My first interaction with Googles Gemini

Me: How relevant are Deleuze and Guattari to media production research?

Gemini: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari are highly relevant to media production research, offering a powerful and innovative toolkit for understanding how media shape our world and how we engage with it. Their philosophy, particularly concepts developed in Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, challenges traditional ways of thinking about communication, subjectivity, and power, making them particularly useful for analyzing contemporary media landscapes.

Here’s why they are so relevant:

• Critique of Representation: Deleuze and Guattari fundamentally challenge the idea of thought as representation. Instead, they propose a more dynamic understanding of thought as an encounter and an event. This is crucial for media research that moves beyond simply analyzing how media “represents” reality, to explore how media actively produces reality, affects, and desires.
• Rhizome and Assemblage:
  • Rhizome: This concept describes non-hierarchical, interconnected networks, much like the root system of certain plants. It contrasts with arborescent (tree-like) structures, which are hierarchical and centralized. In media production, the rhizome helps analyze the diffuse, decentralized, and constantly evolving nature of digital media, social media, and user-generated content, where connections can be made in any direction.
  • Assemblage: This concept refers to heterogeneous collections of elements (bodies, discourses, affects, technologies) that connect and interact to form a functional whole. Media production can be understood as complex assemblages of technology, human labor, economic forces, creative ideas, and audience interactions. Analyzing media through the lens of assemblage allows researchers to map out these complex relationships and understand how they produce specific effects.
• Desiring-Production: For Deleuze and Guattari, desire is not a lack but a productive force. They speak of “desiring-machines” that connect and produce flows. In media production, this can be applied to understanding how media industries produce and capitalize on desires, and how media consumption itself is a form of desiring-production, shaping subjectivities and consumer behavior.
• Schizoanalysis and Micropolitics:
  • Schizoanalysis: This is a method of analysis that seeks to map the “social unconscious” according to movements and intensities of desire, focusing on how power operates at a molecular level rather than just through grand narratives or institutions. In media research, schizoanalysis can help uncover the subtle ways media influences thought, behavior, and social formations, going beyond traditional content analysis to examine the affective and productive dimensions of media.
  • Micropolitics: This concept emphasizes how power operates in everyday interactions and at a local, diffuse level, rather than solely through large-scale political structures. Media production is inherently micropolitical, involving countless decisions, negotiations, and interactions that collectively shape media output and its impact.
• Body Without Organs (BwO): While abstract, the BwO can be used to understand how media can deterritorialize and reterritorialize bodies and identities. It speaks to the potential for media to disrupt established norms and create new possibilities for being and relating, even as it can also be used for control and homogenization.
• Control Societies: Deleuze, in particular, discussed the shift from “disciplinary societies” to “societies of control,” where power operates through continuous modulation and pervasive monitoring, rather than confinement. This resonates strongly with the digital age, where data, algorithms, and networked media play a central role in shaping and controlling behavior, making his work highly relevant to understanding the implications of new media technologies.
• Post-Media Era: Guattari himself made prescient comments about the “post-media era,” suggesting a displacement or decentering of the mass media’s hegemony. This concept continues to be explored in critical postmedia studies, analyzing how digital platforms and new forms of communication are transforming the media landscape and the production of subjectivity.

In summary, Deleuze and Guattari provide a sophisticated theoretical framework for media production research that moves beyond simplistic models of communication and representation. Their concepts enable researchers to:

• Analyze the complex, non-linear processes involved in media creation and dissemination.
• Understand the affective and desiring dimensions of media consumption.
• Examine the micropolitical forces at play in media industries and user interactions.
• Explore how media shapes subjectivity and fosters both conformity and resistance.
• Critique the pervasive influence of capitalism and control in the digital age.

Many contemporary scholars actively use Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas to analyze various aspects of media, including digital games, social media, news production, and the evolving relationship between technology and human experience.

Me: What would a contrary position be to these ideas?

Gemini: While Deleuze and Guattari offer a rich and often provocative lens for media production research, several contrary or critical positions highlight their limitations or propose alternative frameworks. These critiques often stem from different philosophical traditions, methodological preferences, or political priorities.

Here are some common contrary positions:

1. Structuralism and Semiotics:
   • The Critique: Deleuze and Guattari explicitly reject structuralism’s emphasis on fixed, underlying structures and codes that determine meaning. A structuralist or semiotic approach to media production would argue that meaning is primarily generated through systems of signs and their relationships (e.g., syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes). They would focus on analyzing the rules and conventions that govern media texts and how these structures produce specific interpretations.
   • Why it’s contrary: Where D&G see fluid “flows” and “assemblages,” structuralists see stable “structures” and “systems.” Where D&G emphasize the production of desire and becoming, structuralists prioritize the decoding of meaning and the analysis of linguistic or symbolic codes. This approach often prioritizes the text itself and its internal logic, rather than the “molecular” processes of production and reception emphasized by D&G.
2. Traditional Marxism and Political Economy:
   • The Critique: While Deleuze and Guattari are deeply critical of capitalism, traditional Marxist approaches might find their “desiring-production” and “micropolitics” to be too abstract or to deflect from the fundamental role of class struggle, economic infrastructure, and capitalist modes of production in shaping media. A traditional Marxist perspective would focus on:
     • Ownership and Control: Who owns the means of media production and how does this influence content and access?
     • Labor Relations: The exploitation of media workers within capitalist production systems.
     • Ideology and Hegemony: How media serves to reproduce dominant ideologies and maintain the power of the ruling class.
   • Why it’s contrary: Marxists might argue that D&G’s focus on desire, affects, and “deterritorialization” risks obscuring the concrete material conditions and power relations that underpin media production. They might see D&G as too idealist or as underestimating the enduring power of economic determination. Some Marxists also criticize D&G for not providing a clear roadmap for political action or for dissolving the subject in a way that makes collective organizing difficult.
3. Empiricism and Quantitative Research:
   • The Critique: Many media researchers operate within an empiricist paradigm, prioritizing observable data, measurable effects, and quantifiable trends. They might find Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts to be overly abstract, metaphorical, and difficult to operationalize for empirical study.
   • Why it’s contrary: D&G’s philosophy is not designed for hypothesis testing or statistical analysis. Their approach is more interpretive, philosophical, and focused on tracing processes and transformations rather than measuring discrete variables. An empiricist might argue that D&G’s theories lack falsifiability and cannot be empirically validated, making them less useful for generating actionable insights or policy recommendations.
4. Audience-Centric and Reception Studies:
   • The Critique: While D&G touch upon consumption as desiring-production, much media research focuses heavily on how audiences interpret, engage with, and are affected by media. Approaches like reception studies, cultural studies (particularly the Birmingham School), and uses and gratifications theory emphasize the active role of the audience in making meaning.
   • Why it’s contrary: While D&G would acknowledge the audience’s role in producing effects, their focus is often broader, looking at the entire assemblage of media, technology, and desire, rather than isolating the audience as a primary unit of analysis. Some might argue that D&G’s emphasis on “flows” and “intensities” can overshadow the specific, conscious interpretive practices and social contexts of individual audiences.
5. Humanism and Subject-Centered Theories:
   • The Critique: Deleuze and Guattari’s critique of the individual subject (e.g., the “body without organs” as a rejection of a fixed identity) runs counter to humanist approaches that center on human agency, consciousness, and the individual’s role in creating meaning and enacting change.
   • Why it’s contrary: Theories that prioritize the conscious, rational subject might find D&G’s de-centering of the self to be disempowering or to neglect the ethical and political responsibility of individuals. They might argue that media primarily functions to inform, persuade, or entertain a conscious audience, rather than to plug into unconscious desiring-machines.
6. Rational Choice Theory and Information Processing:
   • The Critique: In some communication fields, particularly in areas like marketing or political communication, models rooted in rational choice theory or information processing are common. These models assume that individuals make decisions based on logical evaluations of information and that media’s primary role is to transmit information efficiently.
   • Why it’s contrary: Deleuze and Guattari would dismiss such models as overly simplistic and reductive, ignoring the complex, non-rational, affective, and unconscious dimensions of human behavior and media engagement. They would argue that media operates not just by conveying information but by producing desires and modulating affects.

In essence, a contrary position to Deleuze and Guattari’s relevance in media production research would generally prioritize:

Economic or institutional determinism over micropolitics: Focusing on large-scale power structures and material conditions.

Structure over flux: Emphasizing stable systems and codes.

Representation over production: Focusing on how media reflects reality rather than creates it.

Consciousness over unconscious desire: Highlighting rational thought and individual agency.

Empirical measurement over conceptual mapping: Prioritizing quantifiable data and testable hypotheses.