The Full Body and I

Part 3 delves into the distinctions between person and individual, and collective personhood and collective individuation, focusing on the political efficacy of social media flows of signs. Peirce’s concept of the “index” is cross-bred with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of the “point-sign” toward an updated concept of interpellation, or how individuals are inducted into collective processes through the performative emission and dissemination of signs. A new theory of the “media figure” is proposed. Deleuze and Guattari’s enigmatic concept of the “full body” from Anti-Oedipus is reinvented to rethink the political relation between the individual and collective levels. The nature of the affective regime fostering fascism is discussed, with attention to the difference between affect and emotion. It is suggested that contemporary individuals are personifications of the capitalist process, and that fascism piggybacks on this. The sandwiching of the individual between sub-personal and supra-personal levels is discussed in term of the “dividual.”