a note on individuation
it is true that experiences individuate and that we are always already in the middle of this individuation—we are individuals before we even know it. however, individuation can be a powerful mode of living…provided it is a mode, not a subject. a subject has a form which proclaims its qualities in advance; in a way, it lives as if it has already been individuated… additionally, every reader of Spinoza knows that an individual can only be a mode, never a subject or a substance: the latter are God or Nature—or maybe Deleuze’s plane of immanence…
so…if we are always already in the middle of an individuation, what is there to do? the experiences which take place and of which certain combinations individuate are not those of an individual—they are external to each other but still produce an individual.
perhaps an individual is to disappear, disperse, dissolve itself into the forces which are productive of the experiences. what freedom is to be found in this process?
or perhaps an individual must search for ways of creating new experiences, experiences which would produce new individuations, compose new modes of living? there would no longer be any confusion between persons and individuals; only individuated modes on a plane of immanence…
When I first read Spinoza’s Ethics, I thought of modes as arising from essence the way a signal would appear on an otherwise flat channel. We are modes on the essence known as ‘human’ (though where our ‘essence’ begins is up for debate), and our individuality is contained in the spike we create. But this spike is not so much distance as an elasticity of essence.
That’s not something I feel, however. I don’t feel essence. I feel bound to similarities, but they don’t help me connect to other minds. How I bridge that gap is very different than just assuming commonality. I think, instead, of how Spinoza talked about happiness in regard to being open to receiving all sorts of impressions: the more openings we have and the more diverse our emotional repertoire, the more likely we are to be happy. I think of these things as approximating happiness and closing the distance between others. I cannot ever achieve zero distance (much like Zeno’s paradox of infinite halves), but I can get so close as to be nearly unable to distinguish between myself and others. I can walk in someone else’s shoes, but I cannot be the other watching me walk in her shoes. Like oil and water, I can connect for a while, but I am always impelled toward a positive distance.
Sean
May 11, 2009 at 6:42 pm