The affs attachments to static meaning prevents ethics that are attuned to the texture and specificity of daily life – prefer immanence

The reading I give here of Deleuze and Guattari's work suggests that it is through open-ended attunement with the multiple forces of our life that we can unfold, rather than attempt to dictate or control, the responses that will best serve the evolving capacities of the interdependent life-forms of the communities to which we belong. Deleuze and Guattari's conception of an immanent ethics calls on us to attend to the situations of our lives in all their textured specificity and to open ourselves up to responses that go beyond a repertoire of comfortably familiar, automatic reactions and instead access creative solutions to what are always unique problems. My reading of their conception of ethics emphasizes its pragmatic efficacy for resolving the often-painful dissonance we experience as embodied human beings struggling to live good lives. Although progressive thinkers and activists have not yet achieved a world where change is no longer needed (despite some claims to the contrary), our concerns have shifted as the world changes, and theory has attempted—often with great success—to keep pace with these changes. With this book, I hope to contribute to such efforts by rendering a Deleuze—Guattarian approach to life accessible in light of questions about what it means to be human, normative and alternative conceptions of identity and subjectivity, and ethical and political questions about how we can live from day to day as well as work toward making the world a better place. Deleuze and Guattari's conception of doing theory is that of an intervention that can help one answer the question of "how one might live" rather than a representation of the world (May 2005, 1-25). Philosophy, in their view, is (or should be) an evolving force that affects and is affected by other forces as they play out over time; meaning unfolds and evolves through the differentiated becoming of the multiple forces of life. This perspective prompts a creative approach toward reading and writing theory as well as toward thinking. Arresting the dynamic force of concepts by restricting their meanings to past formulations overlooks how their meanings evolve in response to the shifting configurations of the life problems they address. Far from prompting an anarchic sloppiness, Deleuze and Guattari's approach invites tracking the subtleties of meaning that emerge when one attends to the texture of specific contexts. Concepts cannot mean in abstraction from life; their power can only unfold in relation to other concepts as well as the heterogeneous forces of life as evolution. Unfolding incipient meanings of concepts in ways that will suggest satisfying solutions to the problems life poses requires skillful attunement to the interrelations of words to other words as well as words and the material situations in and through which words mean. Deleuze and Guattari's conception of an immanent ethics and politics premised on affirming what is as well as unfolding what could become invites creative resolution of the obstacles that prevent us from our individual and collective thriving. Their life-affirming approach attends to what Susan McManus in a recent article terms the "affective register of subjectivity" in ways that prompt resolution of "nihilistic blockages in agency" (McManus 2007, 1-2) and instigates the belief in the earth and the invention of a new people for which Deleuze and Guattari call. Furthermore, their approach to ontology and doing theory suggests a constructive way of "mapping" a variety of projects against the background of a virtual whole that connects all projects promoting progressive change as well as individual and collective projects invested in living "good" (as in ethical) lives. This ability to provide a framework loose enough not to exclude disparate projects, and yet coherent enough to allow us to connect various kinds of progressive projects without assimilating those projects to specific theoretical paradigms, may provide impetus for the kind of joyous hybrid connections Rosi Braidotti calls for in her inspiring book, Transpositions (Braidotti 2006). Although it is impossible for any given path to affirm everyone equally, acknowledging the mutual implication of our unfolding projects as well as creatively thinking in terms of the larger wholes connecting us could help us find new solutions to how to live and work toward collective solutions.