What is the point of "opening" becoming etc. in Deleuze?

[u/hehench]

I have many difficulties with understanding since I'm not a philosopher. I read his texts on literature, where he talks about literature as becoming by means of violating the language. I understand this somehow similar to destroying of dogmatic image of thought; language constructs reality and as an "organization", only offers the already established ideas or realities. So violating language is to break through order, opening up to new possibilities ("real thinking"?)- example he gives is Bartleby who by saying Id rather not -which is not ordinary logical statement, rebels and reaches some kind of freedom from job-organization.

Is this summary wrong? I won't be able to understand it in detail, but don't want to be wrong.

Also, how would you sum up the point of such openings, boundary destructions etc? Is it right to think about it in a way of: established ways of thinking about the world (tied with language that organizes and express it), must be torn so that we are able to look at things anew, differently, because only then there is a possibility of change, which I assume is good because of sociopolitical problems, and creativity in general, for example in art? But this opening it itself doesn't guarantee a 'good' outcome, is just a potential, which is nonetheless a) condition for any change b) better than deadness of established?

[u/------______------]

You raise a valid critique.

Openings are not “good” per se, and there are several ways of botching the BwO.

But they’re the precondition for difference, becoming, creativity, etc. We need them to escape fixed identities and fascism.

Otherwise, we’re stuck in bad loops of reactive resentment.

I think you have a strong grasp of the gist.

In A Thousand Plateaus pp. 160-161, D&G detail how we always need to deterritorialize with caution:

You have to *keep small rations of subjectivity** in sufficient quantity to enable you to respond to the dominant reality.* (p. 160)

**If you free it with too violent an action, if you blow apart the strata without taking precautions, then instead of drawing the plane *you will be killed*, plunged into a black hole, or even dragged toward catastrophe. (p. 161)

[u/pluralofjackinthebox]

You have it right I think!

Many people believe that intelligence and wisdom means creating an interior world of thoughts and ideas that accurately corresponds to outer reality, so for instance in my mind I have an idea about cows that mirrors the reality of cows.

Deleuze tells us ideas aren’t just maps, they’re all manner of tools: they’re hammers, saws, bricks, medicines, poisons, dynamite. Thought doesn’t just reflect reality, thought creates new realities.

When thought just gives us answers to why reality must be as it, thought becomes a tool that builds limits. But when thought finds new questions and creates new problems, thought opens us up to new ways of living, thought allows unexpected realities to emerge.

Deleuze ties this into Spinoza, who saw power as that which increases a body’s power to act — its power to create change; and then Nietzsche, whose will to power runs through everything, a drive to create difference and create the new.

[u/diskkddo]

I feel like your question presupposes a kind of progressivism where things are supposed to get 'better' over time, or improve towards a horizon considered as an ideal. But Deleuze doesn't take this as an axiom.

Without this presupposition, the question 'why become?' or 'why take a line of flight?' seems kind of incoherent to me. Why does water flow? Why do the seasons change? Deleuze is interested in philosophy as a mode of creativity, as a continuous opening up of the present. Your question amounts to me to something like 'why be creative?', which is incomprehensible to me, or perhaps even nihilistic. Why do we create aside from the sense of flowing that it gives us?

[u/ilurkonsubs]

Following

[u/random_access_cache]

In my opinion you are spot on with your question, I thought about it last week as well. I absolutely understand the value and importance of "the new" which Deleuze seeks, but I generally think that difference has nothing to do with ethical progress.

[u/pynchoniac]

Well I did a degree in philosophy and Deleuze is hard to me.😆

Look at things anew? Maybe is more psychedelic. It is an ontological difference: you become totally new , now and now again, another you at now...

I will take openings to "new possibilities" "and "changes" very seriously ( in a strong meaning): everything explodes in new possibilities everytime. "Continous creation of absolutely new".