Microsoft Word - Introduction.en_Vignola.docx LA  DELEUZIANA  –  ONLINE  JOURNAL  OF  PHILOSOPHY  –  ISSN  2421-­‐‑3098   N.  2  /  2015  –  ALICE  AND  THE  MIRROR 1   Alice  Beyond  the  Selfie.  To  be  worthy  of  what  happens  to  her   by  PAOLO  VIGNOLA*         When  I  say   ‘Alice  becomes  larger’,   I  mean  that   she  becomes  larger  than  she  was.  By  the  same   token,  however,  she  becomes  smaller  than  she   is  now.  Certainly,  she  is  not  bigger  and  smaller   at   the   same   time.   She   is   larger   now;   she   was   smaller   before.   But   it   is   at   the   same   moment   that   one   becomes   larger   than   one   was   and   smaller  than  one  becomes.  This  is  the  simulta-­‐‑ neity  of  a  becoming  whose  characteristic   is   to   elude   the   present.   […]   Alice   does   not   grow   without  shrinking  and  vice  versa.   Gilles  Deleuze,  The  Logic  of  Sense       Alice’s  becoming,  as  becoming  simultaneously  larger  and  smaller,  provides  the  oppor-­‐‑ tunity   to   diagnose   the   present   through   a   phenomenon   more   “current”   than   ever:   Tiqqun’s  “Jeune-­‐‑Fille”  (young  girl),  which  today  is  amplified  by  social  networks.  At  the   same  time,  Alice’s  becoming   indicates  a  political  strategy   that   is  rigorously  untimely,   which   means   inclined   to   find   singular   virtualities   that   escape   the   chronology   of   the   commodification  of  the  time  of  existence.  Following  Deleuze’s  Logic  of  Sense,  but  also   projecting  it  onto  the  present  (hence  in-­‐‑actualizing  it),  the  commodification  of  existence   occurs  first  in  chronological  time,  which  is  why  one  says,  “time  is  money”.  This  is  the   time  of  consumption,  time  that  literally  consumes  itself,  but  it  is  also  the  time  in  which   we  consume  and  consume  ourselves.  With  incomparable  style,  Deleuze  opposed  to  that   sort  of  metaphysical  hourglass,  i.e.  Chronos,  the  flashing  of  another  temporality,  the  one   of  Aion:     In  accordance  with  Aion,  only  the  past  and  future  inhere  or  subsist  in  time.  Instead   of  a  present  which  absorbs  the  past  and  future,  a  future  and  past  divide  the  present   at  every  instant  and  subdivide  it  ad  infinitum,  in  both  directions  at  once.  Or  rather,  it   is  the  instant  without  thickness  and  without  extension,  which  subdivides  each  pre-­‐‑ sent   into  past  and  future,  rather  than  vast  and  thick  presents  which  comprehend   both  future  and  past  in  relation  to  one  another…  Whereas  Chronos  expressed  the  ac-­‐‑ *   Prometeo  researcher,  Yachay  Tech.  This  publication  was  sponsored  by  the  Prometeo  Project  of  the   Secretariat  for  Higher  Education,  Science,  Technology  and  Innovation  of  the  Republic  of  Ecuador. LA  DELEUZIANA  –  ONLINE  JOURNAL  OF  PHILOSOPHY  –  ISSN  2421-­‐‑3098   N.  2  /  2015  –  ALICE  AND  THE  MIRROR 2 tion  of  bodies  and  the  creation  of  corporeal  qualities,  Aion  is  the  locus  of  incorporeal   events,  and  of  attributes  which  are  distinct  from  qualities.  Whereas  Chronos  was  in-­‐‑ separable  from  the  bodies  which  filled  it  out  entirely  as  causes  and  matter,  Aion  is   populated   by   effects   which   haunt   it   without   ever   filling   it   up…   Always   already   passed  and  eternally  yet  to  come,  Aion  is  the  eternal  truth  of  time:  pure  empty  form   of  time,  which  has  freed  itself  of  its  present  corporeal  content  and  has  thereby  un-­‐‑ wound  its  own  circle  (Deleuze  1990:  148).     It  is  indeed  from  Aion’s  point  of  view  that  the  becomings  of  Carroll’s  Alice  are  to  be   understood,  Aion  being  the  extra-­‐‑corporeal  and  ineffectual  modality  of  Time  itself,  split   between  past  and  future,  escaping  for  this  reason  from  the  trap  of  identity.  If  it  is  with   Chronos  that  one  can  tell   the  story  of  what  happens  to  him  and  of  his  gestures  as  a   succession,  it  is  only  Aiôn  that  allows  us  to  deal  with  the  events  happening  on  another   plane,   that  of  Thinking,  which  experiments  with,  counters   the  effects  of  and,  by   this,   extracts  the  sense  of,  our  actions  and  passions  within  that  which  occurs:  “the  Event  is  in   what   happens”.   Furthermore,   as   The   Logic   of   Sense   teaches   us,   this   Thought   moves   through  paradoxes,  that  is,  by  overcoming  opinion,  common  sense  and  all  the  images   imposed   or   suggested   by   philosophy,   politics,   science,   power   (from   religion   to   the   market,  from  the  state  to  culture).  These  are  the  images  that  indicate  to  us  how  to  think   and  how  to  watch  ourselves  in  the  mirror.   In  this  sense,  La  Deleuziana  desires  to  think  Alice’s  becoming  as  a  becoming-­‐‑woman   both  in  its  a-­‐‑chronological  theoretical  paradoxicality  and  in  the  political  paradoxicality   that  is  expressed  in  actuality.  Aware  of  and  enthusiastic  about  the  inseparability  of  the   two   dimensions   (theoretical   and   political)   within   Deleuze’s   writing   and   thought,   the   journal  suggests  a  pathway  to  sense  the  entrance  to  which  resides  in  the  most  general   recognition  of  becoming,  as  the  movement  of  thought  unfolding  through  its  conceptual   personae.  It  deals  with  a  particular  entrance,  or  a  precise  paradox,  inasmuch  it  immedi-­‐‑ ately  opens  onto   that  middle  ground  between  philosophy  and   literature,   from  which   comes   Deleuze’s   Alice   herself.   It   is   indeed   in   the   interstices   between   concepts   and   writings,  from  which  “one  comes  back  with  red  eyes”  (Deleuze  1997),  that  there  occurs   both   the   becomings   (becoming   woman,   child,   animal,   imperceptible,   etc.)   and   the   creation  of  conceptual  personae.  Hence  the  front  door  to  becoming  allows  us  to  enter   the  Outside,  to  “breathe  some  possibility”,  that  is,  to  feel  and  observe  the  lines  of  flight   that   Deleuzian   thought   makes   available   confronted   with   a   present   that   it   wishes   to   elude,  but  only  so  as  to  be  able  to  survey  and  overfly  it,  and  in  this  way  to  invent  strate-­‐‑ gies  capable  of  critiquing  it.   Why   Alice?   Because   she   becomes   both   young   girl   (Jeune-­‐‑Fille)   and   woman   at   the   same  moment.  It  should  be  remembered  that,  amongst  all  the  becomings,  for  Deleuze   and  Guattari  becoming-­‐‑woman  is  the  pre-­‐‑condition  and  the  unavoidable  starting  point   of  the  entire  process  of  minoritarian  becoming.   The  reasons  for  such  an  incipit  are  essentially  political,  and  they  refer  to  the  phallogo-­‐‑ LA  DELEUZIANA  –  ONLINE  JOURNAL  OF  PHILOSOPHY  –  ISSN  2421-­‐‑3098   N.  2  /  2015  –  ALICE  AND  THE  MIRROR 3 centric  valency  inscribed  in  the  constitution  of  Western  subjectivity.  The  man  (male)  is   indeed   “the   privileged   referent   of   Subjectivity,   the   standard-­‐‑bearer   of   the   norm/law/logos   [that]   majority   represents,   the   dead   heart   of   the   system”   (Braidotti   1997:  65).  Consequently,  the  masculine  can  be  nothing  but  a  site  for  deconstruction  and   critique   –   becoming   is   only   minoritarian   –   and   moreover   becoming-­‐‑woman   is   to   be   understood   as   “a   fundamental   step   in   the   process   of   becoming,   for   both   and   for   all   sexes”.   It   is   in  this  sense  that,  according  to  Deleuze  and  Guattari,  “even  women  must   become-­‐‑woman”,  while  today,  from  the  Alps  to  the  Pyramids,  from  the  Manzanares  to   the  Rhine,  it  seems  that  the  trend  is  that  of  becoming  young  girls  –  and  of  selfies,  or  the   self-­‐‑/auto-­‐‑exposing  use  of  subjectivity’s  digital  showcase,  with  Facebook  representing   the  symptoms  of  this  “infantility”.   Certainly  La  Deleuziana,  a  woman  and  young  girl  within  the  same  becoming  as  Alice,   does  not  intend  to  lash  out  either  at  a  mass  phenomenon  or  at  the  tendencies  of  a  gender   that  would  also  include  her  –  not  to  mention  the  fact  that  she  is  on  Facebook  as  well…   Thus   the   moment   has   come   to   explicate   the   sense   of   being   a   young   girl   today,   by   returning  to  Tiqqun’s  theory  (conceived  at  the  end  of  the  last  century),  for  whom  the   “Jeune-­‐‑Fille”  is  a  sort  of  updating  of  this  anthropomorphosis  of  capital  (Cesarano  2000),   which  is  the  result  of  a  phenomenological  description  that  concerns  the  anthropophizing   and  anthropopoietic  process  of  Capital.  The  latter  makes  itself  human,  incarnates  itself   in  it,  and  by  this  makes  every  man  a  part  of  itself  –  building  the  human  starting  from  its   axioms.  In  this  sense,  we  feel  obliged  to  add,  we  must  also  investigate,  at  a  conceptual   level,  the  paradoxical  feminization  of  work,  which  colors  or  affects  and  abuses  cognitive   capitalism  beyond  and  within  any  gender  distinction.  Moreover,  and   in   line  with   the   “Postscript  on  the  Societies  of  Control”,  the  Jeune-­‐‑Fille  best  allows  us  to  understand  the   valorization  of   individual  differences  by  marketing  and  Data  Behaviourism  (Rouvroy   2013),   inasmuch  as   they  are  objects  of  promotion  and  exploitation,  as  used   in  post-­‐‑ disciplinary  societies.   Why  the  Jeune-­‐‑Fille?  First,  because  “she”  is  not  a  sexuated  or  generational  concept   (and  thus  to  be  confined  within  a  singular  social  figure,  precisely  that  of  the  young  girl),   inasmuch  as  she  can  be  identified  with  every  subject  –  in  primis  the  male  –  that  embod-­‐‑ ies  the  becoming-­‐‑commodity  of  human  being.  Because,  therefore,  she  “is  only  the  model   citizen  such  as  commodity  society  has  defined   it   since  world  war  one,  as  an  explicit   response  to  revolutionary  threats  against  it”  (Tiqqun  2001:  iii).  Because,  definitely,  as  a   product  of  the  valorization  of  difference,  the  Jeune-­‐‑Fille  becomes  a  singularity  perpetual-­‐‑ ly   in   the  mirror,  and  she  “would  be  that  being  that  has  no  more   intimacy  with   itself   except  as  a  value,  and  all  of  whose  activity,  in  all  of  its  details,  will  finally  come  down  to   self-­‐‑valuation”  (ivi:  v).  Here  it  is  thus  the  selfie,  as  the  current  mirror  of  the  Jeune-­‐‑Fille,   the  contemporary  screen   that,   in   the  auto-­‐‑valorization  of   the  user,   gives  vent   to   the   symptom  of  presence’s  and  the  present’s  neurosis,  a  neurosis  that  marries  the  symbolic   misery  generated  by  the  hypertrophy  of  communication  grown  on  social  networks  and   LA  DELEUZIANA  –  ONLINE  JOURNAL  OF  PHILOSOPHY  –  ISSN  2421-­‐‑3098   N.  2  /  2015  –  ALICE  AND  THE  MIRROR 4 through  their  communicative  models.   Unlike  Tiqqun,  we  do  not  think  (ourselves)  from  the  height  of  a  theoretical  and  politi-­‐‑ cal  community,  as  adamantine  revolutionary  subjectivities1,  because  we  are  conscious  of   the  milieu  of  capitalistic  control,  the  one  of  the  digital  screens  where  our  unconscious   lives.  We  must  also  be  aware,  as  Veronique  Bergen  emphasizes,  of  the  tendential  capture   of  Aion,   i.e.  of  becomings,  by  the  Market:  Aion   is   increasingly  reterritorialized,  hence   chronologized.  Nevertheless,  or  maybe  precisely  for  this  reason,  we  can  desire  Aion  only   because  we  are  dangerously   immersed  in  this  chronological  present  that  offers  to  us   only  sterilized  differences  and  nomadisms.  And  it  is  for  this  same  reason  that  becoming   is  possible  and,  firstly,  revolutionary  becoming.  To  ignore  our  immersion  in  this  present   would  be  to  be  worthy  only  of  what  happens  to  others.  Therefore,  we  have  no  need  to   cry,   nor   to   hope,   but   let   us   try   to   find   new   weapons   –   following   Deleuze’s   parodic   suggestion  of  an  art  of  control:       Television  is  the  form  in  which  the  new  powers  of  “control”  become  immediate  and   direct.  To  get   to  the  heart  of   the  confrontation  you’d  almost  have  to  ask  whether   this  control  might  be  reversed,  harnessed  by  the  supplementary  function  opposed  to   power:  whether  one  could  develop  an  art  of  control   that  would  be  a  kind  of  new   form  of  resistance.  (Deleuze  1995:  89)     Yesterday  the  television,   today  the  selfie  and  the  social  network:   these  are  almost   incompossible   words   for   some   Martian   attempting   to   learn   English,   but   they   are   nevertheless  functional,  each  in  relation  to  the  other,   for  the  capitalist  exploitation  of   relationships  (Stiegler  2015)  and  paired  together  by  His  Holiness  Communication.  The   fact   that   the   selfie,   as   a   monadography   of   the   21st   century,   has   captured   so   much   territory   as   to   become   the   most   used   practice   on   social   networks   gives   pause   for   thought.  Perhaps  it  is  a  kind  of  reaction  to  something  that  no  longer  exists.  And  precisely   because  this  is  what  it  lacks,  capitalism  –  which  is  an  artist  of  lack  –  flaunts  its  presence.   Deleuze,  following  Klee,  already  said  long  ago  that  “the  people  are  missing”;  today  one   could  say  that  “the  social  is  missing”.  The  social  of  digital  technology  seems  indeed  to  be   substituting  itself  for  the  social  itself,  emptying  it  of  its  meaning,  to  the  point  that  psychic   and  collective  individuation  (Simondon  1989)  gets  lost  in  the  cracks  of  individualization,   while  “taking  care  of  the  self  and  of  others”  (Foucault  1986)  –  without  which  there  can   be  neither  complicity  nor  solidarity  –  degenerates  into  taking  care  of  selfies  and  avatars.   This   is   the  ground  zero  of   sociality,   in  which  one   is   tied  with  another  only   in  being   driven  to  adhere  to  what   is  offered  to  us,  as  monads  that  can  touch  each  other  only   through  screens  –  it  is  not  even  a  matter  of  profile,  but  of  profiling.   If  the  mirror,  like  that  composed  of  water  within  which  Narcissus  is  entombed,  was   the  first  screen,  in  the  case  of  the  myth  it  was  neither  a  selfie  nor  stupidity,  because  the   1   For  a  critique  of  Tiqqun’s  position  see  Consigliere,  Paravagna  2008. LA  DELEUZIANA  –  ONLINE  JOURNAL  OF  PHILOSOPHY  –  ISSN  2421-­‐‑3098   N.  2  /  2015  –  ALICE  AND  THE  MIRROR 5 two,  as  we  know  them,  are  products  of   the  most  soporific  of  powers,   i.e.   capitalism,   which  today  stirs  up  the  drives  to  annihilate  desire.  The  Jeune-­‐‑Fille   in  selfie  and  per   selfie  thus  expresses  regression  to  the  drive  to  commodify  the  process  of  subjectiviza-­‐‑ tion,   which   works   like   a   kind   of   walled   path   dedicated   to   an   essentially   blind   and   entropic  jouissance,  inasmuch  as  it  is  entirely  flattened  into  consumption.   If  desire  is  for  Deleuze  and  Guattari  a  productive  social  power,  negentropic  and  vital,   it   is  not  by  chance  that  Tiqqun  describes  the  Jeune-­‐‑Fille  as  a  corpse  wearing  flawless   makeup  –  and   this   is  even  more   true   thanks   to   the   filters  and   tweaks  of   Instagram,   Photoshop  or  smartphone  apps.  Instead,  Alice,  even  in  front  of  a  mirror,  has  no  need  for   makeup,  or  for  sexy  or  cheeky  poses,  or  tags  and  sharing;  nor  does  she  need  an  identity   or  a  nickname,  her  becoming  escapes  from  cookies  and  profiling,  and  she  has  no  need  to   login,  because  she  already  has  her  “intensity  card”.  Hence  we  would  love  to  suggest  that   Alice,  between  her  becomings,  also  becomes  La  Deleuziana,  and  vice  versa.   Furthermore,  with  this  issue  we  would  like  to  attempt  to  concretize  what  we  wrote  in   the  Manifesto  of  this  journal:       La  Deleuziana  is  above  all  a   figure  of  thought,  or  a  conceptual  character:  a  girl,  a   woman,  or  even  a  becoming-­‐‑woman  –  of  concepts,  of  authors,  of  a  century  that  oth-­‐‑ erwise  will  never  be  Deleuzian.  As  a  woman,  La  Deleuziana  is  a  response  to  the  Jeu-­‐‑ ne-­‐‑Fille  of  capitalism,  who  is  the  commodified  subjectivity  through  which  desire  is   systematically  addressed,  which  means  destroyed,  in  favour  of  the  algorithmic  com-­‐‑ putation  of  behaviours.  If  one  must  dare  once  in  life,  we  hope  that  La  Deleuziana   would  be  a  bit  like  L’anti-­‐‑Œdipe  of  this  age:  l’anti-­‐‑jeunefille  that  tries  to  trace  a  line  of   flight  from  the  sad  passions  to  which  thought  is  often  led.2     Hence  we  dare,  even  if  only  for  a  moment,  and  with  those  who  desire  it,  to  unleash  a   barrage   of   concepts   that   attempt   to   incise   the   present.   In   short,   it   seems   that   the   moment  has  come  for  La  Deleuziana,  too,  like  (the)  woman,  to  become  Deleuzian.   Why,  finally,  do  we  choose  woman?  Because  the  only  weapon  that  we  hold,  that  is,   critical  sense  as  the  power  of  creation,  can  be  shaped  only  by  writing  –  in  any  form,  even   digital  –  and  for  Deleuze  to  write  is  to  become-­‐‑woman,  “a  becoming-­‐‑woman  that  could   be  obtained  only  through  a  fight”  (Deleuze,  Guattari  1987)  against  the  forces  attempting   to   degrade   and   dissolve   us   into   the   ever-­‐‑increasing   current   of   stupidity   and   micro-­‐‑ fascism.  And  the  woman  can  be  everything,  but  not  fascism.  More  generally,  the  vital  and   emancipatory  gesture  of  writing  consists   in  conjugating  the  molecular  fluxes  crossing   the   subjects   and   their   identitarian   segments   (genders,   species,   ethnic   groups,   ages,   classes,  etc.)  in  order  to  bring  them  to  the  thresholds  of  dis-­‐‑identification,  which  alone   allows  for  revolutionary  alliances  to  form  between  minorities.  And  one  can  be  sure  that   as  long  as  there  is  life,  there  is  minority.  Furthermore,  the  becoming-­‐‑woman  of  writing  –   that  is,  being  in  the  minority  even  if  in  front  of  one’s  own  identity  and  that  Deleuze  sees   2   http://www.ladeleuziana.org/manifesto/ LA  DELEUZIANA  –  ONLINE  JOURNAL  OF  PHILOSOPHY  –  ISSN  2421-­‐‑3098   N.  2  /  2015  –  ALICE  AND  THE  MIRROR 6 in  many  writers  (Kafka,  James,  Lawrence,  Miller  and  Virginia  Woolf  herself)  –  does  not   consist  in  “writing  as”  a  woman  (just  as  becoming-­‐‑animal  is  not  reached  by  “imitating”   the  animal),  but  in  making  alliances  with  those  who  suffer  the  effects  of  a  majority.   So  here,  then,  is  a  first  step  towards  rebuilding  the  “social  that  is  missing”:  writing  as   the  tracing  of  a  line  that  dis-­‐‑identifies  us  and  as  the  encounter  with  an  other  with  whom   we  would  be  able  to  join.  And  for  this  reason,  too,  Woman  seems  to  us  the  name  to  give   to  the  strategies  of  transformation  and  counter-­‐‑effectuation  of  the  torrent  of  events  that   is  annihilating  critical  thought.  Woman  as  Greece,  as  Lampedusa,  as  the  Moon  and  the   Earth,  as  (geo)philosophy.       Contents     We  decided  to  open  this  second  issue  of  the  journal  with  a  sort  of  present  that  Ve-­‐‑ ronique  Bergen  sent  to  the  editorial  board  after  reading  the  call  for  paper  of  this  issue:  a   portrait   of   La   Deleuziana,   which   the   reader   can   find   in   French   (original   version),   in   English  and  in  Italian.  Such  a  portrait,  which  is  generous  and  critical,  bright  and  vision-­‐‑ ary  at  the  same  time,  represents  for  us  a  kind  of  second  manifesto,  for  which  we  will  try   to  becoming  worthy.   As  in  the  previous  issues,  La  Deleuziana  proposes  a  meaningful  path  through  its  ses-­‐‑ sions,   in  order   to  disclose   the  key  elements   that  have  been  suggested   in   the  call   for   papers.  Hence,  within   the   “Necessity/Concepts”   category   the   reader   could   find   three   different  insights  of  what  Alice’s  point  of  view  might  mean  for  our  present.  Rosi  Braidot-­‐‑ ti’s  Vitalismo  –  Materia  –  Affermazione  (transcription  of  a  lesson  given  in  Bologna  on  21   Oct.  2014),  focuses  on  several  contemporary  issues,  such  as  digital  ‘second  life’,  genet-­‐‑ ically   modified   food,   advanced   prosthetics,   robotics   and   reproductive   technologies.   Thanks  to  her  deep  engagement  in  Women’s  Studies,  Braidotti  brings  the  reader  to  a   fundamental  question  for  the  present   issue  of  La  Deleuziana:  “is  woman  anthropos?”.   This  question  involves  a  radical  inquiry  about  the  phallocentrism  behind  the  meaning   and   the  postures  of  western  civilization  –   to  which  Braidotti  has  dedicated  her  own   work.       Elonora  De  Conciliis’  Il  divenire  donna  dell’idea  e  la  verità  della  Jeune-­‐‑Fille  grabs  from   another  angle  the  philosophical  issue  about  woman,  gender  and  capitalism.  Starting  with   a  deep  reading  of  Derrida’s  deconstruction  of   the   image  of  Woman   in   the  history  of   philosophy  and  in  Western  civilization,  De  Conciliis  suggests  using  this  very  thesis  for  a   diagnosis  of  Tiqqun’s  “Jeune-­‐‑Fille”  as  a  valid  concept  to  describe  the  anthropomorphiza-­‐‑ tion  of  Capital.  While  the  female,  according  to  Tiqqun,  seems  to  become  the  image  of   contemporary  capitalism,  De  Conciliis,  passing  through  Lacan,  Derrida  and  Baudrillard,   indicates  Woman  as  the  subject  capable  of  escaping  both  from  philosophy’s  traditional   phallogocentrism  and  from  neoliberal  capitalism.     LA  DELEUZIANA  –  ONLINE  JOURNAL  OF  PHILOSOPHY  –  ISSN  2421-­‐‑3098   N.  2  /  2015  –  ALICE  AND  THE  MIRROR 7 On  this  emancipatory  path,  Gianluca  de  Fazio’s  article  (Etica  delle  composizioni.  Sul   divenire-­‐‑donna  e   le   linee  di   fuga  della  corporeità)  could  represent  a  useful   tool   in   its   description  of  Deleuze’s  concept  of   ‘becoming-­‐‑woman’.  As   the  author  explains,   if   this   concept  can  be  thought  at  the  crossroads  of  two  key  Deleuzian  issues,  the  body  and  the   event,  the  becoming  as  movement  of  social  transformation  also  indicates  its  ethical  and   political  actuality.     The  section  “Symptomatologies”  hosts  two  articles  focusing  on  Deleuzian  “becoming-­‐‑ woman”  as  well,  but  their  purposes  are  more  focused  on  “what  is  happening  to  us”.  In   particular  Stefano  Dughera,  with  the  article  Per  una  lettura  deleuziana  del  capitalismo   cognitivo.   Sul   divenire-­‐‑donna   del   lavoro   contemporaneo,   proposes   to   use   becoming-­‐‑ woman  as  a  lens  to  investigate  the  transformation  of  contemporary  work  within  the  so-­‐‑ called   cognitive   capitalism.   The   broad   field   of   authors   Dughera   involves   allows   the   reader   to   develop   a   deep   understanding   of   both   the   contradictory   movement   that   characterizes   contemporary   capitalism   and   the   relationships   between   Deleuzian   becoming  and  the  social  and  political  production  of  the  Common.   The  second  article,  written  by  Öznur  Karakaş  (La  petite  fille  de  la  surface  comme  fig-­‐‑ ure  de  la  dissolution  du  soi)  investigates  the  possible  traces  of  the  Jeune-­‐‑Fille  contained   in  The  Logic  of  Sense,  whose  contemporary  symptoms  have  been  described  by  Tiqqun.   After  a  recognition  of  the  key  concepts  involved  to  describe  the  feminine  in  The  Logic  of   Sense,  Karakaş  emphasises,  with  the  help  of  Luce  Irigaray,  the  fundamental  difference   between   the   Jeune-­‐‑Fille   and   the   becoming-­‐‑woman:   while   the   former   represents   the   result   of   the   capitalist   apparatus   of   capture,   the   latter   calls   for   a   conception   of   the   feminine  to  fight  against  any  patriarchal  symbolic,  political  and  economic  system.     The  section  “Regions”  hosts  the  Italian  translation  of  Theresa  Senft’s  article,  The  Skin   of  the  Selfie  (La  pelle  del  selfie),  which  reflects  upon  the  political  stakes  of  aisthesis  in  the   age  of  touch-­‐‑screens  and  the  selfie.  At  the  centre  of  the  essay  there  is  the  public  dissemi-­‐‑ nation  of  selfies  featuring  the  face  of  Sandra  Bland,  an  African  American  activist  with  the   group  Black  Lives  Matter,  who  was  imprisoned  after  a  routine  traffic  stop.  Sandra  Bland   died  in  prison,  leaving  us  with  the  traces  of  her  life  on  social  networks.  Starting  from  this   fact,  Senft  has  developed  a  meaningful  discourse  on  public   images  of  private   life  and   individual  death  that  calls  for  a  reconfiguration  of  the  relation  between  aesthetics  and   politics.  For  Senft  this  new  political  relation  to  aisthesis  should  focus  on  the  surface  of   our  existences,  that  is  on  their  and  our  skins.   The  “Red  Eyes”  session  presents  two  articles  focused  on  Deleuze  and  literature,  which   is  also  the  starting  point  of  this  issue.  Valentina  Maini’s  article  (“Io  sono  grande  e  piccola   insieme”:  divenire  Amelia  Rosselli),  suggests  a  parallelism  between  the  work  of  the  Italian   poet  Amelia  Rosselli  and  Deleuze’s  Alice.  Such  a  parallelism  is   found  by  Maini   in   the   common  tension  towards  that  paradoxical   form  of  becoming,  by  which  both  the  poet   and  Deleuze’s  conceptual  character  express  their  unsettled  identities:  becoming  bigger   and  littler  at  the  same  time.  This  kind  of  paradoxical  tendency  concerns  all  the  political   LA  DELEUZIANA  –  ONLINE  JOURNAL  OF  PHILOSOPHY  –  ISSN  2421-­‐‑3098   N.  2  /  2015  –  ALICE  AND  THE  MIRROR 8 questions  raised  by  the  essay  of  the  present  issue,  thus  testifying  to  the  strong  relation   between  politics  and  literature  that  inspired  Deleuze’s  writing.     Olga  López’s  article,  Proust-­‐‑Deleuze:  les  signes  des  jeunes-­‐‑filles,  analyses  the  becoming   woman  in  the  work  of  Marcel  Proust.  Following  a  Deleuzian  suggestion,  López  shows   that   Proustian   aesthetics   cannot   be   separated   from   a   tension   towards   the   becoming   woman  through  which  the  affects  seem  to  be  created  in  À  la  recherche  du  temps  perdu.   Describing  this  kind  of  artistic  methodology,  López’s  work  at  the  same  time  develops  a   singular  point  of  view,  or  more  precisely,  its  own  singular  methodology  in  relation  to  the   present  issue  of  the  journal.  If  most  of  the  articles  of  this  issue  describe  the  becoming-­‐‑ woman  either  in  general  or  from  the  point  of  view  of  this  woman,  even  if  written  by   men,   López   attempts   to   provide   a   paradoxical   alternative,   in   the   wave   of   the   whole   issue:  as  woman,  describing  the  becoming-­‐‑woman  of  a  male  writer.     In  the  section  “New  Weapons”  the  reader  will   find  Angela  Balzano’s  article  Tecno-­‐‑ corpi  e  vie  di  fuga  postumane  and  the  reason  is  immediately  evident.  By  reviewing  both   the   theoretical   assumptions   of   post-­‐‑structuralism   (Deleuze   and   Foucault)   and   the   contributions  of  neo-­‐‑materialist   feminism,   the  essay  describes   the  metamorphosis  of   subjectivities  in  the  age  of  biotechnologies.  With  the  help  of  Rosi  Braidotti  and  Donna   Haraway,  Balzano  tries  to  develop  a  theoretical  and  political  path  based  on  the  political-­‐‑ transformative  dimension  of  the  cyborg  and  nomadic  subjectivity.  The  goal  is  then  to   trace   the  condition  of  possibility  of   the   invention  of  new  critical  weapons   for  a  non-­‐‑ anthropocentric  and  non-­‐‑phallocentric  subjectivity  –  a  subjectivity  still  to  come.       Daniel  Ross  article,  Touch/Screen,  is  the  content  of  the  section  “Anomalies”,  through   which   La   Deleuziana   attempts   to   approach   the   major   questions   of   the   issue   from   a   different  point  of  view.  If  the  screens  are  one  of  the  key  points  of  the  present  issue,  what   has  not  been  so  clearly  declared   is   the  question  of   cinema  and  of   tele-­‐‑technology   in   relation  to  subjectivity,  desire  and  becoming.  Nevertheless,  such  a  question  is  unavoida-­‐‑ ble  in  order  to  understand  most  of  the  causes  that  brought  us  to  deal  with  the  Jeune-­‐‑ Fille,  the  selfies  and  other  troubles  for  subjectivity  signalled  in  the  call  for  papers.  Ross   develops   a   genealogical   critique   of   such   causes,   in   order   to   show,   with   the   help   of   Bernard  Stiegler,  how  cinema,  television  and  contemporary  screens  not  only  describe  or   even  pervert  our  desire,  but  essentially  participate  in  the  constitution  and  possibility  of   this  very  desire.  Understanding  this  might  allow  the  development  of  that  Deleuzian  art   of  control  signalled  above,  an  art  that  became  possible  precisely  in  the  aftermath  of  the   invasive  effects  of  television.   In  the  last  section  “Precursors”  we  will  find  Alexander  Wilson’s  text,  Comment  choisir   ce  qui  aura  été  ?  Réflexions  sur  l’optimisme  prométhéen  contemporain.  This  section  hosts   essays  different  from  the  general  subject  of  the  present  issue  that  call  for  the  next  one.  In   this  regard,  Wilson’s  article  represents  a  sort  of  bridge  from  the  “anomalous”  Ross’  text   and  the  issue  3  of  the  journal.  Indeed,  Wilson  posits  two  movies  on  the  backcloth  of  his   reflections  about  pessimism  and  optimism  for  climate  change  and  technological  acceler-­‐‑ LA  DELEUZIANA  –  ONLINE  JOURNAL  OF  PHILOSOPHY  –  ISSN  2421-­‐‑3098   N.  2  /  2015  –  ALICE  AND  THE  MIRROR 9 ation:   von   Trier’s   Melancholia   and   Nolan’s   Interstellar.   The   opportunity   disclosed   by   those  movies  is  thus  to  reflect,   following  contemporary  philosophers  such  as  Deleuze   and   Stiegler,   but   also   with   Leibniz,   upon   a   fundamental   question:   what   could   living   without   a   compossible   future   in   relation   to   climate   change   mean?   How   can   we   live   within  the  risk  of  a  generalized  death,  not  (only)  of  human  being,  but  of  the  very  Earth?   The   goal   of   thought   becomes,   once   again,   “not   to   cry,   not   to   hope,   but   to   find   new   weapons”.         BIBLIOGRAPHY     Braidotti,  R.  (1997)  “Degli  insetti  e  delle  donne”.  in  Vaccaro,  S.  (ed.),  Il  secolo  deleuziano.   Milano:  Mimesis.  pp.  59-­‐‑94.   Cesarano,  G.  (2000).  Manuale  di 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