image: http://www.inflexions.org/n1_t_nguihtml.html Quote: Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p18
What is the difference between a structure and a process?
STRUCTURE: 1. the action of building 2a. something that is constructed 2b. something arranged in a definite pattern of organization 3. manner of construction 4a. the arrangement of particles or parts in a substance or body 4b. organization of parts as dominated by the general character of the whole 4c. coherent form or organization 5. the aggregate of elements of an entity in their relationships to each other.
PROCESS: 1a. PROGRESS, ADVANCE 1b. something going on : PROCEEDING 2a. a natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes that lead toward a particular result 2b continuing natural or biological activity or function 2c. a series of actions or operations conducive to an end 3. a prominent or projecting part of an organism or organic structure
To differentiate between a structure and a process is therefore to understand that a process is something continuous, it is not fixed or static, but consists of a ‘going on’, a continuing, a series of actions that demonstrate gradual changes. A structure, on the other hand, is ‘definite’, it is an aggregate of many parts and is considered as a whole; the whole being defined by whatever is dominant in the structure’s general character.
PROCESS PHILOSOPHY is based on the premise that being is dynamic and that the dynamic nature of being should be the primary focus of any comprehensive philosophical account of reality and our place within it. Even though we experience our world and ourselves as continuously changing, Western metaphysics has long been obsessed with describing reality as an assembly of static individuals whose dynamic features are either taken to be mere appearances or ontologically secondary and derivative. For process philosophers the adventure of philosophy begins with a set of problems that traditional metaphysics marginalizes or even sidesteps altogether: what is dynamicity or becoming—if it is the way we experience reality, how should we interpret this metaphysically? Are there several varieties of becoming—for instance, the uniform going on of activities versus the coming about of developments? Do all developments have the same way of occurring quite independently of what is coming about? How can we best classify into different kinds of occurrences what is going on and coming about? How can we understand the emergence of apparently novel conditions? Process philosophers claim that there are many sound philosophical reasons to take the processual aspects of nature, cognition, and action as fundamental features of the real.
“There is one term of the problem which you are not taking into account: precisely, the world. The real. You say: the real, the world as it is. But it is not, it becomes! It moves, it changes! It doesn’t wait for us to change.. .It is more mobile than you can imagine. You are getting closer to this reality when you say as it 'presents itself'; that means that it is not there, existing as an object. The world, the real is not an object. It is a process.”[1] - John Cage
The Structure of the Real (Lacan): “The Order which comes before every Symbolisation or Imagination is called the Order of the Real. The Real is barred from the Symbolic Order but it also makes the Symbolic Order possible as it calls for an endless flux of signifiers to generate meaning. The signifiers constantly try to signify the Real in the Symbolic Order. Paradoxically, it will never be possible to put it into words completely: a gap will remain. The arrows do not indicate a causal relation, but a process of Symbolisation. Through the object a, the Symbolic Order refers back to the Real Order. It is the place where the 'brokenness' of the subject ,where the gap in the Symbolic Order becomes apparent. For Lacan, this is typically situated in the openings of the body. The voice and the mouth are therefore examples par excellence of the object a. Through his look and through his voice the subject gets in touch with others. But at the same time, he loses his look or his voice: he can never see or hear it himself. Thus the price that has to be paid for communication/Symbolisation is the loss of the primordial object a, at which the subject's desire is pointed. In sum, we can say that the Real is that which comes before Symbolisation, and which provokes desire. When it is approached too closely, it is a horrifying reality, but it also makes Symbolisation possible”.
“Music becomes meaningful the more perfectly it defines itself in this sense—and not because its particular elements express something symbolically. It is by distancing itself from language that its resemblance to language finds its fulfillment”. - Adorno
“In order for music to free itself, it will have to pass over to the other side - there where territories tremble, where the structures collapse, where the ethoses get mixed up, where a powerful song of the earth is unleashed, the great ritornelles that transmutes all the airs it carries away and makes return.” [2] - Deleuze
“Consciousness needs to be redefined accordingly in terms of flows of variations, constantly transforming within patterns of continuity. The old mind–body liaison needs to be reconstructed in terms which are not nationally driven, top-down and hierarchical. Processes, flows, in-between-status have to be taken into serious account, that is, into conceptual representation. Continuities and discontinuities alike need to be considered. Internal complexities and non-sequential effects have to be accepted in the order of our thought. To live up to these complexities, we need conceptual creativity and a healthy, non-nostalgic detachment from traditional beliefs about what counts as ‘the knowing subject’”. -Rosi Braidotti
For both statements and desires, the issue is never to reduce the unconscious or to interpret it or to make it signify according to a tree model. The issue is to produce the unconscious, and with it new statements, different desires: the rhizome is precisely this production of the unconscious
“A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes. We should stop believing in trees, roots, and radicles. They’ve made us suffer too much”. A rhizome is a “multiplicity” not a multiple. There is no absolute “one” for which we can trace it back to. [3]
"Multiplicity remains completely indifferent to the traditional problems of the multiple and the one, and above all to the problem of a subject who would think through this multiplicity, give it conditions, account for its origins, and so on. There is neither one nor multiple, which would at all events entail having recourse to a consciousness that would be regulated by the one and developed by the other" -Deleuze
[1.] Quote in 'John Cage, For the Birds: John Cage In Conversation with Daniel Charles', London/New York: Marion Boyars, 1981; as quoted in: 'Tàpies: From Within', June ─ November, 2013 - Press Release, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC ), p. 17, note 10
[2.] "Essays critical and clinical" by Gilles Deleuze, (p. 104), 1993.
[3.] Deleuze & Guattari,, A Thousand Plateaus, p7- p15