Faciality, and the lack of it here
Submitted by
on Sun, 12/28/2008 at 1:57am.
ok, so i'm still plowing through (for the 2nd time) "a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia" by deleuze and guattari, and i had to share a passage:
'One can form a web of subjectivities only if one possesses a central eye, a black hole capturing everything that would exceed or transform either the assigned affects or the dominant significations. Moreover, it is absurd to believe that language as such can convey a messege. A language is always embedded in the faces that announce its statements and ballast them in relation to the signifiers in progress and subjects concerned. Choices are guided by faces, elements are organized around faces: a common grammar is never separable from a facial education. The face is a veritable megaphone. Thus not only must the abstract machine of faciality provide a protective screen and a coputing black hole; in addition, the faces it produces draw all kinds or arborescences and dichotomies without which the signifying and the subjective would not be able to make the arborescences and dichotomies function that fall within their purview in lanquage. Doubtless, the binarities and biunivocalities of the face are not the same as those of language, of its elements and subjects. There is no resemblane between them. But the former subtend the latter. When the faciality machine translates formed contents of whatever kind into a single substance of expression, it already subjugates them to the exclusive form of signifying and subjective expression. It carries out the prior gridding makes it possible for the signigying elements to become disernible, and for the subjective choices to be implemented. The faciality machine is not an annex to the signifier and the subject; rather, it is subjacent (connexe) to them and is their condition of possibility. Facial biunivocalities and binarities double the others; facial redundancies are in redundancy with signifying and sujective redundancies. It is precisely because the face depends on an abstract machine that it does not assume a preexistant subject or signifier; but it is subjacent to them and provides the substance necessary to them. What chooses the faces is not a subject, {...}; it is faces that choose their subjects. What interprets the black blotch/white hole figure, or the white page/black hole {facial recgonition systems}, is not a signifier, as in the Rorschach test; it is that figure which programs the signifiers.'
That being quoted, how much of chess should be played across from one another? Chess.com is a wonderful place, but is the lack of direct human interaction an advantage or hinderance? Clearly it is more difficult to psych out one's opponent online, with limited means of communication (compared to the complexities of one-on-one interaction). I guess that ultimately my question is... does playing online help me when I'm in a live game?