A Requiem for Postmodernism:

The New Media Adjusters from Sokal to Starship Troopers

Andrew Murphie

Without an enemy I go mad. I can no longer think1

So writes Jacques Derrida in The Politics of Friendship. If he is right then I

must thank Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont for their book Intellectual
Impostures: Postmodern philosophers abuse of science2 (aka Fashionable
Nonsense the title I prefer). This is the infamous book, published in 1998,
which attacked all our favourite French philosophers for the fact that they
misused concepts and terms from the hard sciences. It is a sad little book, and
was preceded by a somewhat sad little hoax3 one which led Derrida to write
of le pauvre Sokal4. Derrida thought that poor Sokal would only ever be
remembered for the whole sad affair (and not for his contribution to physics).

I could not say that the books enmity is enduring. Sokal and Bricmont are not
particularly good enemies5. I can say, however, that the book provided a lot of
energy for this paper. In fact, it has provided what I shall call the negative
from which I hope to develop a more positive discussion and here I do mean
a negative in an almost photographic sense. I hope I can get this negative
developed into a picture of contemporary media issues.

My concern here is not really to prove Sokal and Bricmont wrong, though I
apologise in advance for those moments when such a concern does creep into
what I have to say. (The reader may be relieved to know that I have
transported most of the more general argumentative points I have with
Fashionable Nonsense to some extremely long footnotes6 those who wish to
pursue this one more time can head there.) Of course, there is no doubt that on
many points of science Sokal and Bricmont are right and I will not be as
foolish as to assume I know as much about science as Sokal and Bricmont
assume they know about philosophy or culture7. I am nevertheless going to
argue with them about science. This is because, as we shall see, one curious
point is that it seems that Sokal and Bricmont themselves occasionally get their
science wrong at certain crucial and rather telling moments. At such moments
there are issues at stake which are much larger than the issue of Fashionable
Nonsense. These are and Im sure that Sokal and Bricmont would agree here
issues to do with the nature of reality. They are issues, more precisely, to do
with the nature of the way in which we mediate reality. They are, then, broadly
speaking, media issues.
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There is another side to this. As much as Sokal and Bricmont complain about
postmodernism relativism they do, as McKenzie Wark pointed out in relation
to the Sokal hoax long ago, indulge in it themselves. Put another way, they
themselves are trying to mediate reality with rhetoric, unfounded and ill-
informed assertions and, most importantly, their new found celebrity. In
suggesting the last I am not suggesting that they are interesting celebrities but
merely that they take their place on the tattered remains of the postmodern
stage9.

Sokals hoax and the subsequent book, then, could almost be described as an
almost banal postmodern media event.

The books claims are a little muddled but are essentially two. Firstly, the book
is just pointing out that occasionally some French philosophers get their
science wrong. This is no big deal, just a friendly correction. Secondly, despite
occasional denials and qualifications when challenged, the book aims to
demonstrate that this is all part of a postmodern plot to rid the world of sense
and reason in favour of fuzzy thinking and apolitical relativism. Of course, this
second argument depends for what limited life it has both on the first, and also
on the common but misconceived conflation of French philosophy and
postmodernism10. It also relies on the continuance of postmodern culture into
contemporary life which is a doubtful thing indeed but I shall pass over that for
now11.

Here I shall take up two points of departure. Firstly, the developing fluid of
the photographic negative for me is Sokal and Bricmonts fear and loathing of
the great shibboleth of postmodernism: its supposed contamination of the real
world with a flood of poisonous relativism. This has developed my
ambivalence towards postmodernism into something approaching gratitude and
remembrance. Secondly, and this is the real theme of my paper here, I want to
ask why it is that Sokal and Bricmont misrepresent the history of differential
calculus in a passing comment on Deleuze and Guattari. This is a small point in
their book, but for me it is a telling symptom.

In fact, I would like to argue here that a philosophical understanding of

differential relations is crucial to an understanding of what it is that
postmodernism achieved and what it is that postmodernism passed into. This is
a passing which I would like to call, not the digital revolution (which occurred
in the mid nineteenth century with the telegraph and the laying of undersea
communication cables), but the differential revolution. This differential
revolution has been developing for a long time under many other revolutions,
but has only recently gained consistency. This is partly, I think, in response to
contemporary cultures increasing need for the mediation of, and adjustment to,
an exponential increase in the experience of complexity. Accompanying what
I shall call, for want of a better term, the differential revolution, is, I shall
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argue, a notion of media as a series of adjusters. And through all this, a crucial
determination shall be the notion of the virtual.

First things first, however what does is mean to suggest a requiem for
postmodernism when Sokal and Bricmont think that the monster is alive and
well? I do not mean that postmodernism is now done with, defeated or dead
and those who wish to can just go back to a cosy (or horrific) modernity. On
the other hand, I am not really suggesting that postmodernism ever really
began, in the sense, that is, of a project we can continue or even a coherent
system of thought. I would rather think that postmodernism was a far from
uniform cultural condition. It was perhaps a state of mind if you like, or a
whirlpool in the stream of the world that has now unwound and slipped
downstream. Whatever the postmodernist moment was or was not, however, it
seems that it has indeed now passed us by, as so many commentators have
pointed out. So by a requiem I mean that it is time to celebrate its passing, and
to consider what even more illegitimate offspring it has given birth to.

Actually, at the time, all through the courses I taught in postmodernism,

through the debates and so on, I thought that it held no affinity for me. I never
felt particularly postmodern, especially when I tried, and if I ever did, it did not
take long for the realisation that I was, like so many other element of the
supposed postmodern, merely echoing the modern once again. That was the
trouble with the word postmodern itself. Whatever else occurred, it always
suggested that you had one eye on modernity or the enlightenment. The post
prefix suggested that it was constantly necessary to brush the remaining bits of
both the modern and the enlightenment off your shoulders like some persistent
dandruff that would not go away. Personally, I found all this warding off of
three hundred years of cultural history a little tiring. I was glad when certain
commentators that I trusted declared everything to have moved on.
Nevertheless, recently I have found the postmodern returning to my mind like a
friend only just disappeared (as Derrida points out, friendship can only be
declared after death and even then only painfully). I have been buoyed of late
by an affection for certain philosophers, artists and cultural events, and
annoyed by the antagonism towards the contemporary that still attempts to
make postmodernism into a stalking horse for everything that is wrong with the
world. Thus, this is a requiem for that in which, in retrospect, I have found
many things to love, and which has given birth to so many things that may now
help us all adjust to the world. In this sense, then, I come not to bury
postmodernism, but to praise it, even and especially as a very productive
chimera.

This is very different from the position of Sokal and Bricmont, for whom
postmodernism becomes something of a still living monster, almost beyond
comprehension (and certainly beyond their own!). Of course, there are many,
drawn from the old left and right who share such views, and it is perhaps these
that have made Sokal and Bricmont the postmodern celebrities they are. The
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problem with all this, however, is that the central figures of Fashionable
Nonsense are French philosophers who even Sokal and Bricmont admit are not
really postmodern (except through what Sokal and Bricmont themselves call
a weak logical link). If this is the case, how does Fashionable Nonsenses
weird game come about? Is this just a reactive position, or is it a broader
position shared with many of postmodernisms proponents and arbitrators? To
begin to answer these questions I am afraid I shall head to anecdotal evidence.

There was a time years ago when I wrestled with the abuse of my philosophical
favourites Deleuze and Guattaris thought as exemplifying everything that was
wrong with the postmodern world, and passively accepted the word of those
who assumed them part of their postmodern team. Then, however, I finally
made the mistake of reading their work more extensively (meaning that I read
more than the capitalism and schizophrenia books). In the course of this one
comes across some striking anomalies with the caricatures of such thought
given by both sides of the postmodern divide.

I shall not attempt to resolve these here except to say that, for me, what all this
means is that now I use the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari and others as
something that comments on the pathways through the modern and the
postmodern, while actually belonging entirely to neither. Such philosophy is
also something that explains, for me particularly, the specificity of the media
changes we have been going through within, but also beside and after the
postmodern. In the process I have understood more about what it is that many
others are saying about the medias part in contemporary cultural
discontinuities and the formations of new continuities more, that is, than I
could have understood had I remained purely under the sign of the postmodern
star.

I know that there are a lot of gaps at the centre of all of this. Fashionable
Nonsense, for its part, seems strangely bereft of the logic, empiricism and even
realism that it champions. As I have said, it seems more a celebration of
unexpected celebrity. Perhaps this just indicates that Sokal and Bricmont
themselves, despite the feigned looks of horror, really were catching up with
postmodernism after the event. After all, postmodernism itself was full of
absences, full of mourning, and full of a compulsion to repeat that it was never
quite able to repress. Sokal and Bricmont seem to perform these absences
rather than really challenge them, something made absolutely clear in that they
choose the wrong targets. Far more telling targets than those in their book
would have been the purer poststructuralists such as Derrida and Foucault who
were the real villains promoting absences, attacking truth, and so on. Of
course, this would not have sufficed either. One of the simple things that Sokal
and Bricmont do not seem to want to acknowledge is a fact known since the
ancient Greeks, namely that the friends of truth do not in fact possess it in
absolute measure12. This is the very conundrum of postmodernism but in this
both postmodernism and poststructuralism only reenact the history of
 5

philosophy. Indeed, it is perhaps because, like postmodernism, Sokal and

Bricmont look backwards rather than forwards that they miss the real
importance of the philosophers they address. This is precisely that of seeking a
way out of these very old conundrums about how we can know the world.

What if, more generally, postmodernism was also seen as a kind of portal, a
kind of absence that formed a gateway for almost anyone who wanted to go
through it to the future. I do not want to defend postmodernism here (what
would that mean anyway?) but I did like postmodernisms admission of
complexity, even if it did not always know what to do with it. In particular, I
liked the way in which complexity was stolen from the hands of scientists,
academics and some artists and placed in the hands of culture in general. I
liked the way in which popular culture was suddenly allowed to speak of, and
enrich, its own complexity, without everyone having to study for a PhD in
either quantum physics or French philosophy. Maybe that is what I object to
most in Sokal and Bricmonts book. They want postmodernism because they
want a wall to bounce off, a fence to throw stones over. They do not want to
ask the question about the future namely what would it mean to have gone
through postmodernism and come out the other side?. In this sense maybe
some of what I am saying here is purely territorial, about building fences or
opening gateways.

The debate within much of the left surrounding these issues has certainly been
about building fences or open gateways. Sokal and Bricmont, for example,
despite their almost complete lack of any understanding of dialectical
materialism, want to defend the left against itself (where have we heard that
before?), in particular against a trendy section of itself. Yet, sadly, we need a
new left as never before one that could emerge from the postmodern
condition, not attack it.

Confutatis The Postmodern and the Post-media Era

This is echoed both in Guattaris somewhat surprising antagonism to

postmodernism and in his declaration of a desire for a post-media age, which
are clearly related. Although it is true that there is something rather old-
fashioned in all this, I want briefly to go through it as it provides a map for the
new territory in which I hope to finish.

Guattaris partner Deleuze had very little to say about postmodernism - that I
can find in any case. Deleuze did once write that things were not going too
well in contemporary thought..because theres a return under the name of
modernism to abstractions, back to the problem of origins, all that sort of
thing and that any analysis in terms of movements, vectors, is blocked13.
This is fairly ambiguous, however, in terms of our interests here. With
Guattari, however, there is no ambiguity. He could not stand Postmodernism.
 6

Here is what Guattari says about Postmodernism and issues related to this
discussion -

"Rather than joining the fashionable crusades against the misdeeds of

modernism, or preaching a rehabilitation of worn-out transcendent
values, or indulging in the disillusioned indulgences of postmodernism,
we might instead try to find a way out of the dilemma of having to
choose between unyielding refusal or cynical acceptance of this
situation."14

Elsewhere Guattari has a swipe at both structuralism and, once again,

postmodernism. He complains that both of these "have accustomed us to a
world which evacuates the pertinence out of the human interventions
incarnated in concrete politics and micropolitics"15.

His comments on the existence of a post-media age are related to his

aversion to the postmodern relativism which, ironically, Sokal and Bricmont
accuse him of promoting. According to Gary Genosko the transition to this age
will involve four factors.

[1] Foreseeable technological developments[2] the necessary

redefinition of the relations between producers and consumers[3] the
institution of new social practices and their interference with the
development of media[and][4] the development of information
technologies16

Of course, put simply, Guattari is talking about increased interactivity and

participation as something that multiplies the number of media vectors within a
culture. Increased interactivity in the media bounces these vectors around in
more directions than the traditional mass media. Genosko points out that this
could be interpreted as an old-fashioned reaction against mass media that
people like Umberto Eco think should be pensioned off. I am not so sure, as
Guattari may be nave in some ways, but in others what he is proposing is more
complexity, not less. He is not proposing a return to simple solutions but a way
forward. He writes, for example, of the problem of how humanity might find a
compass by which to reorient itself within a modernity whose complexity
overwhelms it17. His answer is to think through this complexity in a
renunciation of the reductive approach of scientism when a questioning of its
prejudices and short-term interests is required. This, he says, will be necessary
if we are to enter into a post-media era, one which will lead us out of the era in
which all great contemporary upheavals, positive or negative, are currently
judged on the basis of information filtered through the mass media industry,
which retains only a description of events and never problematizes what is at
stake, in its full amplitude18.
 7

Now I think that, while there is possibly some naivety in the discussion here
about mass media, there is none about the need to problematize what is at
stake in its full amplitude. Neither is it nave to reject a media function which
sees the media as only a description of events.

There is also another side to this which complicates it further. Although

Guattari obviously likes the idea of new media technologies, he does not like
pure information theory. In other words, he is not an instrumentalist but a
contextualist. Going further into all this Guattari suggests that the

suggestive power of the theory of information has contributed to

masking the importance of the enunciative dimensionthat a message
must be received, and not just communicated. Information cannot be
reduced to its objective manifestations; it is, essentially, the production
of subjectivity, the becoming-consistent of incorporeal universesThe
truth of information refers to an existential event occurring in those who
receive it.19

Once again this is nothing to do with just getting your information right or even
with improving communications. He comments that this is not a matter of the
exactitude of facts, but that of the significance of a problemthe current crisis
of the media and the opening up of a post-media era are the symptoms of a
much more profound crisis.

Now, if I untangle from this what I find useful, it is again the notion of the
problem in its existential framework, and this is the problem of negotiating
complexity, including the complexity of information. This is not a problem
necessarily to be solved once and for all. It is certainly not a problem to be
solved by more information theory, communicative action or even just better
(or more) communications. It is instead a problem which gives us life, that
energises the culture rather then depletes it or hollows it out from within like
some blood-sucking zombie. For us here today, I would term this a problem of
mediation. This is indeed different from the general problem of the mass
media, even if it occurs within it.

This problem of mediation with the concept of the problem given its more
dynamic affirmative meaning - is what I would suggest emerges from
postmodernism. It would have been impossible for it to emerge without the
mourning for modernisms great projects and an abandoning of modernisms
desires for transparent communication. It is an emergence that is indeed
predicted in Lyotards book on the postmodern condition20. It is an emergence
of new narrative structures and narrative devices developed to operate or
negotiate, or even create new complexities. It also involves, as Guattari has
pointed out above, the emergence of new technologies. These are technologies
which marry a conscious understanding of the philosophy and practices of the
differential to a rapid expansion of differential based technologies (should we
 8

therefore, as I have suggested, call digital media differential media it would

be more in line with the totality of their architecture and function). Most of the
techniques, technologies and new media forms involved in this emergence are
media forms, and even media narratives, to do with mediation itself (from
Oprah to the films of Atom Egoyan to Princess Di). Yet, as these new media
mediations emerge, they also change fundamentally the nature of media
(something to which many older and some younger - journalists object). For
example, the task of the media is still to report but now it is not only to report.
Now the media must allow us to mediate what we hear, to adjust to it, or
perhaps to adjust it ourselves (there are obvious criticisms here but I am not yet
proposing this as an ethic). This has always been the case to some extent, but I
believe that as a function it is now colonising all other media functions.

Something that is obvious in all this (but that theory still lags behind
nevertheless) is that we do not have a new medium per se, although media
theory has always loved the game of spotting the new medium. What does this
mean for media theory?

Firstly, this means that there is now no media object, but rather media as
objectiles (the objectile is the object put into the event of continuous
variation21). There are no media subjects but fields of subjectification and
subjectivation by which I mean fields in which we are put through subjective
relays and occasionally in which we get to relay a few things ourselves. In all
this we have a shattering of old media in the most productive sense and a rapid
proliferation of new media in all kinds of mutations. I am not suggesting here
that media have ever stood still. Nevertheless, in the past we could at least walk
or run beside them. I am not sure if this is possible anymore.

Secondly, the same thing is happening to media departments, which are

themselves fragmenting and redistributing, emerging into the middle of, and as,
other disciplines.

Thirdly, there is a proliferation of ideas of the media, none of them correct or

true in the old sense. Media seem now, partly by virtue of what I can only call
a new consciousness and partly by virtue of new technologies, truly virtual
entities. As such, following Deleuzes theory of the virtual, they are
unpredictable, productive and constantly actualising forms which do not
necessarily follow from the virtual relations that produce them.

In sum, everything summed up in the word media has now passed through
several critical points, fragmenting and dispersing every time, and will
continue to do so. This is not because of fashion or even because the media is
central to culture. It is more because the media is so well equipped to take on
mediation. In a sense the media, in the best sense of the word, finds itself in
accord with the Spinozan ethics of the accumulation of power through what he
 9

called active affections active relations with the world. The media finds itself
best able to internalise resonances and dissonances within the world.

Yet if the media is taking over, it is mutating rapidly as it does. This is the
beauty and the problem of being a media theorist today. It implies that the
fundamental error in much discussion of media and culture is the assumption
that a greatly enhanced power of the media and operation of the media in
culture is only a matter of quantity. Moreover, the assumption here is that this
is a matter of quantity to which we can apply the same equations and theories.
For me, this only indicates a certain poverty, a poverty that implies a need for
theory to explore the idea of mediation as much as the culture is. (If I take one
idea from Baudrillard here it is that the masses are ahead of us when it comes
to the media). We need to rethink interactivity and adjustment. We also need a
ship for this exploration and I would suggest that this ship is built out of
differentials (differential calculus but also differential thought, differential
existence).

I shall begin with a brief comment on interactivity.

Interactivity is normally posited as an interactivity between two objects, two

subjects, or an object and a subject humans, terminals or interfaces for
example. Of course, in this understanding, the interactive, the truly in-between,
has already slipped our grasp in being subjected to these primary entities.

What would it be to rethink this and take interactivity as primary? I have

written a lot on this elsewhere22 but here I would just champion Stelarc, who
subjects himself to interaction rather then subjecting interaction to himself.
There are many other artists one could mention but I am particularly interested
in the work of the German artist Rebecca Horn, who builds unlikely
assemblages out of the interaction between machines such as binoculars and
pianos, animal parts such as feathers, narrative fragments and so on. More
generally, it is perhaps in art performance art and installations in particular,
including digital media installations that have followed more traditional multi-
media - that a theory of interactivity is truly to find its object or more
correctly, a relation that would turn this theory into an objectile. What would
this theory be? It would, of course, be a theory which takes seriously from the
first the passing and necessarily transient mediation of existence in all its
complexity. What, however, would enable us to do this without reaching for
the short hand of recognisable objects and solid facts?

I think it would be the differential.

It is at this point that I wish to discuss Sokal and Bricmont again as their
anxiety about Deleuzes discussion of the differential, and about complexity in
general, signals to us as if from beyond the breakers.
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Agnus Dei - Alan and Jean and Gilles and Felix

Now in Fashionable Nonsense the chapter on Deleuze and Guattari runs at

about 70% quoted material and 30% commentary - much of which amounts to
the fact that all this quoted material sounds pretty silly23.

So there is rather a lot of quotation with little argument and the one major
argument they produce in this chapter - that over differential calculus24 and, in
particular, over the status of infinitesimals25 within differential calculus26. I
shall review some of the arguments here as they are important to my own.

I will begin with a ridiculously cursory and elemental summary of the history
of calculus, or at least of the very basic elements of this history necessary to
what follows.

We can begin with the Greeks, and the simple problem of the curve in
geometry. This could be summed up here in the problem of finding the area of
a circle. The Greeks could find the area of squares and triangles but the circle
did not have straight lines. The solution was to put the circle inside a square
and to say that the circles area was roughly the same as the square. Of course,
if you made it an octagonal this was better. You could calculate, for example,
the area of the eight triangles this octagonal made with the centre of the circle.
Sixteen sides was even better. And so on to infinity.

Infinity was the point, however. If you kept going, the actual area of the circle
would consist of the addition of the areas of the innumerable triangles to
infinity. For practical purposes you only had to go part of the way to get what
you wanted. In theoretical terms, however, the problem was that you ended up
with ridiculously small quantities for the bases of your triangles these are
what are known as infinitesimals. What is more, all this was based upon the
somewhat imaginary idea that at a certain point a curve would become a
straight line, as least as far as calculations went. All this explains why , which
most of us will remember from school as the crucial component of the formula
for the area of the circle (r2) is an irrational number that goes on forever.

Now the differential calculus, also known as the infinitesimal calculus,

developed by both Newtown and Leibniz at about the same time, was
developed to deal with precisely these problems. It was a more precise
mathematical solution to these problems and it worked. These were problems
of curves which are, of course, produced by a combination of forces or vectors,
or by changes over time. In short, these were problems brought about by things
that do not move in straight lines but in rather less predictable ways. We might
say that since God moves in a mysterious manner the calculus was an attempt
to get a little closer to God. One of the problems of the calculus however, was
those troublesome little infinitesimals, which reminded you that the calculus
was built on weird and somewhat shaky foundations. Practically, the problem
 11

of infinitesimals seemed finally solved by French mathematicians dAlembert

in 1790 and Cauchy in 1820. They introduced a concept of limit within the
calculus which essentially seems to be a way of roping the infinitesimals into a
holding pen while we get to use the calculus in the field (of engineering and so
on). This was an elegant solution, completed by Weierstrass a little later in the
century. In only seemed to solve the problem, however, as infinitesimals did
not go away. In fact, in the 1960s, however, Abraham Robinson manages to let
the infinitesimals out again to roam the fields with us, in what was called non-
standard analysis. In short, the infinitesimals were reincorporated into the body
of calculus by respectable mathematical means. Of course things are much
more complex than this but this is not our concern here.

What has all this got to do with media? Well quite a lot actually, as I hope to
show. I will not go into the mathematics much more here except to say that in
calculus we have three levels of determination. These are important.

1. We have the undetermined - that is, dx or dy which are essentially a

mathematical representation of an undetermined difference in x or y (as
the two coordinates of a point in space) so that, through time, x and y
would be at different points. This implies firstly that nothing is standing
still. It implies secondly that over time there is, inevitably, a difference.
2. When dx and dy enter into a relation we have reciprocal determination
represented mathematically in the figure dx/dy. This is the figure of
difference itself, as it is defined by the relation.
3. Over time, of course, this reciprocal relation produces a series of
completely determined points (such as a circle, or, in the real world, the
fold in a curtain).

Now I take the risk of going into all this in the most elemental fashion because
it is absolutely central to Deleuzes theory of difference. It also gives a manner
of approaching many issues. These include the relations between the virtual
and the actual and the processes by which the virtual is produced and produces
the actual in turn. These also include such notions as the problem itself, of
cultural difference, of the substance of mediation and adjustment, of how ideas
form, change and work in culture, and so on.

I shall begin with the virtual. As is relatively well know by now, Deleuze
proposes a theory of what he calls different/ciation. In this, the virtual is
constantly differentiating. Differences over time form a kind of virtual
consistency which is precisely the consistent resonance of at least two series of
differences (we could call them dx and dy) over time. The actual, on the other
hand, is the complete and in one sense final determination of the world as we
perceive it directly. The actual is what ongoing differential virtual relations
produce at any given moment. Daniel Smith gives the example of the colour
green as produced in the differential relation between yellow and blue27. It is
the equivalent of the way in which the reciprocal relation between dx and dy
 12

forms a series of points, or what those such as Virilio or McKenzie Wark, in

media terms, call vectors (sloping lines, curves and so on).

There are some more important points here.

Firstly, all the important things happen in the realm of the virtual. The virtual
is the realm of the event. The actual world (of mute facts, perceptions, and so
on) so beloved by traditional journalism, and by Sokal and Bricmont, is
secondary. This is not to say that the actual world does not exist. Quite the
opposite. It is, however, to oppose the muteness of matter as we peceive it
anyway - to the dynamism of the virtual. Where this virtual realm lives - in
itself - is an interesting question we shall come to later.

Secondly, all this implies that there are two kinds of difference. There is
intensive difference, which is dynamic, virtual and produced in reciprocal
series of differences brought into relation. In a sense, intensive difference is
difference internalised within a relation in order to activate a certain power.
There is also extensive difference. This is the difference between things we can
categorise as different in the actual. It is probably the difference that is more
familiar to us. It is difference in space in extension. There is quite a lot of
confusion in cultural studies and media theory about these two forms of
difference. I should add that different ethics, politics and theories follow from
the assumptions you make about difference in this regard. There is nothing
radical about a consideration of extensive difference this is something
undertaken at least since Aristotle. Moreover, extensive difference is something
which, if it excludes a consideration of intensive difference, only judges
difference on the basis of a certain commonality. Things are only different on
common ground. Intensive difference is more radical. It assumes that the
differential relation is the only common ground. The only thing in common is
difference. One can see how this repeats the two understandings of interaction I
mentioned before.

Thirdly, it is quite clear that Deleuze regards Ideas as virtual entities or

relations. Or, we could say, that he regards Ideas as particular assemblages of
virtual relations that attain some consistency in the way that they internalise the
power of certain differentials (and differentials of differentials and so on).

Hostias - Differing over the Differential

Now we can perhaps return briefly to Sokal and Bricmonts criticism of

Deleuze treatment of the calculus.

The differential calculus and the whole concept of the differential is indeed
crucial to Deleuzes book Difference and Repetition. It is also crucial to much
of his later work.
 13

Sokal and Bricmonts attack on Deleuze in the area of the differential is not,
however, with the substance of his argument. It is characteristically obtuse.
Deleuze specifically writes that the problem of infinitesimals so crucial to the
status and practical use of the calculus in mathematics, does not interest him28.
Yet, despite Deleuzes lack of interest in the problem of infinitesimals, it is
precisely on this ground that they challenge his facts. Even then they get
everything wrong. Sokal and Bricmont charge that Deleuze, fool that he is,
seems to think that infinitesimals are still a problem for mathematics. Deleuze
is behind most high school text books here, they argue, because the problem of
infinitesimals was solved over 150 years ago (by dAlembert and Cauchy with
the rigorous notion of limit).

I will leave it to a footnote to provide a full counter-argument here but merely

note in the body of this paper that it is Sokal and Bricmont themselves who get
their history of science wrong29. The problem of infinitesimals was not
resolved, except in a practical sense, 150 years ago. As just mentioned, there
was even a new branch of mathematics developed in the 1960s, non-standard
analysis (a wonderful term), to welcome infinitesimals fully. There is some
debate about non-standard analysis but it is nevertheless a respectable
innovation. In fact, infinitesimals remained a problem philosophically, and
even mathematically, during this entire 150 years, as demonstrated in the
development of non-standard analysis. Deleuze, if you read him, seems to
know this very well. Even Cauchy, who is supposed to have solved the
problem, still used infinitesimals after his supposed solution30.

One might ask then, firstly, why Sokal and Bricmont are so concerned with the
question of the infinitesimals31 that Deleuze here sidesteps, and, secondly, why
they here reject any notion of continued contradiction and difficulty even
within mathematics (let alone sciences relation with the rest of culture). One
might especially ask this when they get the basics wrong of the history of
science. (What would that old science charlatan Freud say about this I
wonder?)

In fact, far from that which Sokal and Bricmonts rather lazy history and lazier
reading of Deleuze suggests, Deleuze knows exactly what he is doing in
ignoring the whole issue. He remarks that -

In fact, there is a treasure buried within the old so-called barbaric or

pre-scientific interpretations of the differential calculus, which must be
separated from its infinitesimal matrix. A great deal of heart and a great
deal of truly philosophical naivety is needed in order to take the symbol
dx seriously: for their part, Kant and even Leibniz renounced the
idea.32

Deleuze here wants to allow for the productive force of the differential within
the world, despite, or even because of, the mathematical problem of the
 14

infinitesimal. He wants to point out that, philosophically the differential allows

us to reconceptualise the world in terms of its events, changes, and emergences.
Of course, as especially modern physicists would have to agree, the differential
is also in part the technical means by which the world is now produced and by
which we negotiate more directly the changing cultural world every day (from
better wine barrels to machine powered flight to bridges and VR systems).

The latter is not what interests Deleuze primarily, however. Deleuze, is

interested in the differential because the differential is a conceptual element of
emergent difference that we can oppose to contradiction. It is an Idea which
produces a number of concepts and technical means of negotiating emergent
difference. In a sense it allows us some access to the processes of emergent
difference itself. It enables us to find continuities where before there seemed to
be only contradiction and to find difference at the heart of apparent
commonality. (This is why such notions provide pathways out of, as much as
into, postmodernism.). So, for example, in writing about the unconscious and
consciousness Deleuze opposes Leibnizs differential continuities to the
contradictions of Freud33. What does this mean? Well Deleuze suggests that the
differential describes the process that actively creates perceptual continuities in
order to allow us to adjust to the complexity of perception at any given
moment, or over a series of moments. So, for example, a differential is applied
to millions of drops of water and we perceive the ocean, not each drop of
water. This is crucial to notions of perception and mediation because it implies
a conscious and unconscious which are not based upon opposition and
exclusion (that is, the unconscious stores what is antagonistic to
consciousness). Rather it assumes a conscious and unconscious based upon
active and functional relations between differences. All consciousness or
indeed any sort of perception is a kind of macro mediation of micro
perceptions. This also gives us the beginning of a theory of desire in that all
appetite is a kind of differential applied to what Leibniz used to call appetitions
infinitesimal bits of appetite. All the unconscious is here is the world in all its
infinity - whether we are talking about the infinitely small or the infinitely
large! And here the world (and us within it) operates, and in a sense, constantly
adjusts to itself, as a world of differentials within differentials within
differentials.

Of course, all this has immediate application within the realm of new media. It
also has consequences for any theory of new media. For a start, I would argue
that the basis of these media, both conceptually and technically, is the
differential. So for example, ray tracing, as used in the production of virtual
space, is based on differential calculus, and the whole notion of VR is really
one of instantaneous mediation through the operation of powerful differentials.
Moreover, here, as in all digital media, it is the series of reciprocal relations
between heterogeneous series of differences that matters between 1s and 0s
of course, but also at all levels of digital machinery (including the analog). In
this there is a kind of digital unconscious and a digital consciousness, a
 15

constant to and fro between the micro and the macro using the differential. In
fact, it should be obvious by now that what I am saying is that all contemporary
machinery and much contemporary thought - is based on an increased ability
to negotiate the complexity of the world through the manipulation of
differentials. This is the raison dtre of the digital, the manner in which it
becomes the universal machine. Previously I have called this the new ability
to manipulate the threshold at which the threshold of perception operates. It is
the difference between manipulating what one sees and manipulating how one
sees. It is the new ability to move between different thresholds of perception.

Lacrimosa - The Science/Culture Wars did not take place

There is obviously something personal at stake for me, then, in the reaction to
Sokal and Bricmont, apart from my general affection for the work of Deleuze
and Guattari34.

What is at stake for me is the notion of the differential itself which is central to
my theorising of digital media and of contemporary cultural shifts.

The differential revolution is firstly about making things smooth that may have
appeared to have been in contradiction. It may secondly give a way of
accounting for points of discontinuity, operating in the middle of discontinuity,
and even producing discontinuities. The difference between these two forms of
difference continuous and discontinuous - are not absolute in themselves
however. Now, Sokal and Bricmont aside, I am going to suggest that these
differential operations arise from cultural and theoretical understandings. I
would also suggest in passing that it is no accident that Leibniz invented the
differential calculus and the notion of the universal machine (i.e. computer),
though I would not, of course, be the first to do so.

For me, then, the engagement with Sokal and Bricmont has all been perversely
useful in a re-thinking of both the issues involved and of the use of differentials
in media theory. This has not been without its frustrations, as will be obvious,
but these frustrations do demand answers. The overwhelming answer for me is
that setting up stark antagonisms perhaps forces you to choose too early. It is a
pity when one is forced to choose between complexity35 and clarity, between
pleasure and reason, between what one knows and what one is challenged by,
between a cultural condition of Postmodernity and politics. It is also a pity
when one cannot move on from these. What if we do

If you forget Sokal and Bricmont and others like them, you are left with at least
two alternatives as regards the differential in its cultural role. This does not
really involve doing mathematics and this is certainly not what I am
suggesting.
 16

The first alternative is Deleuzes theory of different/ciation. This is, as I

sketched it out previously, a theory of intensive difference.

Intensive difference is the power or potential that exists within the relation
between two heterogeneous series, series which might never meet but which
nevertheless are entwined in an ongoing interaction. It is by definition intense
because of the multiplicity of resonating relations it internalises within the
differential relation. What such interactions create is a productive problem or
a series of problems. Extensive differences (or actualisations) are some of the
multiple possible solutions to the problem. Any resulting tension between them
is a result of their retaining the power of the intensive virtual which will lead to
more actualisations and so on. In short, there are differences of pure potential
within the virtual (such as the differences between ideas which produce new
ideas). There are extensive differences within the actual, but the actual is
produced by the virtual, even as the virtual gets caught up and tangled and
changed in the unpredictable and somewhat stubborn world of matter.

When we take this view of intensive and extensive difference we can better
understand apparent paradoxes such as the global and the local. Such
paradoxes are only paradoxes in extensive difference (i.e. in space). In virtual
terms, such intensive series as differences as those between locals and globals
are not paradoxes, or antagonisms, and not even in the end to do primarily with
space. They are to do with differential relations. And we are creating more and
more material grounds for these relations: global satellites, more and more
communication vectors interacting within the workplace, home and in-
between, the Internet, Photoshop, even new forms of conversation, new forms
of teaching, new relations in general.

Another way of thinking about the relation between intensive and extensive
differences is as something highly energised (read faster) running into
something with low energy (read slower). I put it this way because I want to
demonstrate that the virtual is not as idealist (in the philosophical sense) as it
sounds. It is, to my mind, a new form of materialism. In part, this is a result of
taking interaction first. In a sense, it is the interactive component of what we
used to think of as an object that is its virtual consistency something that
turns it into what Deleuze calls an objectile, where object is transformed into
an event continuous variation. In all this there is no predestination as the
situation is, in a sense, constantly changed both in its own internal dynamics,
and, inevitably, in its interaction with other dynamics.

The second alternative as regards the cultural role of the differential is that of
Jean-Michel Salanskis36. He writes a much more nuanced critique of Deleuze
on these points than Sokal and Bricmont37.

Salanskis, who studied with Deleuze but is now someone interested in the
connection between philosophy and mathematics, takes up precisely the point
 17

of the differential. He does this in an argument which has consequences for our
understanding of the virtual, and subsequently of interaction and mediation.

Salanskis suggest that all these questions of the differential should be left to the
world of mathematics. He brings up the invention of non-standard analysis as
something which reintegrates the infinitesimal into the calculus. For Salanskis
this is the pure and simple integration of the infinitesimal into the register of
quantity (71). In non-standard analysis

nonstandard elements are partly functional. In other words they achieve

a sort of modern compromise between number and function homologous
in part to the compromise effected by the old concept of the variable
without it any longer being a question of representing the movement of
variation38

In the process, for Salanskis, this seems to do away with the necessity of tying
the whole problem of the infinitesimal calculus into a metamathematical
horizon such as that of the concept or of the problem. Salanskis thinks this
metamathematical horizon is a kind of idealism with a Hegelian
architecture.

In short, for Salanskis, indetermination occurs within the actual and there is no
virtual. To say otherwise is idealism. For Salanskis, intensive difference is a
concept that results from a mistaken idealist model of the world. This is not all.
As I have stated it before, Deleuzes theory is genetic, in that it accounts for the
genesis of the world in the dynamism of the in-between, but Salanskis rejects
this as well. Salanskis thinks that there is no virtual determining the actual. For
him, the infinite is just part of the continuum. It is not the ideal cause of the
continuum.

Salankis has other objections to Deleuzes formulations which are pertinent

here. One is to do with the model for the idea-in-culture39. Salanskis objects
precisely to the primacy of interaction and variation in all this model of what
he sees as a kind of idealism. He objects to the primacy of events, of
transindividualism within it, to a dialectic without an object, for it must be
without a subject. Here again Salanskis seems to reject the notion of
complexity as possessing its own dynamic. He writes

if the idea is entirely bound up with genesis, with the event-

adventure which spreads out from the virtual which is itself commanded
by the total affirmation of chance, then I will infinitely be tempted to
forget what is addressed from speech to speech, text to text, discipline to
discipline, in favour of a what happens on which I have conferred in
advance and on principle a sort of trans-human prestige.40
 18

One is tempted to write exactly! but that would not quite take account of the
central serious questions Salanskis raises (and, as we saw earlier, Deleuzes
partner Guattari was also concerned with the question of enunciation, if not
quite in the same manner).

These questions are three. There is firstly the question of how one finds
consistency in all this. I think this is what Guattari calls the production of
subjectivity, the becoming-consistent of incorporeal universes. The second
question is that of whether there is anything outside of quantity, of what
Deleuze calls the actual, and if there was, whether we could know it. The third
is that of the relation between the idea as genetic and the idea as addressed (as
destinal). The destinal idea is an idea that relates to a particular discourse. It
presents no particular explanations for the genetic processes to do with
perception and knowledge, only a schemata. In all this Salanskis claims,
quite rightly, that Deleuze both uses and abuses Kant, whose claims on
knowledge were much more restricted than Deleuzes theory of the genetic
properties of the virtual Idea.

Can all these problems be resolved? Well, they are large questions which
deserve much more attention than I am about to give them but I shall attempt to
answer them at least within the context of this paper.

My answers are to be found within Deleuzes theory of the differential itself

In answer to the consistency question, I would argue that the differential

relation itself is the answer, which functions like the dynanism between the
positive and negative charges in atoms or molecules or the differences between
the elements of DNA. In other words I would argue that there is a singular
consistency in ones contextual dynamism.

As to whether there is anything outside of quantity, or more correctly, outside

the actual (which to my mind does not fully describe the entirety of quantity,
as Salanskis seems to assume), the simple answer is that there are only bodies,
in the broadest possible sense. This far we can agree. Bodies, however, as we
know, as immensely mediated and mediating. They are dynamic. They eat each
other, rub each other up the wrong way (and occasionally the right way). They
change. They respond to the environment. They fall apart, and come together. I
do not think that this reduction to bodies, in their dynamism at least, invalidates
Deleuzes theory of the virtual. This is because I do not think his theory of the
virtual is an idealist theory, although it is a theory of Ideas. The virtual exists as
the differential, but this is not to say that the differential does not find the
ground for its groundlessness within bodies.

The third question seems to me to be a question of address indeed and raises

the related question again of the idea. Is an idea just addressed to a discourse
within culture, and subsequently, to a subject, to a self? Or is an idea that
 19

which forms between the differences both within culture, and between culture
and the world in short, between the philosophical and the non-philosophical.
All I can say here is that I am certain that Deleuze and Guattari say the latter
and that to say the latter is less of an idealist position than to assume the fatality
of ideas in their reaching their destination, or even in their address,

Implicit in all this is the final question of where the virtual resides (and I
personally have Salanskis to thank for this as much as Deleuze). The virtual
resides in interaction. We would say that it is part of the actual but this would
miss the point. Both the actual and the virtual are drunk with each other. The
virtual, of course, resides within the actual, even as it exceeds it. It resides not
in another world, but in the (differential) gaps in this world. It may be
immanently transcendental, if I can be forgiven what appears to be an
oxymoron, but it is not transcendent.

In what is itself an instructional moment, Salanskis finishes with the example

of learning to swim. He recalls Deleuze in Difference and Repetition writing
about this process. For Deleuze, the real process of learning to swim begins
when the student combines his disjunctive points with those of the water, and
in a sense actualizes his movements. This fascinates Salanskis, but he is
disturbed by the inessential character of the instructors demonstration on the
sand41. What follows is instructive for us all particularly those who seek to
theorise and to teach media. Salanskis wants to emphasise the initiatory
function of a prescription - the fact that even when swimming out in the
ocean, I remain attached to the interlocutionary space of the human act of
swimming, what I express is also the genius of a combination of gestures
whose example I faithfully follow. Well in the tension between Deleuze and
Salanskis between new methods of swimming in new contexts and being
faithful to the instructional authority of culture is a great deal. Here is the
turning point of the world, a productive differential if ever there was one,
although I do not want to suggest that Salanskis is simply wrong. One could
imagine a productive area in-between these two positions here.

I do want, however, to finish this section with a question. My question is - what

if you do learn to swim by yourself as and when you need to? Or, what if you
make substantial and unfaithful adjustments to your swimming? Without
fidelity to instruction? Sometimes without instruction at all? What if we learn
to swim when and if we need to in the digital sea by ourselves? Or, not really
by ourselves, for each self is itself a sea of interaction.

Sanctus Some Conclusions about Media and the Differential

Revolution

I would like, in conclusion, to sum up some of the impacts of the differential

revolution on media theory. I would suggest that, as always, this is a question
of adjustment. This makes some of us anxious but even that anxiety is itself a
 20

call for adjustment to circumstances. Morever, I would suggest that the media
is always a call, one way or the other, for us to adjust. New media particularly
call to us in this way. Recently, a student in my department, Amanda Jessup.
wrote in a bulletin board discussion about a transformation of Heideggers
being-before-death in the contemporary world. It is transforming itself into
both a being-before-the-unknown and a being-before-computers which I
think is a perfect way to put this. Of course, as Heidegger would emphasise, we
will never become completely adjusted to these transformations, never even
adjusted enough, but it is certain that we will experience more and more
events of adjustment because of them.

The substance of this adjustment is intensive difference, and I wonder if we do

not need to create more of an engagement with this intensive difference in
media theory (not to mention media departments). Of course, chaos, in both the
ancient and contemporary scientific senses of the word, will follow! Yet if we
continue to predicate the development of media departments (and media theory
and even production and journalistic procedures) on a suspect notion of
immutable common sense, on easy categorical divisions (disciplines for a start)
and the primacy of simple facts we betray something. We betray the very thing
that dynamises not just a theory of the world, but the contemporary operational
procedures of the media itself.

Even more traditional forms of media such as film highlight the intensification
of events due to the media. I am thinking here particularly of the films of Atom
Agoyan, which are full of adjusters, adjustments and media events. One of
them is even called The Adjuster42, about a character whose work is to do
whatever it takes to adjust insurance claimants to their catastrophe (so that they
will not claim as much against the company). The lawyer in The Sweet
Hereafter43, a film as full of differential tensions as any I can think of, is
another such figure, negotiating as he does the ambiguous ground of financial
compensation for the tragic loss of children who were in a school bus which
crashed into an icy lake. Neither the insurance adjuster nor the lawyer are
exemplary moral figures, but they do carry with them the contemporary
ambiguities of constant adjustment. And his film Exotica44 thrives on the most
dissonant series to form its differentials. There are many here but the prime
series resonate between a tax inspector, a DJ, a stripper, and the pregnant
owner of the club where they all meet. All of whom have been somewhat
shattered by the murder of the tax inspectors daughter, whose body was found
by the more innocent teenagers who were to become the DJ and the Stripper.
The crucial indicator of intensive difference in these films is that one never
knows in which direction they will move next. There is scene between the tax
inspector and the DJ towards the end of Exotica in which one could easily kill
the other, but a critical point is passed through after which they embrace. It is a
kind of event. There are also all kinds of lines in his film that run close to each
other but never really meet. Pairs of baby-sitters in Exotica for example. Or
the stripper (who was once a baby-sitter and in a sense still is in an
 21

internalised intensity) and the pregnant owner of the club. Sometimes in

Egoyans films mediation is, in the traditional sense, a bringing together, but
more often, it remains a mediation, a differential interaction, that will never be
resolved, as much as it will change both sides of the interaction.

There are other contemporary films which turn these things inside out. In Paul
Verhoevens Starship Troopers45 a film about a war between giant bugs and
beautiful people - we find an ironic and extremely exaggerated treatment of the
world that Sokal and Bricmonts vision seems to imply, although Sokal and
Bricmont would be horrified to think so. Without the differential of irony
Starship Troopers would be the bleakest film imaginable, but with the irony,
for many, it seems a comedy (Socrates would have died laughing). It has it all.
In this film everything at first seems known or knowable. Everything is simple.
There is heavily-etched conflict and contradiction rather than the complexities
of a Deleuze-Leibnizian continuity. It is a world of anti-relativism, of the
march towards pure epistemological certainty. It is a world, in fact, in which
liberal ambiguity is for wimps. There are stark choices, which are not, at least
not in the first instance, particularly mediated. In the world of the film you are
either a citizen by virtue of military service or you are not. You are a bug or a
beautiful person.

Ironically, and even more satisfying at first glance for Sokal and Bricmont,
Starship Troopers is not even very postmodern (although to my mind it does
enter into the differential revolution eventually). It is far too moral, or at least it
appears to be. Yet even under this surface morality there is another morality, or
perhaps a series of fables. These fables are, to my mind, all about the
consequences of denying complexity, the perils of needing to live within
epistemological certainty. For a start the thing you fight is the thing you
become or at least, if you do not the thing you fight is the thing that will
consume you. The initially hard-edged line drawn between beautiful people
and giant bugs, for example, soon begins to fade, and many in the audience
were left sympathetic to the bugs as they ate into the basics of the Hollywood
star system. It seemed to be telling us that You may be beautiful. You may
be heroic. In this film, however, that only makes it more likely that you will
end up food for bugs. Other clear oppositions also break down. It is the future
and theres that internationalism that informs films of this type, but the high
school system make it clear that we are talking about America here. The only
thing is that these Americans join an army in which the uniforms look
suspicious like Hollywood Nazi uniforms.

Beyond all this there is also an ethic within this film, and it is one apt to our
discussion. The more you try to keep things apart the more they move into the
territory of intensive difference and their extensive differences collapse as they
produce something new you did not expect.
 22

So this film leaves us with a general rule. This is that the more intensely you
pose extensive difference, the more intense (by definition) is the intensive
difference (and the operation of the differential).

We can apply this rule to contemporary media developments. The Internets

very basis in extensive distribution is what gives it its extreme intensive
differentials. VR systems, which are precisely trying to recreate an illusion of
extensive difference (that is, three-dimensional space) on the hop, rely heavily
on differentials, particularly on the mathematics of differential calculus.

This leads us to a second rule. The more you want to create extensive
difference, the more you need an ongoing structure of intensive difference built
in. This explains both new media technologies ongoing developments and
gives us some direction for emerging new media theories. Put simply, we need
to find more parallels to the intensive calculus in our media theories.

This enhancement of intensive difference which I, amongst many others, am

bearing witness to here, is a contemporary cultural event. Of course, we have
always been subject to intensive difference (in the form of God, the Platonic
Idea, and so on). Now, however, in a somewhat Faustian manner, we have
brought summoned it down to earth (or up from hell) and are learning to use it
for ourselves.

Yet some, like Faust, at precisely the manner when we are beginning to tap the
infinite, want it all for themselves. Common to all these more selfish
appropriations of our new powers within intensive differnce is the use of a
decoy and often this decoy takes the form of reason just before it is about to
lead us into its own collapse into stupidity or silliness. Sokal and Bricmonts
characterisation of postmodernism, for example, has nothing to do with the
reality of postmodernism. It is a decoy with which they hope to distract us
away from their own, as scientists, toying with the infinite (both in their
laboraties and in their quest for celebrity). The dry economic rationalism that is
given as the reason behind every regressive social move in politics today,
including the slow strangling of universities, is also a decoy, used to distract us
from the imposition of ultimately irrationalist policies within the social. This
explains, why, in unversities at least, there are more and more stupid things to
do in the name of rationalist management policies. In Starship Troopers the
90210 people are used as decoys so that military intelligent can locate and
capture the big brain bug - a bug which is the mastermind for all the other bugs
and learns, in a parody of contemporary empiricism in the cognitive sciences,
by sucking out the brains of its victims. The last of these examples again
contains a moral lesson. Watch out if you are caught between rival rationalities
that are both intent on your destruction, or youll get caught in the differential
between them!

Tuba Mirum
 23

In the face of such traps we need:

1. A theory of media in the light of the recent intensifications of mediation.

2. An ethics or pragmatics of interaction an operating manual for the
differential revolution.
3. Not to be sacrificed to intensive differentials (such as those between
military intelligence and giant smart bugs) from which we are excluded.
Could we ever be excluded from these differentials of power, in any case, if
not for the illusion of participation in the Ideal (of instrumental reason, of
economic reform, of citizenship at a price)?

Maybe I have fallen for another elaborate hoax. If Sokal and Bricmont get their
science wrong in the midst of defending it, rely primarily on rhetoric in an
argument directed against rhetoric, and constantly quote out of context, isnt
that a dead giveaway? To mimic the old Chinese proverb, if a Sokal pretends to
be a postmodernist, how does he know that he is not a postmodernist
pretending to be a Sokal? How would we know?