What Trump needs to do is double down on his MAGA platform, and he will. There will be zero Trump supporters who will change their vote due to what you see as a major change in ideology. — Hanover

We will see. So far, we witness the complete pause. Trump, as well as GOP leaders are completely
silent for 9 days. Therefore, it is possible to assume that they are busy with rewriting of their regular
rhetorics. However, most likely, you are right again: rhetorics, as well as ideological platforms
are not important today.

No predictions are really clear. It's all speculation, but I really can't see middle America finding anything acceptable about defunding the police. In fact, there is tremendous support for the police nationwide. It's just been silenced for the moment. I don't even think the African American leadership is totally comfortable with these attacks on police departments. Most big cities are Democratically controlled, meaning the mayors and police chiefs are typically Democrats and oftentimes minority. I'm not fully convinced that even inner city minority citizens want to see police withdrawal from their communities, as I've heard their complaints in the past were that it took too long in their communities for the police to arrive, if at all. — Hanover

The domination of systemic racism
discourse makes Tramp's "Make America Great Again" rhetorics meaningless, so his campaign has to invent the different rhetorics asap.

but what do we see as the predicted outcome of the current awakening to racial inequities? Is it that people will do as you suggest and throw their very being into its elimination, or will they march while the marches take place and then go back to business as usual, or will they hold their breath until all this passes, or will they recommit to protecting the institution that they never thought racist in the first place?

My prediction is that they will not do as you think they should, but that it will likely be one of the other approaches — Hanover

You mentioned four possible future outcomes, and you rejected the first one as least probable, because

Leaving aside the question of how bad and systemic the problem truly is, unless you are the one oppressed, it is unlikely you will spend the time trying to resolve the problem, whatever it is. — Hanover

Your first option may become much more probable if the momentum of the movement
“defund the police” can accelerate and bring the crash of the police as well as various affiliated
institutions. Likely, the whole movement is not just about the elimination of racial inequalities.
When we look at Seattle Autonomous Zone, it is difficult to imagine that we witness the radical
rupture, the “break with causality,” and the beginning of the revolution. So, all in all, you are right in your predictions. What will be the tangible broad social outcome of the current civil unrest? Will it break the framing of the one more large-scale media event? So far, as you mentioned, there is just one apparent result: the intensifying of political correctness. It is not clear if another decisive result will be Trump’s re-election. The domination of systemic racism
discourse makes Tramp's "Make America Great Again" rhetorics meaningless, so his campaign has to invent different one asap.

If the people are constituted through a complex interplay of performance, image, acoustics, and the various technologies engaged in those productions, then “media” is not just reporting who the people claim to be, but media has entered to the very definition of the people. — Number2018

Baudrillard's perspective supports the thesis that the media is the function of power, and its primary purpose is to maintain the status quo. Dayan and Katz in the
book "Media Events" continued this line of argumentation.
Large-scale' media events' are formatted to make sure that they meet our
preconceived expectations of our roles and the roles of the media.
Spectacular and high-exposure media events serve a ritualistic role in helping to define mediated cultures. For example, the Olympics, political assassinations, terrorist events, and royal weddings are identified as significant enough to make the watching
and reading of the event a significant cultural artifact in itself. Such events can
be understood as cultural rituals whose representation in the media carries a message about how we should understand ourselves. Each ritual requires a particular mode
of representation and interpretation, which in turn creates a shared identity for our community. For instance, the glorification of national athletes at the Olympic games
is exactly what reminding us of our national identity and re-creates our nationalism.
According to Dayan and Katz, in a mass-mediated world, the very ritual of
consuming the media becomes a form of social integration. Dayan and Katz published their book in 1994. Then, there were tremendous changes due to the advent of the open digital space and social media networks. The media has intensively reported the critical events of the ongoing civil unrest, starting from George Floyd's death up to his funeral. It does not look like the media coverage has promoted the maintenance of dominant societal identities, while rendering any alternatives as deviant, or even seditious. It is possible to assume that the media's primary controlling function has shifted from the support of a set of identities or particular narratives to the consuming of media-products. Therefore, it becomes understandable how the media can transcend and transform any possible struggle, any potential or actual conflict, how it covers the entire field of all unfolding events, and why the particular content of any event becomes less important.

It is the matter of the state of things.
— Number2018
Don't you think that this is actually part of the problem? — Heiko

Yes, I think so. If you read Weibel’s essay, mentioned in OP, you could find that there is the evolution of perspectives on violence, starting from Benjamin and Schmitt to Derrida and Agamben. The simple view on violence considers it as the direct and primary device of the state’s domination. On the contrary, their thought is based on the assumption of the negation of the negation. The primary domain of violence has gradually become hidden and indiscernible. Thus, for Agamben, the dialectics of inclusion/exclusion leads to conclude that “human life…included in the juridical order solely in the form of its exclusion (that is, of its capacity to be killed)” (Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer).
Agamben goes as far as to propose that fascist concentration camps constitute the
paradigmatic model for the contemporary political body. Yet, for sure, the Nazi concentration camp doesn’t comprise a privileged figure of reflection on violence. Nowadays, totalization or ham-fisted determination is not a result of centralized, discernible, and coercive modes of power. Even fascism, the most violent political regime, should be explained as an effect of founding productive processes. For Deleuze and Guattari, beyond ideology or repression, there is the more fundamental level of power that should be conceptualized in terms of desire: “the masses, at a certain point and under a certain set of conditions, wanted fascism, and it is this perversion of the desire of the masses that need to be accounted for.” The problem of ‘how can power be desired?’, (‘how can the subjugated group support domination?’) has allowed to develop the conceptual framework, explaining fascism as well as the contemporary capitalist production of our subjectivities. Our lives are not shaped by the model of bare life that submits to sovereign power. They are constituted by capital's grasp on our psyches, in particular through the control which it exercises over the media, advertising, opinion polls, the flow of deformable and transformable coded figures.

Systemic racism obtains when a system(s) function (regardless of explicit rules) to favour certain racial groups over others. It doesn't require overt individual racists (though it may protect and even reward them) nor does it necessarily require any conscious acts of racism at all (and obversely you could have conscious acts of racism in a system where no systemic racism exists, only rather than being performative of the system, they would be antithetical to it). Systems are culturally contextual, they're embedded in cultures and how they function depends on their relationship to the culture they're in. So, often it's what the system allows rather than what the system demands that's important. — Baden

I am perplexed by the point of unconscious engagement in ‘systemic racism.’ Many people do not publicly exhibit or privately express any recognizable features of racist behavior or racist beliefs and consider themselves non-racist, tolerant, and multicultural. They do not perform any conscious acts of racism. Yet, some of them are regularly involved in professional activities that could be qualified as maintaining systemic racism according to the above definition (cops, journalists, politicians, etc.) Therefore, individuals may exercise acts of systemic racism unbeknownst to themselves, or even contrary to their intentions, if alignments of power or culture subtly orient their actions. Consequently, despite their personal views and qualities, these people may be called racists or systemic racists. Please correct me if I misunderstood or misinterpreted the quote.

It is not a matter of enthusiasm. It is the matter of the state of things.

Where exactly would the difference between the "positive" picture and the defining negatives be when we are talking about conscious processes? You can not think a "citizen" without a "state", but behaving like a citizen where there is no state might be possible. That is for the negation of the negation. But when we are talking about the "state" symbol there is the notion of "souvereignity" and we know the authority, although it is referred as a symbol and (hopefully or not) never realized. — Heiko

Thank you for the excellent point! Indeed, we could think that there is no violence when one behaves as a good citizen in the absence of the apparent state's exercise of coercive or violent ways of power. For Deleuze and Guattari, there is no citizen (or subject) before the synthesis of the unconscious. There is not a conscious I that produces, but a process of production of which the I is a kind of product. The aim of psychoanalysis is to aid the repression of the drives and strengthen the ego's adaptation to reality.
On the contrary, according to Anti-Oedipus, such a 'reality' has no ontological status: it is merely an effect of oedipalized consciousness. The signifying structures that shape thought and an ordinary consciousness of an oedipal, average, or standard 'citizen' are effectively produced by machinic processes in society. This production is not directly violent. Yet, it effectively blocks and averts the development of alternate subjectivities and ways of thinking.

I would like to return to your apprehension of symbolic violence:

Symbolic violence.
The negative prejudices and stereotypes that are reproduced by institutions are a central factor in institutional violence and a trigger for personal violence.

Symbolic violence encourages the adoption of discriminatory or coercive positions in ideology, economics, gender relations, destruction of nature, etc. It is based on an extensive network of values assimilated from childhood and then reinforced by society's legal norms to inculcate in us an oppressive culture because it is uncritical and prepares us for passive and/or active submission to unfair structures. For example, public stereotypes about the immigrant or atheist can support the passivity of authorities in the face of labour exploitation or a legislation or practice that prevents access to public office based on religious beliefs. — David Mo

I think that you presented correct, but narrow and reduced conception of symbolic violence.
Baurdieu concieved it as the way to impose not just a set of discriminatory or coersive positions.
It is the set of practises, aimed to make one to accept a certain worldview, together with the set of presupposed values and beliefs. Symbolic violence does not necessarily works negatively. Individuals accept and absorb the norms, structures, and hierarchies of the social settings through the engagement in complex of non-violent and non-ideological dispositions.

You give a soft idea of Foucault. As if he authorizes all means of domination that are not directly violent. I remind you that on discipline and punishment he wrote more than one book and on "pastoral power" he made a very harsh criticism in volume I of the History of Sexuality. For example: Under the pretext of ensuring the salvation of the sheep, the shepherd builds a subtle device of power, capable of unfolding even over the intimate solitude of the believer and leading him towards a new form of widespread servitude. — David Mo

I do not think that Foucault's aim was to authorize the means of domination.It looks like his intention was to make them discernible. He attacked the dominating academic framework, pointing out tohidden and ubiquitous forms of power. These strategies were much more subversive and effective than the direct and apparent criticism.

simply forcing every teenager to stay locked up for several hours a day listening to uninteresting talk is violence. Even more so when he can be qualified as "unfit" or "very deficient" -or similar. — David Mo

You are right. Yet, I think that Foucault's view of discipline allows to consider seemingly non-violent
methods of control - when a teenager finds a talk interesting or she is qualified as a good or a gifted
student as ways of exercising power.

You give a soft idea of Foucault. — David Mo

Starting from 'History of Madness' we see the evolution of Foucault's perspective on power:
it becomes lighter, more ubiquitous, less attached to 'negative' objects or practices (directly
violent and coercive), and more saturated within wide domains of social practice.

You don't need to be very patient to see the state go berserk. We get images every day. — David Mo

I would like to pay your attention to the word IMAGES. I do not deny the presence of different forms
violence in the contemporary society. I just want to prioritize. What kind of violence is prevaling?
When the mass media shows a series of particular images for 24/7, so that a specific narrative and agenda should become dominating, one could consider symbolic violence as the leading one.

I will answer your last post tomorrow

The Anti-Oedipus' desire could produce the collective unconsciousness beside the rule of Law, the fear of castration, or any other feature of the oedipal complex - it works against repressive modes of power.

Most people for example never get into serious conflict with the state because they know the rules. — Heiko

It is right as a common sence point of view. However, we cannot explain a variety of patterns
of human behaviour by the fear of panishment.

Deleuze and Guattari made up for the concept of "regimes of significants", following Nietzsche based on the ancient "sign(s) deep into the flesh" to signify ownership or subjection. With the internalization of those archaic structures we get to allegiance in advance. — Heiko

Most likely, Anti-Oedipus was written to counter the conceptions of the internalization of the repressive coercive regimes of violence as a primary mode of power.

a teacher does a lot of things. Wiping wet noses, for example. But his institutional task is mainly to evaluate, classify and exclude. These are forms of domination sustained with institutional violence. This violence is often symbolic when the teacher qualifies with categories of scholars: "He lacks intelligence", "She is lazy", "He is not prepared for...", "She lacks discipline". — David Mo

I think that a teacher’s major institutional task is to include her students into a wide educational network by using primarily nonviolent, seemingly objective professional pedagogical techniques
and methods. For Foucault, the ordinary and the habitual function as the hinges of power.
That is why his conceptualization of power was refuted and misunderstood.

What is new in him is that the same model included also behaviourism, a form of control that uses psychological techniques more than violence. — David Mo

I understand your intentions and the terminology you used. Yet, I think that Foucault's conceptional framework goes far beyond "behaviorism, a form of control that uses psychological techniques"
"A relationship of violence acts upon a body or upon things; it forces, it bends, it breaks, it destroys, or it closes off all the possibilities. In effect, what defines a relationship of power is that it is a mode of action that does not act directly and immediately on others. Instead, it acts upon their actions. Power is a question of ''government'', which does not refer only to political structures; rather, it designated the way in which the conduct of individuals or groups might be directed". (Michel Foucault, The Subject and Power). The panoptical disciplinary mechanisms of control included practices of surveillance, elicitation, and documentation. They constrain behavior precisely by making it more thoroughly knowable or known. But these new forms of knowledge also presuppose new kinds of constraints, which make people's actions visible and constrain them to speak. It is in this sense primarily that Foucault spoke of "power/knowledge." Further, ''government'' covers various non-disciplinary modes of power, such as bio-power, pastoral power, normalization power, etc.

What's your definition of violence?
— TheMadFool

Nullify or weaken someone's freedom by acting through physical force, threat, technique, hierarchy, ideology, manipulation of language or abuse of weakness. — David Mo

I think that Foucault conceived 'freedom' as produced and constructed , as the effect of power. That is why he was often criticized: his conception of power does not leave any space beyond its control.

Regarding the recent murder of George Floyd, the media appeared to be very quick to label the murder as the result of racism. — Pinprick

Actually, you did not accept my attempts to explain what happened. It is OK. Yet, after all, what is your own version (explanation)?

the media is partly to blame for the current state of affairs by labeling the murder an act of racism, with no evidence — Pinprick

Why did the media label the murder as an act of racism?

It could be productive to compare the ongoing protests with the 1968 civil unrest events in France. The events reached such a point that
the national government ceased to function after President Charles de Gaulle
fled France to Germany. Jean Baudrillard personally witnessed the events of 1968. Generally, his view of action-in-concert was close to Arendt's one. The revolutionary rupture, the 'break with causality' occurs when a process erupts secreting new systems of reference. The action of revolt cannot be derived from the order of causes. People, acting together, can create and sustain the new subjectivity and its forms of expression. In Baudrillard's perspective, the mass media played a decisive role in the defeat of the May 68 protest movement. "Mass media diffusion and contagion had nothing to do with the symbolic quality of the action. At the extreme, the subversive act is no longer produced except as a function of its reproducibility. It is no longer created; it is produced directly as a model. The symbolic has slipped from the order of the very production of meaning to that of its reproduction, which is always the order of power. "(Jean Baudrillard, Requiem for the Media). When the nationwide public had become in-formed by the mass media, the authentic solidarity and enthusiasm were lost. The media coverage has distorted and transformed the mode of action, reducing it to reproducing the various simulacra prototypes. Baudrillard’s view has entirely diverged from Butler’s conception as well as from the role of the media in the current civil unrest.

But the cable and broadcast networks--even a few overseas news teams--and major newspapers were all covering the same story in a generally similar way--video of people demonstrating, close-ups of signs, footage of fires, tear gas--all that. — Bitter Crank

This is a kind of media resonance effect, when various media platforms start covering the same story
in a similar way. One of the theories (of Niklas Luhmann) explains this phenomenon so that the media usually retains particular modes and patterns of covering, reporting and narrating.
Do you have any other thoughts? Do different media platforms try to support particular agenda?

One author who has studied this at length is Michel Foucault: the micro-powers, as he calls them. They are authoritarian systems that generate an apparently rational discourse aimed at social exclusion. This happens in the school, the family, the business, the asylum, the hospital, etc — David Mo

Is that possible to show explicitly that a teacher is exercising a sort of micro-power while teaching a class? She is not entirely focused on controlling the marginal students of her class.

Brutal and visible repression is no longer exercised -or not limited to- but rather a pressing and permanent control to modify behaviour. — David Mo

Yes, Foucault tried to make it clear that his conception of power has nothing in common with its
violent or repressive theories. The disciplinary, panoptical mode of power has been entirely different from the sovereign one.

In his view, the very concept of "man" and the sciences associated with it are a result of the techniques of controlling, monitoring and punishing the marginal elements of populations. — David Mo

So, for example, does a psychologist (who is completely unaware of being an instrument of power)
apply “the techniques of controlling, monitoring and punishing” while consulting a patient?

I get most of my news from Minnesota Public Radio, here in Minneapolis. MPR was very much social-justice-forward in their treatment of Floyd's death. Several call-in shows were reserved for black callers; white listeners were invited to not call -- just listen. Their reporters accepted the narrative that police regularly murdered black people -- citing some cases in the Twin Cities and cases in other cities over a few years time. — Bitter Crank

Do you think that Minnesota Public Radio reporting was decisive factor in forming the
nationwide narrative?
Also, do you remember the initial media coverage of the Ferguson events of August 9,10 2014?
It could be interesting to compare to understand if the media's approach has changed.

I think I disagree here. Why would video evidence of a cop blatantly killing a person unprovoked not qualify as breaking news? The addition of racism into the equation adds drama and sensationalism, but isn’t needed to further the media’s agenda. — Pinprick

people are not powerless or forced to repeat the stereotype. The people involved in the first two steps could have chosen otherwise. Therefore they are still responsible for doing so. — Pinprick

Most likely, you would not ask the New York Stock Exchange broker to make decisions according
to some moral or religious system of values. They have to be effective and make money. Similarly, people who made the critical decision of the addition of racism, could not decide differently, considering all their business environment. Anyway, thank you for the productive dialogue!:smile:

having media outlets clearly labeled as opinion programming would help. There is a certain air of authority and accuracy that goes along with the term “news” that has now become misleading. — Pinprick

There is the radical approach to the media that I appreciate:
https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=1302
Niklas Luhmann proposed that the media constitutes an autopoietic system with its own independent
self-referential programs and quolities.

Objectivity cannot seem to be found, and this results in the public being burdened with the need to seek out varying opinions and draw their own conclusions. — Pinprick

According to Luhmann, objectivity never existed in the world of social reality.

Aren’t humans completely in control of what gets covered/reported, and how? — Pinprick

To answer this, I would like to get back to your OP.

Regarding the recent murder of George Floyd, the media appeared to be very quick to label the murder as the result of racism. — Pinprick

Indeed, the media was swift. Likely, it is possible to represent what happened using the following scheme, dividing it into steps:
1) Selection 2) Prioritizing 3) The way of covering/reporting (labelling) 4) Maintaining the created momentum
5) Back-Referencing, so that all previous steps, all that was constructed looks as a set of real facts.
Probably, the selection was made on the base of the corporate policy, as well as aspiration to advance and to shape particular political agenda. The policy is debated and renovated by the small group of big bosses, and it is entirely out of public awareness. So, most likely, the decisions to choose the scene of a murder as the breaking news was made by a small group, following the corporate policy of a few of the biggest media platforms, and the rest of them just followed it. 3) “Labeling the murder as an act of racism, with no evidence” – the critical point! Note that without this ‘labeling,’ there would not be “the breaking news,” so that 1) and 2) would become pointless. We may think, that steps 1) and 2) at list provide an evidence of existence of a group of responsible humans. Unfortunately, this stereotyped narrative – about racist evil white cop (Step 5) had already existed and in-formed steps 1) and 2). There is the shortcut circuit of what was previously constructed and the earliest stages of selection/reporting/covering. So, all the process has been almost automatized. Probably, the vast majority of the media personal do their jobs with a high degree of self-awareness, intentionality, and motivation. Yet, they retain the same patterns and schemes of narrating, expressing, reporting, covering, selecting, editing, etc. To verify it, you could watch various programs of a few mainstream media platforms for a while. That is why I think that the media performs automatically.

what needs to be analysed is the way in which this symbolic violence is linked to the real violence of the institutions with the myriad of almost invisible micro-violences that make up the society of imperial capitalism. — David Mo

Could you bring a few concrete examples?

we must turn here to a philosopher who is unjustly forgotten today, Jean-Paul Sartre.This oblivion is due in large part to the fact that he dedicated himself to attacking institutional violence as a class phenomenon and to defending the counter-violence of the dominated - with more or less success. — David Mo

How Sartre's perspective on violence was different from the 'classical' marxist view?

Would making such a distinction be a legitimate or lawless act? Or would it come down to whose opinion is which? — Heiko

You are right. To make it clear, it is necessary to bring a more rigorous framework. First, I do not think that somebody's private opinion is worth qualifying as a legitimate or lawless act of violence; unless, by voicing it, one hurts somebody or effectuates some considerable effect. Yet, if one can bring argumentation,
sufficient enough to convince you (and maybe somebody else), it is indeed a performative act.

For example, when a judge calls something "criminal", we all know that this might be quite relative, for example depending on where you are. Would that make any difference? — Heiko

Once again, my mere opinion about a judge sentence is not important at all. To make it an act, I must demonstrate why this particular sentence is justified or not so that I would be able to question (or confirm) the judge or judicial system authority. Or, I need to apply a
sophisticated rhetoric to make you believe me. In this case, it would be symbolic violence. This concept allows us to distinguish usually indiscernible violence and to avoid the simplicity of the banal dichotomy.

The contemporary society maintains the social order without the firm support of dominating ideological or religious authorities. Also, the state’s exercise of coercive methods of power has considerably diminished. Therefore, to explain ‘how society is possible,’ Bourdieu has abandoned Benjamin and Schmitt’ theories of violence related to the conception of repressive power. Instead, he has developed the theory of symbolic violence. To a certain degree, it is similar to the Marxist idea of ‘false consciousness.’ Yet, people do not merely internalize the discourses of the dominant. They accept and absorb the norms, structures, and hierarchies of the social settings through the engagement in complex dispositions of their social existence. Symbolic violence targets and forms an individual’s ‘durable principles of judgment and practice’ (the habitus).

So do you think the media should at least be held partly responsible for what’s now occurring? Should the media’s methods change? — Pinprick

All in all, I completely understand your perspective. Yet, I think that we cannot change the media. When you write: “the media is partly to blame for the current state of affairs,” you probably underestimate the role of the media in the construction of our social reality. It continuously exercises the excess of dominating creative power, and performs in a machinic, automotive mode, without personal human intentions. Therefore, the media is always entirely to blame for the state of affairs. Practically, we could try to understand how the media functions and to regulate our own degree of involvement and engagement.

It’s strange. You would think that outright murder by the very people charged with protecting us would warrant a public outcry in itself, but it seems the outcry is much greater if the murder is considered to be racially motivated — Pinprick

To me the media’s role in this is more fuel for the fire. — Pinprick

The media role is to transcend and transform any possible struggle, any potential or actual conflict, to cover the entire field of all decisive events. The particular content of the unfolding event is less important. There is the singular paradoxical phenomenon of our days: the media, together with the neoliberal elite, compose vanguard of the struggle for the set of the most noblest aims. There are multiple effects of this situation: the elite and the media reinforce their power and influence, but they also advance the accelerating societal changes.

I’m asking about the consequences of operating in this way, specifically considering all that has transpired with this incident. Thoughts? — Pinprick

The media is just one of the factors of the entire dynamic. There is the double crisis of economy's shutdown and pandemic's effects as well as the continuous erosion of trust in traditional institutions. Since Trump was elected, there has been an escalation of the struggle around his presidency's legitimacy. We see the dramatic increase of the partisanship of the mainstream media. Probably, since the stakes are so high now, the leading media platforms are further diverging from the facts reporting. For example, yesterday CNN presented the unnecessary excess of power when peaceful protesters have been pushed away from the White House so that Trump could pose beside St. John Episcopal Church. According to the Fox News version, Trump has restored law and order by visiting the church that was set on fire during the previous night protests.
The singular event occurs in the US right now. Is that possible to obtain credible information about what is going on?

I think that the media is partly to blame for the current state of affairs by labeling the murder an act of racism, with no evidence (at least that I’m aware of) other than the fact that the race of the murderer and victim were different. The question I have is whether or not the incident should have been labeled as racist. Even if it was a racist attack, which the evidence seems to be lacking in my opinion, would it have been better to simply label it as a murder in order to prevent the chaos that has ensued? Or, does the media’s responsibility to report accurately outweigh the possible consequences? — Pinprick

The media has its agenda: it always tries to engage the most significant possible audience for as long as possible. To achieve this goal, the media utilities various techniques and strategies: first, they select the so-called ‘brute’ fact to report. Then, the media frame this fact to be enveloped in the recognizable plot and to invoke the familiar narrative. Even if they do not label the chosen fact directly, they can easily integrate it into a favorable context. Further, the news should appear as the novel and extraordinal ‘breaking news’. A collective of professionals supports the current breaking news on-air and is ready to drop it at any time to start the next one. Often, a media platform promotes a clear partisan perspective. Yet, it is even much more effective in imposing a particular cluster of opinions and preferences when it looks like reporting the neutral, unbiased news.

The virtual is best understood as a "problem" that has ontological standing. It is distinguished from the actual, which, by contrast, can be understood to be the corresponding 'solution' to the problem. — StreetlightX

There is one more way to think of Deleuze’s virtuality. When heat is applied to a tranquil liquid, the liquid’s equilibrium is disturbed. In classical thermodynamics, a physical system tends toward maximum entropy, which is the highest degree of stability and homogeneity under existing conditions. In theory, when the heat is increased, the liquid loses its stability but retains its homogeneity so that molecules are moving chaotically with increased speed. But, if the heat is increased at a specific rate, a threshold is reached, and an order spontaneously arises out of chaos. A pattern of a system of vortexes appears. So, the liquid now is
unstable, but it is no longer homogeneous, and the system has moved from entropic equilibrium. Yet, its tendencies to retain a balance do not disappear. There are two virtual attractors (or dimensions): the constraint to dissipate heat and return to thermal equilibrium, and the restriction to lose momentum to gravity and return to kinetic equilibrium. The liquid contracts the two virtual states into its actuality, becoming a kind of individualized singularity. Each vortex has a population of locally correlated particles, but its molecules are also associated with all the liquid particles. The new whole acquires particular sensitivity to the variation of its determinants. There is the set of independent variables (a phase space) so that the sum total of the system transformations could be represented as a trajectory or a fractal. The virtual and the actual are co-resonating systems. They necessarily duplicate and effectuate each other. Actualized, the metastable order decreases the effects of the virtual. But, at a threshold state, the virtual intensifies, and the actual weakens at a bifurcation moment. In reality, the process of actualization is complicated by many fluctuations and indiscernible factors. Even in the considered simple example, interference between attractors adds an element of chance, so that the choice of the actualized state at the bifurcation moment is often unpredictable. A mutual immanence of the virtual and the actual is a particular synthesis, the coexistence that transcends its genesis and actuality. When we move from physical systems to social ones, the complexity increases, and the indeterminacy heightens. Therefore, based on the differentiation of the virtual and the actual, Deleuze’s social ontology has been an act of audacity.

At stake in this is the status of emotion: is it an 'origin' - a brute biological given that is simply 'activated' in certain circumstances - or is it instead a 'result' - a bio-social 'production' that helps orient one's actions and is the outcome of an evaluative process? It's this latter view which I want to outline and discuss here.

The basic idea behind this second view of emotion is that emotion is two-pronged, as it were. At the 'base', biological level, what is 'immediately' felt is a kind of generic, non-specific 'affect', which simply indicates both intensity (heightened or dull feeling - 'urgency' of affect) and valence ('good' or 'bad' feeling, something threatening or rewarding). The second step in the 'production' of emotion however, is an evaluative one - a matter of categorising this initial affect (as sadness, as anger, as joy...), a categorisation which takes place on the basis of a range of bio-cultural considerations. — StreetlightX

Probably, to conceive an individual emotional sphere in relation to socially determined cognitive and affective processes, we could use Simondon’s approach. An individual and society are never
in a relationship as one term to another, as though two independent essences interact with each other. On the contrary, they are in the ongoing process of reciprocal individuation. “The individual only enters into a relationship with the social through the social.
The psychosocial personality is contemporaneous with the genesis of the group, which is individuation.” (Simondon, Individuation: psychic and collective). The process of social mediation has been rapidly changing over time. Benedict Andersen, in his book “Imagined Communities,” proposed that the nation was created due to a sense of “horizontal comradeship.” The mass mechanical production of printed works united people through the interiorization of literary culture. Before Anderson, a similar project was persuaded by Walter Benjamin. “Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art…The reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional engagement…The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.” (Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction). “Technical reproducibility,” the film, provided new possibilities for collective experiences: mass became the new and the only spectator of a film and the consumer of mass culture. In both examples, social mediation involves two dimensions: categorical affects, which takes place at the pre-programmed level of the enactment of virtual intensities, and vitality affects at the level of emotions experienced by an individual. The co-occurring aspects of mutual interplay create various transindividual links and effects. The organization of the techno-social medium covering the gap between registers plays a decisive role. Anderson’s national state and Benjamin’s fascist regime require distinct complexes of collective and individual affects. In our time, our virtual medium, connecting the social with the individual, contains and compresses a multitude of various registers. Due to the complex topology of interconnections, we often experience its effects without a clear understanding or explanation.

Odd, that someone of his status should be so forgotten. — Banno

What is your answer? Why is he forgotten?

One of the things that attracts me to thinking-for and thinking-with is precisely that they make thought a matter of transindividuality in the first place. — StreetlightX

I agree with you. We need to reorient our thinking towards Outside, exteriority, or transindividuality.

To think-for is to have to comport our thoughts in a certain way for the sake of what impels it: language, dance, loving, hunting. Thought here is directly implicated with an outside without which there would be no thought at all. The danger to avoid is in believing that there is thought that is 'for itself' before it is for anything else: all thought is in a certain sense thinking-for, all thought is already implicated in an outside long before it becomes a self-enclosed reification. — StreetlightX

Now I better understand your undertaking of ‘thinking-for’ and ‘thinking-with.’ All in all,
you have done a great job! Yet, I want to point out a few things.
When you write:
" what we pay attention to, how we 'parse out the world' - is very much dependant on what we are thinking for. The implication if we extrapolate a little, is that there is a thinking-for-speaking no less than a thinking-for-dancing or thinking-for-writing-this-post or thinking-for-sex and so on, "
it may look like you accentuate the particular moment of thinking that could fit for the concept of intentionality. “Intentionality is that feature of the mind by which it is directed at, or about, or of objects and states of affairs in the world.” (John Searle, Seeing things as they are). In Searle’s approach, ‘intentionality’ covers both ‘thinking-of’ and ‘thinking-for.’ Therefore, Searle's intentionality could re-establish the predominance of the centralized rational subject.
Probably, out of your examples( there is a thinking-for-speaking no less than a thinking-for-dancing or thinking-for-writing-this-post or thinking-for-sex and so on.), we could prioritize thinking-for-speaking to make your concept more rigorous. My thinking-for-speaking (or thinking-for-writing) would be determined mostly by a set of speech acts that I can utilize, recollect, connect with, invent, than by my immediate environment or merely by my desire to speak. Otherwise, my intention to speak may not become thinking-with-speaking, remaining just a vague transient thought.There are virtual instances that subtly direct and manage my immediate conscious acts. In other words, when I write or speak, I actualize a virtual assemblage of enunciation. To make it clear, I try to connect your concepts to D&G’s theory of double articulation from “A thousand plateaus.” “There are two distinct formalizations in reciprocal presupposition and constituting a double-pincer: the formalization of expression in the reading and writing lesson, and the formalization of content in the lesson of things…
There are two poles: the facial articulation of expression (face-language), and the manual articulation of content (hand-tool).” Your quote: “An agent who forms his forces according to diagrams read off from the implements, fits himself into a series of equivalent and interchangeable agents” allows us to conceive thinking-with-hammering in terms of populations, but also to implement D&G’s “lesson of things, the manual articulation of content.”
Further, when I am hammering a nail, the whole operation would be impossible without a variety of institutionalized verbal performances (speech acts) that I previously performed, or I was acted upon: learnings, teachings, instructions, rules, orders, programs, etc.(D&G’s “reading and writing lesson”). Similarly, a virtually present collective assemblage of enunciation determines my thinking-for-dancing or thinking-for-sex at the moment of thought's emergence , even without being consciously actualized in my mind. Probably, we could extrapolate so that thinking-for-dancing and thinking-with-dancing also constitute reciprocal presupposition which is governed by a social-collective infrastructure. And, it could help us to better understand

the exact relation between the subject and modes of thought — StreetlightX

I don't understand when you say "my thinking is different from thought..." Thinking and thought are the same process. — Harry Hindu

Yet, in some situations, the use of one word may be more appropriate than the other. In my examples, I applied ‘thinking’ to the case, where I am hammering a nail so that I am part and parcel of the whole act: my unconscious, conscious, sensor, and kinetic processes are immediately engaged as the working parts of the whole act. In the rest of my examples, I “do things with words,” there are a variety of speech acts. To underline the difference, I used different words.

I'm also asking is the thought of hammering a nail the act of hammering a nail. — Harry Hindu

I think that when I am hammering a nail, my thought is neither the thought of hammering a nail nor the act of hammering a nail. In this instance, my thought constitutes the different mode of thinking, ‘thinking for.’

The rest of your post doesn't seem to address my question. I asked if the sound of a word is about something that isn't the sound of the word. I'm also asking is the thought of hammering a nail the act of hammering a nail. If your answer is yes, then you are a solipsist. If no, then thoughts are about things (of which thoughts could be a thing, hence we can turn our thoughts back on each other, just as we turn our view back on itself in being self-aware). In other words, a word or thought is about things other than the word or thought. — Harry Hindu

Thank you, now I understand your question better. Please note, that you posed the question in such a way that it has just one (yours) answer – If I disagree, that would mean that I am a solipsist. From my perspective, your answer - “a word or thought is about things other than the word or thought” constitutes just the relative truth, taken to the particular frame of reference. ‘Thinking about’ (or ‘thinking of’, StreetlightX’s concept) expresses just one, isolated way to conceptualize the relation between ‘things and words.’ It is possible to show that all speech acts, affiliated with the processes of the hammering a nail (‘thinking for’), are not merely determined by social conventions and individuated performances in Austin’s sense. They are unseparated from collective infrastructure so that their real agents are various populations. That is why ‘thinking with’ is necessarily implicated in ‘thinking for.’
The set of social presuppositions, virtually present in the thinking process as well as the physical part of the act of the hammering, is necessary for the successful accomplishment of the whole operation.

I will answer you later

Indeed, representational thinking does not cover the entire domains of our thought, which are embedded within our daily practices.
— Number2018
So words don't represent, or mean, something that isn't the words being used? And by mean, or represent, I also mean to act as a stimulus to drive a particular behavior in someone (the behavior isn't the word being used to drive the behavior), because meaning and representations are causal. — Harry Hindu

When I hammer a nail, my thinking (it may or may not be accompanied by a verbal act) is different from thought in each of the following situations: I plan to hammer a nail, I order to do it, I take a verbal account of how I do it, or I teach somebody how to do it. Nevertheless, despite of the distinction between all these ways of thinking, each of them is virtually given when I hammer a nail.

There's a kind a Nietzschean 'genealogy of modes of thought' to be written here, the story of how thought becomes 'interorized', turned upon itself and then serving to dominate the other modes of thought (the revolt of slave-thought over master-thoughts, as Nietzsche might put it!). — StreetlightX

This project has already been successfully persuaded, for example, by Foucault or D & G. However, after them, it looks like we should not get engaged in ‘interiorization’s genealogy’ anymore. During his career, Deleuze has steered away from the critique of ‘interiorization,’ focusing on ‘exteriorization.’ And, we need to examine the reasons for this turn.

It is, I'd perhaps prefer to say, a way of thinking about thought that comes only thought is taken as an explicit subject of thought itself. As in, for the most part, our everyday, waking, living, loving thoughts do not conform to that model - we are constantly thinking-with and thinking-for, our modes of thinking are constantly engaged in the world around it, modulated by and engendered by our various encounters. But it's that dis-engagement, when thought bears upon itself and becomes inward-dwelling that thinking-of tends to become predominant. — StreetlightX

You make an excellent point here! Yes, it is still necessary to counter the dominating model of thought, based on the image of the sovereign rational subject. Indeed, representational thinking does not cover the entire domains of our thought, which are embedded within our daily practices. Yet, your vision of ‘thinking for’ should be enriched with various connections and dimensions. Otherwise, being contained within the particular ontological domain, which is related to our experience, your image of thought may eventually get explained and controlled by rational models. One of the possible strategies could be the fragmentation of the image of the centralized subject. Accordingly, we could consider subjectivities, agencies, assemblages, or multitudes, constituted by the parts that are independent of the whole. And, an individual thinking process would become just one of their working parts.

Thinking-with is often implicated in thinking-for: I think-with something in order to think-for something - I think-with the hammer in order to think-for repairing the shed. — StreetlightX

Probably, the fragmentation of the image of the subject can also help to disclose unavoidable relations between ‘thinking for’ and ‘thinking with.’Also, your previous attempts of thinking subjectivity differently could be brought back here. Isn’t subjectivity, discussed in https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4250/subjectivities, related to your ‘thinking for’? If yes, we need to understand how automized, unconscious, and deindividuated subjectivities are embedded into our intimate experiences. And, is your ‘thinking with’ affiliated to collective subjectivities of https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6887/collective-subjectivity/p1 ? The answer could help us to better apprehend the radical changes of social agency, starting from Canetti’s crowd subjectivity up to aleatory digital communities of our time.

Probably, it could be reasonable to frame the three ways of thought that you discuss by using the concept of the image of thought.

there is no 'general model' of thought. This is the interest in considering 'thinking-for': unlike 'thinking-of' or 'thinking-about', which has the tendency to 'assimilate' all thinking under a general model, 'thinking-for' pluralizes thought, it enables us to acknolwedge various kinds of thought, rather than making thought a monolithic action that is the same in all circumstances. — StreetlightX

If one particular image of thought – ‘thinking-of’ (representational thinking) prevails over others, it is not enough to point out that "’thinking-of’ has the tendency to 'assimilate' all thinking under a general model." It may look like the tendency is generated by routine, "natural" ways of thinking or universal characteristics of mind. Yet, there are a variety of apparatuses and processes, subtly and effectively maintaining the dominating model while oppressing the alternatives. To resist and expose these apparatuses, one has to start thinking differently, inventing different images of thought. Likely, there is no peaceful coexistence of various kinds of thinking. The contention should be part and parcel of their multitude.