This paper reports how according to Heidegger, Deleuze, and Agamben, both the notion of thinking and of philosophical activity, far from meaning the same, involve fundamental differences. However, our reading of the three authors also proposes to discover a common affiliation related to the contrast between “doxa” and “thinking”; Heidegger’s, Deleuze’s and Agamben’s are three ways by which we can understand the “birth” or “emergence” of thinking as an experience or activity that should not be understood as stemming from the field of communication or re-presentation. All these considerations converge finally in the subtle quality of thought as liminal “pow-er” that, according to each author, must also be understood in its paradoxical quality of “impotence”, quality much closer to the experience of in-corporation as an event (Heidegger); to the pre-supposed, non-discursive moment –and simultaneously con- stituent– of either philosophical, artistic, or scientific “creation” (Deleuze); or to the pure enjoyment of power, as the experience of a type of “deprivation”, both positive and unlimited, as well as eluding any “function” (Agamben). / El presente artículo da cuenta de cómo en Heidegger, Deleuze y Agambenlas concepciones sobre el pensar, por un lado, y la actividad filosófica, por otro, lejos de ser indistintas la una respecto de la otra, implican diferencias fundamentales. Sin embargo, nuestra lectura de los tres autores también propone descubrir una filiación común referida a la contraposición entre “doxa” y “pensamiento”: las de Heidegger, Deleuze y Agamben constituyen tres vías por las que podemos comprender el “nacimiento” o “surgimiento” del pensamiento, experiencia o actividad que no debe suponerse como efectuación posible desde el ámbito de la comunicación o re-presentación. Todas estas consideraciones confluyen, finalmente, en la calidad sutil del pensamiento como “potencia” liminar que, de acuerdo a cada autor, debe comprenderse también en su calidad paradójica de “impotencia”, calidad mucho más cercana a una experiencia de la in-corporación como acontecimiento (Heidegger); al momento presupuesto y no discursivo –y a la vez constituyente– de la “creación” ya sea filosófica, artística o científica (Deleuze); o al de la pura fruición de la potencia, como experiencia de una especie de “privación” tan positiva como ilimitada y que sesustrae a cualquier “función” (Agamben).

Deleuze’s work is certainly heterogeneous. Throughout his life he managedto deal with an amazing variety of subjects: history of philosophy, psychoanalysis, politics, literature, painting, cinema, among others. However, the author of A Thousand Plateaus did not address a particularly relevant area for the twentieth century configuration –photography. This absence is unsettling not only because of the cultural importance of photography, but also because his reflections concerning the concept of image are a recurrent theme throughout his work. This research will not seek to determine the reasons why Deleuze did not explore the field of photography, because we believe that a question like this is, to say the least, idle. On the contrary, we will try to prolong his reflections in order to unfold the intuitions found in his philosophy that may help us to address the issue of the photographic. In this sense, our objective will be to develop a taxonomy of the photographic image from the distinction of two main types: the transparent image and the opaque image. / La obra de Deleuze es ciertamente heteróclita. A lo largo de su vida se ocupó de una variedad de temas sorprendente: historia de la filosofía, psicoanálisis,política, literatura, pintura, cine, entre otros. Sin embargo, un territorio de singular relevancia para la configuración del siglo XX no fue abordado por el autor de Mil mesetas: la fotografía. Esta ausencia es inquietante, no solo debido a la importancia cultural de la fotografía, sino también porque las reflexiones en torno a la imagen son recurrentes a lo largo de toda su obra. La presente investigación no buscará determinar las razones por las que Deleuze no exploró el ámbito de lo fotográfico, pues creemos que una pregunta como esta es, por decir lo menos, ociosa. Intentaremos, en una dirección diferente, prolongar sus reflexiones con la finalidad de desplegar las intuiciones presentes en su filosofía que nos puedan ayudar a abordar la problemática de lo fotográfico. En este sentido, nuestro objetivo será elaborar una taxonomía de la imagen fotográfica a partir de la distinción de dos tipos fundamentales: la imagen transparentey la imagen-opaca.

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Deleuze’s short essay on the societies of control has, one could say, infected thought on the present. Few serious reflections on today’s media society seem immune against the plausibility and evidence of Deleuze’s deliberations, not least because they use the force of abstraction to draw theoretical concepts from empirical facts, allowing for an anticipation of future developments without getting lost in details. Deleuze argues that a society whose media and technologies provide an apparatus of seamless connectivity and global scope has irreversible effects on the way we perceive, think, and create order. At the same time, the naturalization of these effects progresses via retroaction – making us forget it has ever been different. With his text, Deleuze stands in the midst of this naturalization and neutralization process: This may be why it is inevitably a “postscript” to the societies of control – it takes the artificial position of the “post” in order to be able to look at one’s own contemporary culture from an alienating distance, as Foucault once demanded for every description of the present (1999: 91). This “post,” then, by no means signals a retrospective look at a process already completed; instead, Deleuze gives an exaggerated account of the early digitization age from an artificial retrospective standpoint, which, ironically, will also have been one “after” writing.

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Neoliberalism has been on the rise at least since the mid-1980s. The economization of the social and the increasing globalization of capital show all the characteristics of a neoliberal governmentality, as Michel Foucault has analyzed it (cf. Foucault 2008). Gilles Deleuze described this process as a new transformation of the disciplinary society into a control society, which he briefly sketched and described in his far-sighted and ‘prophetic’ essay (cf. Deleuze 1992). However, it is not just as if Deleuze is saying “Fuck ould Foucault, move over.” Rather, Deleuze shows that Foucault’s analysis revealed that the disciplinary society (with its heyday in the 18th, 19th, and much of the 20th century) was only the actual (still present but disappearing) of the then pertinent predicament, whereas the society of control was already chomping-

Animals are good to think with, or so they say. And animal totems have consistently found a hospitable ecosystem in Continental Philosophy. From Isaiah Berlin’s fox and hedgehog, to Friedrich Nietzsche’s menagerie of eagles and asses, to Donna Haraway’s companion species, different critters have been put to work at the service of The Concept. In Deleuze’s influential essay, “Postscript on the Societies of Control,” we encounter two particular animals: the mole and the serpent. (“We have passed from one animal to the other, from the mole to the serpent, in the system under which we live, but also in our manner of living and in our relations with others.” [2011: 140f]) The former is the emblem of the disciplinary society, which, according to Deleuze’s argument, is evolving swiftly into a control society, overseen by the oily coilings of the latter. What to make of this totemic distinction? What can the mole and the serpent tell us about the present moment, thirty years after Deleuze released them into our minds in this context? Since it is hardly more than a suggestive throw-away line in the original piece, we can only speculate.

“Perhaps it is money that expresses the distinction between the two societies best.” This statement from Deleuze’s (1992: 5) famous “Postscript on the Societies of Control” (first published in French, cf. Deleuze 1990) should be taken seriously. Much has been made of the implications of this essay, especially for the description of contemporary digital culture: e.g., tracking as an example of the “control mechanism, giving the position of any element within an open environment at any given instant” (ibid.: 7). The central role of money and Deleuze’s specific ideas regarding the transformation of capitalism in (or as?) ‘societies of control’ have received comparatively little attention. Seb Franklin (2015: 3-10) has already discussed Deleuze’s famous essay in relation to questions of socio-economic order, but he did not explicitly discuss the role of money. This is all the more surprising if we consider that Deleuze called himself a Marxist: “I think Félix Guattari and I have remained Marxists, in our two different ways, perhaps, but both of us. You see, we think any political philosophy must turn on the analysis of capitalism and the ways it has developed” (Deleuze 1995: 171). Among others, Choat (2010: 125-55) has underlined that Deleuze’s thought was always very close to Marx (cf. also Thoburn 2003). It is therefore not surprising that Deleuze assigns money an important role in the description of control societies.

What if we read Gilles Deleuze’s late essay on control societies not as a contribution to Foucault’s map ?

As Alexander Galloway observes in an essay called “Computers and the Superfold,” Gilles Deleuze’s 1990 “Postscript on the Societies of Control” is a highly unusual text, when compared to the philosopher’s larger oeuvre: “Such a strange little text” (Galloway 2012: 513), it is indeed very different from the earlier Deleuze of Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense, or the Deleuze who wrote the two-volume magnum opus Capitalism and Schizophrenia in tandem with Félix Guattari. How to read not only its peculiarity within Deleuze’s work as a whole, but also its particularity as a text that belongs to a certain genre?