Winning my maiden flight of fat fancy

We have instructions to pull instructions for developing a concept from What is Philosophy? by Gille Deleuze and Felix Guattari. I have begun to flesh out what I think is an instruction in an email, which I will send sometime over the weekend (and re-post as a comment to this post).

The writing out of that instruction is in an awkward, adolescent phase; the ideas are embarrassed by each other and fighting over which gets "shotgun." But I do not want to wait until I have made everything "clear and simple." I want to try to carry it out; to use my "own chivalric powers," my "own method" without waiting to completely understand (D&G, 31).

But you need at least an inkling of what the instruction is to make sense of this bit of sputtering. "What would thinking be if it did not constantly confront chaos?" (D&G, 208). We- philosophers, scientists, artists- defeat this chaos, at least according to Deleuze & Guattari we do, but we have to plunge into it to do so. D&G, like Badiou with his void, created a sexually charged, feminized space against which/in which our actions are framed. I have problems with this imagery though I understand its power.

So I will confront a little chaos; following the witch's flight to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to stir up some trouble. I do this all the time. I am more than a little baroque in my intellectual endeavors. If it is baroque, don't fix it!

But I stall. The baroque mode has its own tail chasing, foot gnawing worries. The "classy" classical thinkers worry about getting it right. The baroque worry about getting (conning) you to come along for the ride.

Some fats to fuel our flight (not all fuel is necessarily of good quality; some fats burn better than others)

1. A blog post Obesity: Is it a Form of Malnutrition?

2. A little bit of government reporting.

3. Some "fat" girl fashion.

4. Not "vital" anecdotes because these are of the more "psychosocial type," but as we are told, we have to "diagnose real types" to untangle the three movements- territory, deterritorialization and re-territorialization (D&G, 69).

My uncle Eddie was over 600 pounds when he died in 2007. He was not yet 52 years old. He died a slow, horrible death. His illness was complicated by his weight but also by the ineptitude and prejudice of medical professionals at Shands. One of my cousin has lost over 200 pounds. He went from 375 pounds to just under 170 pounds. My nana at 5'6 spent most of her adult life over 230 pounds. She got down to 200 pounds but couldn't lose any more weight. Then in the last six months of her life, dying of liver cancer, she lost over 50 pounds because she no longer could/wanted to eat.

At my heaviest, I have been more than a little over 200 pounds. I periodically, due to health problems that come and go like weather patterns- some what predictable, seasonal conditions with occasional cataclysmic storms on par with the disturbances wrought by climate change- gain a lot of weight and then when the pattern has passed, the weight is lost. As I age, I lose less weight after each (im)perfect storm. I never will be skinny; I am without a doubt not well nourished despite my fat. I am less concerned with weight loss than health, but what constitutes a healthy diet is contested, complicated and compromised.

5. Images: the fat lady sings, getting the skinny, fat chance, cannibalism/zombies

Me and Commerce's Concept Cylons

Cylon Six
Lately, to take a break from my work (classes, thesis project, bread-n-butter), I have been watching episodes from the first season of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. I do not have a TV in my house; I am a reader more than a watcher, I cannot stand commercials, and I am too impatient to wait a week to get the next installment of a story. I prefer to suck down a series (TV, movie, book) in a short period of time.

I also am using this series as a way to think. I read for or work on a project for a chunk of time and then take a break by watching this bit of sci fi fluff. During this break, my brain doesn't stop; it relaxes, the ideas/concepts/problems are not completely ignored. They are in soft focus, humming softly in the background. And something about the choice of this particular series works well for me right now as I think about the ideas developed in WIP? and Advertising the American Dream.

Right now I am enjoying thinking of commerce's concepts as a type of Cylon; commerce has taken over the concept factory by sending its undercover agents in (they feel like entertainment, they sound like parables, they looks like icons). Most of the following ideas are pulled from a lecture by Ulmer: Philosophy's goal is to tell us what the good life is. Religion (connected to orality) focuses attention on an axis of right and wrong (salvation). Science and much of philosophy (connected to literacy) focuses on true and false (empirical reality). Aesthetics, which most often emerges from entertainment (advertising) (connected to electracy) focuses on pleasure and pain (well being).

Commerce tells us that we can find the good life by buying particular products and (increasingly) services. Like a Cylon, not all of what advertising does is bad. Like the humans in the series, our thinkers have cut themselves off from something vital (the affective). Advertising helps show a way toward the creation of ourselves as aesthetic people (versus literate or oral). But like the sophists, advertising focuses on rhetoric detached from the object.  Advertising has taught us that listening to the sizzle is important, we also just need to cut into the meat at stake. Killing off Commerce's concept Cylons is not as helpful as re-purposing and re-directing them.