The Arachnean and Other Texts (Univocal) by Fernand Deligny

by Fernand Deligny

The Arachnean and Other Texts by Fernand Deligny (1913–1996) is a collection of writings from the second half of the 1970s. In 1968 Deligny established a “network” for informally taking care of children with autism that was more than a mere site of it was a milieu created out of a reflection on the mode of being autistic. What is a space perceived outside of language? What is the form of a movement without perspective or goal? How do we engage with a world that is not our own, a world turned upside down yet truly common, where acting cohabitates with our actions and the unknown with our forms of knowledge? Such is the mythical web of the “Arachnean,” made of lines, holes, traces, enigmas, and questions without answers that demand to see that which cannot be seen. Long before the digital age of social networks, meshworks, and digital webs, Fernand Deligny speaks to us in his own autobiographical and aphoristic manner. For Deligny, his life was always experienced in the form of “the network as a mode of being.”

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference, Philosophy, Psychology

Paperback

First published October 1, 2013

Reviews

[Sophie]

Read the introduction then cried on the floor then read the rest of the book

[ipsit · Rating 5 out of 5]

"How to frame the undertaking of exiting from all projects"? Or then again, as Deligny himself asks in a still-untranslated exposition, how to envision a method of connection that would be "outside of capacity" - one that would not shoulder the hints of a longing to make autistics and other people who live outside, or on the edges, of language, fit in with the state of the "thoroughly considered project," the neurotypical subject, the human-that-we-are?

As this imperative interpretation uncovers, Deligny sought after this inquiry by working discreetly, quietly, industriously over decades, to produce a completely unique feeling of living life in the same way as others. "The regular I talk about, impervious to the interruption of language, neither cooperatives nor imparts," he composes. However the new feeling of the basic that comes to fruition in Deligny's work is additionally as old as the Arachnean itself: "If our specific system, so wobbly and dubious, had a business," he states, "it is weave probably a few parts of primordial communism." The production of The Arachnean and Other Texts moves the strained of Deligny's primordial communism, and brings it plunging into the present — or maybe uncovers it to have been here, turning its sparkling web, from the beginning. What I learn from Deligny is a specific form of empathy - the indispensable act of going with individuals in their silence and maybe "hearing" them in their silence, as well. Deligny's thoughts and practice, his essence informs my thoughts and inquiries. He is a constant guide.

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sabe aquele livro que tu se pergunta "por que eu comprei este livro?" e essa pergunta tange tanto ao motivo inicial de ter comprado esse livro quanto ao motivo posterior, depois de tê-lo degustado em que você faz a tal pergunta. Este é um destes livros. Talvez seja um problema meu com os franceses que escrevem livros deste tipo, talvez seja um problema dos franceses que escrevem livros deste tipo comigo. Talvez. É uma escrita muito vaga, que não diz nada com nada ao mesmo tempo que pretende dizer tudo com tudo. Inacabada seria uma boa definição para esse tipo de escrita científica também. E, tchans, não é que este é realmente um livro inacabado, com textos que não foram completamente prontos pelo autor? Eles foram organizados depois de sua morte, isso explicaria muito muita coisa. Mas não. Não explica. É um livro que as notas sobre eles se fazem explicar de uma maneira muito mais elucidativa do que ele mesmo, como aqueles livros que os professores dão para os alunos só a nota introdutória, porque do resto não vão entender nada mesmo. Complicadinho, hein, complicadinho mesmo.

[Molsa Roja(s)]

És una tasca gairebé impossible extreure’n res. No perquè sigui excessivament abstracte o difícil de seguir, sinó perquè és un pensament aberrant, un pensament que té lloc encara sota el domini de la paraula però en un extrem tal que esdevé, per mi, incomprensible. O bé Deligny és un geni, o bé és pràcticament afàsic, o bé no tinc prou paciència. Cercava la gènesi de diverses nocions que Deleuze empra, i no m’he trobat amb res més que desvariejos, un vagareig sense propòsit.

[Joseph M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've come to appreciate spiders. I've also come to identify with a lot of animals in my life. I'm not sure why, but I feel like animals are a large though point for me. And spiders I have come to appreciate
This book, as well, is highly unheard of.
I first found out this book through my amateur Deleuzian research, and also my interest in autism. I was technically diagnosed with autism, but they're trying to have me do another test (more money). So this book was of interest to me.

As a whole, it's very fragmented. Very aphoristic. It mimics the "wander lines", which are different but not opposed to "thought-out-projects". It's not that a line is either one or the other. Interpretation makes it that way. His thesis is that "networks", "wander-lines" and the "Arachnean" arise as a difference to "thought-out-projects". In some of the other papers, for context, he talks about how language divvies up the world (my own terms). The wander lines are not just what you would draw in your notebook when suffering through class, even though those also are wander lines (as pure energy). Wander lines are what allows an object to stop "being" something and allows it to become, in a event of multiple explosive lines of meaning against interpretation. This isn't all rainbows, it is agonizing as I've experienced. The autistic mode of communicating is not the norm.
I think this work is important because, in this world of "no-nonsense" work and even normative political action, there can be actually a turning away from the suffering other. The spider web gets burnt, and no wonder people get feverish in the heat where everyone either follows their instinct of revenge or ignorance. Despite it all, the network, the spider web, has to be released somehow. It sometimes comes out as stuttering, saying the wrong thing, and fun-ningly having a pundit agree with you.
As you can see, it is different from centrism. It is the agony of not yet having a people, or even a movement. You could say loneliness. In this, there needs to be new ground, because the old ground is burnt and slippery. You need a hug, or a network, or a knowledge of a 'common' (another one of Deligny's terms that he explicates in a good short paper of his).
Also, is a human the judge of where the spider sets up shop? You can't put a spider on a plate and expect it to weave a good web. Suddenly some of it's functions of movement, not necessarily change, but all of a sudden the constellation is different. Like a videogame AI running against a wall or glitching out, a fish taken out of water. There isn't a lack of something in the AI, I guess it's as simple as the topology of their environment putting them in a new mobility. Accommodations are not necessarily the whole story.
"But this is not my aim."
There is a definitive distress that a lot of autistic people experience, and is in part social.
The purpose is not to disdain the 'ideologies' causing these problems, but rather to see what happens, to even live. Deligny talks about the gaze of the autistic person as not "looking for something" but more like 'using' the space of the eyes in contrast to a utilitarian looking. It's not about using a calculator to solve a moral issue, which only gets to the start. It's also not about allowing suffering to burn alone, but about abnegating 'wanting' to help, which doesn't allow, for example, an autistic child or adults expression to establish a network (which was there anyway, like the web was "in" the spider). One of the most powerful moments in the book was Deligny's thought on the hug.
Networks survive in conditions of crampedness, like Deleuze's minor literature, because they are against the organs as interpreters. It is radical empathy, totally unfolded and open. Proust being compared to a spider himself (what Deleuze says in AO on Proust).
Deligny also likes to say "But this is not my aim" a ton (as mentioned in the book "Artmachines" by Sauvagnargues, which is how I found out about Deligny)

It's a political work. A project. I'm glad its not as known as it is, because I want to keep it. A network.

[javor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crazy book. Lots of Guattari-esque themes. Loved the translators' use of translators notes for the French-specific language games Deligny did. Otherwise: relied too heavily on metaphor; never engaged in formal critique or analysis + overly poetic; used weird 20th-century French conceptions of autism and felt too (post-)structuralist and not very scientific. Still very cool though. Deligny seemed to lay some of the foundations for rhizomatic thought here (notably, the comparison between the Arachnean web and hierarchical thought had strong parallels in AO and more so ATP). Generally really cool though!